The 'Battle of Hastings' was the decisive
Norman victory in the
Norman conquest of England. The location was a hill approximately six miles north of Hastings, on which an
abbey was subsequently erected.
The battle took place on
October 14,
1066, between the Norman army of
Duke William of Normandy, and the English army led by
King Harold II. Harold was killed during the battle; traditionally, it is believed he was shot through the eye with an arrow. Although there was further English resistance for some time to come, this battle is seen as the point at which William gained control of England.
The famous
Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events of the battle.
Background to the battle
Harold had claimed the throne of
England for himself in January of 1066 soon after
Edward the Confessor died. He secured the support of the
Witenagemot for his accession. Some sources say that while Edward had promised the throne to his cousin William, on his deathbed he decided to confer it to Harold instead.
On
September 28,
1066, William of Normandy, after being delayed by a storm in the
English Channel, asserted his claim to the English crown by military force, landing unopposed at a marshy, tidal inlet at Bulverhythe, between what are now the modern towns of Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea. The Bulverhythe beachhead is within two miles of the Senlac battlefield, is sheltered, and has access to high ground, whilst
Pevensey, which had long been held to be the Duke's landing place, is marsh-bound - presenting problems for off-loading troops, horses and stores, and remote from the road to London. Legend has it that upon setting foot on the beach, William tripped and fell on his face. Turning potential embarrassment in front of his troops into a exercise, he rose with his hands full of sand and shouted "I now take hold of the land of
England!" This bears suspicious resemblance to the story of
Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain, and was perhaps employed by William's biographer to enhance the similarities between Caesar and William.
Upon hearing the news of the landing of the Duke's forces, the Saxon Harold II, who had just destroyed an invading
Norwegian Viking army under King
Harald Hardråda and
Tostig Godwinson (Harold's brother) at the
Battle of Stamford Bridge (which effectively ended the
Viking age), hurried southward from London. He departed the morning of the 12th, gathering what available forces he could on the way. After camping at Long Bennington, he arrived at the battlefield the night of
13 October.
[1]
Harold deployed his force, astride the road from
Hastings to
London, on
Senlac Hill some six miles inland from Hastings. Behind him was the great forest of Anderida (
the Weald), and in front, the ground fell away in a long
glacis-like slope, which at the bottom rose again as the opposing slope of
Telham Hill.
The Saxon force is usually estimated at seven to eight thousand strong,
[http://www.battle1066.com/hforce1.shtml, retrieved on July 24, 2006] and consisted entirely of
infantry (the English rode to their battles but did not fight from horseback). It comprised the English men-at-arms of the
fyrd, mainly
thegns (the English equivalent of a land-holding aristocracy), along with lesser thegns and a core of professional warriors:
Huscarls, the King's royal troops and bodyguards. The thegns and huscarls, probably veterans of the recent
Stamford Bridge battle, were armed principally with swords, spears, and in some cases the formidable
Danish axes, and were protected by coats of
chain mail and their usually circular
shields. They took the front ranks, forming a
shield wall with interlocking shields side by side. The entire army took up position along the ridge-line; as casualties fell in the front lines the rear ranks would move forward to fill the gaps.
[2]
On the morning of Saturday,
14 October 1066, Duke William of Normandy gathered his army below the English position. The Norman army was of comparable size to the English force, and composed of William's
Norman,
Breton, and
Flemish vassals and allies along with their retainers, and freebooters from as far away as Norman Italy. The nobles had been promised English lands and titles in return for their material support, but the common troopers were to be paid with the spoils and "cash", and hoped for land when English fiefs were handed out. Many had also come because they considered it a holy
crusade, due to the Pope's decision to bless the invasion. The army was deployed in the classic medieval fashion of three divisions, or "battles" - the Normans taking the centre, the Bretons on the left wing and the Franco-Flemish on right wing. Each
battle comprised infantry, cavalry and
archers along with crossbowmen. The archers and crossbowmen stood to the front for the start of the battle.
