Battle of Hastings, The Read online

  Given the absence of any other corroborating documentation in the Vatican than Hildebrand’s letter, the whole truth will probably never be known. Most historians of the period have accepted the fact that the duke’s appeal to the Pope was made, and that the papal blessing and a papal banner were given. Although William of Poitiers states that the banner was carried before the duke during the battle, nothing that could possibly be interpreted as a banner of such significance can be identified on the Bayeux Tapestry, which would seem strange if, as is generally assumed, the Tapestry was commissioned by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. There is the corroborating fact that Pope Alexander is known to have bestowed such a banner on Roger de Hauteville, younger brother of Robert Guiscard, together with absolution for all who fought with him against the heathen of Sicily.

  The truth of the story of the banner, like that of the papal blessing, has usually been accepted by subsequent historians and is now part of the fable of the conquest. There may or may not have been such a banner. There may, or may not have been papal sanction of the conquest. On the other hand, it is difficult to make sense of Hildebrand’s letter of 1080 to William except on the assumption that some very categorical sign of approval and blessing had been sent by the Pope in 1066 at the urging of Hildebrand, and that both Hildebrand and William were aware of the fact. The balance of probability is that there must have been some expression of support from the Vatican, from the Pope or possibly just from Hildebrand (which would not preclude the necessity for a regularization of the situation in 1070), but it is fair to point out the arguments against this conclusion.

  In the meantime, in England, Tostig had made his first contribution to the English defeat. The preliminary skirmish in May had convinced Harold that his brother was acting in league with William and that his descent upon the south coast was the preliminary to the full-scale invasion he was expecting. He called out the fyrd, and mobilized the navy. On this occasion he may well have called out the general fyrd, for the Chronicle tells us that he gathered a greater land and ship army than any king had ever raised before, but it telescopes events here, for it passes straight on from this remark to events later in the year. Florence of Worcester gives a fuller account:

  King Harold arrived at Sandwich and waited there for his fleet. When it was assembled, he crossed over with it to the Isle of Wight, and, inasmuch as William, count of the Normans, was preparing to invade England with an army, he watched all the summer and autumn for his coming. In addition he distributed a land force at suitable points along the sea-coast. But about the feast of the Nativity of St Mary [8 September] provisions fell short so that the naval and land forces returned home.lxxxi

  These dates indicate that he had held the fyrd in service not for the statutory two months but for nearly four, including the period of harvest, so it is hardly surprising that provisions should have run out. If William held his men together at Dives and St Valéry without foraging, he did well, but it can only have been for about half the time (though we have no certain knowledge of the date when William assembled his army, the evidence points to this being in early August). With hindsight, Harold must have been aware that he had called out the fyrd too soon but his belief that Tostig and William were acting in concert was reasonable; given the time it took for the host to assemble, he dared not wait. The land fyrd went home to rescue the harvest, the fleet was sent around to London to refit. There are rumours (as has already been noted, though the E Chronicle puts it earlier than September), though no firm corroboration, that there was a sea encounter with the Normans; if there was, it might have taken place at about this time, perhaps coinciding with William’s transfer of his forces from Dives to St Valéry. It is known from the Norman sources that there were storms in the Channel at this date, in which William lost many men and ships; it is perfectly possible either that the English fleet was also damaged in the storms (it is recorded that some of Harold’s ships were lost on the way to the North Foreland), or that there was in fact an encounter between the two opposing navies in which both sides lost ships as both were moving east up the Channel. There is an interesting note in the Domesday Book of a certain Æthelric of Kelveden in Essex who ‘went away to a naval battle against King William’ and fell ill on his return.lxxxii The storms at this point give some support to Harold’s reasons for standing his forces down. By the beginning of September, the period of the equinoctial gales had arrived, and normally seafaring would stop for the winter. The likelihood of William launching an attack later than this must have seemed to him to be much reduced. In fact, William’s luck held and 1066 was to produce a St Martin’s summer.

