The Anglo Saxons at War 800-1066

by Paul Hill

  I was once a warrior’s weapon.

  Now a noble young retainer

  dresses me in threads of twisted gold

  and silver. At time men kiss me,

  at times I summon close friends

  to do battle; a horse sometimes bears me

  over the earth, sea-horses sometimes

  sweep me, gleaming, over the ocean;

  now and then a maiden, ring-adorned,

  replenishes my paunch. I must lie on planks

  at times, plundered, hard and headless;

  often, gold-garbed, I hang on the wall

  above drinking warriors, a splendid sight,

  instrument of war. Covered in riches,

  I draw in breath from a brave man’s lungs

  when retainers ride towards battle.

  At times I tell proud warriors

  that wine is served; at times rally them,

  save booty from hostile men, drive off

  the enemy. Now ask me my name.

  One or two other references to horns deserve mention. The will of Athelstan (d. 1014), the son of Æthelred II, briefly describes an item interpreted by most as a ‘trumpet’ but is best interpreted as a silver-coated blowing horn called a ‘blædhorn’. Also enigmatic is the Ripon Charter Horn, still in existence today. This horn is purported to have been given to the Yorkshire town by Alfred the Great when he visited the place in 866. Its authenticity has been fiercely defended for centuries, but whether it is the real item does not seem to matter half as much as its iconic symbolism. The Anglo-Saxon horn, it would appear, can be a very powerful civic symbol even in the modern age.

  Whatever else horns were used for, it is clear that they had some sort of military signalling purpose on the battlefield or thereabouts. There were, however, other more visual devices deployed on the battlefield to identify movements of units of troops and these were the banners and standards of the day. Although this is still a pre-heraldic period, it is possible to see that certain banners and signs had certain attachments to the military leaders of the day.

  Standards, Pennants and Other Insignia

  On the highest point of the summit he planted his banner, and ordered his other standards to be set up.

  The Carmen

  Some early references to Anglo-Saxon banners (Latin: ‘vexilla’, French: ‘gunfanun’) and flags are somewhat enigmatic. Nennuis, in his ninth-century Historia Brittonum, describes the existence of a red dragon belonging to the British and a white dragon belonging to the English or Saxon armies of the early Dark Ages. Bede, however, has a lot to say about King Edwin of Northumbria and his banners and standards. There is much in what he says which owes a due to an inherited notion of Romanitas, but there need not be any doubt that the Northumbrian king travelled around in great splendour during campaigns and at peace time:

  he had such excellency of glory in the kingdom that not only in battle were banners (vexilla) borne before him, but in time of peace too a standard-bearer was accustomed to go before him whensoever he rode about the cities, townships or shires with his thanes; yea, even when he passed through the streets to any place there was wont to be carried before him that kind of banner which the Romans call Tufa but the English Tuuf.

  It is still not clear if the Tufa was a truly Roman banner or whether during the Roman period it was used by the Germanic-influenced units and has more of a Germanic background. It seems to have been a pole with a cross piece from which the flag hung like a flat sail of fabric, sometimes topped by a tail of horsehair. But there it was in Bede’s world in northern England being proudly waved in front of the Northumbrian king. Bede also tells us of another banner, that of King Oswald, who was laid to rest at Bardney Abbey in Lincolnshire beneath a banner of purple and gold.

  The suggestion that Anglo-Saxon kings had their own standard bearers is surely not a matter for dispute. The legend of St Edmund, murdered at the hands of the Great Heathen Army in 869, was in fact passed down from word of mouth by the very man whose responsibility it was to carry the king’s banner into battle. He may have known about the famous Raven Banner of the Vikings which was taken by the Anglo-Saxon leader Ealdorman Odda during the Battle of Cynuit from the Dane Ubba. The Viking Raven Banner is described as being attached to a pole on one side and from the top it hung from an extending bar forming a quarter circle of fabric. Viking banners such as these are often imbued with a magical property and were said to hang silent in defeat. The taking of a banner was a crucial sign of victory on the battlefield and this one event at Cynuit marked the turning point in the fortune of Alfred the Great against the Danes.

