by Jack Lindsay
We are lucky to have three early accounts of the battle: in the prose of William of Poitiers, William’s chaplain; in the verse of Carmen de Hastingae Proelio which seems certainly to be by bishop Guy of Amiens (written by 1068 or at latest 1070); and in the designs of the Bayeux Tapestry. The weapons of both sides were much the same. Though in the battle only the English had axes, the Tapestry shows Guy of Ponthieu with an axe as he receives William’s embassy. One English archer is depicted, but he is no different from the four Norman ones; perhaps we are to infer that there were four times as many Norman archers as English. The latter were certainly not ignorant of archery. Bows appear in the Battle of Maldon, though it is not clear which side uses them. A century after the Conquest, William fitzStephen found archery practice a part of London holiday pastimes; and under Henry I accidents from careless archery practice were common enough to call for special legal notice.[325] But possibly because of losses in the north Harold was now short of archers. The battle accounts show the Normans as superior in them as well as in cavalry. Against William’s army were Harold’s shire levies, a close phalanx, a shieldwall up to ten or twelve ranks deep, with house-carles making up the front line. The latter would have dismounted as horses were used for attack, not defence. Each side had its standard, the Normans the papal banner charged with cross and roundels, Harold the dragon of Wessex and his own sign of the Fighting Man. The Tapestry shows a model dragon on a pole over him as he dies. Heraldry had not yet been born, though emblems of various kinds had long been used. Asser’s Alfred tells of a dragon woven by the daughters of Ragnar Lothbroc on a banner called Reafan (Raven), which was captured from his sons in 878. Some knights on the Tapestry have shields painted with dragons; some shields are plain, others have markings that may be cognizances or merely constructional forms. Wace says that the Normans had devices on lance flags and shields so as to tell one another in the mellay. But in general these were not personal or family emblems like the later heraldic ones.
Harold had been with William on his Breton campaign and must have known something of his methods. Most likely, he had decided to meet any cavalry attack with the phalanx. On the right ground light cavalry could hardly hope to breach a solid line; and when the enemy weakened, the defenders could move into attack. William, however, had his archers ready to harass the phalanx. His forces were divided into three groups, Bretons on the left, a mixed Franco-Flemish contingent under Robert of Beaumont on the right, and Normans in the centre. With horsemen and archers he had a freedom of movement denied to the compacted English. He set his archers in front, probably backed by light-armed footmen with slings and spears; then came the heavier footmen, with mounted knights at their rear. He deployed his men without response from the English.
The trumpets sounded and the battle began about 9 a.m. William’s formation suggests that he envisaged three tactical phases: shooting by the archers, assault by the heavy infantry, and attack by the cavalry, penetrating any breaches in the enemy line. The archers stuck their quivers in the ground and shot uphill; their arrows would have been easy to catch on shields unless they passed high overhead. The paucity of English archers would have one disadvantage for the Normans; there would have been few enemy arrows for them to pick up and use for return volleys. Next the infantry advanced up the hill and were met with a shower of missiles that is described as unprecedented. The Normans failed to break the English line and suffered from the axes of the house-caries. The Bretons, who had the easiest slope to climb, would have been the first to meet the English resistance. Unsupported for the moment on their right, they fell confusedly back, forcing their cavalry with them, into the marshy depths of the valley where heavy casualties were suffered. The English are said to have chased after them down the slopes.
The Norman contingent, unprotected on its left, also fell back, and the Franco-Flemish one further along followed their example. Even the baggage guard was affected, and there was danger of a Norman rout. William at once galloped down into the tumult. The tale got around that he had been killed. Pushing back his helmet, he shouted that he was still alive, and, with the aid of bishop Odo and Eustace of Boulogne he rallied the fugitives and after a while was able to launch some of his own cavalry, which then charged downhill and attacked the Englishmen who had broken ranks in pursuit of the Bretons. He thus struck them between the hillock and the marsh. Most of them were killed, though some succeeded in getting back to their line or climbed on to the hillock. Probably after these events there was an exhausted pause. Both sides needed to reform.
Harold has been blamed for not taking advantage of the period of Norman disorder and launching an attack. His failure to do anything of the sort is so remarkable, so out of character, that it has been plausibly suggested that he did in fact launch a counter-attack, that he made it too soon, and that, through William’s prompt and resolute action, it was met and beaten. The episode in question was treated at length by the Tapestry, and during it Harold’s two brothers, Gyrth and Loefwin, were killed. We can well imagine that they would have led a counter-attack, but would not have been carried away by some of the fyrd breaking ranks; and unless they did lead such an attack, it is hard to see how the Normans were in such straits.
It was now that William decided on the third phase of the operations: the heavy cavalry attack up the ridge. There could be no question of a thundering impact such was possible on level ground or downhill. The English again let loose a hail of missiles and many of the Normans were cut down by the battleaxes of house-carles. The struggle seems to have gone on some time, till at last the Normans fell back. Again either the fyrd broke line or there was an attempt at an English counter-attack. But William was ready. He had cavalry in reserve which were sent to fall on the English. Two similar incidents are said to have occurred on the Franco-Flemish front, with similar results. Now the English had suffered so many losses that they had to draw in their flanks and gather round the standard.
