The Battle of Hastings (15 page)

The development in Normandy may have been later than once supposed, but it had happened. At Hastings, his men were astonished to see William fighting on foot at all.
50
The Norman nobility began to see mounted warfare as a part of being the warrior élite. When the Conqueror himself was knighted, sword, shield and helmet were part of the ceremony, as were lance and the reins of his horse. So also were promises to protect the Church and the weak, to act justly. We see the beginnings of chivalric ideals.
51

The Normans now used well-armed mounted cavalry as a regular feature of their warfare. In 1041, during the course of their rise to power in southern Italy, a Norman force beat the Byzantine Varangian Guard at Monte Maggiore by a mounted charge. At Civitate in 1053, Richard of Aversa led a successful charge against the opposing papal force, and had the ability to regroup and return to the fray, thus winning the battle. In Normandy, we hear of William commanding forces of three hundred knights; and it was the speed of the charge at Varaville, cutting off the enemy when only half were across the River Dives, which gave William victory in 1057.
52

They had also, by 1066, developed some tactical achievements. It used to be questioned whether medieval cavalry was capable of the feigned flight, and some historians wrote off this feature at Hastings as coming from the imagination of writers. It is now widely accepted that feigned flights were possible, and had indeed been employed by various Frankish armies and others over a period of time, for example, by the Alans, Huns, Byzantines and Magyars. The Bretons employed the feigned flight against Fulk IV, count of Anjou. The Normans used the feigned flight on several occasions before Hastings, for example, under Walter Giffard at St-Aubin in 1053: ‘the Normans succeeded in drawing away a considerable part of the army and, as if in flight, they led the French into a trap. For suddenly the Normans who seemed to be fleeing, turned round and began violently to cut down the French.’ Walter Giffard, incidentally, probably fought for William at Hastings.
53
The Normans also made a feigned flight to draw the enemy away from the walls of Messina in Sicily in 1060.

Later Norman armies were organised in small tactical groups, sometimes called conroys, and there is little reason to dispute the likelihood that these had a long history. Wace suggested that the conroys were based on men from the same geographical area. The conroy is unlikely to have numbered much more than about twenty men.

There was a third major difference between English and Norman warfare, but its significance is less vital so far as Hastings is concerned. The Normans built and used fortifications which we call castles, the English on the whole did not. There were fortifications in England, but their nature was different. From Alfred onwards there had developed a network of over thirty fortified strongholds, virtually towns – the burhs. Some of these were fortified with stone walls, as Towcester, while some towns already possessing walls had them repaired.
54
But these were on a national basis, and were large enough to contain urban populations and offer shelter to those living in the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, it may be significant that our word for ‘castle’ derives from the word the English used for their own fortifications.
55

There was at least one private fortification, found at Goltho in Lincolnshire, which suggests that the English were moving along the same sort of path as the Normans. It has been called ‘a pre-Conquest castle’, and its function like that of a castle was as a ‘defended residence’, though Goltho’s defences were not as massive as those of a typical castle, and at present it is a unique site. When it did become a castle in about 1080, it was a particularly small one, but was still more strongly defended than its English predecessor.
56

The continentals brought to England under Edward the Confessor had, it is true, built a handful of such buildings, including Pentecost’s Castle and Robert’s Castle, so the English were not entirely unfamiliar with this kind of fortification. It is interesting to find Harold Godwinson making earthwork defences with a ditch around Hereford in 1055. Given time and without the Conquest, castles would almost certainly have developed in England, but the rate would have been slower.
57

Equally truly there do not seem to have been so many castles in Normandy, nor were they built so early, as was once believed. Normandy was certainly not the base or centre of castle-building, and seems to have adopted the practice which grew up probably first in the Loire region. In England there were no more than half a dozen castles at the most before the Norman Conquest.

In Normandy, castles were at this time mostly what we might call citadels, fortifications built within towns. But there were some separate structures and a few at least were earthwork and timber (i.e. motte and bailey). There is mention of large ditches cut to defend both Arques and Domfront. When the Conqueror besieged Brionne for three years from 1047, he constructed earthwork fortifications on the banks of the River Risle; similarly at the siege of his uncle’s new castle at Arques, William built a mound for the protection of his own men, and again no less than four mounds at Domfront. At both Domfront and Alençon, previous dukes had permitted the erection or rebuilding of castles.
58
There were pre-1066 towers at Ivry and Brionne, as well as ‘The Tower’ at Rouen. J. Yver believed that the length of some sieges meant that the castles concerned were probably constructed of stone.

Breton castles are shown in the Bayeux Tapestry’s account of the Conqueror’s campaign there probably in 1064: at Dol, Dinan and Rennes. The Tapestry also shows the castle of Bishop Odo, the Conqueror’s half-brother, at Bayeux; and at Beaurain where Harold was held prisoner; and probably William’s own fortification at Rouen. There is reference to the Conqueror building a new castle at St-James-de-Beuvron. The use of castles may seem less relevant to Hastings than the possession of archers and cavalry, but it is not entirely without significance, when one considers how William used Pevensey and constructed a castle at Hastings in the period immediately preceding the great battle, and indeed how the Conquest was carried through in the years after Hastings.
59
Castles of course developed quickly in England after the Conquest partly because the Norman lords were ruling a hostile land and needed to protect themselves.

Notes

  
1
.  
Carmen
, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 29. This work has been the subject of much debate over its dating: R.H.C. Davis, ‘The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’,
EHR
, xciii, 1978, pp. 241–61, proposing a later date than had previously been accepted; and historians taking sides over the issue since. In the present writer’s view Davis was probably correct to consider there was a problem, and the work may date from about 1100. It would still have interest as a source on armies of the eleventh century.