  King Athelstan (924–39) was supposed to have been sent the banner and the lance of St Maurice by Hugh, Duke of the Franks in the early tenth century. It is not known for certain what this banner looked like, but the Flag of the Order of St Maurice is a yellow Cross Bottony on a red background. But it was not just kings who had the banners. Earl Siward of Northumbria is supposed to have had a magical banner called the ‘Ravenlandeye’, which was eventually left to the city of York and which hung in the Minster there on his death in 1055. This banner is clearly a relative of the great Viking banners, one of which was carried before Harold Sigurdsson in 1066. Also, there are clearly individual unit standard bearers acting for lesser leaders on the Bayeux Tapestry on both the English and the Norman sides.

  The only thing we know for certain is that by the time King Harold placed his standards on Senlac Ridge in Sussex in 1066, the concept of army and personal standards in Western Europe was already well over a thousand years old. King Harold’s standards are thought to have been the dragon of Wessex (Fig. 20) and his ‘Fighting Man’ personal standard. The so-called dragon of Wessex appears to have a very ancient heritage and may be linked to the standards that Nennius spoke of. It is most likely to have had its origins deep in the Roman past and from there the association with the Anglo-Saxons is likely to have come through their early contact with the late Romano-British armies of the lowlands. As early as the second century the Roman cavalry began to use a new type of standard known as the ‘draco’. This flew from the top of a shaft and had a wolf or snake-like head to it. It seems to have been something like a modern windsock in construction. It is described variously as hissing in the wind when in motion. It appears to have had its origins in the Barbarian Danube region according to some, although other more Eastern cultures had similar standards. It is not clear, however, whether these early examples of a draco standard variously perceived as either snakes, dragons or wolves are linked to the standard that became the royal dragon of Wessex. Henry of Huntington alludes to the earliest presence of such a dragon-like beast when he refers in his twelfth-century work Historia Anglorum to the Battle of Burford fought in 752. Cuthred of Wessex’s forces took on those of Æthelbald of Mercia and at the head of the army was Ealdorman Edelhun carrying a dragon standard. In fact, Edelhun ended up fighting hand to hand with the Mercian standard bearer in this account, but frustratingly we are not told what type of standard Edelhun’s opposite number was carrying. Henry of Huntington also mentions the beast again in his account of the Battle of Assandun (Ashingdon) in 1016. Here again Edmund Ironside’s forces fight under the dragon of Wessex.

  Fig. 20. A selection of English banners, from the Bayeux Tapestry.

  But it is with the Bayeux Tapestry that we get the most revealing depiction of the dragon standard, although there are questions to be raised. There are in fact two of them, one red and the other gold. Their form is consistent with other descriptions in that they seem to fly at the end of spear shafts as windsocks. Each so-called dragon has two ‘wings’ and two front feet (only) and is attached to the shaft via the head, which one might assume is the only part of the device that is solid.

  As for King Harold’s personal standard of the Fighting Man, there is precious little evidence for it save for the enigmatic statement made by William of Poitiers that ‘Harold’s famous banner in which the image of an armed warrior was woven in pure gold�
�� was sent to the Pope in recognition of the papal banner given to William. It does not seem to be present on the Bayeux Tapestry unless it is the triangular and elaborate standard that has fallen onto the ground during a Norman assault on the English lines around the position occupied by Harold’s brothers (Fig. 20). This particular banner, resplendent with four tails with tassels hanging from them, does not show any fighting figure. It certainly seems to have fallen from the English lines, however. It bears some resemblance to a banner depicted in the northern French Psalter of St Bertin from around c. 1000, which is possibly a ‘gonfalon’. Another candidate for the Fighting Man banner may be the five-tongued banner shown in Fig. 20, however, despite the obvious high rank of the owner, the panel design here is no more than an indistinguishable blob. Quite what the Pope received in Rome we may never know, but it would appear to have been a fabric banner and one upon which much attention was lavished by its makers.

