Battle of Hastings, The (19 page)
Read Battle of Hastings, The Online
Authors: Harriet Harvey Harriet; Wood Harvey Wood
The weather was exceptionally fine, with warm sunshine; so the troops left their armour behind and went ashore with only their shields, helmets, and spears, and girt with
swords. A number of them also had bows and arrows. They were all feeling very carefree.
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When they saw the cloud of dust raised by the approaching army coming over the brow of the hill, they were at first uncertain what it portended; then, ‘the closer the army
came, the greater it grew, and their glittering weapons sparkled like a field of broken ice’.
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Tostig advised retreating to their ships
and making a stand there, although the approach of the English host blocked the quickest way back to them; Hardrada compromised by sending his best riders to summon the rest of his army, and formed
up his men into a shield wall with the wings curved so far back that it was almost circular, with his Land Waster standard in the centre.
The battle of Stamford Bridge, no less than the battle of Hastings, is encrusted with legends, and it is difficult to tell which legend originated at which battle. Hardrada, like William, fell
before the battle when his horse stumbled, and claimed that a fall was good luck. King Harald Hardrada, like King Harold Godwinson, is said to have died from an arrow shot. The exchanges before the
battle may have a foundation in reality, or may not. Snorre is a late witness:
Twenty horsemen from the English king’s company of Housecarls came riding up to the Norwegian lines; they were all wearing coats of mail, and so
were their horses.
One of the riders said, ‘Is Earl Tostig here in this army?’
Tostig replied, ‘There is no denying it – you can find him here.’
Another of the riders said, ‘Your brother King Harold sends you his greetings, and this message to say you can have peace and the whole of Northumbria as well. Rather than have you
refuse to join him, he is prepared to give you one third of all his kingdom.’
The earl answered, ‘This is very different from all the hostility and humiliation he offered me last winter. If this offer had been made then, many a man who is now dead would still be
alive, and England would now be in better state. But if I accept this offer now, what will he offer King Harald Sigurdsson for all his effort?’
The rider said, ‘King Harold has already declared how much of England he is prepared to grant him: seven feet of ground, or as much more as he is taller than other men.’
Earl Tostig said, ‘Go now and tell King Harold to make ready for battle. The Norwegians will never be able to say that Earl Tostig abandoned King Harald Sigurdsson to join his enemies
when he came west to fight in England. We are united in our aim: either to die with honour, or else conquer England.’
The horsemen now rode back.
Then King Harald Sigurdsson asked, ‘Who was that man who spoke so well?’
‘That was King Harold Godwinsson,’ replied Tostig.
King Harald Sigurdsson said, ‘I should have been told much sooner. These men came so close to our lines that this Harold should not have lived to tell of the deaths of our
men.’
‘It is quite true, sire,’ said Earl Tostig, ‘that the king acted unwarily, and what you say could well have happened. But I realized that he wanted to offer me my life and
great dominions, and I would have been his murderer if I had revealed his identity. I would rather that he were my killer than I his.’
King Harald Sigurdsson said to his men, ‘What a little man that was; but he stood proudly in his stirrups.’
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We may be on safer ground with the legend of the Norwegian warrior who single-handed held the bridge across the Derwent while the Norwegian army drew itself up on the far side,
and could only be killed by one of the English who took a boat under the bridge and stabbed him through the gaps between the planks. It is reported at the end of the C version of the Chronicle,
though the entry is clearly a late addition in language a good hundred years later than the rest of the entry; but it is strange that Snorre should not have included a deed of Norse heroism if the
story of it had been taken back to Norway.
Once the bridge was clear, the English were able to attack. According to Snorre, they opened with a cavalry charge, and this has been seized on as proof that the pre-conquest English did
occasionally fight on horseback. But the lateness of this account and the many inaccuracies it contains make this a very doubtful proposition. The English, or some of them at least, may have
ridden to the battlefield but would probably then have fought, as at Hastings, on foot. Hardrada’s main preoccupation would have been to withstand the attack until
reinforcements from his ships could arrive; Harold’s would have been to make sure that he did not. Hardrada’s curved shield wall was essentially a defensive position, but without their
body armour his men were unusually vulnerable, and, in the hand-to-hand fighting that followed, they were cut down in hordes. The first phase of the battle ended when Hardrada turned berserker
himself and rushed forward into the front of the battle. ‘Neither helmets nor coats of mail could withstand him, and everyone in his path gave way before him.’
