Battle of Hastings, The Read online

  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.lxxxv

  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’.lxxxvi 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.’lxxxvii

  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.’lxxxviii 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

  The 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.lxxxix

  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 28th, 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 28th 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 28th would have been at 1514 hours.xc 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 29th, 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 28th, 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.

  The first of these, according to William of Poitiers, was the arrival of a messenger from Robert FitzWymark, a man of Norman or Breton parentage long settled in England, and related to both the duke and the former king – the Robert FitzWymark who less than a year previously had been present at the deathbed of Edward the Confessor. The message he sent to the duke was that

  King Harold has fought with his own brother and with the king of the Norwegians, who passed for the strongest man living under the sun, and has killed both in one battle and destroyed huge armies. Encouraged by this success, he is advancing against you by forced marches, leading a strong and numerous troop; against him I consider that your men would be worth no more than so many wretched dogs. . . I urge you, stay behind fortifications.xci

  William’s reply was that he would fight Harold as soon as possible and had confidence in the ability of his men to destroy him ‘even if I had only 10,000 men of the quality of the 60,000 I have brought with me’. He spoke with bravado; it is unlikely that he had more than the 10,000 he referred to so disparagingly. Whether because of FitzWymark’s warning or native prudence, he did, however, stay within his fortifications, maintaining close contact with his ships, while he awaited Harold’s arrival.

  The situation in the north is much vaguer, since there was no chronicler to leave an account and no direct evidence of the sequence of events survives. It has been calculated that the earliest the king could have had news of the Norman landing was 1 October, which presupposes the arrangement of a relay network of mounted messengers between London and York. (Robert FitzWymark’s warning to William illustrates well the efficiency of the intelligence the duke could rely on; for FitzWymark to get this information to him so fast, ahead of the king’s arrival in London after an exceptionally rapid march, he must have set up his own system of relay messengers to bring the news.) In the days between the battle on the 25th and the arrival of the news from the south, there would have been more than enough to do in the north, with the despatch of the surviving Norwegians, the burial of the more distinguished English dead (Orderic Vitalis speaks decades later of the mountain of dead men’s bones that still bore witness to the terrible slaughter on both sides), the tending of the wounded and the restoration of order in York itself.

  The Chronicle does not say whether the news of the Norman landing reached the king in York or whether he had already started south and met it on the way. The balance of probability, supported by Florence of Worcester, is that he was still in York and set out for London immediately. If he left on the
2nd and maintained the same impressive speed he achieved on the journey north, he would have arrived in London on 6 or 7 October. On the other hand, he may have been slowed by wounds inflicted at Stamford Bridge on many of his crack troops; he may indeed have been wounded himself. He may have collected contingents of men on the way south who had not been in time to meet him on his march to York. Few things testify more convincingly to the efficiency of the English military organization (and, indeed, to Harold’s general acceptance as king) than his ability to raise so many effective armies in so short a time between May and October. None the less it would have been the housecarls who bore the brunt of the Norwegian assault at Stamford Bridge, and even their legendary fighting capacity must have been weakened by it. According to some accounts, he diverted his march to offer prayers at Waltham Abbey, his own foundation, but this cannot greatly have delayed his arrival in London, where his first preoccupations would be to rest his men, send his fleet to cut off the Norman retreat and coordinate the levies that were coming in.

  At this point, William of Poitiers takes up the story again. According to him, Harold sent an emissary to William, restating the right by which he held the throne and bidding William leave his kingdom with all his men. William replied at much greater length, setting out the basis of his own claim and offering to submit his case to either English or Norman law or to trial by personal combat. According to the chronicler, ‘we wish to bring the tenor of the duke’s own words (which we have diligently sought out) rather than our own composition to the notice of many’ as proof of the justice of the Norman cause.xcii The wisdom and justice that he endeavoured to illustrate by the lengthy speech reported are not, in fact, very clearly demonstrated. By English law William had no case, there was no reason why the English succession should be determined by Norman law any more than by the Pope, and trial by combat had at this time no status in the English legal system and did not have until William at a later date altered that system to accommodate it. And, in parenthesis, if William’s invasion had indeed been blessed by the Pope, it would have been most improper for him to have devalued that blessing by offering any of these alternatives. It is likely that the speech reported here by William of Poitiers, like the speech attributed to the duke at the beginning of the battle, was his own composition. On the other hand, such an exchange of embassies would have been a perfectly normal proceeding in such a situation. The main point of interest about this one is that, if it did take place, it makes nonsense of the claim made by both William of Poitiers and the Carmen that Harold’s objective was to take William by surprise, as he had done with Hardrada. If you plan to take your enemy by surprise after a forced march of exceptional speed, you do not first of all send a formal embassy to him letting him know exactly where you are.