Conquest帝国征程(4)

Some historians will tell you that for most of the people of England, Hastings didn't matter that much, that 1066 was mostly a matter of replacing Saxon lords with Norman knights. The peasants still ploughed their fields, paid taxes to the king, prayed to avoid poverty and pestilence and watched the seasons roll round. But the everyday, can rub shoulders with the genuinely catastrophic. Yes, the grass grew green here again, but now there were bones beneath the buttercups and an entire governing class of the English had been dispossessed, their men, land and animals taken from them and given as spoils to the victorious foreigners. You could survive and still be English but now you belonged to an inferior race, the conquered. You lived in England but it was no longer your country.

有些史学家会告诉你，对多数英格兰人来说，黑斯廷斯之战并没有那么重要，1066年的改变不过是诺曼骑士取代了撒克逊王族。农民们仍一如既往地耕地纳税，祈求远离贫困与瘟疫，年复一年经历着四季更迭，却无一天不面临着灭顶的危险。诚然，野草会逢春再绿。但在毛茛之下却埋着皑皑白骨，整个英格兰统治阶级退出了历史舞台。他们的臣民、土地和牲畜都被夺走，成为了获胜的外来侵略者的战利品。你可能幸存下来，依然是个英格兰人，但却成为一个劣等民族、被征服的民族。你仍在此生活，但英格兰却不再是你的国家。