An area had been cleared of trees inside the tree line, 50 paces ahead of the main line of resistance and just behind the archers, 20 paces inside the trees and 40 wide by 10 paces deep, with the undergrowth between the clearing and the battlefield being cleared. Here stood the 50 strong cavalry, out of sight and divided into two groups, each man carrying a short lance.
A reserve of 100 men, half carrying Alan’s green shields, stood to the rear of the main body of troops, together with ten archers.
Alan had never recovered from his distress at the effects of his use of Wildfire at Wivenhoe two years before when he had taken information contained in ancient texts and the chemistry experiments of a student friend from his youth to produce a self-igniting incendiary mixture. Containers of incendiary material, each holding about one gallon had proven totally devastating at that battle. The mixture burned fiercely, adhering to any surface and could not be put out with water. He has seen a dozen or more men immolated with every shot, screaming as they beat at the flames, rolled on the ground or threw themselves in pits of water to try unsuccessfully to douse the flames. This vision, and dealing with the wounded to whom a small splash of Wildfire had meant the loss of a limb and a single drop meant a hole the size of a silver penny burnt clear through the body, had resulted in a resolution not to use the fearsome weapon again if it could be avoided. However, he had four onagers set up in the fortified bailey at Thorrington and charcoal braziers on hand if the Danes broke through and threatened his family and his village. He now viewed this as a weapon of last resort- but one which would be used if required.
As the Danes took their time readying themselves, Alan’s men lounged about in their positions, eating a cold meal of dried beef jerky, bread and cheese washed down with water from the small skin that each man carried as part of his equipment.
Eventually, at about two in the afternoon, the Danes approached. Alan estimated their numbers at about 800, with probably about another 50 holding the ships and village. Alan turned and spoke to his servant Leof, who leaped onto a horse and with two guards galloped away with instructions to be given to Alan’s ships standing off the coast to the west.
The small Danish army slowly moved en masse and on foot, with no apparent formation, towards the large band of Englishmen. The Englishmen rose and took their places in line, chatting to each other and making encouraging comments to bolster themselves and their compatriots. Shoulders were slapped and arms grasped. Wagers were made between men as to who would kill the most Danes, while the men tried to ignore the empty feeling of fear in their stomachs.
The Danes paused close to the first line of defensive pits, about 150 paces from the English line. The pits were arrayed over a depth of about 100 paces and, although carefully planned, seemed haphazard and inconsequential. The Danes would soon learn otherwise.
A tall bearded man in a gilded helmet which shone brilliantly in the sun stepped clear in front of the Danes, turned and began to shout exhortations to his men, waving his arms.
“Kill him!” Alan quietly instructed Owain the Welsh master-bowman who stood at his side. Owain already had an arrow in hand and with a single fluid movement notched the arrow, raised the bow and loosed. A moment later the bodkin-tipped arrow smashed into the back of the Dane between the shoulders, pierced the chain-mail byrnie and threw the man forward onto his face with more than two feet of arrow showing between his shoulder-blades.
After a moment of blank stupefaction the Danes gave a wild hoarse battle-cry and leaped forward. Alan turned first to the archers on the west flank, and then those on the east flank, in each case raising a clenched fist above his head in a pumping motion. No instructions were yet given to the men hiding in the forest to the east. Twenty longbowmen began to rain a hail of arrows into the Danes, each delivering an aimed arrow every four or five seconds. At such short range the trajectory was flat and more than half of the arrows struck shields. When they did not, the sheer power of the longbow drove the bodkin-tipped armour-piercing arrow through whatever it hit, be it chain-mail, helmet or flesh.
Danes were falling, disrupting those who followed behind. Then the Danes reached the main part of the seemingly useless defensive pits. Seeing them, the men skirted around them, but they were slowed- and more particularly were forced into three narrow channels. This made the job of the archers easier. They simply had to select a target from the mass of armoured men. From their advanced positions, with the natural protection offered by the mudflat, the archers on the right flank were now able to mainly avoid the shields, smashing arrows into the sides of the foe, while those on the left flank still had to carefully chose their target.
Alan faced the men hidden in the woods to the east and again raised a fist, punching the sky. Twenty more archers began to rain death on the Danes from the trees behind them, arrows slamming into their undefended backs. Before they reached the row of defensive pits closest to the English already more than 100 Danes lay dead, riddled with the longbow cloth-yard arrows.
The Danes had been channeled by the seemingly-innocuous pits into three areas each 25 paces wide, jostling each other and slowing their progress. As the first of the Danes burst out of the bottle-necks and surged forward, the 10 archers behind the shield-wall joined the fray, shooting point-blank into the faces and throats of the Danes running towards them. Each loosed 4 or 5 arrows at close range into the Danes, the arrows smashing through armour and flesh. Men dropped, some quietly and others screaming with pain from chest or belly wounds.
The English were deployed in chevron-shaped formations in front of each of the three openings in the line of pits. The Danes burst out of the confined areas, spreading slightly as they charged. Danes fell left and right from the efforts of the archers and were trampled underfoot by those who followed. Alan could see behind his own line youths of ten or so years of age trundling hand-carts containing sheaves of arrows to replenish the supplies of the bowmen to the rear of the English line, as they loosed arrow after arrow, each sheaf of twelve taking less than a minute to use.
