by Marc Morris
After the battle, the bodies of thousands of Englishmen and Norwegians were left in the field where they had fallen; more than half a century later, Orderic Vitalis wrote that travellers could still recognize the site on account of the great mountain of dead men’s bones. But the body of Tostig Godwineson was recovered from the general carnage and carried to York for an honourable burial; William of Malmesbury, who had a fondness for such human details, reports that it was recognized on account of a wart between the shoulder blades (the implication being that all the earl’s other distinguishing features had been too badly maimed). His older brother, it is as good as certain, also returned to York in the aftermath of his victory. Apart from anything else, he would have wanted to have a serious conversation with its citizens about the alacrity they had shown in supporting his Norwegian namesake. Quite possibly, therefore, Harold Godwineson was present at Tostig’s funeral, whipped by the wind that continued to blow from the north.23
Two days after the battle, however, the wind changed direction.
11
Invasion
If we believe William of Poitiers, the late summer of 1066 must have been a time of immeasurable frustration for the duke of Normandy and his army of would-be invaders. Although apparently ready since the start of August, the fleet that was supposed to carry them across the Channel to England had been unable to put to sea, its departure indefinitely delayed by bad weather and adverse winds. As late as the second week in September, the 700 ships were still beached and anchored in the port of Dives, leaving the thousands of knights, soldiers and horses idling in the nearby encampment.
If we believe most modern historians, on the other hand, this is simply nonsense. A delay of that length, they maintain, must have been deliberate; William of Poitiers, not for the first time, is twisting the facts to fit his own sensationalist agenda. What the duke was really doing during these weeks, say the sceptics, was waiting for Harold’s army to disband, so that the Normans could land in England unopposed.1
It is easy to see why this argument has commanded so much credence: apart from anything else, it seems well supported by the timing of subsequent events. Harold stood down his army, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, around 8 September. Very soon afterwards – just four or five days later, as far as we can determine – William’s fleet finally put to sea. And yet, a closer examination of the evidence suggests that the sceptical line is unjustified. The duke, it seems, was delayed by contrary winds. For once, William of Poitiers appears to have given us the unvarnished truth.
The principal reason for believing Poitiers is that his testimony is corroborated by a new source – the so-called Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, or ‘Song of the Battle of Hastings’. The Carmen, as it is known for brevity’s sake, has a controversial history of its own. An epic poem, 835 lines long, it was discovered in 1826 in the Royal Library in Brussels. The text as it stands is anonymous, but it was quickly ascribed to Guy, bishop of Amiens, a contemporary of the Conqueror, chiefly because Orderic Vitalis, writing a couple of generations later, tells us that the same Bishop Guy had written just such a poem about the Battle of Hastings. Doubts about this attribution, and indeed the poem’s authenticity, have persisted almost since the moment of its discovery; such academic scorn was poured upon it in the late 1970s that many books and articles written soon thereafter simply ruled it out of court as evidence. Latterly, however, the Carmen’s fortunes have been greatly revived. Scholars are now inclined to accept that it was the poem described by Orderic, and, since he tells us that it was composed before the spring of 1068, it is reckoned as one of the earliest sources we have for the events of 1066. It remains, of course, a poem, with all the potential for artistic licence that that implies, but nevertheless the Carmen is now regarded as one of the key texts for the study of the Conquest.2
One thing that makes the Carmen especially interesting is that it was apparently written for the ears of William the Conqueror himself (the first 150 lines or so are written in the second person, i.e. ‘You did this, you did that’). This, of course, is true for some of our other sources, such as William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers; the difference in the case of the Carmen is that its author, Bishop Guy, was not himself a Norman. The city of Amiens lies in the neighbouring county of Ponthieu, and Guy himself was a scion of Ponthieu’s ruling house. As such, while he clearly sets out to praise William and the Normans, Guy does so with a greater sense of detachment, and far less sycophancy, than, say, William of Poitiers. Another thing that makes the Carmen an interesting source is that William of Poitiers had clearly read it. At various points in his own history we can see Poitiers responding to Bishop Guy’s poem, sometimes borrowing a word or phrase by way of endorsement, other times implicitly denying its account by substituting his own alternative version of events.3
What bearing does all this have on whether or not William’s delay in sailing was deliberate or not? The answer is that the Carmen – an early, independent source, addressed to the duke himself – begins by describing the adverse weather conditions that prevailed in the late summer of 1066: ‘For a long time tempest and continuous rain prevented your fleet from sailing across the Channel … You were in despair when all hope of sailing was denied you. But, in the end, whether you liked it or not, you left your shore and directed your ships towards the coast of a neighbour.’4
William of Poitiers, following the Carmen’s lead, elaborates: ‘Presently’, he says, ‘the whole fleet, equipped with such great foresight, was blown from the mouth of the Dives and the neighbouring ports, where they had long waited for a south wind to carry them across, and was driven by the breath of the west wind to moorings at Valéry.’5 Poitiers is probably being slightly economical with the truth here in blaming the mishap entirely on the weather – presumably the ships did not simply break their anchors and drift out to sea. What must have happened, and what the chronicler has judiciously excised from his account, is that the duke decided to set sail in less than favourable conditions. Having waited a month or more for a south wind that never came, he would have learned soon after 8 September that the English army had disbanded. It must have seemed an opportunity too good to miss, and in any case his carefully stockpiled provisions at Dives could hardly have lasted much longer. Probably around 12 or 13 September, William took a chance and launched his expedition, with near disastrous results.