  
2
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 480.

  
3
.  R.P. Abels,
Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England
, London, 1988, is an excellent recent work which reinforces this modern trend in thinking about the composition of English forces. See e.g. p. 37: the army was ‘aristocratic in its basis’; also pp. 32, 160, 168, 175. The key work on housecarls is N. Hooper, ‘The housecarls in England in the eleventh century’,
ANS
, vii, 1985, pp. 161–76, which should be taken with the additional thoughts in N. Hooper, ‘Military developments in the reign of Cnut’ in A. Humble (ed.),
The Reign of Cnut
, London, 1994, pp. 89–100.

  
4
.  S. Pollington,
The English Warrior from Earliest Times to 1066
, Hockwold-cum-Wilton, 1996, p. 144: the Benty Grange helmet.

  
5
.  Pollington,
English Warrior
, p. 145: the Coppergate helmet.

  
6
.  William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, ii, p. 24.

  
7
.  William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 185.

  
8
.  William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 169. The author, like many others, has been allowed to don a hauberk made by the historian of arms and armour, Ian Peirce.

  
9
.  
Bayeux Tapestry
, pl. 69; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 183.

10
.  Pollington,
English Warrior
, p. 136.

11
.  William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 207.

12
.  Pollington,
English Warrior
, pp. 83, 97, 125, 244. The poem about Maldon is useful, but was probably written about thirty years after the event.

13
.  M. Strickland, paper to Battle Conference, to be published in
ANS
, xix. See N. Higham,
The Kingdom of Northumbria
, Stroud, 1993.

14
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 486.

15
.  Pollington,
English Warrior
, p. 127.

16
.  Henry of Huntingdon,
Historia Anglorum
, ed. T. Arnold, RS no. 74, London, 1965, p. 200.

17
.  J. Bradbury,
The Medieval Archer
, Woodbridge, 1985, pp. 22–40.

18
.  Anna Comnena,
The Alexiad
, Harmondsworth, 1969, pp. 163–5, 416.

19
.  
Bayeux Tapestry
, pl. 40–4;
Carmen
, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 8.

20
.  Anna Comnena, pp. 56–7; R. Glover, ‘English warfare in 1066’,
EHR
, xvii, 1952, pp. 1–18, p. 14.

21
.  See Hooper, ‘Military developments’.

22
.  Abels,
Lordship
, pp. 115: ‘
caballum in exercitu
’; 110. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, pp. 389, 934: ‘
equestri exercitu non modico
’.

23
.  Abels,
Lordship
, p. 13.

24
.  Abels,
Lordship
, p. 45; A. Williams,
The English and the Norman Conquest
, Woodbridge, 1995, pp. 191–2.

25
.  Abels,
Lordship
, p. 146.

26
.  
Carmen
, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 17.

27
.  William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 37.

28
.  Whitelock
et al.
(eds),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, p. 142.

29
.  
Bayeux Tapestry
, pl. 36–9; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 151.

30
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, pp. 460–2.

31
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 20.

32
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 530.

33
.  Pollington,
English Warrior
, p. 151.

34
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 356; Pollington,
English Warrior
, pp. 236, 242; 244, ll. 267–71; ‘
bogan waeron bysige
’.

35
.  Bradbury,
Medieval Archer
, pp. 17–22; I. Gollancz (ed.),
The Exeter Book
, 2 vols, London, 1895, 1934, ii, p. 112, no. 23: ‘
Agof is min noma
’; Aldhelm,
Prose Works
, eds M. Lapidge and M. Herren, Cambridge, 1979, p. 163; Aldhelm,
Opera
, ed. R. Ehwald,
MGH Auctorum Antiquissimorum
, xv, Berlin, 1919, p. 230.

36
.  Snorri Sturlusson,
King Harald’s Saga
, eds M. Magnusson and H. Palsson, Harmondsworth, 1966, p. 152.

37
.  Pollington,
English Warrior
, p. 155; Whitelock
et al.
(eds),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, p. 145.

38
.  
Carmen
, (eds) Monroe and Muntz, p. 25.

39
.  Pollington,
English Warrior
, p. 152.

40
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 481: ‘
cum multo equitatu
’.

41
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 592: ‘
equitatu
’, ‘
equestri … exercitu
’; a saying quoted by Pollington,
English Warrior
, p. 188: ‘
eorl sceal on eos boge
’; Williams,
Norman Conquest
, pp. 196–7.

42
.  Pollington,
English Warrior
, pp. 236, 242, 244;
Carmen
, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 25; John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 487; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 187, he also has the English abandoning the use of horses at this point.

43
.  Whitelock
et al.
(eds),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, p. 130; John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 576.

44
.  T. Cain. seminar paper at Institute of Historical Research, 1997, makes several interesting points about the early English use of cavalry at least in the north, as illustrated on northern carvings, though the evidence is rather of riding than fighting on horseback. I am grateful to Tom for passing me a copy of this paper more recently, entitled ‘A hoary old question reconsidered: a case for Anglo-Saxon cavalry’.

45
.  
Bayeux Tapestry
, pl. 67; Abels,
Lordship
, p. 26; one notes that ‘boys’ (
pueri
) also appear in English households.

46
.  William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 109.

47
.  William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, p. 120: ‘
impetus
’ and ‘
concursu
’ suggest charges, but is only cavalry by inference.

48
.  Wace, ed. Holden, ii, pp. 39–41, ll. 4091–156.