The Battle of Hastings (14 page)

Snorri Sturlusson, the thirteenth-century Icelandic author of the
Heimskringla
sagas, has the English using bows in the battle of Stamford Bridge. There is no reason that this should not be right, but Snorri’s version of the battle is late, garbled and unreliable, and without confirmation it is dangerous to accept his version as correct. In his account, the Vikings had bows and arrows, while the English attacked with ‘spears and arrows’, with the Norse king being killed by an arrow in the throat.
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There is perhaps some confirmation in an addition made to the C version of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, not about the battle, it is true, but about crossing the river, when ‘an Englishman shot an arrow’ at the defender of the bridge, though without dislodging him.
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Two main answers to the puzzle of why the English used archers on previous occasions but not at Hastings seem possible. The first is that, excluding Snorri, these other occasions were much earlier and possibly what had once been a customary method of fighting had become more or less obsolete. There is no more proof for this than for a second contention, but the second seems more likely.

Archers came from certain regions, normally where there were woods or forest. This sort of region made for the use of archery on a larger scale than elsewhere, providing easy sources of material for equipment and plentiful targets for hunting. It is noticeable in later history how often one hears of archers coming from, say, the Forest of Dean or Sherwood Forest. Methods of fighting also tended to be regional, and archery may well have been more popular in Northumbria than Wessex: one notes how many of the early instances of evidence come from the region of the old northern kingdom. Later on, Gerald of Wales wrote that Gwent was noted for its archers whereas other parts of Wales were better known for producing spearmen.

We know very little about the composition of the English armies at either Gate Fulford or Stamford Bridge. Possibly archers fought in one or other or both of these, in which case those same would not have been available at Hastings. As relatively lowly infantry they would be recruited in the local levies. At Hastings, Harold gathered men from as wide an area as he could in the brief space between Stamford Bridge and his fight with William, but the local levies for Hastings inevitably came largely from the south and probably not for the most part from regions especially noted for archery.

In other words it may just be an accident of events that deprived the English of archers at Hastings: the unusual circumstance of having three important battles within the space of a few months and the location of the third and last of them being in the south. We know that the Weald did later produce archers, and perhaps some from there were at Hastings. It may be also that Harold was more concerned about his élite troops, the swordsmen and axemen. Only these men who came from the wealthier social class would possess horses and be able to ride from Stamford Bridge to Hastings. The infantry would be what the local levies provided, and the evidence of the battle suggests that they were chiefly spearmen.

The Normans certainly possessed and used archers at Hastings. Norman archers were also reputed to be lowly. There is a story in William of Jumièges where Bernard the Philosopher puts on poor man’s clothes and then takes up the appropriate weapon, a bow, in order to gain the attention of Duke Richard II by pretending to shoot him. He was arrested, but later pardoned.

The Normans had archers in sufficient numbers to use them in tactical groups. At Hastings, Norman archers were put at the front of the army in the opening phase, played a significant role in the battle, and accounted for the life of Harold Godwinson. Nor was this the first occasion that we hear of Norman archers; they were used, for example, at Varaville in 1057.

Judging by their sophisticated tactical employment at Hastings, archers were a fully integrated part of Norman forces, probably having been employed over a considerable period of time. Both the Franks and the Vikings had archery traditions, so the Normans could have inherited either or both. The bow shown on the Tapestry is always the wooden bow. The likelihood is that this was of length sufficient to be compared to a longbow, and was certainly of the same construction. Actual bowstaves which have been found confirm the point that longbow staves were common over a long period: some forty were found from the late Roman period, one from the seventh century, others from the Viking period. A reconsideration of the artwork of the Tapestry suggests that many of the bows there were probably the height of a man.

Literary sources make it clear that the Normans also possessed crossbows. There is no reason not to believe this possible. The crossbow has a long history, from ancient China to the Romans and the Franks. We have no detailed description and no depiction on the Tapestry, but probably in the eleventh century these would be of relatively primitive construction, perhaps using a forked piece of wood as the basis. It was, nevertheless, thought a powerful weapon. The author of the
Carmen
says that shields were of no use against crossbow bolts.
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The crossbow was mechanical in operation, with a trigger. It shot a shorter, heavier missile than the wooden bow did, called usually a quarrel or a bolt. One advantage of crossbows was that men could be more easily trained to use them. We can only guess why crossbows are not illustrated on the Tapestry. The most likely explanation is that they were rare in England; we hear nothing of them before the Conquest, though it has been suggested that one is pictured on a seventh-century Pictish carving.
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Since the Tapestry was designed by an English artist, we may guess that he was unfamiliar with this weapon.

As to the Norman possession of cavalry, this is more explicable. The English again had, to a degree, the capacity to use horses in war, and occasionally before 1066 they had done so. Likewise the Scandinavian conquerors; when Cnut crossed the Thames in 1016 it was ‘with many men on horses’.
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When Harold was sent by the Confessor against the Welsh in 1063, he went with ‘a small troop of horsemen’; later he met his brother Tostig who commanded a small ‘equestrian army’. It is even true that an Englishman of rank was expected to ride: ‘a noble should be on a horse’s back’. An early scene on the Bayeux Tapestry shows Harold riding to Bosham with his retainers, called ‘milites’, and they are mounted. There are Englishmen in Domesday Book referred to as ‘milites’, though it is not clear what their military function was. It is not for war, and the horses are probably not warhorses, but the similarity to Norman mounted warriors is unmistakable.

