The Battle of Hastings

by Jim Bradbury

  Hastings was relatively static because the English knew that the height gave them advantage and the slope acted against cavalry, but they would look for a moment to advance to victory. Clearly the English advanced a good distance, because Poitiers says that even the Norman spearmen, operating at a distance, now came under attack and were wounded. The result was a flight of the Norman infantry, and of the Bretons and other cavalry on the Norman left: ‘Almost the whole of Duke William’s battle line fell back.’

  The first phase ended in English triumph. Not only had the infantry been driven back and some of the cavalry forced into flight, but there was now a rumour that Duke William had been killed. This does indeed suggest that the whole Norman line was in trouble. How otherwise could it be believed that William, in the centre of the line, had been brought down?

  THE SECOND PHASE OF THE BATTLE

  This was the crisis point for William. His troops were in disarray. The beginnings of a flight can very easily turn into broader panic. The rumour of his death could have been cause enough for a general flight.

  The relative numbers of the armies have inspired thousands of words of print, mostly as we have suggested before, likely to be unprofitable in any except a very general sense. William of Poitiers, our best account, says that the English had a numerical advantage, but then he was biased. Again the unreliable Wace has a credible comment. He says that in his day many have explained the defeat by saying that Harold had a small force, but others say, ‘and so do I, that he and the duke had man for man’, and adds that William had more knights and more archers.47

  I have been present at more than one reconstruction of the battle, again on the Battle site, of course. It does bring home something of the problem of deploying men and fighting over difficult, uneven and hilly ground. It also demonstrates the problem of fighting for long periods with heavy weapons and in armour. No medieval battle could have been fought hour after hour without lengthy breaks for the individual soldiers, and probably for the whole armies.

  Almost the whole line of Duke William fell back … even the armies of glorious Rome, which won so many victories on land and sea, sometimes turned in flight, though supported by loyal troops, when they learned that their leader was killed, or thought that he was dead. The Normans believed that their duke had fallen.

  The Normans were close to defeat. Even Poitiers admits to a flight. Only the commanders stood between them and the loss of the battle. William and his fellow leaders, Odo of Bayeux and Eustace of Boulogne among them, now showed their worth. No one man could have done it, the troops would simply have gone. Bishop Odo is shown on the Tapestry urging on his young men, waving his baton for attention rather than as a weapon.48

  William tried to stand in the way but was failing. He had to rip off his helmet and show his face, the scene is vividly shown on the Bayeux Tapestry, right hand pushing the helmet back by its nasal, incidentally revealing that the headpiece of the hauberk covered the top of his head.49 Like Odo, William is carrying a baton, a sign of command rather than a weapon. A rider next to him points at the duke, clearly saying that he is living. ‘“Look at me”, he shouted. “I am still alive. With God’s help I shall win. What madness makes you turn in flight? What retreat do you have if you flee? … if you keep going not a single one of you will escape. ”’ In the Carmen, William’s speech at this desperate moment went on for some nine lines of text.50

  William himself rode forward, and it worked, they followed him, ‘taking new courage from his words’. He raised his sword and charged into the enemy. They then turned on the men ‘who had pursued them and wiped them out’. The chronicler says that the Conqueror ‘led his forces with great skill, holding them when they turned in flight, giving them courage, sharing their danger. He was more often heard shouting to them to follow him than ordering them to go ahead of him.’

  In the fighting which followed, the duke had three horses killed under him, each time finding a new mount and continuing to fight. Poitiers says that, each time, William killed the man who had brought down his horse, and showed his own physical strength, fighting with his sword and on occasion with his shield. Wace has an unverifiable incident with an English wrestler using an axe, who struck the duke ‘on the head, and beat in his helmet, though without doing much injury’!51

  In the account of William of Poitiers, the first flight was a real one, but it was turned to advantage by the action of the Conqueror. This rings true. According to the chronicler, already by this point, the attack following on the reverse, the English line began to falter for the first time. This is important, because it explains Harold’s failure or inability to counter-attack from here on. Poitiers says ‘gaps began to appear in their ranks here and there, where the iron weapons of our brave soldiers were having their effect’. The chronicler records an individual act of valour at this point, when Robert fitz Roger de Beaumont led a battalion to the attack on the right wing. It was his first battle, and he ‘laid about him with great courage’.

