by Paul Hill
There is a distinction to be drawn here from the foraging examples we have observed in Chapter 2 of this book and the political or strategic need to lay waste an entire area of land. The idea of destroying an enemy’s capability of living off the land is a long-established aspect of both ancient and modern warfare. The strategy was practised widely during the Anglo-Saxon period by both the English armies and their enemies. In some cases, it is evident that the approach was a preferred means of warfare in its own right when compared to the higher risks involved in open combat. The Old English word ‘hergian’ is closely associated with the word ‘here’ and implies a connection with harrying.
As early as the seventh century the great warring kings of early Saxon England, Penda and Cadwallon, played a game of mutual denial of resources. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 798: ‘Ceolwulf, king of Mercia, ravaged over the inhabitants of Kent and the inhabitants of the Marsh [Romney Marsh] and captured Præn, their king and led him bound into Mercia.’ In fact, the unfortunate Eadberht Præn had his eyes put out and his hands cut off. This was a campaign with vengeance at its heart, targeted at a king whose land and people would suffer every bit as much as Eadberht would suffer.
There was good reason for the laying waste of areas. The devastation of landed resources often went hand in hand with the destruction of its people. Sometimes it was for the sake of punishment–a spiteful repost to those who had backed a royal opponent, for example. Edward the Elder’s punitive campaign in East Anglia against the pretender Æthelwold was in response to the latter’s campaign of destruction across Mercia and the Thames Valley. In 909 Edward raised a combined West Saxon and Mercian army and raided the troublesome Northumbrian homelands targeting men ‘and every kind of property’, killing many Danish men and staying in the field for five weeks. In 910 the Anglo-Saxon victory at the Battle of Tettenhall at Wednesfield near a bridge over the River Severn was an English response to the Northumbrian Danes breaking their agreement and raiding deep into Mercia. The victory checked Northumbrian ambition for a whole generation.
Edmund I’s (939–46) destruction of Cumberland and Strathclyde was assisted by the Welsh king of Dyfed in 945, and was designed to punish Strathclyde not only for its role in the great Viking confederacy at Brunanburh (937) but to reduce its capability of harbouring Viking exiles from York, in particular one Olaf Sihtricson. During the campaign Edmund had two of the king of Strathclyde’s sons blinded and when he had finished he ceded the whole territory to his new ally, Malcolm, king of the Scots. The unfortunate thing for the ordinary ceorl tending his farmstead during such times of warring kings was that it did not really matter who his lord’s enemy was. The land he lived on could simply become a pawn in someone else’s game. There is no better example of this than what happened to the people of Lincolnshire in 1014. Swein of Denmark who had settled at Gainsborough and sought tribute and support from the English countryside soon died, to be replaced at Gainsborough by his son Cnut. King Æthelred paid the region a visit with his army and ‘all human kind that could be got at were raided and burned and killed’, except of course for Cnut. Æthelred was particularly noted for such rash actions and it cannot have endeared him to the people of the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindsey.
But if punishment was one good reason to destroy a territory, then for the Normans at Hastings the art of goading one’s enemy has often been thought to apply. When the Norman fleet sailed from Pevensey to Hastings it embarked on an orgy of destruction, partially to supply itself from the surrounding territory, but possibly because news of its destruction might provoke a precipitate reaction from the English King Harold in the north. One thing is certain–the value of the manors in the area was still very much depreciated at the time of the compilation of the Domesday Book some twenty years later. The Normans under King William I (1066–87) carried out perhaps the most famous of all regional reductions in 1069–70. In response to a northern rebellion that promoted the right of the ætheling Edgar to the English throne, William’s men all but destroyed vast swathes of land from the Humber to the Tees in an event that became known as ‘the harrying of the North’.
So, if reducing the territory of your opponent was a strategic or political concern, what do we know of tactics? How did the armies of the period actually fight their battles? To answer this we can be helped by some of the surviving descriptions of the action. But, once again, caution is the watch word.