In most of the accounts of the battle including those of the Carmen and of Poitiers the Normans are said to have made feigned retreats in order to get the English to break their line and the Englishmen stupidly went on breaking it. But we cannot credit that the Normans would have acted so rashly on such ground. The fact that this tactic turns up repeatedly in the accounts of battles of the period makes the story more suspect, not less. The Normans are said to have used it at Argues in 1053 and against the imperial troops at Larissa in 1082; the crusaders in Syria in 1099 found that the Moslems were said to make common use of it. We can safely assume that it was the sort of tale that winners were liable to tell after the event in order to explain away any failures on their part in the battle.
What William seems finally to have done was to throw all his forces into the attack on the weakened English. The archers had presumably drawn fresh supplies of arrows from the munition waggons like the one shown on the Tapestry. They shot high so that the arrows would come down on to the closely packed English. Such knights as still had horses charged; those who had lost their horses joined the infantry. A strange battle, commented Poitiers, where one side was in ceaseless movement, the other rooted to the ground. The Tapestry brings out the high trajectory of the arrows. By the end of the day the English were worn out, and their shieldwall breached; the house-carles died round their lord, and at last, ‘towards the twilight hour’, Harold was killed. The Tapestry shows an Englishman with three arrows in his shield as he plucks a fourth from his eye; dropping his axe, another dies under the sword of a mounted Norman. Baudri of Borgeuil, at the end of the century, says that Harold was shot through the eye, but he may have been misinterpreting the Tapestry. Most experts now think the man with an arrow in his eye is a house-carle; Harold is the man being struck down. Guy of Amiens says the killers were Eustace of Boulogne, a son of Guy of Ponthieu, Walter Giffard, and Hugh of Montford.[326] Just where he fell, nobody knew. His mutilated body was later found among the huddled corpses. (The high altar of Battle Abbey was erected on this spot.) At his death
the English gave way and fled, with the Normans in pursuit. Where broken ground helped them, they turned and rallied. Eustace was hard pressed and called on William to sound the retreat; he was answered by a blow between the shoulders that brought blood gushing from nose and mouth, and he had to be borne off. William once more held his men steady, but the pursuit had cost him some of his best men. Despite the victory, the Normans seem to have been too exhausted and uncertain to rejoice; the next day, for all they knew, might have brought a fresh army on them and they would have been done for. But when the bodies of Harold and his brothers were found, they began to believe in their triumph.
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The sequence of events and the events themselves are substantially the same in the Tapestry, in William of Poitiers’ account, and in the poem on the battle, though with many minor variants. The poem mentions the duke’s long and vexatious delay at St Valéry, but Poitiers adds that there were shipwrecks and desertions. The poem says that the fleet, sailing at night, had torches on every ship; Poitiers says the duke only had a fire lit at mast-top to signal the resumption of the voyage after the pause; the Tapestry shows the lantern signal on the ducal vessel. The poem says a comet shone in the sky; Poitiers that it appeared after Harold’s coronation. The poem says that an Englishman who watched the Normans landing rode off to tell Harold; Poitiers describes it as the visit of a Norman settled in England. Early in the battle the poem speaks of a simulated flight of the Norman army; Poitiers speaks of a genuine flight, though later of a simulated one. The poem says that Gyrth, Harold’s brother, dismounted the duke but was at once killed by him; the Tapestry just says that Gyrth was killed. The poem says that fitzHelloc killed the duke’s horse, then the duke killed him in revenge; Poitiers, merely that the duke was dismounted thrice and each time took his revenge. The poem says that Count Eustace gave his horse to the duke and took one from a knight of his, then the pair ravaged the English camp, and the duke gathered Hugues de Ponthieu and Gilard to launch the assault on Harold; Poitiers draws up a list of honour, which mentions Eustace and Gautier Giffard, together with others whom the poem ignores. And so on. We get the impression that each of the three sources is independent and was based on direct experience or contemporary accounts. The battle was in no sense a simple victory of expert and trained knights against antiquated footsoldiers. William owed a great deal to his superiority in archers. Without a large body of horsemen he could not have kept on making attacks uphill against the English line, but the nature of the ground prevented a shock onslaught. The outcome of the battle was largely determined by the haphazard way in which the English had been got together at London. Harold could have had few of his northern army with him, and such as were there must have been very tired. William of Malmesbury says that after Stamford Bridge:
Harold, elated by his successful enterprise, allowed no part of the spoil to his soldiers. So many of them, as the chance came, stole off and deserted the king as he was proceeding to the battle of Hastings. For with the exception of his stipendiary and mercenary soldiers, he had very few of the poeple with him: on which account, circumvented by a stratagem of William’s, he was routed...
