This page has been validated.
THE
FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES
OF THE WORLD.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS, 1066
Eis voe la Bataille assemblée,
Dune encore est grant renomée.
Roman de Rou, 13183.
Arletta's pretty feet twinkling in the brook made her the mother of William the Conqueror. Had she not thus fascinated Duke Robert the Liberal of Normandy, Harold would not have fallen at Hastings, no Anglo-Norman dynasty could have arisen, no British empire. The reflection is Sir Francis Palgrave's:[1] and it is emphatically true. If any one should write a history of "Decisive loves that have materially influenced the drama of the world in all its subsequent scenes, the daughter of the tanner of Falaise
- ↑ "History of Normandy and England," vol. i. p. 526.
