After Christmas, winter began to show its might, the soldiers suffered a lot of frostbite, some of the horses that could not survive were cooked, the siege of York had completely stopped, and King William forced his army to brave the cold for two days, leaving countless corpses on the edge of the trenches, and almost got a mutiny. In this way, the king's intellect had to give in temporarily to the forces of nature.

The situation in the city was not good, due to the lack of firewood, the Northumbrians even demolished some houses to heat the defenders, and the oak and holly in the streets and alleys had been cut down and looked bare. The Earl of Walsioff rested in Prince Edgar's hall with more than a hundred knights, while the rest of the knights and servants were with the rest of the defenders, and the wounded were placed in St. Peter's Church by the Bishop of Durham. In this way, the English, sheltered by the walls and houses, silently waited for the enemy to exhaust themselves.

Prince Edgar's body had fully recovered, and since the fighting had stopped, he decided to take up a little sport. The prince's interest was focused on archery, and since the last time he saw the Danes, he had developed a keen interest in this legendary longbow, and under the Dane's demonstration, the prince did not care about his own image, and practiced in that rather obscene and twisted posture. Aware of the difficulty of archery, Edgar became more and more enthusiastic, and the Count of Benicia, who came daily to report on the situation of the Normans, was very difficult to understand, but according to the prince's wishes, dozens of young archers from Kerr were selected to participate in the training together. Most of the Danes in the city used shorter hunting bows, and only a few veterans were proficient in the Norse longbow, and they taught the English in their own way, and Prince Edgar ordered many heavy arrows to be made out of hardened steel, including broad arrows with curved barbs, slender tapered arrowheads, and Danish-style forked arrows. The arrows were carefully crafted and preserved as war supplies, and Edgar intended to experiment and promote archery training to gradually change the tragic status quo of the English army's projection firepower. Due to the age and physique of most Englishmen, the Danes did not let them use the longbow with higher pull, and under their tutelage, the English began to change their habits and gradually adapt to this new archery technique. Unlike the Frankish and Norman archers, these longbowed Danes did not just draw their bows with the strength of their arms, but pressed their own weight on the back of the bow, so that their bodies were quite twisted at first glance, and if the bow force reached more than 100 pounds, this skill required more physical toughness. Edgar knew this very well, and once jokingly mentioned to the Earl of Northampton that if he practiced for a long time, he might not be able to straighten up on horseback in the future.

The soldiers were always getting lazier and lazier during the winter truce, and King William in the Norman camp felt a kind of frustration that all his tactics and all his previous successes had been wasted by this damn weather. If the English had not made up his mind to defend York, he could have set out from this fortress and plundered northward, and even if the enemy refused to engage him head-on, he could always burn the land and defeat the enemy beyond the battlefield. William was sure that when he destroyed everything between York and Durham, the rebels would be scattered, and the Norman army would even cross the pass of the Pennines and leap into the Hadrian Wall before spring. But now, with York's remnants and fortresses and fortresses large and small, between themselves and the lands to the north, the Normans could not risk leaving so many enemies behind them to complete the conquest of Northumbria. Recently, William's mind has been thinking about the idea of retreating, although it is a pity to give up, but the current loss of the army is not small, the vast land in the south is still safe enough to control his hands, and a temporary retreat may be a better idea than under the city of Don.

By January, King William had not made up his mind until the Count of Robert d'Iu brought a letter from Normandy. After reading the letter, the king breathed a sigh of relief, and said to the Count of Mortan, who was beside him: "That prodigal son of Capet is starting to get restless. ”

Robert de Mortan took the letter from Prince Robert from the king's hand, and after only one glance, he frowned, he glanced at the calm king, and said: "Mann's affairs are a bit troublesome, and those rebellious nobles will definitely seek the help of the Count of Anjou as they have done in the past, and with the support of the King of France, I am afraid it will be very tricky." ”

King William played with one of the rings in his hand and added, "Not only that, but the Mann nobles in our army will probably become unreliable unless we are willing to give them more land in England." And according to the present situation, the worst case scenario for us is to be besieged on three sides, and the King of Denmark Sven may not give up on England for a while, and King Anjou and King Philip may act at any time, and Robert, the fool, actually swears in his letter that this is absolutely impossible! In fact, only the direction of Brittany is safe for the time being, and our allies, the Flemish, don't seem to be of much help this time. ”

Simon de Furksan next to him rolled his eyelids when he heard this, such a dangerous situation, the king actually looked calm, once King Philip turned his face, his family territory would bear the brunt, not to mention that the Norman cause would be hit hard. Then, the apprehensive Knight Simon listened to the Count of Mortan say, "Since Your Majesty has already made a judgment, I don't know what to do at present?" ”

King William was silent for a moment before replying: "In order to conquer the English, we cannot fall out with Philip at present, first tell Philip that we will not directly oppose the succession of Mann, and as long as the army of Anjou does not enter Le Mans, our alliance with the French royal family will still be valid." Then ask Robert to withdraw the troops from the Mann border, order them to return to the front line in Brittany, and then send a message to the Duchess of Brittany, warning them not to cross the border. Also, you immediately ordered the whole army to prepare to retreat. We will return to Normandy first, so that Philip and the Counts of Anjou will not dare to act rashly, and wait until the weather warms up before dealing with the Danes and the English. ”

On that day, Prince Edgar met with the Norman envoy, and when he heard the envoy explain that his army was about to be withdrawn, the surrounding English people were overjoyed. The Normans made a request to the English to collect the corpses of the city, which was agreed to by the prince. In addition, Edgar agreed to William's terms, promising not to pursue the retreating Norman army. At the end of the negotiations, the Normans finally returned to their division, and they suffered thousands of losses in York, many of them frostbitten, in addition to the loss of 600 horses, and about 8,000 men with exhaustion and scars on the way south. The casualties of the English were not light, with only over six hundred knights left in the five squadrons under Edgar, and the infantry reverted to two thousand men after being replenished by the Danes in York, including those who were training longbowmen.

Before leaving, King William took one last look back at the fortress of York, and the mountains in the distance were vaguely like raging waves, William sighed secretly, and then kicked the horse's belly and stepped away on the ice. The Normans and England were in desperate need of recuperation after a series of battles since last summer, and upon arrival in Salisbury, William ordered the army to be disbanded, and then returned to Normandy by ship with Queen Matilda, who had arrived earlier.