Harold may well have had no time to arrange what to do with the spoils from Stamford Bridge; there may have been much discontent at a second forced march; men may have fallen back through exhaustion. The few days at London could not have brought in large levies. Malmesbury stresses the small size of Harold’s army at Hastings:
Those persons seem to me to err who swell up the numbers of the English and underrate their courage; who, while meaning to extol the Normans, load them with ignominy. A mighty commendation indeed: that a very warlike nation should conquer a set of people who were obstructed by their own multitude and fearful through cowardice. On the contrary they were few in number and brave in the extreme; and sacrificing all concern for their bodies, poured out their spirit for their country.[327]
William’s steadfastness certainly must have helped a great deal; but we must not think there was tactical control except of the simplest kind. The Tapestry gives us no hint of any uniformity in Norman equipment, or regularity of formation. What we see are knights riding at the English in a succession of columns with two or three abreast. There is one scene with an Englishman being ridden down. Most Normans throw spears; only two or three have their lances under their arms. The artist stresses this point by making the throwing spears thin and the couched lances thicker. What is shown is nothing like shock cavalry tactics. One interesting detail is that spears and lances used by both English and Normans have a cross-piece near the top to prevent deep penetration. Poitiers speaks of the terrific clamour on both sides. There would have been no possibility of orders except of a very local kind. On the other hand, the English system of defence by means of axes and javelins could not have been very effective, yet it seems to have repelled the Normans for many hours. And it may be that if Harold have been able to disengage his forces without disorder, he could have gone to collect fresh troops and then met the weakened Normans again, but he seems to have been too tenacious for such tactics.
In Heimskringla the English horsemen at Stamford Bridge ride against the Norse footmen with spears, but fail till the latter break formation; in the mellay Harald Hardrada is killed by an arrow through his windpipe.[328] This account was written a century after Hastings and seems to be based on that battle; but it is not inherently impossible. Certainly the English leaders and their retainers would normally have been mounted. The Chronicle of 1055, dealing with the Welsh marches, says that the English went off ‘because they were on horses’, which becomes in Florence of Worcester the statement that the English were bidden to fight on horseback against their custom. But even if correct, the Chronicle is telling of warfare on steep broken ground, thick with trees, and no doubt the fyrd normally did not use horses. Still in 1063 the English seem to be mounted under Tostig against the Welsh on the coastal strip of north Wales; and in 1054 Siward defeated Macbeth of Scotland despite his Norman allies. Florence states that Siward led ‘a mounted army’. The existence of horses in 1016 is implied, when Edmund Ironside, says the Chronicle, pursued the Danes in Kent ‘with their horses to Sheppey’, killing those he could overtake. An Anglo-Saxon drawing shows two horsemen riding side by side, one throwing a spear, the other holding a two-edged axe; there are no hounds and the nearer horseman has a shield on his bridle arm. The way that the men ride, two abreast, with missiles, suggests strongly the charging knights of the Tapestry. We may take the drawing to represent thegns or house-carles in action. Under William in Brittany Harold played his part in a mounted force; and at Gerberoy in 1080 Englishmen fought on horseback for William.[329]
What was unusual for a battle in England was the large number of horsemen in the Norman army. In the sense that this mass of knights represented the serried might of feudal France opposed to a phalanx of the traditional English kind, there was an historical significance in the contrast between the armies; but what was crucial for Harold was rather the hurried and restricted way in which he had got together his forces, and the rash way he rushed into battle in his eagerness to deal with the Normans as he had dealt with the Norsemen. We may discount the charge that Edwin and Morcar deliberately left him to fight alone. They had lost heavily at Fulford, and Harold’s hurry gave them no chance to join him with fresh forces. Perhaps his death was more disastrous than his defeat. His accession had broken the line of kings with their Woden genealogies; the Aetheling was young and unknown; Edwin and Morcar lacked the prestige to aspire to the crown. There was nobody round whom resistance could gather. Only a great figure, capable of arousing a strong sense of the English tradition and with a legitimate claim to the throne, could have unified and roused the national forces. And there was no such figure. Only local resistance was possible and this had no hope of success. So the fact that Harold had broken the line of legitimate descent, and intruded as an outsider on the royal kindred, was of enormous help to William, once he was dead.
A vain attempt was made to find a substitute. Ealdred of York turned to the one person who might have aroused English loyalties: Edgar Aetheling, now about fifteen. He was helped by Stigand, Edwin and Morcar and the Londoners, with varying degrees of resolution. But when he had to make the final decision — whether or not to crown the lad — his heart failed him. The family of Godwin had so long been the real centre of power in England that since their disappearance no one had the courage or resolution to attempt a new start. And William, whether out of caution or good sense, did not advance on London at once and so gave time for the vacillations of Ealdred and the earls to increase. He himself could not yet believe his own good luck: that with one battle he had crushed all opposition. Steadily devastating the land he moved along the south coast. A sally of men from Romney was ferociously beaten back. He went on to Dover, then turned inland for London, where he arrived by the end of October. He was now delayed by dysentry. Queen Edith surrendered Winchester. He advanced to the south end of London Bridge, but lacked the strength to take the city. So he laid waste Southwark and marched west, once more destroying everything in a swathe through Surrey, north Hampshire and Berkshire. Then he turned to cross the Thames at Wallingford. He was ringing London with a black band of death. Twenty years later in the Domesday Book his course could be traced in the clumps of manors which slumped in value after 1066. We can see that the usual distance his army travelled was twenty-five miles a day.