In Search of the Dark Ages

by Michael Wood

  HAROLD’S ACCESSION: A RIGHT-WING COUP?

  It was all the more ironic that in 1064 on a boating trip from his manor at Bosham, Harold Godwinson should have been shipwrecked on the French coast and brought to William’s court. There he stayed for some time participating in a military expedition against the Bretons, in which he impressed the Normans and their duke by his physical strength and chivalrous behaviour. The upshot of Harold’s stay however was a famous and fateful oath sworn at Bayeux by which (so the Normans later asserted) the earl promised to support William’s claim to England. Whether Harold’s oath was made under duress or not it placed him in the position of a perjurer in the eyes of the Normans, and was instrumental in William’s obtaining papal blessing for his war against England.

  On 5 January 1066 Edward died in his new church at Westminster. The very next day, ‘before the funeral meats were cold’, Earl Harold seized the throne and was crowned in the abbey. It was alleged by some that on his deathbed Edward had put his kingdom in Harold’s protection, and the Bayeux Tapestry portrays such a scene. But the unseemly haste of the earl’s consecration indicates the true nature of the changeover: an all-powerful dynasty, not of royal blood, had effectively usurped the throne of the Cerdicings. It was a coup d’état carried off with great speed and purpose. When the news reached William he received it in silence, his face black with fury. A protest was immediately sent off to the English court asking for an explanation. But that was mere diplomatic protocol. The die was cast. William gave the order for a fleet to be constructed.

  THE EXPEDITION PREPARES

  In taking the throne Harold undoubtedly knew he would have to fight to keep it. Soon after Easter a comet was seen, ‘a portent such as men had never seen before’ (it was Halley’s Comet and was visible from 24 April for seven days), and the Bayeux Tapestry portrays a spectral fleet invading Harold’s mind as news is brought to him of ‘the long haired star’. He had troubles enough on his mind. His brother Tosti had been expelled by the Northumbrians the previous year – even in that wild province his brutality had been extreme – and had come across from his exile in Flanders to plunder on the south coast. Thinking this descent to be a precursor of the expected Norman attack, Harold decided to call out his armed forces and put them on standby. That summer he raised ‘the greatest sea and land hosts that any king in this country had gathered before’ (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and brought them round to Ethelred’s old naval base at Sandwich to await the mobilisation of his household troops (this took a long time, says the chronicler, presumably because Harold was also recruiting short-term mercenaries from abroad, and Denmark in particular).

  Over the Channel William was now assembling a great fleet at Dives-sur-Mer, where there was a good anchorage in the river Dives estuary, protected by a great sweep of sandbanks. A permanent Norman fleet existed by the 1030s, but this can hardly have been very numerous. By the early summer of 1066, therefore, plans were actively in hand for the construction of a fleet of transports capable of carrying several thousand Norman and continental knights, infantry and archers, and at least a couple of thousand warhorses, together with provisions, military supplies, mobile smithies, racks of arms, and large quantities of ‘spares’ – especially arrows – for the replenishment of supplies during battle. It may even be that the timbers for a small motte were taken ‘prefabricated’ for erection in an emergency – for instance in the event of the landing being contested: perhaps this was the ‘castle’ eventually erected at Hastings. The magnates of Normandy were each required to make a contribution of ships, and these were sizeable and expensive (there were stories that the Norman nobility were initially very unwilling to undertake the expedition, on account of the strength and wealth of England, the ability of her professional troops, and the dangers of the sea voyage; but at a great meeting at Bonneville-sur-Touques, William won them over). On the Bayeux Tapestry the main transports look similar to Viking ships, but the whole fleet must have been diverse, ranging from large ornate vessels like the royal flagship the Mora (given by William’s wife Matilda), to tiny supply craft. The construction of the ships went ahead with every speed in the Norman ports, and after May they began to concentrate in the mouth of the river Dives, where the fitting-out was done. It may be conjectured that the fleet was ready from the start of August. But adverse winds looked like delaying the start of the expedition. Meanwhile a new element entered the story.