Similarities were marked by the English themselves, and their word for the French ‘chevalier’ is the one which has established itself in the language: ‘cniht’ meaning retainer as the origin, of course, for ‘knight’.
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But the English ethos of war, like that of the Vikings, was an infantry one. Swordsmen and spearmen, in the Scandinavian case even archers, were the admired warriors. The known English burials of warriors demonstrate that the weapons of an infantryman were those considered precious enough to take into the other world, reflecting their values in life. The English warriors expected to stand side by side, comrades together around their leader, to hack, or thrust, and trade blows. The
Carmen
poet wrote ‘the English scorn the solace of horses and trusting in their strength they stand fast on foot’; and he also stated that at Hastings the English had horses which they left to the rear when forming for battle.

The shield-wall, or war-wall, was a poetic description of this put into practice: a solid line of men standing shoulder to shoulder to face the enemy. At Sherston in 1016, the best men were placed in the front line, which was probably normal practice. At Hastings, the English were described as all on foot and in close ranks.
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The ideal was to advance towards victory or to die.

Cavalry, with its capacity to ride off to safety, was not an admired kind of troop. A telling phrase in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
relates to the flight of the English under Earl Ralph at Hereford in 1055, ‘because they were on horseback’. In the poem of the battle of Maldon, Byrhtnoth told his men each to let go of his horse, ‘to drive it far off and to march forwards’. This attitude lasted well into the age of cavalry, when it could often be a mark of courage to abandon the horse and its promise of escape, and to stand alongside your men.
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There is plenty of evidence that the English had horses and used them for war, sometimes that they even did fight from horseback. There are early, again northern, stone carvings of cavalry in battle.
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There are countless examples of horses being used for transport, and no doubt at all that the English aristocracy could ride and did ride. Harold’s quick journey from Stamford Bridge to Hastings was not made on foot. The attempts of some ill-informed individuals to do the trip on foot to test its feasibility seem rather pointless. There was no serious problem in covering the distance on horse as Harold and his household and professional or noble troops clearly did. There are also plenty of examples of horses used in raids and for pursuits after a battle. The horses possessed by English warriors were clearly held in the vicinity and used as required.

But actual cavalry fighting in battle is another matter. It required three things at least which the English lacked: a desire to fight in this way; trained warhorses for use in battle; trained men used to fighting from the saddle. The Normans possessed all three, perhaps derived from Frankish connections. A ninth-century proverb in Francia claimed that training for cavalry should begin before puberty, since after that it became difficult to acquire the knack. Young men, such as Robert de Grandmesnil, trained to fight on horseback in William’s household. Such young men were no doubt the ‘boys’ encouraged by Bishop Odo at Hastings on the Tapestry.
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Certainly the English had horses and bred them. We hear on occasions of the Vikings taking English horses for their own use during their campaigns. But the Vikings used them as the English did, not for battle. The Normans needed their own specially bred horses, such as they took with them to Sicily, such as they transported across the Channel in 1066. The young Norman warrior learned to fight from horseback as a noble pursuit. The idea of a mounted élite was already forming in Norman and northern French minds in a way that was yet to happen in England. The heroes of English poetry were warriors who fought on foot. The warfare of Normandy, like most of north-western continental Europe, relied heavily on development from the Frankish Carolingian Empire. Fortified strongholds or castles, and warriors trained to fight on horseback had developed over a century or so. The Bretons, for example, ‘gave themselves to arms and the equestrian art’.
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There is still a question mark over the degree of continuity from Carolingian Neustria to Viking-ruled Normandy. There is little sign of those things we consider ‘feudal’ before 1100: castles, knights, mounted warfare. It may be significant that the great families of the Conquest era, such as the Beaumonts, Warennes and Montgomeries, do not appear much before 1100 either. This does not mean the families did not exist, but perhaps it signifies a change in attitudes to the importance of family and especially the concept of inheritance and lineage.

Both features, castles and mounted cavalry, were emerging as newly dominant in warfare in the mid-eleventh century. Western medieval cavalry methods developed very gradually, with the first evidence from the Merovingian age, and with less dominance in the Carolingian period than once thought. But when the Conqueror aided by the king of France fought at Val-ès-Dunes in 1047, there were probably cavalry attacks from both sides.
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The less reliable and later writer Wace, a Channel Islander, gave a graphic account: ‘horses were to be seen running loose over the plain, and the field of battle was covered with knights riding haphazard for their lives … the Orne swallowed soldiers and horses in great numbers’.
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There is one reference to English cavalry fighting in 1066, but it is made by Snorri Sturlusson. He has an English cavalry charge at Stamford Bridge, not confirmed in other evidence of that battle, and oddly similar in his account to the Norman charges at Hastings. It is likely that Snorri, writing an heroic saga at a much later date, used the only detailed evidence of a battle from the period (for Hastings) to fill out the account of the battle which mattered more to his work, in which occurred the death of his hero, Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. No evidence can be ignored, but Snorri’s is far less convincing than that from the period itself.

Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence in this debate is the one clear example of English fighting on horses close to this period. In 1055 Ralph, earl of Hereford, fought a skirmish against the Welsh. Ralph’s background was continental, he was the Confessor’s nephew by his sister’s marriage to the count of Mantes. Edward knew him during his own Norman exile, and brought him to England after he gained the throne. Ralph was then rewarded with his earldom. He was trained in the continental methods of war, albeit he was not a greatly renowned warrior, and indeed in England earned the epithet of ‘timid’. According to John of Worcester, against the Welsh, Ralph ordered his English troops ‘to fight on horseback, against their custom’.
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They were not successful. From this we may reasonably deduce that there were some continentals in England who were keen to develop cavalry fighting, but who found that at this time it was difficult. It would take time and the will to undertake drastic change. We may conclude that the English by 1066 had chosen to prefer their trusted infantry methods against the considerable changes that would be required to produce not simply cavalry forces but to make their élite troops into mounted warriors.