Legend has it that William's minstrel and knight,
Ivo Taillefer, begged his master for permission to strike the first blows of the battle. Permission was granted, and Taillefer rode before the English alone, tossing his sword and lance in the air and catching them while he sang an early version of
The Song of Roland. The earliest account of this tale (in
The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio) says that a English champion came from the ranks, and Taillefer quickly slew him, taking his head as a trophy to show that God favoured the invaders: later 12th century sources say that Taillefer charged into the English ranks and killed one to three men before suffering death himself. Regardless, fighting was soon under way in earnest.
The battle
Battle of Hastings
William relied on a basic strategy with archers in the front rank weakening the enemy with arrows, followed by infantry which would engage in close combat, and finally culminating in a cavalry charge that would break through the English forces. Yet from the very beginning, William's plan went awry. The archers had little effect on the English shield wall because Harold had his men placed on the top of a hill to prevent the arrows from hitting them. Before the infantry could engage the housecarls, a shower of stones and projectiles flung by the English caused heavy casualties amongst the Norman ranks. William, realizing that his attack was failing, was therefore forced to order his cavalry to attack far sooner than he had anticipated. Yet due to Harold's position, William's cavalry charge fizzled out as the horses struggled uphill. The still-intact English shield wall easily held back the Norman cavalry and, much to William's chagrin, many of Harold's housecarls were highly-skilled with the Danish battle axe, capable of causing ghastly wounds to a horse and its rider.
Apparently without warning, the Breton division on William's left routed. Realizing that they would be quickly outflanked, the Norman division then began to withdraw followed quickly by the Flemish. Seeing the enemy's retreat, many of the English fyrdmen (along with Harold's brothers, Leofwyne and Gyrthe) broke ranks and began to pursue. In the following confusion, William's horse was killed from underneath him and the Duke toppled to the ground. Witnessing the apparent death of their leader, the Normans began to panic and rout. Yet just when victory seemed to belong to the English, William himself took off his helmet to show he was alive and rallied a handful of knights to his person. In a moment of decisiveness, William and his knights charged their pursuing enemies, now no longer protected by the orderly shield wall, and cut down large numbers of undisciplined fyrdmen. With the tables so suddenly turned, many of the English did not recognize the Norman counter-attack until it was too late. Some managed to scramble back uphill into the protective ring of housecarls; others, including Harold's brothers, were not so fortunate.
As the remaining English pursuers rejoined the main force, a brief respite came over the battlefield. William himself took advantage of this momentary rest to ponder a new strategy. The Norman's near rout had turned to William's advantage since the English lost much of the protection provided by the shield wall when they pursued. Without the cohesion of a disciplined formation, the individual English were easy targets. Keeping this in mind, William re-engaged Harold's force. Early historians state that the Normans repeated a number of feints to draw out small groups of Englishmen and then cut them down. However, later historians have commented on the difficulty of such a complicated manoeuvre. Whatever happened, it is almost certain that as the English shield wall grew smaller and smaller, many of the fyrdmen in the back ranks clustered closer together behind the thinning wall of housecarls.
The English force now provided an interesting opportunity to William. Until then, William's archers had always fired directly into the English force (and was therefore ineffective due to their interlocking shields). Now, William ordered his archers to fire directly over the shield wall so that the arrows landed into the clustered back ranks of the English army. This the archers did, and with great success. It is believed by some that Harold was hit in the eye with an arrow although that is purely speculation taken from a scene depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. Whether Harold was hit or not, when the two forces engaged again, William and a handful of knights managed to break through the shield wall and strike down the English king. Without their leader, many of the thegns and fyrdmen panicked and retreated, while Harold's personal bodyguard and a number of his veteran housecarls fought to the end.
