At no time in the day's battle did so many Normans die, as perished in that fosse. So those said who saw the dead"[1] The account given in the 'Chronicon de Bello' is similar. "There lay," says our monk, "between the hostile armies a certain dreadful precipice, caused either by a natural chasm of the earth, or by some convulsion of the elements. It was of considerable extent, and being overgrown with bushes or brambles was not very easily seen; and great numbers of men—principally Normans in pursuit of the English—were suffocated in it. For, ignorant of the danger, as they were running in a disorderly manner, they fell into the chasm and were fearfully dashed to pieces and slain. And the pit, from this deplorable accident," he adds, "is still called Malfosse." According to William of Malmesbury the slaughter was so great, "that it made the hollow level with the plain with the heap of carcases." According to Odericus Vitalis, Eugenulph or Engerran de Aquila, whose descendants afterwards gave to their barony of Pevensey the name of the "Honour of the Eagle," was among the number of those who thus ingloriously fell. The scene is graphically described in the Bayeux Tapestry, and the accompanying legend is: hic ceciderunt simul anglo et franci in prelio. Upon an elevated bank some Saxons soldiers are shown hurling down darts upon the Normans as they struggle and plunge in the fosse. This exactly agrees with Malmesbury's statement—"By frequently making a stand, they slaughtered their pursuers in heaps; for, getting possession of an eminence, they drove down the Normans, when roused with indignation and anxiously striving to gain the higher ground, into the valley beneath, where, easily hurling their javelins and rolling down stones on them as they stood below, they destroyed them to a man."[2]
There is no place near Battel which can, with a due regard to the proprieties of language, be called a "dreadful precipice" (miserabile præcipitium vaste patens), though, by comparing Malmesbury with the Monk of Battel, I think I have succeeded in identifying the locality of this "bad ditch." From all the probabilities of the case it would seem that the flight and pursuit must have lain in a north-westerly direction, through that part of the district now known as Mountjoy.