  Elsewhere on the Tapestry, there are other English standards or unit markers. These appear at either end of the shield wall in the main depiction of the Norman assault on the English lines. At the far left a mail-clad warrior holds a spear at the top of which is a fabric banner similar to the Norman pennant being thrust towards him by a cavalryman. It is rectangular in shape and has three tongues to it. Its central panel consists of two vertical bands enclosing an undecorated central section. At the other end of the shield wall a similar warrior holds before him a banner or flag of the same rough dimensions but which has five separate tongues and a central circle in the main panel, which we have observed above.

  It is clear from our sources that banners were used to identify leaders easily and at a distance. If the banner dipped or fell in battle it might have a specific meaning to allied or friendly troops who observed it. Under no circumstance was it ever a good idea to be seen with your banners going backwards. They were the rallying points for men in the field. By the time of Hastings and the arrival of the Normans such unit markers at whatever rank were commonplace and had been for centuries. It was even said in 1091 that to ride out without your banners flying in Normandy meant that you intended to do no good to your enemies. It is tempting to see a similar weight of importance laid upon these banners in the Anglo-Saxon period, if only we had the evidence for it.

  Siege Engines, Ballistas and Crossbows

  Confined by a wire fence, and filled

  with princely treasures, I’m the bulwark

  of my people. Many is the morning

  I spew spear-terror; the more I’m fed,

  the greater my strength. My guardian watches

  how darts whistle out of my belly.

  At times I almost swallow the burnished

  dark bolts, the baleful weapons,

  searing poisoned spears, esteemed by warriors.

  Men remember what issues from my mouth.

  This enigmatic Exeter riddle has been taken by some to indicate a sling of some sort, but reading between the lines, we have here an item that seems capable of hurling a heavier variety of missile (spear-like in form) from its body. It is a fascinating prospect that such machines might have existed in Anglo-Saxon England, but there remains a likelihood that the riddler here may be recalling the famous siege engines of the Byzantine East. However, the very fact that he knows how one was used, how it was set up and what sort of missiles spewed from it, is enough evidence to suggest that at least the Anglo-Saxons were aware of such things.

  Anglo-Saxon sieges against Viking opponents as we have observed, were quite often successful. But nowhere is there mention of the types of engines we find a hundred or so years later in the era of the crusades. We cannot envisage the re-conquest of the Danelaw in the tenth century being won by ballista bolts or trebuchet-like, missile-hurling equipment. The only observation we can make is that Edgar the Ætheling, the blood candidate to the English throne who was a mere youngster in 1066, later went on crusade. At Constantinople he collected the raw materials for siege engines from the Emperor Alexius and seems to have contributed in some way to the siege of Antioch in 1098. Quite what this shows of the Anglo-Saxons’ knowledge of siege engines and their usage is anybody’s guess, but the career of the extraordinarily long-lived Edgar the Ætheling (c. 1051–c. 1126) is not taken to be representative of the Anglo-Saxon military experience in general.

  The crossbow (another candidate for the subject of the Exeter riddle) is poorly evidenced in Anglo-Saxon England. Its appearance on a Pictish carving suggests that a very basic form of the weapon was in use in Scotland in the period equivalent to the early Anglo-Saxon period in England. However, until recently we saw no firm evidence for its re-appearance until after the Norman Conquest. However, in a reviewed corpus of material from excavations in Winchester three items are now being interpreted as crossbow bolt heads. They were discovered in early ninth and mid to late tenth-century levels and their presence may suggest the weapon was not unknown in England at the time. The crossbow does in fact get a very late Anglo-Saxon literary reference: it comes in 1079 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle when the unfortunate Toki (an Anglo-Dane) gets shot by what is described as an ‘arblaste’, thought to be a crossbow. The crossbow was a very simple device to use and had a powerful effect. It was hardly a weapon that freely attaches itself to the Anglo-Saxon psyche, as much like the bow, it cannot be something with which one proves one’s bravery.

