Hastings: 950 Years Ago

I like anniversaries. They're a great way to mark important dates in human history, and the big ones are a great way to bring attention to our past through re-enactments, celebrations, and special events. So far I've covered the Battle of the Somme, and today I'm covering another major landmark in the history of western Europe involving the English and the French.

Today marks the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. There are a lot of "seminal" events in human history; the development of agriculture, the French revolution, etc. But perhaps at no other time in history did the outcome of a single battle have such massive consequences for world history. Hastings never fails to make lists of most important battles, and for good reason.

Norman knights charge Anglo-Saxon Huscarls in a shield wall during the battle,
from the famous Bayeux Tapestry. 

The battle itself was fascinating, and I'll provide a very brief summary here. Anglo-Saxon England was in the middle of a succession crisis and it's Wittan, the democratic parliament of the kingdom, had elected Harold Godwinson as king. This caused two rival claimants, King Harald Hardrada of Norway and William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy to launch invasions of England. I won't get into all of the messy political details of the claimants legitimacy and such, except to say that it was complicated. To further complicate things, King Harald had the support of Tostig, King Harold's brother. Tostig had been earl of Northumbria, Tostig had fomented a rebellion during the reign of a previous king, Edward the Confessor. Harold was a major adviser to Edward, and convinced him to outlaw Tostig and take his property. Tostig went into exile, and eventually made contact with King Harald, convincing him to invade.

King Harold was handsome, strong,
intelligent, and apparently well-
regarded by his nobles and his subjects. 

Initially Harald's invasion was successful; at the Battle of Fulford on September 20th the viking army defeated an outnumbered Anglo-Saxon force at the Battle of Fulford and occupied York.  Meanwhile, King Harold had summoned his army. This was made up of three groups; at its core were the Huscarls, personal retainers to the king made up of the best professional warriors in the kingdom. The bulk of the army was made up of the Fyrd; this was a militia made up from across the lower classes. Most were armed only with a long knife, spear, and shield, but a few of the wealthier ones may have been able to afford a helmet and perhaps a leather or hide shirt for armor. Supplementing these forces were the Thegns, landowners who were well equipped and armed and who fought either alongside the king's Huscarls or as part of a noble's retinue. This force, consisting mostly of the militia fyrd, sat in the south of England waiting for William's invasion when Harald invaded.

One the 8th of September, King Harold was forced to disband his army; the fyrd was composed mostly of farmers, and the harvest was coming in with no sign of Duke William's promised invasion. Without the harvest the kingdom would starve, and so the king sent his men home. However, he soon learned of Harald's success in the north, and King Harold rushed north  with his Huscarls, gathering and Fyrd and Thegns he could as his army rode north. On September 25 the Anglo-Saxons crushed the viking army at the Battle of Stamford bridge. Harald and Tostig were both killed in the battle, and very few of the Norwegian vikings survived. This event brought a close to the viking age, and secured the north. However, the Anglo-Saxons had taken heavy casualties, and the men were exhausted.

Anglo-Saxon Huscarls fought with large two-handed
axes, as well as with spears, swords, and shields
By this time they may have used kite-shaped shields
similar to those carried by Norman Knights. 

Norman knights fought on horseback with
javelines, lances, shields, swords, and maces. They
were the finest heavy cavalry in Western
Europe at the time. 

Unsure of what was happening, Duke William finally launched his invasion. Bad weather had kept his fleet at anchor, but they were able to cross and landed in England on September 28. His fleet was scattered during the launch, and if it hadn't been for Harald's invasion the Anglo-Saxons most likely would have swept the Normans away with little difficulty. As it was Duke William was forced to establish a fort near the town of Hastings, where he reorganized his army and raider the local countryside for supplies.