  It was only now that William of Poitiers describes a feigned flight occurring. He says: ‘they therefore withdrew, deliberately pretending to turn in flight. They were mindful of the fact that only a short time before their retreat had been turned into success.’ The English saw victory in their grasp and, says Poitiers, a thousand of them pursued the retreating Normans. Then ‘suddenly the Normans turned their horses, cut off the force which was pursuing them, made a complete circle around them, and massacred them to the last man’.

  This tactic of the feigned flight has caused much debate. Many historians have believed it impossible. Lt.-Col.Lemmon wrote ‘a “feigned retreat” was the recognised method by which chroniclers concealed the fact that the troops on their own side had run away’, and thought the tactic ‘impossible’.52 But Poitiers does not disguise the first genuine flight, and does still describe feigned retreats.

  The reasons of those who cannot accept the tactic have been those of ‘common sense’. They contend that it was a tactic beyond the capabilities of eleventh-century cavalry. For some reason, most of them assume that the whole Norman line was supposed to have turned at once. It is true that Poitiers’ account very much suggests that the first flight was genuine, and its outcome fortuitous, but he and others described feigned retreat tactics as well. It is also true that Poitiers says a thousand followed, but this is probably exaggeration unless it denoted not the single feigned flight but an English decision for a general advance. There is no reason to suppose that all the Norman cavalry used the tactic at once. We do not believe that they used a concerted charge with lances. They operated rather in smaller groups together. What one needs to see is a group of ten, twenty or fifty knights deciding on the manoeuvre.

  We have pointed out in a previous chapter that feigned flights were a common ploy before 1066, and were used by the Normans on several occasions elsewhere. The historians who declare them impossible are flying in the face of the evidence; virtually all the chroniclers who go into detail include the tactic.53 If we follow Poitiers, there seems no serious reason to discount the feigned flights. The first occasion was accidental, from then on they used the tactic once or twice deliberately and with some success. Some English were drawn off from the defensive position, and killed. If we consider this done by discrete sections of the Norman force, then obviously the English would lose men but not be annihilated, which is what happened.

  One argument against the tactic is that it makes the fleeing force vulnerable, with backs to the enemy. The comment of the Carmen is interesting on this, suggesting a normal action in such a tactic. The writer says that, as they fled, ‘shields covered their backs’; the straps of the shields of the mounted men would have allowed this.54 The Normans had some success, there were gaps in the English line, but it still held as the rear ranks filled in for the dead and wounded. Poitiers says ‘twice the Normans used this ruse with equal success’, but the English line ‘was still terrifying to behold’, and the Normans ‘had great difficulty in contain
ing it’. This suggests that still there was that thin line between an English counter-attack and a deliberate drawing off by feigned flight. The feigned flights could very easily have turned into real ones.

  William of Poitiers then describes a series of cavalry charges against the English line, which gradually wore down the English without breaking it. The English had by this time suffered heavy losses. There was another breathing space while each side licked its wounds. William, if not desperate, knew that daylight hours were running out. He needed a victory even more than Harold. He began to regroup for a final push.

  THE THIRD PHASE

  Part of the fascination of the battle of Hastings is that it was such a close-fought thing. For all that the Normans had mounted cavalry and a stronger force of archers, for all that forces which relied on heavy infantry alone were to go out of fashion, these two very different armies had fought almost the whole day and the outcome was not by any means certain. The hill had blunted the impact of the cavalry and had made it more difficult for archers to shoot with effect. The shield-wall manned by heavy infantry, well armed and well disciplined, proved a match for the Norman cavalry as well as their infantry.

