Battle of Hastings, The

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2008 by
Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

First published in paperback in Great Britain in 2009 by
Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

Copyright © Harriet Harvey Wood, 2008

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To my sister

William the Bastard, having driven out the legitimate king of the English, seized the kingdom.

Annales Corbeienses

O fools and sinners! Why did they not ponder contritely in their hearts that they had conquered not by their own strength but by the will of almighty God, and had subdued a
people that was greater, and more wealthy than they were, with a longer history: a people moreover amongst whom many saints and wise men and mighty kings had led illustrious lives, and won
distinction in many ways at home and on the battlefield?

Orderic Vitalis,
Ecclesiastical History
, book IV

CONTENTS

List of Plates

Introduction

The Background

The Contenders

The Prize

The Armies

The Prologue

The Battle

The Aftermath

The Sources

Notes

Bibliography

Index

LIST OF PLATES

INTRODUCTION

V
ery few battles change history. The claim has been made for the battle of Waterloo, but Waterloo merely confirmed the course of a history that was
clearly visible before it, but had been rudely interrupted by Napoleon’s re-entry on the European stage. It marked a turning-point; it was not a catalyst. The battle of Britain is, perhaps, a
stronger contender. Or the battle of Lepanto. William Golding has, with some justice, claimed the distinction for Thermopylae, on the grounds that it won thirty years’ respite, enabling
Athens to develop from a small provincial town to the city of Pericles that was to dominate the Mediterranean for centuries. ‘If you were a Persian,’ he writes, ‘you could not
know that this example would lead, next year, to the defeat and destruction of your whole army at the battle of Plataea, where the cities of Greece fought side by side. Neither you nor Leonidas nor
anyone else could foresee that here thirty years’ time was won for shining Athens and all Greece and all humanity.’
ⁱ

Such a claim, if substantiated, means that what Leonidas and his Spartans achieved at Thermopylae ranks that desperate defence higher in its cultural implications than almost any other battle in
history. John Stuart Mill claimed a similar distinction for the battle of Marathon, adding that it was more significant than the battle of
Hastings, even as an event in
English
history, since it changed the whole basis of western civilization. It is perhaps impossible to make a comparable claim for the significance of the battle of Hastings but it cannot be
denied that it too was a battle that was to change the face of Europe, and cause a fundamental realignment between its major players. It was, wrote one eminent historian of the Anglo-Saxon period,
one of the rare battles that have decided the fate of nations. Crécy, Agincourt, Magna Carta and much more lay implicit in the early-morning mist that hung over Caldbec Hill on 14 October
1066. But whatever the consequences of the battle, one fact is undisputed: it wiped out overnight a civilisation that, for its wealth, its political arrangements, its arts, its literature and its
longevity, was unique in Dark Age Europe, and deserves celebration. In the general instability, lawlessness and savagery of the times, Anglo-Saxon England stood out as a beacon. Yet the timing of
the battle and its result were the consequences of a series of accidents that could not have been predicted by either of the commanders. William, when he fought it, was generally known throughout
Europe as William the Bastard. It has been suggested that he might more accurately have been known as William the lucky bastard.

Its outcome was far from a foregone conclusion. Any bookie, invited to give odds on the result a month before, would not have rated William’s chances very high. The betting must always be
against the invader of a country, especially when the invasion has to be by sea, and the defender is prepared for it. Had the winds been favourable and William been able to launch his attack even a
month earlier, as he had hoped to do, it is highly likely that he would have been repelled with ignominy. Philip of Spain’s later attempt at an invasion of England failed because the winds
blew, and his great Armada was scattered. The English lost the battle
of Hastings not least because the winds did not blow in the right direction at the right time.

It was a battle that was much more fully documented – in itself, in its causes and in its consequences – than almost any other battle that took place in western Europe in the Dark
Ages. It is notable that, even at the time, it was recognized as an event of enormous historical significance. There is no shortage of testimony as to the events that led up to it nor to the
conduct of the battle. The problem is that – with one exception – all this body of testimony comes from the winning side. The only contemporary English account, in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, is stark in its simplicity:

On the Norman side there is, by contrast, almost a superfluity of accounts, both of the battle itself and of the events that led up to it. It will be important to establish (as
far as possible) the status and interrelations of these, and a list of the most significant of them is provided in the Sources chapter. Ideally, it should be read
before
proceeding too far with the story, to understand the degree of authority of each. Through them it may be easier to see how it came about that King Harold lost a battle that it might have been
thought impossible for him to lose and how the conquest and pillage of England took place under the banner and with the blessing of the Vicar of Christ.

This is a story that has often been told, and will go on being told as long as there are readers willing to read about it and writers to be drawn to its characters and events and to its
insoluble puzzles and ambiguities. Almost all writers on the subject are partial on one side or the other and I am not less so than most. A recent eminent historian of the period has announced with
his customary enthusiasm that, if he had been present, he would have been charging with William; I make no bones about stating that I would have stood beneath the standards of the Dragon of Wessex
and the Fighting Man with Harold. For many years now the civilization of Anglo-Saxon England has seemed to me a wonderful and astonishing product of the late Dark Ages, a lamp to illuminate Europe,
and its destruction at Hastings a matter for infinite regret. By 1066 it was an old civilization, and old civilizations tend to fall to energetic upstarts. With hindsight, and the advantages of
modern research, it is possible to see how much of Anglo-Saxon England did actually survive the conquest, and that the combination of what survived with what was new produced a great deal that was
equally worthwhile. But much also was lost.

THE BACKGROUND

T
he story that ended on the battlefield of Hastings began many years earlier, when the Danes resumed their invasions of England shortly after the
accession to the English throne of Æthelred, known ignominiously but not entirely unjustifiably to history as the Unready. Viking raids had become familiar to the English in earlier years,
and in a sense had never entirely ceased; but since their defeat by Alfred and his son, Edward the Elder, in the ninth and early tenth centuries and during the triumphant reign of Alfred’s
grandson, Athelstan, the Danes established in the north-east of England had gradually settled down into relatively law-abiding citizens. Athelstan’s code of laws had made special provision
for the punishment of crimes in their territory (which gradually came to be known – for obvious reasons – as the Danelaw) by Danish, rather than English, custom. Under Athelstan’s
immediate successors, such raids as there were seem to have been brief, uncoordinated affairs, designed to procure the maximum return in booty for the least investment in time and risk; during the
reign of Edgar, remembered by later generations as a golden age of peace, they seem to have ceased completely. But Edgar died unexpectedly in 975, leaving two sons by successive wives, the elder,
Edward, a teenager, and the younger, Æthelred, a child of
ten. The character of Edward, despite his later sanctity as Edward the Martyr, appears to have been unattractive
and to have boded ill for his future rule; none the less his assassination three years later by a faction supporting Æthelred was carried out in an act of treachery that appalled and sickened
a society inured to almost every kind of violence. It would be too much to lay the blame for all that was to follow on the circumstances in which Æthelred began his reign; but there can be
little doubt, judging from the contemporary chronicles, that they overshadowed it to an extent from which it never really recovered, and there can be equally little doubt that the temptation
offered to the Danes by a wealthy kingdom ruled by a child of thirteen must have been irresistible.