After Stamford Bridge, Harold moved south with part of his army; the rest remained behind to gather more forces and secure the area in preparation for Duke Williams promised invasion. While traveling south Harold learned of Duke William's landing, and he gathered some forces while en route south. His army made exceptional speed, nearly 27 miles a day for an entire week. This is especially impressive when you consider that very likely only the Huscarls, Thegns, and Nobles were mounted. The fyrd were marching on foot, across land with few roads, carrying their weapons and equipment the whole way after a long march north and having fought a major battle. Harold stopped at London for nearly a week to make sure the government was secure, then continued his march.

On October 13 Harold camped approximately 8 miles from from the Norman fort at Hastings. Emissaries were likely exchanged between the two armies, but the talks came to nothing. Having failed at diplomacy and with his army's position spotted by Norman scouts, King Harold positioned his army at the top of a hill, Senlac Hill, 6 miles from the Norman fort and challenged the invaders to battle. It's likely that the Anglo-Saxons were heavily outnumbered; estimates range from as much as a a few thousand to being outnumbered 2-1, but we can't be sure for certain. What is known is that the Anglo-Saxon army was exhausted and disorganized after its battle and long marches, and was fighting against a larger army. The Norman army relied heavily on crossbowmen and heavy cavalry (early versions of knights), while the entire Anglo-Saxon army fought as dismounted heavy infantry backed up by some archers and other light skirmishers.

The corssbowmen used by the Normans were professional, well-equipped household troops or mercenaries, while the skirmishers employed by the Anglo-Saxons were mostly members of the fyrd armed with hunting weapons and slings. 

Duke William launched the attack by sending in archers, which had little effect on the Anglo-Saxons. They had formed a shield wall, a literal wall made by interlocking their shield which was nearly impervious to most kinds of attacks. Frustrated, Duke William deployed his infantry. As these men advanced up the hill, the Anglo-Saxon shield wall opened and men hurled axes and spears at the advancing Normans, who became disorganized and unable to break the shield wall. Duke William then unleashed his heavy cavalry, hoping to simply run through the Anglo-Saxons.

A shield wall was difficult to crack. Huscarls armed with two-handed Danish Axes would have been used to kill enemy horsemen and to destroy the shields of enemy infantry. 

However, the discipline of the Anglo-Saxons at this stage was astonishing. They held their line, knowing that horses will not blindly charge a solid position of infantry bristling with spears. A rumor spread through the lines that Duke William had been killed, and the Normans began to retreat, pursued closely by some of the Anglo-Saxons. Duke William, who had stayed at the rear of his lines, rode forward, and seeing him alive his men rallied and turned on the English. Many were killed, including King Harold's brothers Gyrth and Leofwine. Their bodies were probably moved to near the King, who mourned them briefly before reasserting command and rallying his army.

At this point a lull happened. The Anglo-Saxons reformed their wall and rested, while the Normans came up with a new plan. He realized that while they had the discipline to stand, the Anglo Saxons were eager for victory by pursuing a defeated foe. The Normans then launched a series of attacks, with archer support, whereby they would attack and then feign retreat, causing some of the Anglo-Saxons to follow them. Outside of their wall they were easier to kill, especially by archers. We don't know how many of these attacks and retreats were made, but it was probably several. This tactic couldn't break the shield wall, but it did result in the death of many Huscarls and Thegns, who were then replaced in the line by the poorly equipped and disciplined Fyrd.

Modern reenactment of Norman knights trying to find a weakness in the shield wall

Finally, late in the Battle King Harold was slain. We don't actually know how this happened. He was probably fighting in the shield wall, shoulder to shoulder with his men in the ancient tradition. Norman sources claim that he was killed by being shot through the eye with an arrow, but this was a common trope in Norman chronicles (someone killed like this was implied to be somehow cowardly) and can't really be trusted. All we know is that he died, and his army fell into a panic and began to collapse. They fyrd and many of the thegns began to flee, but it was at this moment that one of the most inspiring moments in English history occurred. The Huscarls were sworn to their king to the death, and refused to leave his body. They surrounded Harold's (and probably his brothers') remains and fought to the last man to protect them.

