| Battle of Hastings |
| Part of the Norman Conquest |
Death of Harold in the Battle of Hastings, as shown on the Bayeux Tapestry |
|
|
| Combatants |
Normans supported by: Bretons (one third of total),
Flemings,
French |
Anglo-Saxons |
| Commanders |
William of Normandy,
Odo of Bayeux |
Harold Godwinson † |
| Strength |
| 7,000-8,000 |
7,000-8,000 |
| Casualties |
| Unknown, thought to be around 2,000 killed and wounded |
Unknown, thought to be around 4,000, but significantly higher than the Normans |
The Battle of Hastings was the decisive Norman victory in the Norman conquest of England. The location was Senlac 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed] Turning potential embarrassment in front of his troops into a face-saving 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, 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,[2] 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: Housecarls, the King's royal troops and bodyguards. The thegns and housecarls, 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, as well as kite 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.[3]
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 an 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
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 Huscarls, 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 fled. 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 take to flight. 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 halflight when they ran afoul of steep ground, called, in later (12th century) sources, "the
Malfosse", or "bad ditch".[citation needed] William rested 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. However, he was reinforced by fresh troops crossing the Channel. After being thwarted in an
attempt to cross London Bridge he approached the city by a circuitous route, crossing the
Thames at Wallingford and advancing on London from the
north-west.
The northern earls, Edwin and Morcar, Esegar the sheriff of London, and Edgar the
Atheling, who had been elected king in the wake of Harold's death, all came out and submitted to the Norman Duke before he
reached London. William was crowned king on Christmas day at Westminster Abbey.
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
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.[citation needed]
Notes
- ^ Howarth p.165
- ^ http://www.battle1066.com/hforce1.shtml,
retrieved on July 24, 2006
- ^ Howarth p.157
References
External links
Coordinates:
50°54′43″N, 0°29′15″E
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
