by Tom Holland
This startling feat of espionage had been achieved only a couple of years before the fateful testing time of 1066. Quite what it was that had brought Harald to Normandy in the first place would later be much debated. The Normans would insist that he had been sent by Edward to promise William the succession; the English that he had travelled there of his own volition in order to negotiate a marriage alliance or perhaps the release of a hostage. It is not impossible that both claims were true. Altogether more certain, however, is that Harald, after a calamitous initial journey to Normandy – one that had featured both a shipwreck and a spell in the dungeon of a local princeling – had ended up as William’s guest. Though this might have been awkward for him, Harald was not his father’s son for nothing: and so it was, smoothly and with a fine show of Godwin opportunism, that he had set himself to a close study of the man whom he would long since have fingered as his likeliest rival for the English throne. Carefully veiling his own ambitions, he had encouraged William to spill out everything. Sure enough, the duke had openly acknowledged to his charming and attentive guest how he did indeed intend to press his right to England, by virtue of his relationship to his long-dead greataunt, the Lady Emma, and by sundry blessings that he claimed to have received from King Edward. Harald, more than content to play his rival for a fool, had duly sworn to support and advance William’s cause. His reward had been yet further gifts, and a ship back home to England. “Watchful mockery” indeed.
No wonder, then, in the early weeks of 1066, that William should have responded to the news of Harald’s accession with icy and bitter rage: he felt the fury of a man who had been cheated as well as robbed. Particularly shocking to him was the memory of how his guest, pledging his support, had done so with a gesture of awful and public solemnity, his hand laid on a relic box, a deed of fateful boldness: for what was an oath if not a challenge flung directly at God? “But alas” – as those who knew the new king had long appreciated – “he was a man always too quick to give his word.”56 It was all very well for Harald to claim that his oath of loyalty to William had been extorted from him under duress, and that he had been crowned entirely by right, according to the wishes and customs of the English people. Such details did not serve to absolve him, for there existed laws more awesome and binding than those of any mortal kingdom. William, at any rate, understood this well enough. Indeed, he had always capitalised powerfully upon it. He was a man, after all, who had turned the Peace of God so thoroughly to his own advantage, and imposed it with such an iron fist, that other princedoms, in comparison with Normandy, could appear to the Normans themselves mere bear pits, “rife with unbridled wickedness.”57 No surprise, then, that the duke, in his determination to secure his right to England, should have moved quickly to explore what else God might be able to do for him. He was acutely sensitive, in a way his wily but lighthearted rival was not, to the changing spirit of the times – a spirit that set a premium on the universal over the local. Certainly, he had no doubts that the laws of England could be made to seem as nothing when compared with the awful majesty of the one supreme law: that of God Almighty Himself. William, whose stern religiosity had always been combined with a talent for spotting trends, was a ruler surpassingly well fitted to appreciate the new enthusiasms that were animating the highest reaches of the Church – and what they might mean for himself. One of his bishops had sat alongside Leo IX at the Council of Reims. One of his abbots had been a school friend of Alexander II, the reigning Pope. The mighty tide of reform, which far from subsiding with Leo’s death had continued to swell and surge and advance, could hardly help, then, in the great crisis of 1066, but be a matter of surpassing interest to William.
Nor, in turn, could William fail to arouse a matching enthusiasm among reforming circles in Rome. In the summer of 1066, even as Harald Hardrada was preparing to unfurl Land-Waster, a very different banner was being readied for the Duke of Normandy. “The standard of St. Peter the Apostle”58 bore no moving ravens on it, nor any other hint of magic, and yet there could be no doubting its awesome and supernatural potency – for it had been blessed in person by none other than the Holy Father himself. A remarkable development. Barely a decade had passed since Leo IX, provoking a storm of shock and outrage, had ordered a papal banner to be carried for the first time into battle; nor, in the interim, had the controversy subsided. Although William’s ambassador had been received sympathetically in Rome, the suggestion that the Pope grant official backing to the invasion of England – a Christian kingdom! – had provoked furious opposition from his advisers. Not, however, from his most influential aide of all: the man who, even more than Alexander himself, was the true designer of papal policy. Hildebrand, by 1066, had risen far. His official rank, that of archdeacon, barely hinted at the degree to which he had become the pre-eminent, indeed the indispensable, power behind St. Peter’s throne.
“If you would thrive at Rome, say this at the top of your voice, ‘More than the Pope, I obey the lord of the Pope!’”59 Such was the homage, half mocking, half admiring, paid to Hildebrand. To the steely resolve that he had always possessed, and his abiding passion for the cause of reform, he brought what were by now years of experience garnered in the very cockpit of the Lateran. Though his own personal sense of sanctity was passionate and exalted, it had not prevented him from honing the often ruthless instincts of a natural politician. Certainly, Hildebrand had no doubts that a reformed England was a prize well worth fighting for. A veritable bog of simony, even by the standards of the rest of Christendom, it urgently needed draining. If William, who had always shown himself a model partner of the Church, could achieve that, then he would have served the cause not only of the reformers but of the sin-steeped English themselves. True, as Hildebrand freely acknowledged, “there are many among my brothers who revile me for this judgement, and charge me with labouring to bring about a terrible sacrifice of human lives”60 – but his own conscience was clear. The end would surely justify the means. An assault on England could worthily be ranked a holy war. And so it was that Hildebrand had leaned on the Pope, and the Norman duke had received his banner.