After the battle the Normans built an abbey to mark the spot of the battle, which is now in ruins. This stone allegedly marks
the spot where King Harold fell and died. 

Elsewhere rearguard actions occurred. One, led by an unknown figure, formed an ambush near a ditch called the "Malfosse" or "evil ditch". We don't know exactly what happened here, but it seems that many Norman knights were lured into attack the Anglo-Saxons behind a ditch. The ditch caused many horses to fall, and their riders were surrounded and hacked down. Eustace of Boulogne, a Norman Noble and one of Duke William's commanders, was badly injured here, and many men were killed, but the Normans eventually overran the position. For the following days groups of Normans pursued the broken English, who continually ambushed and harried their pursuers. Despite this, the battle was over and Duke William had won.

Most of the Anglo-Saxon bodies were stripped, looted, and dumped in a mass grave, but what happened to Harold's remains is unclear. The Wittain attempted to proclaim a boy, Edgar, as king, but Duke William marched on London and seized the government. While rebellions and low-level fighting would continue for years, Duke William became King William the Conqueror and Norman England was born.

Victorian depiction of Hereward the Wake, an Anglo-Saxon resistance leader after the Norman Conquest who
is now an English national hero and a central figure in English Nationalism. 

This battle may not read as particularly interesting to you, but its importance is hard to overstate. Firstly, William was now both an independent king and a vassal of the King of France for his lands in Normandy. This would sow the seeds for the Anglo-French rivalry which dominated so much of western history for the next 800 years. This rivalry, and their associated wars, would have a huge impact on everything from the Protestant reformation to determining the borders of many of the modern nations of Europe. It spurred England to build the British Empire, and France to dominate the continent. Ultimately it led to the bankruptcy of both kingdoms after the Seven Years War. To pay for it, Britain (England's successor) imposed heavy taxes on its North American colonies leading to the American Revolution. In France it triggered the French revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and ultimately events which would help to unify Germany .

Frenchman fighting Englishmen, as is tradition

The battle brought England back into the fold of Europe in a way it hadn't been since the fall of the Roman Empire hundreds of years before. Norman-English goods would begin to be traded again with Europe and vice versa. English soldiers and Norman knights would fight in the crusades, and the politics of England suddenly became of interest to people as far afield as the Islamic Caliphate. By extension, the Normans establishment of a kingdom in England would bring Wales, Scotland, and Ireland onto the European stage; until now they had been at best minor backwaters, but with Norman conquests and wars there they too became important in a global sense.

At its height during the Angevin Empire, Norman England controlled all of Britain, Ireland, and half of France
either directly or through vassal or tributary states. 

England itself was changed forever. Normans ruled England until 1485, when the Welsh Tudor Dynasty came to power. Since then England (and Britain) have also had Scottish and German dynasties, but no native-English ones. This further entangled England and Britain into European politics and trade. Anglo-Saxon and Norman law began to mesh , and from this was ultimately born English common law, upon which the laws of many countries, including the United States, are based today. It would be decades before an English kind would learn English at all, and centuries until it was the first language of a monarch, but Norman French had a big influence on the English language. Old Anglo-Saxon English eventually became middle English, which then became our modern English.  The battle itself was so important that it's often considered the beginning of the Middle Ages proper. With Harald Hardarda's death and the establishment of an independent Norman kingdom (the Normans were descendants of vikings after all) the Viking Age came to a close. There were more raids, even in England, but Scandinavia slowly lost influence after this battle.

So many parts of not only English or European, but world history depended on the outcome of Hastings.  The British Empire, the English language spoken as the modern global Lingua Franca, colonial races, law, global politics; so much of it would have been and would continue to be different if it weren't' for a wet day on October in 1066.

There are so many good sources on this battle that I can't even name them all. The standard introductory narrative used today is David Howarth's 1066: The Year of the Conquest . For a wider look at 1066, Marc Morris recently published his The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England.  I haven't picked it up yet, but it has been getting great reviews and Morris is one of my favorite English historians working today.

That's it for now, see you next time!