  Harold’s renegade brother Tosti, still smarting from his humiliation in Northumbria and anxious to get his own back on his brother for his expulsion, had made his way to Norway. There the king, Harald Hardrada (‘the Ruthless’) was probably already making his own elaborate preparations for war. Hardrada had his own claims on England through Canute and his successors who had ruled in England from 1016. His wife was a kinswoman of that line; he had also inherited rights to succeed in England based on a formal pact made between Canute’s son Harthacanute, king of Denmark, and Magnus, king of Norway. Harald Hardrada was one of the great figures of the age, in prestige as well as in physical size, a warrior famed throughout the northern world. After a youth spent in exile, and a period fighting for the Byzantine imperial guard in Constantinople, he returned to Norway in 1047 with great wealth in bullion, and successfully contended for the throne. His intermittent war with the Danish kingdom now over, Harald was looking for a new outlet for his energies, and the English succession crisis provided it. In the spring of 1066, Harald assembled a great Viking fleet in Trondheim.

  Harold Godwinson could hardly have found two more formidable rivals than those who now confronted him: William in the south and Harald in the north. The Norwegians were the first to strike.

  HARALD HARDRADA LANDS IN YORKSHIRE

  In the summer Harald Hardrada made his way to Scotland. Here Tosti joined him and they prepared to move south. Meanwhile King Harold had brought his fleet to the Isle of Wight, a central point for naval manoeuvres used by Ethelred and Swein alike sixty years before: presumably there was a permanent fleet base there.

  The southern English coastal defences were now on the alert, beacon pyres at the ready. But during July and August there was no move from Normandy. Around the end of August William shifted his base to StValéry at the mouth of the Somme. However the north winds continued to pin him down and eventually the delay proved so expensive to Harold in provisions for his army that he was forced to send the levies home on 8 September. He then brought his fleet back to London where they would spend the coming winter. Some were wrecked on the way, but Harold must have felt that he only had to hold out a little longer and winter storms would force the Normans to abandon their plans for the year.

  However fate took a hand. The winds which pinned William down brought Hardrada’s longships scudding down the eastern coast of England. Early in September he appeared in the Tyne with three hundred ships. They ravaged in Cleveland, sacked Scarborough and around 15 September entered the Humber and anchored at Riccall, a mile below the confluence of the Ouse and the Wharfe. Riccall remained the Norwegian base for the campaign which followed: one of the shortest, and most dramatic, of all Viking campaigns.

  BATTLE AT GATE FULFORD

  On 20 September Harald marched on York. If we can accept the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s estimate of three hundred ships, then he may have been able to put over ten thousand fighting men into the field, a large army by the standards of the age. At Gate Fulford, two miles south of York, he found his way blocked by a Northumbrian force under Earl Morcar reinforced by housecarls of his brother Earl Edwin of Mercia and troops from the Five Boroughs. The English straddled the road, their line stretching from the river Ouse to the marshy low ground towards Heslington. They put up a hard fight, but the Norwegians broke them and forced their left wing into the marsh where many were drowned. A thousand of the best troops in the north were killed that day, along with a hundred of the clergy of York who had come out to support their army. The Norse poets King Harald had brought with him to record his triumphs were jubil
ant; the English, it was said, ‘lay in the fen, hewn down by the sword, so thickly heaped that they paved a way across the swamp for the brave Norsemen’ (Saga of Harald Hardrada). The city made no further effort to defend itself, and Harald was politic enough to keep his army out of it. The leading citizens entered into negotiations with him and surrendered on the Sunday, agreeing to accept Harald Hardrada as king and to assist him against King Harold. Hostages were given as a token of faith, and more promised from the shire. Suddenly the Northumbrian witan was acting once more as it had in the heady days of Eric Bloodaxe.