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At this point, according to Snorre, he was struck by an arrow in the throat and died.
The king’s death, as so often in mediaeval warfare, caused a hiatus in the proceedings, and at this juncture, again according to Snorre, King Harold renewed his offer to his brother and
quarter to all surviving Norwegians. The offer was rejected, and the fighting around Land Waster resumed. The third phase of the battle started when the Norwegians from the ships, led by Eystein
Orri, arrived to reinforce Tostig. The odds were not as uneven as might be supposed: the Norwegians were, most of them, fighting without armour, but the English were fighting without sleep, after a
heroic forced march of several days; both sides were by this time exhausted by the battle and the heat – indeed, Snorre reports that even those from the ships who did have armour threw it
off, and that many died from heat exhaustion without striking a blow, after covering the miles from Riccall at top speed. The fighting continued until late in the afternoon, by which time Tostig
had also fallen, and those who had survived the carnage fled back to the ships, pursued by the English. There is no evidence to show who was responsible for Tostig’s death; Guy of
Amiens attributes it to Harold, but this was obviously so that he could add the label of fratricide to those of perjurer and usurper. It was reported that his body was so mutilated
that it could only be identified by a wart between the shoulders, and it was given honourable burial in York after the battle. Hardrada’s young son Olaf and the two Orcadian earls, who had
all been with those who had remained with the ships, were given quarter and leave to return home by Harold, after swearing oaths never to attack England again, an oath that Olaf honoured when he
succeeded his brother as king. Harold allowed them to take as many ships as were necessary for their remaining men. They took twentyfour, out of the three hundred that had brought them.
If it had not been for what happened so soon afterwards, Stamford Bridge would be remembered as a battle of the highest significance in its own right. The death of Harald Hardrada, the legendary
and most feared warrior of his time, and the destruction of his army, marked the end of the Viking age that had influenced so much of Europe, from Byzantium to the Atlantic. It also marked the end
of centuries of assault on England; although there were to be sporadic and local attacks thereafter, mainly from Sweyn Estrithson, there would be nothing on the scale of what had gone before. Under
any circumstances, it was a remarkable achievement for the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, one that the bones of Alfred, Edward the Elder and Æthelred would have saluted; in the peculiar
circumstances of 1066, it was astonishing. But it was not achieved without damage. The Norwegian army may have been virtually destroyed, but they took many Englishmen with them. Between the men
lost by Edwin and Morcar at Gate Fulford and those killed and wounded at Stamford Bridge, the fighting strength of the kingdom was much diminished.
THE BATTLE
T
he battle of Stamford Bridge was fought on 25 September. On the day it was fought William was still at St Valéry, waiting for a favourable
wind. The
Carmen de Hastingae Proelio,
a slightly controversial source, partly because of problems of dating and attribution, partly because clearly written for entertainment, takes up the
story at this point and gives a harrowing picture of his anxiety:
Here you had a long and troublesome delay, spending a fortnight in that territory waiting for succour from the Supreme Judge. You visited the Saint’s church often,
devoutly, with sighs and prayers making pure offerings to him. You looked to see by what wind the church’s weathercock was turned. If it was from the south, you departed happily. But if,
on a sudden, the North wind interrupted and held it at bay, tears streamed down your cheeks. You were forsaken. It was cold and wet and the sky was hidden by clouds and rain.