Descriptions of the Armies in Action
The evidence points to a fearful contest on the field, a predominantly infantry struggle requiring bravery and nerve. It was a scene of great noise, commotion and sheer bloody mindedness. There are many references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in heroic poetry and other writings to battles where one side or another ‘held the place of slaughter’ after the struggle. For the chronicle alone, this occurs in 836, 840, 860, 871, 903, 991 and 1001 to cite the obvious ones. It would seem that whichever side broke first and fled was the loser and the side remaining in possession of the battlefield was the winner. This helps distinguish those hard-fought struggles where there were great casualties on both sides from what might otherwise be deemed a draw.
Some of the descriptions of fighting such as that described in the famous The Battle of Brunanburh poem (937) and The Battle of Maldon poem (991) may be couched in the language of heroic poetry, but even here we have important clues as to what an Anglo-Saxon army did when it went into action. Moreover, King Alfred’s biographer Asser tells us he had heard the account of how the fighting at Ashdown (871) went from someone who had been there. Ashdown is a fine example of tactical evolutions on both sides, if we are to believe Asser’s account. But here is the point where a word of warning needs to be made. Writers such as Asser and John of Worcester (who describes the Battle of Sherston in 1016) drew heavily from classical sources in order to legitimise and justify what they were writing about, making it appear that the leaders they were talking about were comparable with the great men of the classical age. What they had to say about the fighting styles is often based on ancient observations. However, if we read it all carefully, some observations on Anglo-Saxon approaches can be made. The Battle of Ashdown was fought against the Danes when Alfred the Great was still a 23-year-old ætheling. Æthelred I (865–71), the king of Wessex, and his brother Alfred faced the Great Heathen Army near to the Roman road west of a ford across the River Thames at Moulsford.
Asser says that the Vikings had split their forces into two divisions. Infuriatingly, the Latin text reads as if these formations were ‘testudines’ (the Roman ‘tortoise’ formation whereby a troop of warriors moved with shields raised over their backs and to their front giving the appearance of an armoured tortoise). They had ‘organised shield walls of equal size (for they then had two kings and a large number of earls), assigning the core of the army to the two kings and the rest to all the earls’. When the English saw this, they mirrored the formation, splitting themselves into two shield walls also. But Alfred had reached the battlefield with his shield wall in better order than that of the West Saxon king, his brother. Æthelred was still in his tent hearing mass at the time Alfred advanced. It had been decided that the king, when he finally contacted the enemy, should oppose the Viking kings’ division, while Alfred would engage that of the earls. Alfred found himself in a difficult situation having to choose between retreating away from the advancing Danes or crashing into them and waiting for the arrival of the king. He chose the latter. Asser says he only engaged them ‘when he had closed up the shield wall in proper order’. Clearly, the shield wall was a vital tactical formation. The actual fighting at close quarters, however, is not described, but we can imagine that Alfred’s victory was hard fought, given that he was fighting up a hill and with a smaller force. One possible clue as to Alfred’s formation is hinted at by Asser, who in Chapter 38 of his biography describes Alfred rushing at the enemy like a ‘wild boar’. This might just be a reference to the ‘swine-array’ formation popular among
the Scandinavians (see p. 83).
Asser’s account of the Battle of Edington in 878 is less detailed, but contains some significant material nonetheless. It was the culmination of a campaign that had seen King Alfred down on his luck and exiled to an island in a marsh within his own kingdom. But here beneath the shadows of an ancient rampart Alfred met Guthrum the Dane and once again the shield walls thumped into each other:
When the morning dawned, he moved his forces and came to a place called Edington, and fighting fiercely within a compact shield wall against the entire Viking army, he persevered resolutely for a long time; at length he gained the victory through God’s will. He destroyed the Vikings with great slaughter, and pursued those who fled as far as the stronghold, hacking them down; he seized everything he found outside the stronghold–men (whom he killed immediately), horses and cattle–and boldly made camp in front of the gates of the Viking stronghold with all his army.
