The Anglo Saxons at War 800-1066
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The two Abingdon manuscripts (B and C) largely use West Saxon sources, although C has an insertion between the years 915–34 known as the Mercian Register which deals with the exploits of the famous Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who ruled the middle kingdom with an extraordinary energy. These brief annals cover the period 902 to 924 and sometimes repeat things mentioned in the main body of the text. The D manuscript (Worcester) is interesting for the characteristics it shares with northern sources. Worcester and York were closely associated ecclesiastical centres in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, being held by the same man (Wulfstan) between 972 and 1016. The long-running Peterborough manuscript (E), which goes up to the twelfth century, has basic material for the period covered in this book and may be an early twelfth-century copy based on a Canterbury original, which replaced one that was lost in the fire at Peterborough in 1116. There is no Mercian Register or poem for the Battle of Brunanburh in this version. Manuscript H is merely a fragment with a twelfth-century entry, but the bilingual epitome of Canterbury (manuscript F) is interesting for the Latin text that accompanies the Old English.
The long history of the surviving manuscript attributed to Alfred’s biographer Asser is worthy of a book in its own right. Suffice it to say that the text has authentic sounding elements to it. The place names of Alfred’s England are given their Welsh names, as we might expect from a cleric from St David’s. But Asser sometimes struggles with his dates and the names of people to whom he must have been close, thus allowing room for historians to question the authenticity of the surviving version of the work. There are, however, some valuable descriptions of Alfred’s army in action at Ashdown (871) and Edington (878) which supplement material from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The chronicler Æthelweard, who wrote at the end of the tenth century about the wars of the previous era, seems to have followed a lost version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Æthelweard’s chronicle has a similar history to the work of Asser in that it comes down to us as a result of good fortune more than anything else. However, despite his tortured Latin syntax and difficult descriptions of battles, he remains a crucial provider of evidence for warfare. His accounts of the wars at the end of Alfred’s reign in the 890s, which involved the young Prince Edward (Alfred’s son and future king from 900–24), are the only detailed accounts for these military encounters. It is important to understand that Æthelweard was apparently at the heart of the political scene at the dawn of the second Viking age when he was putting quill to parchment, and in this respect must rank as one of the most important contributors of the era.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle formed the basis for the work of many more historians who added material of their own. William of Malmesbury, Simeon of Durham, Henry of Huntingdon and John of Worcester provide histories of the kings and events of the era. These were men of the twelfth century, an era of pan-European literary renaissance. William of Malmesbury gives us a detailed account of the reign of King Athelstan (924–39) and provides some revealing information about that king’s use of horses, use of allies and wide-ranging campaigns. Simeon of Durham adds important details gleaned from Northern sources about campaigns and historical traditions in Northumbria, while Henry of Huntington admonishes the English for being ripe for conquest and belittles their ability to use cavalry on the battlefield.
We must also rely upon material that was written in a certain style, such as sagas or poems. With careful interpretation these can be useful. Poetry was the language of political justification in the Anglo-Saxon and Norse worlds. So, despite the obvious bias in works of great praise and despite the struggle of some poets to find the right words to fit the meter of their art form, these works do at least mention people and places, battles and military formations that help to colour the picture. The poems of The Battle of Brunanburh (937) and that of the The Battle of Maldon (991) are good examples.
There are numerous references made in this book to the epic poem Beowulf which frequently mentions military weapons and equipment as well as providing an image as to how the Anglo-Saxons saw the ideal warrior role model. Similarly, evidence is drawn from poems such as Maxims and from the Exeter Book anthology, for example The Wanderer and The Ruin, all of which help to expand on the picture.
Not all the written material is of English origin, however. Old Norse sagas such as Egil’s Saga and Olaf’s Saga are invaluable, despite being written centuries later. If they do nothing else, they capture the spirit of the time. Likewise, Irish writings are extremely useful in helping us reconcile the dates and activities of Vikings in Ireland who were also active in Britain at around the same time. There is also the written material provided by Norman scribes such as William of Poitiers, whose account of the Battle of Hastings campaign is not only near contemporary and written by a man close to the Conqueror himself, but comes from the quill of someone who knew a great deal about tactical evolutions, strategies and close-quarter fighting both in antiquity and in his own day.
There is also the invaluable Burghal Hidage, the heritage of which is discussed below (pp. 89–92). This document gives an insight into the structure and organisation of a defensive strategy for Alfred the Great’s entire kingdom. Similarly, the wills, or more specifically heriots, of great noblemen of the period that describe the war gear due to be returned to a lord on the death of its custodian provide further written evidence of military equipment not mentioned elsewhere in such numerical detail (see pp. 48–51).
