lief that it was the work of Queen Matilda or her ladies, but efforts to place it one or even two centuries later have proved unavailing against the evidence of armor and costume, and the general opinion of scholars now regards it as belonging to the eleventh century and thus substantially contemporary with the events which it depicts.
The modern literature of the battle is also commensurate with its importance. The classic account is found in the third volume of Freeman's majestic History of the Norman Conquest, where the story is told with a rare combination of minute detail and spirited narrative which reminds us, it has been said, of a battle of the Iliad or a Norse saga. Splendid as this narrative is, its enthusiasm often carries it beyond the evidence of the sources, and in several fundamental points it can no longer be accepted as historically sound. The theory of the palisade upon which Freeman's conception of the English tactics rested has been destroyed by the trenchant criticism of that profound student of Anglo-Norman history, J. Horace Round, and his whole treatment has been vigorously attacked from the point of view of the scientific study of military history by Wilhelm Spatz and his distinguished master, Hans Delbrück, of Berlin. Unfortunately the Berlin critics are influenced too much by certain theories of military organization; they do not call the English soldier of the period a degenerate, but they consider him, and the Norman knight as well, in-
