Gripla - 01.01.2000, Side 192

190
GRIPLA
Now the victor, joyful France almost ruled the field; already she was
seeking the spoils of war when the duke sighted the king far off on the
steeps of the hill, fiercely hewing to pieces the Normans who were be-
setting him. He [William] called Eustace to him; leaving the conflict
in that place to the French, he brought strong aid to the hard pressed.
Like a second son of Hector, Hugh, the noble heir of Ponthieu, es-
corted these two, prompt in service; the fourth was Giffard, known by
his father’s sumame: these four bore arms for the destruction of the
king .... The first, cleaving his breast through the shield with his
point, drenched the earth with a gushing torrent of blood; the second
smote off his head below the protection of the helmet and the third
pierced the inwards of his belly with his lance; the fourth [Giffard]
hewed off his thigh and bore away the severed limb; the ground held
the body thus destroyed.
None of the other early Anglo-Norman or Anglo-Saxon sources mentions the
mutilation of Harold’s body (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E, D: 198—99; Flor-
ence of Worcester 1:227; Eadmer:8-9; William of Poitiers:204; William of
Jumiéges 11:168; Ordericus Vitalis 11:149), but William of Malmesbury re-
ports that one of William’s soldiers sliced off the thigh of the dead Harold, for
which ignominious and shameful deed he was subsequently expelled from
the army by William:
Jacentis femur unus militum gladio proscidit; unde a Willelmo igno-
miniæ notatus, quod rem ignavam et pudendam fecisset, militia pulsus
est (II:303).24
That mutilation is also depicted on the Bayeux tapestry from the end of the
eleventh century, where a Norman knight bends down from his horse and
with his sword slices into the left thigh of the prostrate king (English Histor-
ical Documents 11:277). Although the historicity of the Carmen has been
much debated,25 the fact that the desecration of Harold’s body is reported by
24 According to Henry of Huntingdon Harold, who had been pierced in the eye by an arrow,
was slain by a crowd of horsemen falling upon him: “Interea totus imber sagittariorum cecidit
circa regem Haraldum: et ipse oculo percussus corruit. Erumpens autem multitudo equitum
regem vulneratum interfecit ...” (203—4).
25 See Carmen de Hastingae proelio:xvi-xxx, xxxv-lix; Davis 1978; Allen Brown 1996:200,
214-15; Grainge and Grainge 1996:141-42.