  HAROLD OF ENGLAND ACTS

  How quickly did Harold hear the news from the north? The events between the landings on the east coast and the battle of Fulford can be roughly dated between 12 and 20 September. If mounted messengers had ridden south immediately, Harold could have had news of the Riccall landing in three days. But if beacons were used, he could have heard within a matter of hours. This, not post horses, is probably what enabled Harold to act with such decisive speed. Around 20 September, he set off for the north, ‘riding day and night’ says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, gathering his levies as fast as he could. He must have picked up local thegns on the way, but the core of his army was the élite royal force with its housecarls and other mercenaries. He reached Tadcaster, nine miles south of York, on the evening of Sunday 24 September after a march which counts as one of the great feats of medieval warfare. That evening in Tadcaster he put his household troops into battle order, perhaps expecting an attack from the direction of York or Riccall, more likely preparing weapons and tactics for the next day with the housecarls who would be the backbone of his assault.

  STAMFORD BRIDGE

  With Harold of England on the south coast (as far as he knew), Harald Hardrada was in no hurry. On the Monday morning he moved to a road junction called Stamford Bridge seven miles east of York. There he would collect hostages from the shire, and more important, receive supplies for his army which had now exhausted the Riccall area.

  When King Harold reached Tadcaster he must have been informed about the Norwegian plans. On the Monday morning he launched a lightning advance through York and on to Stamford Bridge, a total of sixteen miles. The plan was classic Anglo-Saxon strategy, the long-range advance by a mounted army to a prearranged rendezvous within striking distance of the enemy, and then the final advance at dawn followed by a massive assault by the heavily armed picked troops. The execution was perfect. So confident were the Norwegians that they had left a large part of their army with the ships at Riccall, and they seem to have had so little inkling of what was going on that they had even left their body armour behind because it was a hot day. According to the Saga of Harald Hardrada their first knowledge of the English advance was a cloud of dust rising in the hot air a mile or two off.

  HARALD HARDRADA’S FALL

  That is not to say that Hardrada could not put up a tough fight. He had been in tight corners before, from Byzantium to the rivers of Russia. He immediately sent off mounted messengers to Riccall to summon the rest of his army. In the meantime, the Saga relates, Harold of England called a parley and offered his renegade brother peace and his earldom if he would change sides. For Harald of Norway, however, he had only ‘six feet of English earth’ to give, ‘or as much more as he is taller than other men’. Unfortunately this story is probably no more than a saga man’s literary device. The English launched their attack, first of all, it seems, on a Norse covering force on the York side of the river. Was Harald trying to transfer forces to the east bank to delay the English crossing and give his reinforcements a better chance of turning the issue? According to Florence of Worcester, Harold could deploy ‘many thousands of heavily armed well trained troops’, which suggests an élite royal army, and Marianus Scotus at Fulda records that they attacked in ‘seven divisions’, strikingly recalling Otto of Germany at the Battle of the Lech. There is certainly no need to confine Harold to the simplest ‘shield wall’ tactics, though we cannot prove or disprove the Norse account that he employed mounted javelineers with his housecarls in the ‘modern’ style by now well known on the continent. At this stage the Norwegians attempted to hold the bridge, and a tradition recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that eventually a single Norseman heroically defied the English for a while before he was killed. The main battle took place after the capture of the bridge which enabled Harold to cross the Derwent and deploy his army on the east side. According to Norwegian traditions in the sagas, Harald Hardrada fell early on, struck by an arrow in the throat, leaving Earl Tosti to lead the invaders against his own brother. At this point Morkinskinna, an early thirteenth-century saga compilation, alleges that King Harold blew his war horn and asked the Norse to surrender, ‘but they all shouted back that they would take no truce but would rather conquer or die’. Earl Tosti then fought bravely ‘and he fell there gloriously and covered himself with honour’. The final phase was remembered by the Norwegians as the fiercest of all, in which the English suffered terrible losses. It was called ‘Orri’s storm’ after the Norse earl who led the reinforcements to the scene, late in the day. ‘It was even in the balance whether the English would fly,’ says Morkinskinna. But the reinforcements were so heated by their race from Riccall that they threw off their heavy mail, and many fell through sheer exhaustion. The last stand took place 600 yards east of the river in a field still called Battle Flat where battle relics and numerous small horseshoes have been ploughed up. There most of the Norse leaders fell. Those who fled were hunted down by the West-Saxon mounted troops and killed, drowned in the Derwent, or trapped and burned in bothies and barns. The sun set on an unparalleled catastrophe for Norse arms. The survivors (including Harald’s son Olaf, who had remained at Riccall) could man only twenty ships, their army having suffered perhaps the heaviest casualties of any in the Viking era.