We are told of a long struggle and great suffering in the chase. We are also told of Alfred’s approach towards a siege as well, and his ruthless way of going about it. Unfortunately, we are told nothing of the nature of the deployment of the forces on the battlefield or how weapons were used or what their effects were.
The poem The Battle of Brunanburh in the entry for 937 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle provides some evidence for the effects of weaponry in warfare, albeit captured in heroic language. King Athelstan (924–37) and his brothers defeated a confederacy of Vikings and Scots in this great and long-remembered battle. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s record of it describes Athelstan and his brother Edmund who struck ‘life long glory . . . in strife around Brunanburh, clove the shield wall, hacked the war-lime, with hammers’ leavings . . .’. The war-lime mentioned here refers to the lime-wood shields of the shield walls. They are hacked with hammers’ leavings, which in this case are the swords of the Anglo-Saxons forged by smiths with their hammers. The results were profound: ‘There lay many a soldier of the men of the North, shot over shield, taken by spears.’ Again, the image is one of a clash of shield walls, of the power of the sword and spear and of the bravery in hand-to-hand combat of the protagonists.
The Battle of Maldon recalls the action in 991 by Byrhtnoth, the East Saxon ealdorman, near the Blackwater Estuary against a Viking enemy (pp. 117–20). The poem starts with the men of the English army dismounting from their horses to advance to the battlefield to fight complete with spear, shield and sword. Byrhtnoth then rides along the line of infantrymen reminding them of their need for bravery and practising what seems to be a shield drill. Byrhtnoth then dismounts himself and joins his own hearthtroop. A Viking messenger shouts across to the ealdorman that his side is prepared to accept payment instead of fighting, but typically Byrhtnoth will have none of it. According to the poet the ealdorman then
bade shields be raised then warriors go forward
so that they all stood on the riverbank.
But it was not enough for any kind of decision. The first phase of battle proper after a stand-off on a causeway seems to have been the preparatory fire of light spears and ‘busy’ bows, followed by shields clashing with ‘points’. One casualty on the English side was Wulfmær, hewn by Viking swords. An Englishman returned the gesture by cutting down a Viking with his own sword. The fight continued with the wounding of Byrhtnoth, the cowardly fleeing of Godric, son of Odda, who seized the dying ealdorman’s horse against the Anglo-Saxon code of warfare. But there are those who cannot stand to leave the battlefield without avenging the death of their lord, according to the poet. Among these, one Offa who made a speech about how the actions of the cowards had left a breach in the shield wall, and incited others to crash once again into the Vikings. There follows a scene of brave fighting, mainly with spears and swords. Shield rims ‘burst’ and mailcoats sing a song of terror. It is all glorious stuff, giving an idea of the grim reality of close-quarter fighting even if it is told in the entertaining language of the mead hall.
Central to all these accounts are the weaponry (spears, javelins and swords, with the occasional appearance of a bow) and the famous Old English shield wall. The shield wall makes its most stirring appearance in the description of the Battle of Sherston in 1016 given by John of Worcester, who also hints at Edmund Ironside’s choice of deployment being fitted to the local topography:
Drawing up his army as the nature of the ground and the strength of his force required, he posted all his best troops in the first line, placing the rest in reserve ... he ordered the trumpets to sound and the troops to advance slowly. The enemy’s army did the same. Having gained a position where they could join battle, they attacked each other with loud shouts, fighting desperately with sword and spear.
Among all this was Edmund himself fighting in the front ranks. In this example, the army has properly formed up and advanced in order to crash into the enemy fighting at close quarters with its best men armed with sword and spear. But there is still no mention of tactical formations. The picture is rather that of an unstoppable steamroller. Moreover, John of Worcester was borrowing heavily from Sallust’s The Conspiracy of Catiline and his Jurgurthine War. In places, it is almost a word for word lift from the quill of the Roman writer of the first century BCE. However, some important changes are made whereby we might assume John was tweaking the narrative to fit what he knew to be the case for the English armies of the eleventh century. John removes Sallust’s reference to the leaving aside of javelins and the fighting with swords, preferring to replace this with the more likely advance of the English with spears and swords. It is just possible that writers such as John of Worcester were aware of the methods of Anglo-Saxon fighting and tried to accommodate this in the texts of their works despite being hamstrung by the need to conform to classical precedent.