Aftermath
Only a remnant of the defenders made their way back to the forest. Some of the Norman forces pursued the English, but were ambushed and destroyed in the semi-darkness when they ran afoul of steep ground, called, in later (12th century) sources, "the Malfosse", or "bad ditch". William, after resting for a night on the hard-won ground, began his work of the
Norman Conquest. He recruited his army for two weeks near Hastings, waiting for the English lords to come and submit to him. Then, after he realized his hopes of submission at that point were in vain, he began his advance on
London. His army was seriously reduced in November by dysentery, and William himself was gravely ill. Nevertheless, he directed his forces to continue their approach on the city: in three columns they made their way to
Wallingford on the
Thames. After crossing over, William threatened London with a siege.
The northern earls,
Edwin and
Morcar, Esegar the sheriff of London, and
Edgar the Atheling, who had even been elected king in the wake of Harold's death, all came out and submitted to the Norman Duke. William was crowned as England's third king that year, on Christmas day at
Westminster Abbey.
Harold's plaque (2006)
Remembrances and retrospections
Battle Abbey was built on the site of the battle. A plaque marks the place where Harold is believed to have fallen, and the location where the high altar of the church once stood. The settlement of
Battle,
East Sussex grew up around the abbey and is now a small market town.
The
Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events before, after and at the Battle of Hastings.
The Battle of Hastings is also an excellent example of the application of the theory of
combined arms. The Norman archers, cavalry and infantry co-operated together to deny the English the initiative, and gave the homogeneous English infantry force few tactical options except defence.
However, it is quite likely that this tactical sophistication existed primarily in the minds of the Norman Chroniclers. The plain fact is that had the English remained under control, as did the Franks at Tours, and not broken their line, they would have held. The account of the battle given in the earliest source,
the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, is one where the Norman advance surprises the English, who manage to gain the top of Senlac Hill before the Normans. The Norman Light Infantry is sent in while the English are forming their Shield Wall (to no avail) and then the main force was sent in (no distinction being made between infantry and cavalry). Interestingly, it records the first retreat of William's forces as the result of a French (not Norman) feigned retreat that went wrong, the English counter-attack, William counter-counter-attacks, and it all develops into a huge melee during which Harold is slain by a group of four knights and therefore the bulk of the English army flee.
Succeeding sources include (in chronological order)
William of Poitiers's ''Gesta Guillelmi'' (written between 1071 and 1077), The
Bayeux Tapestry (created between 1070 and 1077), and the much later ''Chronicle of Battle Abbey'', the Chronicles written by
William of Malmesbury,
Florence of Worcester, and
Eadmer's ''Historia Novorum'' in Anglia embellishes the story further, with the final result being a William whose tactical genius was at a high level - a level that he failed to display in any other battle. Most likely is the simplest explanation: that the English were exhausted and undermanned, having lost or left behind their bowmen and many of their best huscarls on the fields of Fulford Gate and Stamford Bridge, or on the road from York. This weakness, rather than any great military genius on the part of William, led to the defeat of the English at Hastings. Even with this weakness, it was still a hard-fought battle that could potentially have gone the other way.
Notes
1. Howarth p.165
2. Howarth p.157
References
★ ''Hastings 1066'', The Fall of Saxon England; Osprey Campaign Series #13,
Christopher Gravett, Osprey Publishing, 1992
★ ''1066: The Year of the Conquest''. Howarth, David. 1993. Barnes and Noble, New York.
★
The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of
Guy Bishop of Amiens, edited by Catherine Morton and Hope Muntz, Oxford at the Clarendon Press 1972.
External links
★
www.1066.us, an extensive Website on the battle, with an emphasis on wargaming simulation.
★
Battle of Hastings, 1066, for more information.
★
James Grout: ''The Battle of Hastings'', part of the Encyclopædia Romana
★
The Song of the Shield Wall, an
SCA song about the event.
★
[1], a short documentary about the 2006 battle re-enactment.
★
"Hastings" In-depth book on the Battle of Hastings by Peter Poyntz-Wright.
★
"Information on the battle of hastings" Includes facts and full story.
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