  The reasons for William’s move from Dives to St Valéry are controversial. Some historians think he was looking for a base closer to England, or that his army had exhausted the area around Dives. William of Poitiers, who normally misses no opportunity to attribute any event, however unfavourably it may have turned out, to the duke’s foresight and sagacity, ascribes no such motive to the move:

  Presently 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 Saint-Valéry. There too the leader, whom neither the delay and the contrary wind nor the terrible shipwrecks nor the craven flight of many who had pledged their faith to him could shake committed himself. . .to the protection of heaven.lxxxiii

  This does not imply any kind of strategic planning. It is much more probable that the duke left Dives with a wind that he thought would carry him to England but that veered, and instead found himself driven by storms that he could not resist up the Channel, finding no shelter until his ships reached St Valéry. It is clear from William of Poitiers that the losses he sustained in men, ships and morale were heavy, and that he had the dead who came ashore buried in secret in order that morale should not be lowered further. We do not know the exact date of this move, but can work it out backwards (approximately at least) from the fact that the Carmen de Hartingae Proelis tells us that he lay for about a fortnight at St Valéry before he could sail, which would imply a move just about the time that Harold stood down his troops and sent his fleet to London. It is possible that his spies had told him that Harold’s force would have to be disbanded about this time, and that he had seized on this as the most opportune moment to make his attack and also probably the latest practicable time to do so before seafaring closed down for the winter. Although not a seaman himself, he would have had plenty of advisers to tell him when the Channel normally ceased to be navigable. If he had indeed succeeded in crossing the Channel at this time, he would have found Harold still in the south and (on the evidence of his later showing) well able to assemble a strong enough army to meet him successfully. What difference that encounter would have made to later events in the north can never be known.

  We have to assume that both William and Harold had good intelligence systems set up and were both getting regular news of what went on on the other side of the Channel. Indeed, William of Poitiers tells that the duke captured one of Harold’s spies, showed him around his camp and sent him home to tell his master what he had seen. With so many Normans settled in England, the duke had good opportunities of knowing what was going on there. Not only did the abbey of Fécamp hold extensive estates in Sussex (its estate at Steyning had been repossessed by Harold but it had retained its other estates at Rye), but also the very considerable benefice at Bosham (which had excellent access to the sea – Harold had sailed from there on his ill-fated visit to Normandy) had been given by King Edward to his Norman chaplain, Osbern, later Bishop of Exeter, who was not only a cousin of William but whose brother was one of the duke’s closest advisers. If Harold had been truly as calculating or as ruthless as the enemy he was preparing to repel, he would surely have expelled such Norman settlements as these from England as soon as he was crowned. On the other hand, he may have calculated that William was most likely to make
for the part of England where he had assured allies, and it would have been helpful to a man who had the whole south coast to guard to have some idea where his enemy was most likely to land. If this was his calculation, it was correct. William did make for Sussex. With his intelligence network already installed, he would have known when Harold called out the fyrd. Perhaps it was not simply opposing winds that delayed his crossing but also the desire to keep his enemy guessing, the hope that Harold would eventually have to do what indeed he did do, disband his forces. In fact, if this was indeed his strategy, he could not have delayed much longer, and he very nearly left it too late. He could not have known, any more than Harold did, that there would be a period of prolonged summer in September and October; and indeed, he ran into the September equinoctial gales when many of his ships and men were lost on the voyage to St Valéry and then was obliged to wait with considerable anxiety for much longer than he wanted for a favourable wind. What we do not know is how much William knew of what was happening in the north of England.