‘The rough sea compelled you to turn back’, says the Carmen, candidly. The Norman fleet ended up, not in England as they intended, but (as William of Poitiers indicates) in the port of St Valéry, a hundred miles further east along the north French coast – ‘a dangerous rock-bound coast’, as the Carmen accurately describes it. William had, in truth, been very lucky to have escaped a more comprehensive disaster. Poitiers speaks of ‘terrible shipwrecks’, and tells us that men began to desert from the duke’s army. Although his comment that William tried to maintain morale by burying the bodies of the drowned in secret looks somewhat suspect (Xerxes once did something similar), Poitiers’ testimony is in general terms perfectly plausible. Indeed, it draws support from a fact we have already seen, namely that the disbanded English fleet, sailing back to London at the same time, suffered similar losses.6
In mid-September, therefore, William’s planned invasion hung precariously in the balance. His fleet was diminished by losses, his supplies were dwindling. He was no longer in his own duchy – St Valéry lies in the neighbouring county of Ponthieu (hence the Carmen’s credibility for these events). And the weather continued to be against him. Guy of Amiens describes the duke not only visiting the shrine of St Valéry, but anxiously watching the weathercock on top of the church’s steeple for signs of a change in the wind. ‘You were forsaken’, says the Carmen, ‘It was cold and wet, and the sky was hidden by clouds and rain.’ With the heavens set against them, there was nothing else the Normans could do except seek divine intervention. William himself prayed and made offerings at St Valéry’s shrine; he also (as subsequent records show) vow
ed to found a new church dedicated to the saint in England, should the invasion be successful. When these personal overtures had no discernible effect, he decided to get the whole army involved. According to William of Poitiers, the duke had Valéry’s body removed from its shrine and carried out of the church, in what was clearly a large-scale, open-air ceremony. ‘All the assembled men-at-arms’, says the chronicler, ‘shared in taking up the same arms of humility.’
They had to wait a further fortnight, but eventually their prayers were answered. ‘At length’, says Poitiers, ‘the expected wind blows. Voices and hands are raised to heaven in thanks and, at the same time, a tumult arises as each man encourages the other.’ The Bayeux Tapestry shows men carrying and carting weapons and wine to the ships in a somewhat sedate fashion. It is the Carmen that best captures the jubilant but frantic atmosphere that followed:
Immediately, all were of one mind and purpose – to entrust themselves to the sea, now calm at last. Although dispersed, all arrive rejoicing, and run instantly to take up position. Some step the masts, others then hoist the sails. Many force the knights’ horses to clamber on to the ships. The rest hasten to stow their arms. Like a flock of doves seeking their lofts, the throngs of infantry rush to take their places on the boats. O what a great noise suddenly erupts from that place as the sailors seek their oars, the knights their arms!7
Frustratingly, conflicting dates in our source material means we do not know on what day this dramatic scene took place. Most probably it was 27 September, though just possibly it was 28 September. We can, however, estimate the time of day by looking at the tides. The Normans would have needed to embark on a rising tide, and to have departed soon after high tide, in order for their heavily laden ships to have sufficient clearance. On 27 September 1066 low water at St Valéry occurred at around 9 a.m., high tide at around 3 p.m., and the sun set just before 5.30 p.m. This fits very well with the Carmen’s comment that ‘the day was already closing in, the setting sun departing’ when the ships finally cast off their moorings, and the duke’s own vessel raced ahead and took the lead.8
As luck would have it we have a description of William’s ship. A few lines added to the end of the Ship List tell us it was called the Mora, and that it been prepared for him by his wife, Matilda. Sadly, we can’t say for certain what the ship’s name signified (though all manner of suggestions have been put forward). The List also tells us about a finishing touch that Matilda had caused to be added: at the prow of the vessel stood the figure of a small, gilded boy, holding a horn to his lips with one hand and pointing towards England with the other. A similar figure appears on one of the ships depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry.9
Once the ships reached the open sea, says William of Poitiers, they immediately dropped anchor. Partly this must have been to enable the fleet to establish the ‘orderly formation’ described by the Carmen, but it was also, as Poitiers explains, ‘for fear that they might reach the shore to which they were bound before dawn, and run into danger in a hostile and unknown landing place’. There would, of course, have been no shortage of sailors who had made the same crossing hundreds of times before on hand to advise on timings. The English coast lies about sixty miles from St Valéry; if they maintained a speed of between three and four knots the voyage would take at least twelve hours – bringing them to England, as Poitiers indicates, before the sun had risen. For several hours, therefore, they idled outside the estuary while night fell. As the stars filled up the heavens, says the Carmen, so the ocean filled with glowing torches. At length – probably around 9 p.m. – a lantern was lit on William’s ship, a trumpet sounded, and the fleet sailed on.10