  Contrary to custom, King Harold did not share the booty won in the battle with his army, but entrusted it to Archbishop Ealdred of York. According to Adam of Bremen it included a block of gold accumulated on Harald’s Greek expeditions which needed twelve men to lift it. Later writers ascribed this appropriation to greed on Harold’s part, but he was a hardened general in a fight against time, and the last thing he would have wished was an army encumbered with booty. There was more fighting ahead. We may conjecture that Olaf’s surrender was negotiated on 26 September while the English buried their dead. (The Norse dead were left unburied and their bones were still a prominent landmark for the traveller in the Yorkshire wolds in the 1130s.) On the night of 26 or 27 September Harold probably celebrated his victory in York. At 9 am on Thursday 28 William of Normandy landed at Pevensey. The news may have reached Harold in York on Sunday 1 October. The net was closing on Anglo-Saxon England.

  WILLIAM: THE LANDING IN ENGLAND

  The weather on the French coast was probably cold and wet until 27 September when the wind changed to the east. The ships were loaded, the troops embarked and they set sail in the evening. The crossing was to be made through the night, to reduce the risk of interception by the English fleet. Dawn came around 6 o’clock, and the royal ship touched Pevensey level at ‘the third hour’, about 9 o’clock. There was no opposition. The hazard of war had fallen with William. The duke quickly rode into the interior to explore the by-paths with a small force, presumably reconnoitring the line of the Roman roads inland. Not satisfied with what he saw he transferred the whole army down the coast to Hastings (probably rowing round) and built a fort there. From Hastings he controlled the roads inland to London, and William occupied himself for the next few days with devastating the villages round about: twenty places around Hastings are mentioned in Domesday Book as being wasted, and some were never rebuilt.

  HAROLD: THE ENGLISH ARMY

  Meanwhile Harold was riding hell for leather down to London to assess the situation. If he left York on 2 October, as seems likely, then he may have reached the city on 6 October – 40 miles a day. The speed of this march could again suggest that he came w
ith an élite force, the housecarls and other mercenaries with their spare mounts. In other words the royal fyrd which supported him in the northern campaign was discharged, and a fresh army summoned to London. Some shires of course had been heavily hit in the fighting so far. Mention of a Cambridge shire thegn in Domesday Book who died at Stamford Bridge makes us wonder whether the eastern counties had been on the northern campaign, and that as at Ringmere and Ashingdon fifty years before, Cambridgeshire lost many men at Stamford Bridge. At any rate the myth of Harold having taken the same army up from the south coast to Yorkshire and then back down to Hastings cannot be sustained. One northern chronicler says Harold had five days in London to gather fresh forces but that losses in the north had been so severe as to leave him with a much smaller army than normal. This would mainly comprise the élite troops: ‘apart from his stipendiaries and mercenaries,’ says William of Malmesbury, ‘he had few from the country’. Even more serious than this is the suggestion in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in Florence of Worcester’s Chronicle and in William of Malmesbury’s Deeds of the Kings, that Harold could not count on the loyalty of all his troops, and that there were desertions in the crucial hours leading up to the battle. We will look at this in more detail below, but the build-up to the Battle of Hastings starts to look less like a great defensive national effort, as portrayed by nineteenth-century historians, but more a desperate throw of a crippled dynast with his support dwindling away: a man wearing the crown of the Cerdicings, but unable to command the allegiance of an Athelstan or an Edgar.