  Snorre Sturlason’s King Harald’s Saga claims that Tostig went in person to Norway before he appeared in May off the south coast of England. If he went to Sweyn Estrithson in Denmark, he might well have carried on to Norway. Snorre provides an account of his interview with Harald Hardrada. Tostig would, Snorre suggests, have reminded Harald of his own claim to the English throne through his nephew, King Magnus, and of the plunder to be expected in England; he would have suggested that, if they were to conquer England together, they could share the kingdom and its riches (he might, however, have reflected that, on past performance, Harald Hardrada was not a man likely to share a kingdom); and, possibly most persuasive of all his arguments, he would have pointed out that in York, the capital of the northern Danelaw, there would be much sympathy and support for an invader of Scandinavian origins. How far this was true is not easy to estimate now. We have seen that, when the Northumbrians rebelled in 1065 against their last earl, Tostig, they did so not to gain Northumbrian independence but to secure a non-Scandinavian replacement for him. What Tostig would have ignored in his anxiety to be reinstated in his earldom, and what he would naturally not have mentioned to Harald Hardrada, was his own great unpopularity in Northumbria generally and York in particular.

  Whether or not Tostig went to Norway, whether or not Snorre’s hypothetical conversation ever took place, contact must have been made between him and Hardrada in some way. Tostig, as we have seen, retired to Scotland to lick his wounds under the protection of King Malcolm and wait for the rendezvous. Snorre is irritatingly economical with dates, but says that Harald sailed from the Solund Isles to Shetland, where he stopped only briefly, before continuing to the Orkneys which were then Norwegian territory. Here he paused to deposit one of his two wives and both his daughters, and to pick up the Orcadian earls Paul and Erland with their men and ships. It has been estimated that, with what forces Tostig had been able to recruit from Scotland, the Norwegian armada consisted of about three hundred ships and nine thousand men. There may well have been more men than that. The crew of a Scandinavian warship could be anything between forty and eighty men, and, allowing for the fact that some of the ships would be supply ships that would hold fewer and whose crew might not be fighting men, it is not impossible that Hardrada’s fighting force could have been as many as twelve thousand. He then sailed down the east coast of Scotland and England as far as Scarborough. When and where the junction with Tostig took place is uncertain. He may have picked him up off the Firth of Forth on his way south; Snorre says they did not meet until Hardrada arrived in England and that Tostig then became his man. We do not know, therefore, whether they were together when Hardrada sacked and subjugated Cleveland and Scarborough and burned the town. At Holderness an English force opposed him but was defeated. The Norwegian fleet then turned into the Humber and proceeded up it and up the Ouse as far as Riccall, driving before it Earl Morcar’s ships, which were bottled up there at Tadcaster on the Wharfe, which joins the Ouse just above Riccall. Hardrada could have continued up the Ouse as far as York itself, but would then have risked the English ships coming back down river into the Ouse to cut off his retreat. At Riccall, he was only ten miles south of York.

  From Riccall, leaving a substantial body of men to guard the ships, Hardrada and Tostig marched on York on 20 September but were confronted by Earls Edwin and Morcar at Gate Fulford, barring his road to the city. The English earls had thus had the opportunity to pick their ground for battle, and had arranged themselves with their right flank on the bank of the Ouse and their left defended by a deep ditch beyond which was bog and marshland. Hardrada, facing them, also drew up his army with one flank reaching down to the river Ouse, and the other and weaker stretching inland towards the dyke and the large area of swampy ground. He placed himself towards the river end where his forces were strongest, with his menacing standard Land Waster (a white silk banner on which Odin’s bird, the black raven, gaped for slaughter with wings spread) over his head. According to Snorre, the English approached in close formation, and launched their first attack on the weaker wing opposing them. This almost immediately gave way and, as the English pursued them, Hardrada swung his stronger wing around to take them in the rear and the flank, pushing them into the boggy land. There was really no contest. The English fought well but when pushed back into the quagmire behind them, many took flight and were drowned either in the river or in the swamp – so many, in fact, that it was said that the Norwegians could cross the swamp dryshod on the bodies of the dead. Edwin and Morcar survived, and surrendered York on 24 September. They could hardly do anything else. The fact that the city was not sacked may have been because it was the capital of Tostig’s old earldom and he wanted it back. None the less, the fate of Scarborough, if known to the citizens, would have done much to persuade them to accept whatever terms were offered.