When the sun rose the next morning, at around 6 a.m., there was apparently intense anxiety on board the Mora. As William of Poitiers explains, during the night the duke’s flagship had raced ahead of the others (‘trying to equal his ardour by its speed’); at daybreak its occupants discovered they were quite alone, with no other sails in sight. The duke himself, naturally, was unperturbed, and quelled the nerves of his companions by calmly sitting down to an abundant meal, ‘as if he were in his hall at home’. It is a scene worthy of the classical authors that Poitiers sought to emulate, but not directly copied from any of them and so impossible to dismiss completely. Of course, by the time William had finished his hearty breakfast – washed down, we are told, with spiced wine – the crisis was over. ‘On being asked again’, says Poitiers, ‘the lookout saw four ships following; the third time he exclaimed that there were so many they resembled a dense forest whose trees bore sails.’11
Some three hours later, around 9 a.m., the Norman fleet landed on the English coast. Their port of arrival was Pevensey, and this was almost certainly intended. The town itself was insubstantial, but it boasted the attraction of a former Roman fort (Anderitum) which afforded the invaders some immediate protection. More importantly, aiming his ships at Pevensey meant that William could make use of Pevensey Bay, a suitably extensive landing ground for his several hundred ships. The Bayeux Tapestry shows the horses being unloaded from the ships, and Norman knights racing to occupy the town of Hastings, a dozen miles further east along the coast. Here too they seized an ancient fortification, in this case the Iron Age hill fort that stands on the cliffs high above the town. ‘You repair the remnants of earlier fortifications and set guards to protect them’, says the Carmen: the fort at Hastings, like the one at Pevensey, was immediately customized to meet the Normans’ requirements. As we can see from the surviving remains, the invaders dug ditches and raised ramparts to reduce the size of both sites, transforming each from an old-style communal fortress into that modern French phenomenon, the castle. At Hastings, the Tapestry shows teams of diggers labouring to create that most distinctive of early castle features, the motte.12
Thus William landed in England, probably on the morning of 28 September, possibly the morning after. When did Harold learn of his arrival? The answer depends, of course, on where the English king was, and here our sources leave us somewhat in the dark. We know that he fought and won the battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September, but what he did in the days that followed is uncertain. One possibility is that, still anxious about the Norman threat, he immediately rounded up the remnant of his army and set out southwards, but this does not seem at all probable. Having won his great victory over the Vikings, it is far more likely that Harold would have remained in Yorkshire for a few days, resting his men and attending to the region’s pacification. We know that he negotiated with the Norwegian survivors and granted them safe passage home, and we can reasonably assume that he would have wanted to reimpose his authority on the citizens of York. As we’ve seen, William of Malmesbury claims that the body of Tostig Godwineson was taken to the city for burial, an occasion for which his brother is likely to have been present. Another twelfth-century writer, Henry of Huntingdon, says explicitly that Harold was holding a celebratory feast in York when news arrived of the Norman landing.13
The king’s location is important because it determines how much time he had to react. From Pevensey to York is approximately 270 miles: if the Normans landed in the morning of 28 September, news can hardly have reached him before 1 October. Looking ahead for a moment to our one indisputable date (and not, I hope, giving too much away), the Battle of Hastings took place on 14 October. Harold, in other words, moved from Yorkshire to the Sussex coast in barely a fortnight. Moreover, as all the chronicles attest, he spent some of that time paused in London – six days, if we believe Orderic Vitalis. All of which means the king must have travelled south from Yorkshire very quickly – much more quickly than he had travelled on his outward journey, which usually attracts greater admiration. If Orderic is right, Harold must have covered the 200 miles between York and London in just four or five days. Obviously he cannot have marched infantry at a rate of forty or fifty miles a day; most likely the foot soldiers who had fought at Stamford Bridge were dismissed in the wake of their victory. The conclusion must be that the king rode south, as fast
as he could, accompanied only by mounted men. As they rode, fresh orders must have been sent to the shires, with orders to assemble a new army in London.14
Back in Sussex, the Normans themselves must have been anxious for news of their enemy – not least who their enemy was. As we have seen, it is highly likely that William’s original departure from Dives, around 12 September, had been inspired by news that Harold had stood down his army a few days earlier. It is also likely that, in the days that followed, the Normans learned about the arrival in Yorkshire of Tostig and Harold Hardrada. They cannot, however, have heard about the battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September before their departure from St Valéry just two or three days later. It is a fact that has been noted by historians many times in the past, but is no less arresting for all that: William arrived in England not knowing which Harold he was going to have to fight.
News of Stamford Bridge must have reached William within a few days of his arrival – probably around the same time that Harold was made aware of the Norman landing. According to William of Poitiers, the messenger who brought the news was sent by Robert fitz Wimarc, a Norman who had come to England many years earlier in the company of Edward the Confessor and served in the former king’s household (he is the ‘Robert the Steward’ who was present at the Confessor’s death). If Poitiers can be believed – and here we must bear in mind his desire to dramatize events – the message sent by this sympathetic Norman was not encouraging. Harold had defeated and killed both Tostig and Hardrada, destroying their huge armies, and was now heading south to confront William. The duke was advised to stay behind his fortifications.15