O with what sweat the men drip and with what blood the ground while wounds are being given to the foreigners!
This may or may not be a rhetorical expansion on the previous battle of Coleshill episode; but if not, it is an expression of the zietgeist that every Briton who was not from Norman stock would have been empathic with. Throughout the HRB and Vita Merlini this feeling is expressed, of the indigents of Britain constantly being invaded. For the most part it is alluded to as by Divine judgement upon their sins that invaders have ruled over them. Henry Blois makes sure that the author of the Vita voices the same attitudes held by the indigents never losing sight that he is Geoffrey of Monmouth. ‘Geoffrey’s’ audience would have understood that it was a feeling commonly held among most of the peasant class.