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William had gone so far as to cause the body of the saint to be removed from his tomb and carried around the town in procession
to the accompaniment of
prayers, to ensure, as William of Poitiers puts it, that the contrary wind became a favourable one. On the 28
th
, his prayers were answered. Christine and Gerald Grainge wrote an
extremely interesting paper about the voyages from Dives to St Valéry and from St Valéry to Pevensey from the point of view of the sailor, in which they discuss the hazards
William’s mariners would have faced in sailing from St Valéry. According to them, a typical series of Atlantic low pressures in the Channel would have brought the weather that so
distressed William; this was succeeded on the 28
th
by a high pressure system that brought with it warm weather, clear skies and a southerly wind. By their calculations, high tide at St
Valéry on the 28
th
would have been at 1514 hours.
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Since the fleet would have been dependent on the ebb tide to get them out of
harbour, embarkation must have been undertaken at breakneck speed. Both William of Poitiers and the
Carmen
tell us that, by the duke’s orders, the fleet hove to once it had cleared the
coast to enable the stragglers to catch up and the ships to assemble in some sort of order. William, however, also tells us that during the night the duke’s ship so far outstripped the rest
of the fleet that he found himself entirely alone at daybreak. Needless to say, he behaved, according to his chronicler, with the greatest sangfroid, eating breakfast on board as if he were in his
chamber at home, while waiting for the rest of the ships to catch up with him. Had Harold still had his fleet patrolling off the Isle of Wight, the duke might have been in some danger, though it
would have been very much a matter of luck if one isolated ship had been spotted by them. As it was, the Norman fleet landed at Pevensey at daybreak on the 29
th
, apart from a few ships
that became separated from the main fleet and landed at Romney where the crews were attacked and slaughtered by the inhabitants.
It is a matter of conjecture whether William had any news of the Norwegian invasion before he sailed. With the winds in the north as they were before the 28
th
,
it would not have been impossible for word to have been brought to him of the invasion; the knowledge that King Harold had marched north to repel it would certainly have been known to his
intelligencers in the south. It is highly unlikely, however, that, even if he knew of the invasion, he could have heard of the result of Stamford Bridge and indeed it is fairly clear from William
of Poitiers’ account that he had not. He may have landed, not knowing whether he would have to face King Harold of England or King Harald of Norway; he may not have known about the
latter’s invasion at all; he may have been completely mystified to find a virtually undefended shore to greet him. He lost no time in profiting by the opportunity it presented. Having erected
a wooden castle on the remains of the old Roman fortifications, he went out personally with some of his leaders to prospect. It took him very little time to realize that Pevensey (where he may have
landed as much by chance as by choice), though a good harbour, was a poor base for freedom of movement, and to decide to transfer his headquarters to Hastings.
The coastline of the Pevensey and Hastings area has changed substantially since the eleventh century. Pevensey is no longer on the coast; then, it was at the head of a sizeable inland lagoon
(which has since become Pevensey Levels), ideal for sheltering large numbers of ships, but unsuitable for the kind of manoeuvring that William had in mind. In order to move east, towards Hastings
and the main road to London, he first had to proceed west to circumvent the large areas of salt marsh, with frequent tidal inlets, which his men could not march across. He could then have turned
north-east towards Hastings, descending on it from not far south of where the battle was actually to be fought. At Hastings, which
had been one of Alfred’s fortified
burhs
, he would have found a harbour adequate for his ships and a good defensive position on what was then virtually a promontory, a triangle lying between the Brede estuary, the Bulverhythe
estuary and the sea, with the only land exit the road to London. He would also have found the remains of the old Roman fortifications as well as those of Alfred’s, an ideal site for another
of his wooden castles. How much of Alfred’s fortifications remained nearly two centuries after they were built is uncertain, but the earthen ramparts would almost definitely have survived.
There is a certain irony in the fact that one of the strong points built by Alfred to defend his kingdom against Viking invaders should have served as the base for a latter-day pirate of Viking
descent. Since time seemed to be on his side for the present, he would probably have had the horses ridden around the salt marshes to Hastings to avoid the risky business of another embarkation and
disembarkation of them, while the ships sailed or were rowed around. Once comfortably established there, he could send out his men to ravage the surrounding lands (most of them belonging to the
Godwin family) for provisions while he waited upon events.