  Tents

  That the Anglo-Saxons took tents on their campaigns cannot be realistically challenged. The terms used for tents were ‘geteld’, ‘feldhus’ or ‘træf’. The Vikings are, of course, well known for their mobile encampments. They are even mentioned as setting up their tents in Gloucester while on campaign by Æthelweard. In fact, the Vikings were so proficient with such things that it seems they had different tents for different purposes, giving Old Norse words to each type. ‘Tjald’ was the basic form of the word for tent and ‘Tjaldbuééð’ was a ‘tentbooth’ from which some sort of trading may have taken place. A ‘landtjald’ was a ‘land tent’ and a ‘stafntjald’, or ‘stem-tent’, related to a maritime version similar to those evidenced by the archaeological remains of the Oseberg and Gokstad ships. These tents were basic A-frame constructions, but as far as the very slim evidence for Anglo-Saxon tents are concerned, there seems to have been a slight difference in form between these and those of the Scandinavians.

  Archaeologically, we are very poorly off for evidence, but the most often referred to set of illustrations of what are purported to be Anglo-Saxon tents come from the Harley Psalter, a collection of Psalms, itself copied from a ninth-century Frankish source. It shows examples of what is thought to be the geteld, the basic Anglo-Saxon tent, popular too on the Continent (Fig. 21). The design is quite simple, with an A-frame shape and a large cross bar at the top which was placed through what was presumably a linen sleeve from which the rest of the tent draped. These cross bars are often shown as highly decorated in the manuscripts, and the tents could be quite tall. One version shows a tie holding the front flap of the tent open. Two tents are shown in the early eleventh-century manuscript copy of the Bible depicting Abraham’s men pursuing Lot on campaign. Here, the decorated crossbar is in evidence and the draped canvas is pegged into the ground creating a pleated effect. Illustrations indicate by the presence of crosses on top of one or two of these tents that they may have also been used as mobile chapels when on campaign. This is perhaps the place where Æthelred I was praying before the Battle of Ashdown in 871. The few illustrations we have of these, however, show no cross bar and tend to appear more bell-like in shape. As to what any of these tents were made of, we are left to wait for archaeology to paint a fuller picture. All we appear to have at this stage are a few dubious and difficult to date tent pegs.

  Fig. 21. A tent depiction from a contemporary manuscript.

  Conclusion

  It is surely very clear that the Anglo-Saxons had a sophisticated and comprehensive answer to the questions posed by their military enemies. The reasons a lowly Anglo-Saxo
n went to war were nearly always governed by the directions of their lords and masters, the ealdormen and kings of the day. The training of the warriors now seems to be in evidence, if only by strong inference. The impact of going to war was clearly profound, leading to death, misery, exile and the loss of one’s lord. On the other hand, the benefit of victory could be untold riches and prestige for many who participated, a chance not only to impress, but to acquire.

  The problems associated with cycles of vengeance in the Anglo-Saxon world seem also to have consumed entire generations, leading to internecine warfare when it might have seemed to independent observers that the eyes of Englishmen should look beyond their borders for the greatest of dangers. So much of Anglo-Saxon warfare was linked in with the notion of kinship and lordship ties. The use of hostages and the swearing of binding oaths have clearly been shown to be fundamental concepts in political negotiation. The desperate fate of some of these men shows clearly the great human cost incurred when one side or another reneged on an agreement. But treachery seemed to lie everywhere for some kings. Æthelred II (979–1016) was one such unfortunate ruler for whom an apologia is long overdue. The great efforts he made to restore his kingdom to the former Alfredian glory it once had were often overshadowed by those who would intrigue with the Danes for their own advantage.