To the Battle of Hastings we turn, and to the words of a fairly reliable William of Poitiers, who as Duke William’s military chaplain was in a good position to give the clearest idea of the fighting styles of the day, despite his vaunted and sycophantic language. He says that the English dismounted and went on foot drawn up one close to the other. When the Normans advanced and fired their missiles into the English lines they were met with a mixture of javelins, darts, lethal axes and stones tied to sticks. The English were most keen of all to prevent a breach in their line, a comment that again demonstrates the value of cohesion in the shield wall and the dangers of it collapsing. The lack of evidence in Poitiers’ account for any tactical evolution in the English lines is probably down to his observation that their formation was so extraordinarily tight: ‘those who were killed hardly had room to fall’. Although the English were on higher ground, their position seems to have been very restricted. They did not have to march to the attack, though. It was not just their higher position that aided the English. Poitiers also hints at the effects of their weaponry: ‘Their numbers and the strength of their army, as well as their weapons of attack, which penetrated without difficulty shields and other pieces of armour were also to their advantage. So they resisted vigorously or repulsed those who dared to attack them at close quarters with swords.’ The result of the battle is, of course, well known. Shield walls are vulnerable on their flanks. It would seem that at Hastings the Normans were able eventually to find a way to prize open a flank and then began to roll up the line towards Harold’s standards.
Unfortunately, there is no equivalent English evidence for the sorts of tactical formations employed by the Danes and Norwegians. The ‘wedge’ attack formation described by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, known to the Scandinavians as a ‘swinfylking’, is not in evidence on the English side (with the possible exception of Asser’s description of Alfred at Ashdown), although one must surely suppose the housecarls and Danish mercenaries in the English armies would have employed something like it. It seems to have involved the deployment of two men in the first row, four in the second, eight in the third and so forth. The way to receive the expected rush would have been to deploy in staggered formation allowin
g recesses in the line to receive the onslaught so that the sides of the recess could envelop the attackers. Edmund Ironside’s attacking formation at Sherston, however, seems a very much simpler, more linear affair.
We lack so much evidence for tactics that we have to make assumptions instead. Edmund Ironside was clearly a consummate commander cutting a dashing figure in English legend. At Sherston he displayed leadership, knowledge of terrain and command skills. But as we shall see in our next section on stratagems, Edmund was the victim of perfidious trickery, the type of which often makes itself known from the pages of the Anglo-Saxon histories. No matter how good the commander, he can never fully prepare for betrayal.
Stratagems and Ruses
In every period of history there is some sort of evidence for the mind games played by war leaders. Tricks and deception are often surrounded by legend. The Trojan Horse is one of the more famous, but it seems everyone was at it. For the Anglo-Saxons the evidence falls into the category of semi-myth and legend. The usefulness of these stories lies not so much in hard evidence for actual military stratagems, but in their demonstration that their authors thought they were possible deeds that a warrior of the Anglo-Saxon period might be inclined to undertake, regardless of the ancestry or origin of the story.
Disguise is, of course, one such ruse. King Alfred’s legendary visit to the Danish camp before the Battle of Edington in 878 while disguised as a minstrel is the stuff of legend, but people must have thought it a perfectly possible notion. Another equally vivid story comes from the Jomsvikinga Saga and tells of the fortunes of the Danish army on one of the many occasions it found itself stationed in London. We cannot be sure what particular year it refers to but the story is fascinating nevertheless. It says that at the time of the mid-winter fair in the town, armed Englishmen hid beneath the covers of the market wagons and therefore entered the city undercover as the wagons came in. They were able to massacre the Danes as they gathered for church service unarmed at midnight. Only three Danish ships allegedly escaped this act of trickery.