"No knight under heaven," his enemies owned, "was William's peer." Boy as he was at Val-es-dunes, horse and man went down before his lance.

All the fierce gaiety of his nature broke out in the warfare of his youth, in his rout of fifteen Angevins with but five men at his back, in his defiant ride over the ground which Geoffry Martel claimed from him, a ride with hawk on fist as if war and the chase were one.

No man could bend William's bow.

His mace crashed its way through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the Standard.

He rose to his greatest height at moments when other men despaired.