Naturally, even had Alexander II rebuffed William, the Normans would hardly have set about sheathing their swords. Already, at a series of councils held throughout the spring, the great lords of the duchy had committed themselves to the perilous enterprise of invasion: for they had been bred to hunger after land. Yet still they had their qualms. Some of these were practical; but others were more profoundly rooted. Greed and a joy in violence were not always easy to square with a devotion to the teachings of the Prince of Peace. Dread of the King whose sway embraced the universe, and whose conquest had been over death itself, was deep dyed within many Normans: they could not, as their pagan ancestors had done, gorge themselves on the riches of a Christian nation, and be content to do so as pirates, as adventurers, and nothing more. And of no one was this truer than William himself: for it was his ambition to kill an anointed king, and to encompass his crown, and then to be touched in his turn by the terrifying mystery of the chrism.
Doubtless, then, that summer of 1066, as the same winds that were sweeping the Norwegian war fleet towards England kept the Norman ships stranded impotently in harbour, the presence of St. Peter’s banner by William’s side would have served to reassure him that the Almighty had not, after all, abandoned his cause. Doubtless too, on the evening of 27 September, when the winds finally fell, and the fateful order was given to set sail, he would have reflected on the curious workings of Providence, that had kept him delayed for so long, and amid so many frustrations, only to grant him the perfect moment to make his crossing. For the Channel lay open. William, tucking into a hearty supper on board his flagship, could look forward to a thoroughly uneventful voyage. Meanwhile, his destination, where Harald had been stationed all summer on the expectation of his coming, was waiting ungarrisoned. No wonder, then, as the sun rose the following morning, and revealed to William a great forest of masts, his ships, and ahead of them
the empty coastline of England, “he glorified God’s mercy from the very depths of his heart.”61
And felt himself perfectly justified, as his men began to wade through the shallows on to the beach, or else to coax their horses down unsteady gangplanks, in readying them for the great labour of conquest that lay ahead. William’s first move was a wholly predictable one: to throw up a couple of makeshift castles. One was raised within the mouldering remains of a Roman fort named Pevensey; the other on the far side of a bleak expanse of lagoons and salt flats, beside the fishing port of Hastings. From here, running along a ridge so fringed on either side by creeks that it ranked effectively as a peninsula, a single road led onwards to London. Harold, brought the devastating news of William’s landing while he was still far to the north, naturally expected the invaders to take it. He knew better than anyone in England, after all, what to dread from their way of war. Horsemen fanning out unopposed across the heartlands of Wessex. Granaries being plundered, towns and villages being torched. Rough and ready castles dotting the trace lines of devastation. Only if Harold could keep William bottled up could he hope to spare his “folc and foldan” such a fate. The knowledge of this, combined with his instinctive taste for taking his enemies by surprise, spurred him on ever southwards, without thought of pausing. No time to wait for reinforcements – still less to give his already battle-weary men any rest. Speed was of the essence.
Except that William, in reality, was heading nowhere. Shortly after setting up his headquarters in Hastings, he and his most trusted henchman, William fitz Osbern, had ventured out in person to reconnoitre the local terrain. The isolated nature of their base camp, the single road connecting them to the mainland, the marshes on either side of it: all these “they had boldly explored.”62 Stay where they were, they had quickly realised, and they were liable to end up trapped. If Harald did come against them, then they would have no choice but to meet him in open combat. And most seasoned commanders would have done anything to avoid that perilous business. Yet the very risks contingent on opting for battle, the desperate quality of the gamble, the chance that the whole course of the war, and indeed of William’s entire career, might be decided by a single moment were considerations positively to be embraced.
So it was, as the days passed, that the Normans did the very opposite of what had been expected of them: they hunkered down. Days passed, then a week. Occasionally, from across the creeks that bordered Hastings, black smoke would plume into the sky, the signature of one of William’s raiding parties – but otherwise the invaders did not stir. A second week passed. Still, their nerves taut, the duke and his chieftains and his warriors waited. Then, on the evening of Friday 13 October, scouts came galloping into the Norman camp, slipping down from their saddles with the urgency of their news. White dust had been glimpsed in the distance. The English army was closing in. The usurper was almost at the gates.
