Battles of English History. George Hereford Brooke
to picture the encounter of the two hosts, clad and armed substantially in the same fashion, practically of the same race. After a desperate hand-to-hand conflict the English prevailed; Harold Hardrada and Tostig were both killed, and the host of the Northmen was almost annihilated. With politic mercy Harold allowed his namesake's youthful son and the remnant of the invaders to sail home, on their giving pledges for peace, which in truth they were long in no condition to break. The victory of Stamford Bridge was a great stroke for the security of Europe generally: it broke for ever the aggressive power of the Northmen, which for two centuries had been a standing danger to all coasts from the mouth of the Baltic to far into the Mediterranean, and which had completely conquered two regions as far remote from each other as Sicily and Normandy. At the same time the fearful losses of the battle may well have turned the scale in the struggle that was impending with the transformed Northmen from across the Channel.
William of Normandy's fleet and army was assembled in the first instance at the mouth of the Dive, west of the Seine. Of its numbers it is impossible to speak with confidence, the accounts vary so greatly; but it was as large and complete as the resources of his duchy and the promises he held out to adventurers could make it. He was ready to sail some time in August, but the wind was steadily contrary. About the time when the English fleet was perforce withdrawn from the Channel, he was able to move his whole expedition to the mouth of the Somme, a necessary preliminary to attempting to cross the Channel. So large a fleet, consisting no doubt to a great extent of open boats, could not possibly have ventured to make the passage from the original point of assembly, which was doubtless selected as being more central to Normandy generally. Not for two or three weeks more did the necessary south wind blow. On September 27 the wind was at last favourable: next day William landed at Pevensey, and on the 29th occupied Hastings, where he formed a fortified camp to protect his ships. Nothing could have been more opportune for his interests: he had been unable to move while the English fleet was at sea, nor until Harold, far away in the north, had been weakened by the slaughter among his housecarls at Stamford Bridge. It was not the Norman's policy to plunge into a hostile country. Harold must needs come to meet him, and the nearer he could bring on a battle to his fleet, and therefore to his means of escape in case of defeat, the better for him. Accordingly he remained at Hastings, ravaging the country far and wide, partly for subsistence, partly to compel Harold to approach him.
A Sussex thegn soon brought the news to Harold: he had ridden the whole distance to York in three days, and found the king, so the story is told, at the banquet held in honour of his recent victory. Harold returned to London at once with his housecarls, summoning in all haste the forces of the south and east of England, which responded heartily to the call, the men of Kent and of London foremost. As soon as an adequate number was assembled, he marched straight to meet the invader. The king's exact movements cannot be traced, but the speed with which the whole was accomplished was extraordinary. In sixteen days at the latest from the time of William's landing, Harold and his army were close to him. In that time the news had been conveyed to York, the king's army had marched the whole way back, and men had been sent for and gathered from every shire from the Wash to the Exe. While in London, say the chroniclers, Harold was urged to let his brother Gyrth lead the army against the Norman, on the ground that, while he could not deny his promise to William, and there was a widespread fear of the wrath of the saints at his breaking the oath sworn on their relics, all this applied only to Harold personally. The king might stay in London, organise further levies, and by wasting the country render the advance of the invaders impossible: all would not be lost even if Gyrth were defeated. Harold rejected the well-meant advice; he would ask no one to run a risk he was not prepared to share, he would never harm those who were entrusted to his care. The decision was wise as well as chivalrous, in his peculiar position: his standing aloof would only have strengthened the superstitious awe which the maledictions of the Church on his perjury aroused, and given excuse for other defections than those for which Edwin and Morcar were responsible. Under ordinary circumstances a king's or a commander-in-chief's obvious duty is not to risk his own life. In Harold's case every consideration dictated his being personally foremost in the fight. It would have been well for England had he acted on the advice in a reversed sense, and left Gyrth behind in his stead. While Harold lived Gyrth was only of minor importance; when Harold had fallen, the cause of England might still have been sustained successfully by his brother.