To all of this material, we must add the evidence obtained from archaeology, which can both challenge and support the evidence from the literary sources. Archaeology provides crucial evidence in respect of Anglo-Saxon warfare. We have already noted above the recent dramatic discovery of headless Scandinavians at Weymouth, and there has been a similarly dramatic discovery in Staffordshire of Early Anglo-Saxon gold treasures comprising a helmet cheek piece, gold crosses and sword accoutrements galore. This remarkable find is at the centre of a struggle for custodianship at the time of writing, and historians and archaeologists are developing theories as to what it all actually means. This deposit of riches may represent a collection of war booty taken during the great campaigns at the end of the Dark Ages in England between the warring Saxon kingdoms (a period just outside the scope of this book). Archaeology, then, constantly replenishes the evidential record. For example, in 1982 at the bottom of a well in York an Anglian helmet complete with mail aventail (protective curtain around the neck) and splendid decoration was unearthed (Plate 14). It provided archaeologists with a mine of information about techniques of manufacture so far unknown (see p. 178). Again, in 1997 a magnificent iron helmet from a grave in Northamptonshire was retrieved (now known as the Pioneer Helmet, named after the site’s corporate owners) with boar crest and a surviving cheek piece.
The other evidence that is drawn upon in this book is that of the pictorial depiction. This can be in the form of a relief sculpture, an artist’s illustration on a manuscript text, a tapestry (of which the Bayeux ‘embroidery’ is the most famous example) or a number of other depictions in ivory, on bone, leather or anywhere where there is a visual representation of a warrior or battle scene or other military subject. These visual images are the source of much debate. Caution is the watchword. If we are to take things at face value, then the Norman cavalry that attacked King Harold’s army at Hastings in 1066 comprised horses of varying shades of unlikely colours. Yet, there is much within this spectacularly important piece of visual work that makes perfect pictorial sense so long as it is treated with respectful interpretation.
When it comes to visual representations of things like armoured warriors wielding their weapons, of various ways a warrior could wear his armour, the position of strapping and such like, the question we have to ask ourselves is ‘what was the artist trying to get across to the viewer in this representation?’ We might also consider whether the artist was trying to be accurate or just plain lazy. We will find that the visual evidence left behind by our illustrator
s is capable of giving significant information.
So, with all this available evidence in whatever form it takes, are we in a position to understand why it was that the Anglo-Saxons went to war in the first place? What was it that compelled an Anglo-Saxon freeman to take to the campaign trail?
Chapter 1
Warfare, Violence and Society
Why Go to War?
Imagine you are a thegn living on a modest estate somewhere in the south of England. It is the middle of the tenth century and there is trouble everywhere. Your lord lives within riding distance and one morning you receive a visit from his messenger. You are told to get ready for war. What is it that would compel you to go?
According to modern anthropological research there were a number of reasons for conflict and aggression in the Anglo-Saxon era. In a widely cited paper that concentrates on this subject in respect of the earlier Anglo-Saxon period (600–850), Guy Halsall has elucidated motives such as personal grievances, insults and justifiable revenge as reasons for aggression during this earlier period. All of these motives are evidenced in the Anglo-Saxons’ texts themselves. It is argued that in the pre-Viking period in England there is a heavy ritualistic taint to the aggression between kingdoms.
One of the mechanisms that drove all this stayed with the Anglo-Saxons right up to 1066. There was a compelling need in Germanic communities for young men to prove themselves as warriors. It was a vital part of their coming of age. Warfare played a central role in the making of a warrior leader and the subsequent impression he made on his followers. The accrual of riches and gifts with which he could attract a larger retinue and spread the power of his kin group was driven by his prowess on and around the battlefield. Old English literature is packed with references to warfare as a way of life in this respect. For example, there is evidence in the Maxims and in The Battle of Brunanburh poems to show the symbolic value of gift giving and ring giving, of the protection of warriors and of daring weapon play in battle. Maxims, for example, has the following passage:
A wound must be wound, a hard man avenged. A bow must have an arrow, and both together must have a man to accompany them. Treasure rewards another; a man must give gold. God may give riches to owners and take them away afterwards. A hall must stand, and grow old.
The Battle of Brunanburh in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions the role of the king as ring-giver:
Here, King Athelstan, leader of warriors,
ring-giver of men, and also his brother,
the ætheling Edmund, struck life-long glory
in strife round Brunanburh, clove the shield-wall,
hacked the war-lime, with hammers’ leavings . . .
The notions of the giving and receiving of gifts, of vengeance for the death of one’s lord and of the desire to win glory in battle are never far from the surface in Anglo-Saxon literature. It was an ideal, as we shall see, that had practical benefits if a lord was to surround himself with the right men for the job. It is argued that the lordship ties that bound a man to his lord were just as important to an Anglo-Saxon at the time of Hastings (1066) as they were before the dawn of the Viking invasions of the ninth century. It is accepted that by this time there was a sense of archaism to all this–a reference perhaps to an age long gone, but in any ideal there is always some form of reality.