  With hindsight we see the key moments. The repeated feigned flights had resulted in some deaths and gaps; the repeated cavalry attacks had gradually reduced the shield-wall. But now came the two killer punches. At some point, probably before Harold’s death, his two younger brothers who had fought alongside him, Leofwin and Gyrth, were killed. William of Poitiers simply makes a statement that many English leaders were killed: ‘their king was dead and his brothers with him’.

  The death of the younger brothers is presented on the Tapestry at an early point in the battle, before William has shown his face: both killed by lances, Leofwin probably the figure wielding a battleaxe, Gyrth a spear.55 Recently, it has been suggested that they may have fallen in an English advance. There very probably was such an attempt to win the battle, but there is no evidence of who was involved in it, or even what happened, except that clearly in the last resort it failed.56 Again the elaboration by the Carmen does not carry conviction, with William killing Gyrth in hand-to-hand conflict while on foot.57 No one else noticed that either.

  The first killer punch was the death of Harold. The fact that his brothers had also been killed meant that the English lacked a commander. Before we look at the method of Harold’s demise, let us briefly determine at what stage in the battle it occurred. All sources except one suggest or fit with a death towards the end of the battle, including our best source, Poitiers. The fly in the ointment is William of Jumièges, who states: ‘Harold himself was slain, pierced with mortal wounds during the first assault.’58

  There is no getting round the meaning of the words, but we cannot take this one comment against the weight of all the other evidence, though at least one later source does follow Jumièges. Suggestions have been made that the chronicler originally said something else, such as ‘in the first rank’, and there is a copyist’s error, or that he meant ‘the first attack in the final assault’ – all the usual excuses when evidence does not fit. We can only say that Jumièges seems to have got this wrong, but his is a brief account, which goes straight on to the final stages of the fight and says that it was the death which led to the flight at nightfall.

  William’s last effort was an all-out one, involving every section of his force. We have seen that the Normans had both crossbowmen and archers with ordinary bows, and have argued elsewhere that the latter were in effect longbows. The events which now occurred help to support that argument, since the archery from some distance had the desired effect. William of Poitiers does not say much about this attack, just that ‘the Normans shot arrows, hit and pierced the enemy’.59 But the Tapestry at this point in the margin shows one archer after the other in a prolonged frieze aiming their weapons upwards: nineteen figures without a break, and then more a little further on.60

  I have also argued elsewhere against the idea that the arrows were shot high up into the air to come down again on the English heads, largely because it would have been ineffective, the arrows would have lost their force. This does not mean that they would not adjust their shooting to cope with the higher position of the enemy.61 Some of the English on the Tapestry catch the arrows in their shields, clearly shot with force since they become embedded. Harold was not the only one to suffer; a nameless Norman falls to the ground with an arrow in his head. For the first time the English line was seriously weakened, and some of the main front-line troops were killed, including Harold himself.

  Some, generally more ‘popular’ works, still repeat the old chestnut that Harold was not killed by an arrow in the eye. This was an idea that stemmed from historians criticising the evidence. A number of late sources spoke of Harold being cut down with swords; the early works did not describe at all the manner of his death.62 Our conclusions depend largely on how we interpret two sources in particular.

  The first to consider is the Carmen. Those who accept its account have no arrow in the eye. But it is surely an incredible account, which none of the early sources confirm in any way. By it, the duke sees Harold fighting bravely. He summons to himself a little gang of three, like the magnificent seven: Eustace of Boulogne, whose actions are cowardly in other sources; Hugh the heir of Ponthieu, who is otherwise unknown and who did not succeed to Ponthieu; and ‘Gilfardus’, who is usually identified as Walter Giffard, he of the white hair and bald head according to Wace, another identification which has caused some problems.

  The four, including the Conqueror, attack Harold: the first (none are named in this section of the poem) cleaves through his shield with a sword, drawing blood; the second smites off his head; the third pierces his belly with a lance; the fourth hacks off his leg and carries it away. There was then a ‘rumour’ that Harold was dead. Presumably after all that he was.