The men in the English shield-wall were chanting the ancient Saxon battle-cry. “Out! Out! Out!” They hammered their spears or sword-hilts against their shields. The Danes roared their own battle cries as they closed the English line. Then the front ranks of the Danes struck the English shield-wall like three hammer-blows.
Usually the Danes used their own projectiles when close to the enemy, normally small throwing axes, but this time they were so keen to close with the enemy that they passed up the opportunity to pause and throw. The English swordsmen in the front rank, many experiencing their first taste of battle, quailed as the screaming Danes closed with their long hair flying, mouths open screaming battle-cries or death-cries, faces bright red from the exertion of running on soft ground in full armour.
The battle-chant, the press of men at each shoulder and the feel of the man close behind, the provision of mutual protection and support kept the English line together. When the Danes crashed into the shield-wall they were pushed back as the English warriors bent slightly and shoved hard just as the Danes hit. In the close confines of the battle, where there was hardly space to swing an axe or long-sword, the English swordsmen began to use their shorter one-handed swords to effect, stabbing towards the bellies of the invaders, facing them as they pushed forward and with the shield on their left arm protecting them from the blows of the Danes.
The use of the defensive pits and the positioning of the English shield-wall meant that, while the Danes outnumbered the English two to one overall, at the shield-wall there were two Englishmen for each Dane, with a large pack of other invaders pushing forward trying to get a place. While it was hot work for the English swordsmen in the front rank, they held a two to one advantage on the shield-wall and a spear stabbing over each shoulder trying to impale the Danes if they dropped their guard for a moment, the English held and the Danish losses mounted quickly. In the press the dead, English and Dane alike, found it difficult to fall, being supported upri
ght by the bodies of the living. Men pushed and shoved, shouted, screamed, thrust and slashed with weapons. Blood flew from strokes that hit their target, blood and guts from those who had been eviscerated made the ground slippery and the wounded who did fall to the ground were trampled as the shield-wall surged back and forth.
Crammed together the Danish axe-men had no room to wield their weapons, and the swordsmen were restricted to bashing with their shields and trying to stab their opponent in the guts as any attempt at an overhand stroke would most likely lop off the head of the compatriot standing next to him. The fighting style of the Norsemen, trained for individual and not collective combat, counted against them. Alan had specifically trained the Englishmen, including the fyrdmen, to fight in a shield-wall.
At Hastings the English had learned from the Normans that combat required men to work together in mutually supporting groups and that the importance of individual ability epitomised by the Berserker was largely a thing of the past. While being faced by a huge man wielding a massive battleaxe in both hands, hewing through his opponents like so much wood, slicing men and horses asunder, was enough to make even a brave man empty his bowels, properly executed coordinated close-combat made the two-handed axe almost redundant. If the axe-men were not killed by archers when they stepped forward from their own shield-wall, and the opposing swordsmen kept out of their reach but engaged their attention, the supporting spearmen and bowmen would account for them. The local English fyrdmen had been taught well over the last two years.
Alan’s archers walked back and forth behind the ranked men of the shield-wall, shooting arrows into the faces of men they could almost reach out and touch. Again, many of them were in their first battle and the sight of the huge arrows slamming into the face, throat or chest of men at very short range, the spray of blood from the arrow-strike and the eruption of blood from the mouth of the target as he fell screaming was very different from shooting at straw targets at 200 paces. Many were white-faced and looking as if they would vomit at any moment as they mechanically reached into their quivers for the next arrow and looked for their next target.
When the Danes were fully engaged, separated into three untidy gaggles partly in front of the defensive pits and partly still awaiting the opportunity to move forward, Alan let loose his cavalry. They charged from their hiding place in the woods, through a corridor in the ditches left for their use and smashed into the right flank of the Danes from behind. With the din of battle the Danes did not hear the drumming of the horses’ hooves as they closed.
The first target of each horseman was speared with a lance in his side or back. Some lances broke at the first contact, others lasted to account for two or three of the enemy before the shattered wood had to be discarded and the horseman drew his long sword and began to deal death with each swing of his arm, as the arrow-head formation of the cavalry smashed through. As the momentum of the charge was lost and the Danes realised what was happening and turned to defend the flank, the cavalry drew back to collect new lances and reorganize for another charge. More than 100 Danes lay dead along the path of the charge, along with six horses and four cavalrymen.
In a few moments the Danes on their right flank, the English left flank, had been virtually annihilated. With nearly half their number dead or wounded and with their leaders having been specially targeted by the archers, in particular Owain, it took some time before the men on the Danish left flank and in the centre realised their predicament, and the rear ranks to start trying to extricate themselves.
Many Danes in the centre were looking across at where the cavalry were lining up for their next charge, knowing they would be the target. As the Danes tried to pull back, the English shield-wall swarmed forward, maintaining the pressure. The Danes slowly retreated, trying to keep a coherent force and maintain discipline. The English cavalry charged down another path through in the trenches and hit the Danish centre like an Act of God, again cutting a swathe through the struggling foot-soldiers like a scythe through grass.
