Note 64 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES

And we must remember that this mass of men was 'ranged so closely together in the thick array of the shield-wall, that while they only kept their ground the success of an assailant was hopeless'.64 The Conqueror saw, Mr Freeman reminds us, 'that his only chance was to tempt the English to break their shield-wall'.65 I need not insist on the point further: I need not even have said so much, but that some of those who read these pages may not have realized the true character of Mr Archer's phantasies. The 'scutorum testudo', as William of Malmesbury describes the famous shield-wall,66 is depicted, with his usual painstaking care, by the designer of the Bayeux Tapestry. We read of the 'testudo' at Ashdown fight, even in the days of Alfred;67 it was, again, with the shield-wall that 'glorious Æthelstan' won the day on the hard-fought field of Brunanburh (937);68 we hear of it at Maldon (991), where Brihtnoth, we read, 'bade his men work the war-hedge',—'that is, had made his men form the shield-wall, a sort of fortress made by holding their shields close together'.69 And we do, in Mr Freeman's words, meet with it 'down to the end', when the war-hedge of Maldon was wrought anew, by Harold, on the hill of battle, and stood once more as if a fortress—'quasi castellum'.