The contemporary, or nearly contemporary, accounts of the battle of Hastings are numerous, both English and Norman, but their statements differ greatly. Hardly any of them write with knowledge of the ground; none, it may be safely said, with anything like military precision. It is easy to discount the exaggerations of partisanship; it is easy to perceive that some statements made cannot be true, for reasons of time and distance, or because they are based on misapprehension of known facts. Beyond this one can only conjecture, as one statement seems more probable than another, or more easily reconcilable with things ascertained beyond reasonable doubt. Moreover, though the locality of the battle is open to no question, the appearance of it has been so much changed, that reconstruction of its condition at the date of the battle must again be imperfect. Much was probably altered in the building of Battle Abbey, much has certainly been altered in forming the grounds of the modern house, which include the ruins of the abbey church. For instance the slope up to the spot where Harold's standard was planted, a spot fixed for all time by the high altar of Battle Abbey being placed there, is in its upper part scarped to form a terrace. Again, the whole position looks very like one that might have been selected in earlier days for a camp. The ditch which some accounts say covered Harold's front may possibly have been an ancient one; in which case the hollow bearing the name of Malfosse on the other side, where the defeated English turned and smote their pursuers, may have been partly artificial also. But the present state of the ground affords no positive support to this conjecture, though it does not negative it. All that can be done, in attempting to picture the battle for modern readers, without going into wearisome detail, is to tell the story in a form that does not contradict the known conditions, and to refer to the original authorities3 readers who desire to judge for themselves.
Harold was by the necessity of the case compelled to fight a battle: so far the Norman had prevailed. Tactically however Harold succeeded in forcing the Norman to fight on ground of his choosing, under conditions favourable to the English method of fighting, and unfavourable to the Norman method. He posted his army on a projecting bit of hill, a spur in fact of the South Downs, close to the direct road from Hastings towards London. William of Normandy could not possibly pass the English without fighting: if he did so he was liable to be cut off from his ships. Nor could he wait indefinitely at Hastings: he had no choice but to advance. Further, to receive attack in a defensive position was what gave the best chance of success to the English, practically all foot-soldiers, the best of them clothed in mail shirts and armed with axes. Finally, the piece of ground actually chosen was exactly suitable for its purpose: it was not too large to be fully manned, and it compelled the Normans to charge uphill. On the other hand it is obvious that the Normans, whose main strength lay in mailed horsemen, could not stand on the defensive; attack was what they were fitted for.
Harold's army was drawn up facing to the south, on a ridge somewhat under a mile in length. The ground in front sloped away, gently on the right, steeply in the centre, rather less steeply on the left flank, where the little town of Battle now stands. Behind the right and again behind the left there were hollows, the latter being apparently then the most marked. Behind the centre of the hill was a sort of broad isthmus connecting it with the mass of the Downs. Along the whole or part of the front a palisade4 of some kind seems to have been constructed, by way of protection against the onset of the Norman horsemen: but this cannot possibly have been an elaborate and solid barrier. In the first place there was not time to make such a thing; as has been already noted, the interval between William's landing and the battle was amazingly short for what was done in it. Harold cannot possibly have had more than one October day in which to fortify his position. Nor is there the least probability that the Norman would have looked on, while the position he would have to attack was strengthened to the extent suggested. Moreover there were no materials for such a work ready to hand, though there may well have been plenty for a slighter fence. A chronicler of later date does indeed say that houses were pulled down for the purpose; but the contemporaries imply, if they do not positively assert, that
Professor Freeman's great History of the Norman Conquest contains a very minute discussion of every point of detail, and a narrative framed by laboriously piecing together the statements which on careful comparison he deems most correct. Much of this is very valuable, though there is at least one important point in which his account cannot be right. Much of it is more or less wasted labour, because it involves giving a precise meaning to expressions in the authorities which were probably used loosely. The main outlines are clear enough, the details are at least partially conjectural, and inferences based on physical facts are a safer guide, so far as they go, than interpretations of the inconsistent and perhaps unmeaning language of monkish writers.
There is also the Bayeux Tapestry, which has been reproduced by Mr. Collingwood Bruce, and which for costume and arms is invaluable: but from the nature of the case it is a very poor guide in determining the tactics of the battle. To rely on it for such purposes, as Professor Freeman and others do, seems to me as unreasonable as to deduce a military history of the battle of Agincourt from Shakespeare's
A vehement controversy has raged since Professor Freeman's death regarding the accuracy of his narrative, the point most strenuously disputed being his statement that Harold's front was protected by a solid wooden barrier. It is maintained in opposition that there was nothing but the wall of interlaced shields familiar to both Saxons and Danes. Without entering into the controversy, I content myself with saying that while the weight of testimony seems to be in favour of some kind of obstacle having been erected, I am satisfied, for the reasons given in the text, that there cannot have been anything like the massive structure described by Professor Freeman.