  Hardrada demanded hostages from all the main Northumbrian families, helpfully identified for him by Tostig, provisions for his army and agreement that the Northumbrians would join with his forces and march south to conquer the rest of England. According to Florence of Worcester, Hardrada also gave hostages in return; if so, this was presumably in earnest of his future good faith if he conquered England and a gesture to ingratiate himself with the men of York. This is not confirmed in any of the surviving versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which merely say that Hardrada took hostages. Some of these were delivered immediately, but more, and much of the commissariat, had to come from a distance. Since York was inadequately supplied to maintain the Norwegian army, Hardrada withdrew to his ships to await deliveries, which it was agreed should take place on 25 September at Stamford Bridge on the Derwent, a convenient central and strategic point where several roads met.

  Since he had stood down the fyrd in the first fortnight of September, King Harold must have been waiting with considerable apprehension to see which of the two invasions would come first. The speed with which he reacted to both suggests that he had already arranged some early-warning system, but he could hardly have heard of Hardrada’s landing earlier than the attack on Scarborough, and even then he may not have been certain to begin with whether it was a full-scale invasion or merely a raiding party. As soon as the gravity of the situation – too grave for the young and untried northern earls to deal with by themselves – became clear, he was faced with the alternatives of leaving the south coast undefended while he attended to the northern invasion or staying where he was, on guard for the Normans. This would have given Hardrada and Tostig, already on the spot, the opportunity to strengthen their position in a notoriously turbulent part of the country. King Harold must have been aware that the wind had been settled northerly for the past few weeks, perfect for bringing the Norwegians, impossible for the Normans. It may have seemed a worthwhile venture to march north, face Hardrada and hope to get back to the south coast before the wind changed, and he opted for it. He may have left part of his forces in the south with a watching brief; he probably resummoned t
he fyrd before he left. On the assumption that he might have had the news from the north at any time between 18 and 20 September, he probably left London with his housecarls and whatever other forces he could take not later than the 20th on a day and night march that brought him to Tadcaster on 24 September, an incredible feat of speed. Twenty miles was normally considered a good day’s march; the distance from London to York is about two hundred miles. To have reached Stamford Bridge in fighting order by early morning on the 25th, the English must have done between forty and fifty miles a day. At Tadcaster, according to the Chronicle, he paused to array his fleet, presumably the ships that Hardrada had bottled up there. The word lið that the Chronicle uses normally means a fleet, but it is also used occasionally for land forces and for the men who would have fought on the ships, and in this case it would make much better sense to understand it as arraying his army, which he would have supplemented with levies on his way north and with the men from the fleet. He would also have heard, on arrival or en route, of the result of the battle of Fulford and that the Norwegians were even then awaiting the delivery of hostages and provisions at Stamford Bridge. On the 25th, he marched for York, where he would have picked up Edwin and Morcar with the remnants of their men (if they were still fit for service), and passed straight through the city for Stamford Bridge. R. Allen Brown sees in the surrender of the citizens of York to Hardrada a confirmation of Northumbrian separatism at this time and a lack of enthusiasm for the rule of Harold Godwinson, the brother of Earl Tostig whom they had so recently thrown out;lxxxiv in that case, it is remarkable that no citizen of York slipped out of the city ahead of the English army to give warning of its advance. According to Snorre, Harold closed all the city gates to make sure that no warning was given. It is not known where Snorre got this information; it is not corroborated in any English accounts, but these are so sparse on the subject of Stamford Bridge that this cannot of itself be held to disprove Snorre’s assertion. At all events, no warning was given. On this occasion, the St Martin’s summer operated in Harold’s favour. Hardrada, Tostig and about two-thirds of their men were lounging by the river, waiting for the hostages and supplies. It was a hot day and the men had left their mail coats and much of their armour at the ships. In Snorre’s words,