Almost – but not quite. Frantically, William recalled his foragers, then gave them and all his army a hurried command to prepare for battle. Dusk saw the Norman camp swept by clamour and confusion. Indeed, such was William’s own haste that he put his mail shirt on back to front. Yet naturally, despite the general mood of alarm, he remained the Duke of Normandy still, a man of iron: he did not surrender to panic. On the contrary – having almost been ambushed by Harald, he was now resolved to ambush Harald in turn. “There is no other way of escape.”63 With that brutal home truth ringing in their ears, William ordered his men to take the road from Hastings, to advance along the ridge that would bring them face to face with their approaching foes. There were still several hours to dawn when the Normans left camp. On they marched, three, four, five miles. Steadily, to their right, beyond dense woods, the sky was lightening. Still, though, no sign of the enemy. The sun began to rise. Then, at around eight o’clock, breasting a hill some six miles out of Hastings, the Normans saw a valley ahead of them, and the slope of a second hill, and there, emerging on to its crest, brilliant with gilded banners, the English vanguard. Did William, at such a sight, permit himself the very thinnest of smiles? No doubt – for it was all as he had hoped. Harald’s men were still assembling – rendezvousing for an intended final march on Hastings. Their ranks were unformed. “The woods all around glittered full of their spears.”64 The surprisers had been surprised.65
Yet still, in the Norman ranks, the awful inevitability of what now faced them would have caught at many a stomach. Pitched battle, though rare, ranked as the ultimate index of a man. Scarcely less to be dreaded than death or injury were shame and disgrace. It was not unknown for warriors, confronted by an enemy, to start vomiting – or else “to fake being sick.”66 William and his fellow war leaders, whose entire lives had been preparation for such a moment, were hardly the men to turn tail now; even so, gazing at the brow of the hill ahead of them, at the solid wall of shields that was blocking their way, at the bejewelled battle standard emblazoned with a warrior that marked the presence of Harald, they would have known better than to scorn their foe. No matter that the English way of war – “disdaining the solace of horses and trusting in their strength to stand fast on foot”67 – appeared to anyone raised in France quite hilariously primitive: the truth was that Harald had in his ranks fighters no less trained or deadly than the most seasoned Norman horseman. He too, like the lords of Constantinople and Kiev, commanded a bodyguard of Varangians: axe-wielding professionals, skilled in all the arts of evisceration, known by the English as “housecarls.”68 These ranked as perhaps the most formidable foot-soldiers in all Christendom, and they would have to be cut down if the invasion was not to fail – for only with Harald dead would any victory count as decisive. As the first Norman arrow showers rattled down upon the round shields of the English, and William’s infantry began climbing the hill ahead of them, to test the swing of the housecarls’ axes, he knew that his fate was no longer his own to control. It had passed into the hands of God.
Not that anyone would have expected the divine judgement to be delayed for long. Rare was the battle that lasted for more than an hour or so. The moment of crisis, when all would be decided upon a rumour or a sudden flight, was bound to sweep the field soon. And so it almost proved. Most shields were still unriven, most helmets without dents, most blades barely notched, when all of a sudden word began to pass through the Norman ranks that William had fallen. His men were thrown into panic. As they turned and started stumbling and slipping back down the hill, it seemed as though the retreat was on the verge of becoming a rout: for pockets of the English were leaving the shield wall to pursue them. All hung in the balance.
But William, though his horse had been brought down and he himself flung on to the ground, was not dead. Raising both his helmet and his voice, rallying his dispirited men, reminding them that they were warriors still, he succeeded in steeling his buckling line. And now it was the turn of the English to face a seeming breaking point. Those who had been pursuing their retreating adversaries down the hill found themselves suddenly turned upon. Surrounded, they proved easy meat. Hoofs and trampling feet pulped their bodies into the mud. The slope of the hill turned slippery, a shambles of viscera and broken limbs. For a second time, it seemed as though the battle was decided. But just as the Normans had been rallied, so now did the English refuse to flee. Harald’s great banner still fluttered defiantly in the breeze. The shield wall, though sorely depleted, held. The day remained unresolved.
And even as the hours continued to pass, and the sun slowly to set, and the shadows to lengthen over the increasingly corpse-strewn slope of the battlefield, the confusion did not cease. “It was,” as one Norman would express it later in stupefied terms, “an unheard-of kind of combat, with one side launching ceaseless attacks and manoeuvres, the other standing firmly as though rooted to the ground.”69 Not all the exhaustion of men weighed down by the great weight of their shields and helmets and coats of iron could serve to diminish the desperate savagery of the battle. An hour before sunset, and still William’s men were
hurling themselves against the English, their spears splintered, as William’s own was, their swords no less “dyed with brains and blood”70 than their duke’s. Yet still the housecarls stood firm, swinging with their double-headed axes, bludgeoning their assailants, hacking through metal and flesh and bone. Certainly, planted as they were upon their hill, they could not hope to win – but then again, merely to hold their position, to win through to the night, to force a draw, would rank almost as a victory. William, isolated as he was in a hostile county, and with the sea at his back, could not afford a stalemate. Only succeed in standing firm until the coming of dusk, then, and Harald would most likely win the war.