The Danes routed and fled to the south towards the ships.
It was then the second part of Alan’s plan became evident. Havorn and Alekrage had rowed into Barfleet Creek just as the Danish infantry had started to march north. Being snekke build by the Danes and with Norwegian captains, they had encountered no difficulty in mingling with the ships of the invaders, with Sven shouting replies in Danish and Norwegian to the few shouted questions he heard. The English crewmen kept their mouths shut and heads down. When the battle on shore was joined and the attention of the Danish anchor-guard was distracted, Sven and Lars had quietly taken action against the Danish ships, which by now had floated off the mud bank with the incoming tide and were secured fore and aft by an anchor. Both of the English longships had towed a sunnmorsf?ring, a Norwegian four-oared rowing-boat, and positioned themselves about 70 yards distant from each other along part of the line of Danish ships, which stretched in total for about 200 yards. There were six Danish ships between the two English longships and three Danes to the south of Havorn, with the rest of the Danish ships being north of Alekrage.
While this occurred, on land the Danish troops had just reached the English shield-wall. Distance and the dust thrown up by hundreds of feet made it impossible for those who had remained with the ships to see what was happening, but to a man their attention was drawn north-west, interest piqued by the shouts, screams and din of battle that could now be heard.
The English rowed out with ten men crammed into each sunnmorsf?ring, each targeting the ship next to their own in the group that was flanked by the two English ships. The first ship the men from Havorn approached never even saw them, the four men on anchor-watch standing together near the bow and were dispatched by a silent rush of knife-wielding Saxons. The next ship was slightly more watchful, and Sven waved a large earthenware jar of aqua vitae in each hand before inviting himself and his men aboard, clambering over the stern of the ship and having his men take down the three unsuspecting watchmen.
The third ship saw them coming and some instinct or surliness made the senior watchman wave away the rowing boat. Now with only six men aboard Sven decided to quit while he was ahead and turned to row back to the Havorn, just as shouts were heard from the ship one further along, which was being attacked by the men from Alekrage.
“That’s put the cat amongst the pigeons!” commented Sven casually as he stood and nonchalantly lobbed a small flask containing Wildfire onto the ship that had just refused to allow him to board, starting an instant conflagration. In the meantime ten men had moved from Havorn and Alekrage to crew each of the five captured ships. Anchor ropes were cut at the bows of each ship and the ships hauled backwards into the main stream of the creek using the kedge anchors. Even with skeleton crews the seven ships had little to fear from the Danes, as only an anchor-watch had been left on the Danish ships with barely enough men to raise an anchor and certainly not enough to row the ships.
Remembering one of the maxims written by the Roman Vegetius in the 4th century allow your enemy to retreat, Alan had instructed Sven that he wanted to leave six or seven ships in Danish hands, enough for them to use to flee if the battle went in favour of the English, but with their strength significantly diminished.
Alan knew that, like the wolves they were, the Danish raiders would move on and look for easier prey if they could. He also knew that, also like wolves, if trapped they would fight to the death. Even now there were still more Danes than Englishmen and to totally defeat them would cost many English lives for what Alan saw as no benefit. There seemed an inexhaustible supply of Danes and longships and he wanted as few Englishwomen as possible being made widows today, and as many men as possible ready to respond when the Danes next raided. So Sven and Lars had their crews row close to the Danish longships, carefully tossing flasks of Wildfire into four snekke. The pint or so of incendiary material splashed across the decks setting fire first to the tar-drenched caulking, then the wood hulls and the tarred ropes. One burning sh
ip drifted into another, setting it ablaze in moments, as the Danish crewmen threw themselves in the water and swam away.
The undermanned ships crewed by the English, Havorn and Alekrage together with the new prizes, rowed away slowly towards the Colne estuary and then headed north, using their flax-coloured woollen sails to take advantage of a favourable breeze and give the tired rowers a rest.
Despite the pyres burning behind them the Danes on the shore still seemed unaware of the dual nature of their predicament. They had fallen back approximately half a mile to a point halfway between the initial point of contact and the village of Brightlingsea. Here the land was much more open and footing more firm and they were seeking to rally. With still with over 500 men they stood, and as the second cavalry charge had exhausted itself and fallen back the Danes had formed a shield-wall of two, sometimes three, ranks and with a group of men on each flank to both act as reserves and provide protection for the vulnerable flanks.
The English followed slowly, the infantry leading, moving carefully through the pattern of defensive pits. The cavalry followed, positioning themselves to the east, on the English left flank. There, away from the lower-lying ground, the footing was firmer. Finally, the archers came trotting through, delayed by their obtaining fresh supplies of arrows from the village lads pulling hand-carts laden with sheaves of arrows. Alan was not happy with the new position. The infantry had the defensive pits to their rear. The cavalry, while on open ground and with firm footing, had the stand of trees to their rear. Both the pits and the trees would make any retreat, should it prove necessary, difficult- just as it had for the Danes a few minutes before.
Winter of Discontent nc-2 Page 28