  William of Malmesbury, possibly following the Tapestry, does have an unnamed knight maiming Harold after he was killed by an arrow; the knight in question is disgraced by the Conqueror for this deed, but this does not support the Carmen version in which William himself was one of the four attackers. This incident in the poem really does seem more incredible than any of its other incredible stories. Can one believe that William himself took part in the killing of Harold and no one else apart from the poet recorded the fact? Davis is surely right that this is a later legendary elaboration. It seems unlikely that the Conqueror took any part at all in Harold’s killing. He could not even recognise him after the battle without help.63

  The second and the most important source here is the Bayeux Tapestry.64 The anti-arrow school argued that the figure dying with an arrow in the eye or head was not Harold. The following figure, under the words ‘interfectus est’ [was killed], is Harold, being hacked down by a rider with his sword. Again, this cannot be verified. But knowledge of the Tapestry’s way of pointing out its facts would suggest that the lettering of the name ‘Harold’ above and around the first figure was meant to show that this was the king. A number of people have argued that both figures are Harold and it is a sort of cartoon strip representation of him being first hit by an arrow and secondly being finished off by a cavalryman.65

  This view has been enhanced by the keen eye of a modern historian, David Bernstein. In a paper given to the Anglo-Norman Studies conference, he pointed out that if one looks carefully at the Tapestry, there are visible stitch marks by the head of the second figure; and the obvious interpretation is that they originally represented the shaft of an arrow in the eye of the second, falling figure too.66

  This seems to settle the issue. In the view of the Tapestry at least, Harold Godwinson was hit by an arrow in the head, whether either or both of the figures were meant to be the king. The likely view is that both are Harold. Some later chroniclers give such an account: they may have followed the Tapestry, but even if their facts were not independent, at least they believed the Tapestry meant both figures to be Harold and that he was hit by a
n arrow.67

  The archery had achieved the first major blow of the battle, and one that was fatal to English hopes as well as to their king. The loss of a commander in a medieval battle was very rarely followed by anything but defeat for the side which suffered the loss, and Hastings was no exception. If the English fought on it was from training and discipline, and because the best hope of survival was to slog out the final minutes of daylight and hope to retreat under cover of dark. They did not manage it.

  Wace, for all our doubts, is a useful source for quotes, partly because his military knowledge was good even if his particular knowledge of Hastings was less so. He speaks of the lengthy battle, suggesting that the crisis came at about 3 p.m., after a long day when ‘the battle was up and down, this way and that’.68 William of Poitiers says that the remaining English were exhausted and at the end of their tether, which is not difficult to believe.

  The Normans began to sense victory: ‘the longer they fought the stronger they seemed to be; and their onslaught was even fiercer now than it had been at the beginning’. The duke fought in their midst, sparing none who crossed his path. In other words, after the infantry attack the cavalry made a final charge, and this time it worked. The shield-wall, which had withstood such a battering all day, finally broke and once that had happened there was no hope.

  The English forces broke and fled. The Tapestry’s final scene shows a miscellaneous band of Normans in pursuit, three wielding swords, one a spear and one carrying a bow ready to shoot.69 A small and rather forlorn group of Englishmen are the last figures to survive on the Tapestry, some on horses, some on foot. One may have an arrow in his head, since the context does not seem to fit with him raising a spear. In the lower margin by this point the bodies have been stripped of their armour and lie naked, some without heads, one with a severed arm. The only hope of survival for those who remained was to reach the cover of the woods to the rear. Some ran on foot, some were able to ride. According to Poitiers this was on ‘horses which they had seized’ rather than their own, though there is no reason why others were not able to reclaim the mounts they had left behind earlier in the day. Poitiers says they went by roads and by places where there were none. Many, of course, were wounded and escape was difficult or impossible. ‘Many died where they fell in the deep cover of the woods’, others dropped exhausted along the way. There was a Norman pursuit. Some were cut down from behind, some were trampled under the horses’ hoofs.