The need to prove oneself, to find a lord to serve was a driving force behind the martial activities of young men, but the Scandinavian invasions of the ninth century made the need for men to protect their estates that much more urgent. So, what became the chief reasons for warfare in the subsequent centuries leading up to the Norman Conquest? Where exactly was the threat? The picture is obscured by the question of interpretation. One man’s boundary dispute is another man’s defence of the realm, so to speak. If we take just the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a bench mark, some broad conclusions can be drawn. Wars in the Viking period (that is, after 865) in England were fought by the Anglo-Saxons as part of a ruler’s protection or expansion of his kingdom or other patrimony. The leader had to fight such actions or risk losing the men he had attracted to his household. It was a cyclic thing that meant that warfare was virtually endemic on a number of levels, the key to it being the need for a king to attract and reward men to his calling and then for him to have to expand his wealth to accrue more gifts and riches with which to reward them. For this he needed a bigger army, and so it goes on. The story is the same for the different levels of the aristocracy. When the ealdormen and thegns of Anglo-Saxon England came to loggerheads over competing interests the result might be homicide and this was followed by a subsequent and very damaging ‘feud’ between rival families (see pp. 21–3).
The consequences of the loss of manpower through military ill preparedness were felt by Alfred the Great (871–900) in the early years of his reign. A mixture of treachery and poor strategy saw the invading Danish army all but divide and conquer Wessex in the 870s. For a brief time Alfred became an exile within his own kingdom. The way in which he fought back by re-organising his kingdom’s fighting resources and accruing wealth and loyalty through re-conquest is testimony to the success of the Anglo-Saxon warfare model. The warfare dynamic needed constant feeding from the ranks of freemen who had the right to bear arms. It is no surprise then that during the reigns of rather more peaceful kings, the system would creak a little under the weight of disaffected magnates whose rewards were not as great as they had been in times of cyclic warfare.
There was another driving force behind the reasons for going to war in the Anglo-Saxon period and this was the ‘feud’, the mechanics of which are examined more closely below (see pp. 21–3). The feud counts as a step up from the simple brawl. It has more to do with cycles of vengeance among rival groups usually connected by kinship ties. The trigger was usually a murder. Curiously, the competing factions of extended kin groups fought each other throughout the Anglo-Saxon period regardless of the Scandinavian influx. In fact, the phenomenon became a feature of northern Anglo-Danish life just as much as it was in the southern Anglo-Saxon world, leading eventually to some urgent legislation on the subject brought about by a concerned King Edmund I (939–46).
The Anglo-Saxon response to the keeping of law and order throughout these centuries is worthy of a volume in its own right, but suffice it to say that the Hundred Courts (or Wapentakes in the areas of Danish influence) were attended by men armed and prepared for action in whatever form it took. There was much concern with the economic impact of cattle rustling throughout this period and cross-border theft and large-scale raiding was a reality that often produced a military style response. Similarly, there is a militaristic tone to the London Peace Guild of the reign of King Athelstan (924–39). This law code, known as VI Athelstan, provided for the division of freemen into groups of nine with one leader, each known as tithings, their role to pursue criminals. We might imagine the men of London in their mounted posses chasing down robbers and those who housed them across the countryside. But whether this was warfare or a form of ‘policing’ is a moot point.
The economics of warfare were not lost on the protagonists of the period. Many battles during this period were fought near ports. The first Viking invaders often targeted the low-lying trading settlements on the English and French coasts where merchants plied their trade from vessels and stalls almost on the very shore line. Portable wealth was never far from the mind of any war leader in Anglo-Saxon England. The great Welsh leader Hywel Dda (b. 880, d. 950) made no secret of the fact that cattle raiding and other forms of portable wealth formed part of his foreign policy of the day. Clearly, it was in the interest of the king to protect such places from harm and from Athelstan’s time there were even royal ordinances actively to promote trade in such centres.
But if we look at it from the point of the warrior himself, from the point of view of the man who found himself woken one morning by a messenger from his lord who told him of a hungry and merciless enemy marching to the borders of his lord’s kingdom, or heading for
the royal estate nearby where the king’s winter food supplies and many other riches lay, we will know just one thing. That thegn went to war that morning because he owed that service to his lord. The fact that our thegn held his estate in return for military service meant he was sometimes called upon to provide it. Indeed, his lord may have given him arms and armour when he took him into his household for this very purpose. And on this particular hypothetical morning, with a threat apparent to the wealth and prestige of his lord’s lord (the king), the thegn knew he had to respond. His lord had told him to get ready. His lord had told him who else to bring, how to provision himself and where to meet. The war had begun.
Where Were Wars Fought?
It is not often that a military encounter took place during the Anglo-Saxon period without there being a practical military consideration for the choice of location. According to Guy Halsall, between 600 and 850 it is apparent that excluding civil wars and early Viking attacks, there were twenty-eight battles fought between antagonists. There is evidence to suggest that many of these battles took place at river crossings or near to ancient monuments. The river crossing locations can be explained militarily. Fords and bridges have always had a vital strategic significance and it should be no surprise that campaigners in the Dark Ages chose to meet enemies at these nodal points on the route ways into each other’s territories. A glance at a list of early battles from the Anglo-Saxon period will serve to illustrate the importance of river crossings: there were battles at Crecganford (485); Cerdicesford (519); and Biedcanford (571) to name just a few. The assertion that early battles were fought at ancient monument sites is a little more problematic for the later period, although they do seem to play a part not so much in the location of a battle site, but in being the key points for constituent parts of armies to gather.