STAMFORD BRIDGE - APOLOGIES AND PART FIVE
This week’s Substack (18 June) was inadvertently published as a repeat of Part Four - my fault. Herewith what you should have had.
On the evening of 27 September the weather in the Channel abated and there was a brisk south easterly breeze. William of Normandy’s troops, their stores already aboard, embarked and after an overnight crossing landed completely unopposed at Pevensey. They began to disembark with their horses and prefabricated forts and to move along the coast to Hastings, with the fleet shadowing them offshore. Once at Hastings they erected one of the forts. In any amphibious operation, whether in 1066 or 1944, troops are most vulnerable when landing. It is then that a determined defender can catch them without all their equipment and inevitably not yet fully organised and deployed. Had Harold ignored what was happening in the north, knowing that whatever local victories the Norwegians might achieve the threat to Norway from Denmark could only increase with Harald Hardrada’s absence, and that as the invading army moved south they would meet stiffer and stiffer resistance, the history of England might have been very different. By staying in the south King Harold, being only a day’s ride from London, or two days’ march for foot soldiers, to any of the likely landing areas, would have had news from fishermen or from his own fleet of the Norman sailing and could have met them on the beach and probably defeated them. William’s allies would almost certainly have deserted him and his ambitions towards the English throne would be lost for ever. That Harold did not stay south was because he thought the chances of an invasion were much reduced as the season wore on, and he decided that going north was worth the risk.
As soon as Harold heard the news of William’s landing he gathered his army and headed south, probably on 2 October. We do not know what casualties the English had suffered at Stamford Bridge, but they would have been substantial and speed was of the essence. It is probable that only the housecarls, all mounted, accompanied Harold as he reached London on 6 October, a distance of 200 miles covered in four days. In London Harold began to recruit more troops, not an easy task as the militias had been stood-to, stood down and then stood-to again for the march to Stamford, and it is probable that Harold had to engage in some hard bargaining. He also ordered the English fleet to move from London down the coast to take station off Hastings. On 11 October he left London with such troops as he had and marched towards the Norman encampment, now at Hastings, picking up more men as he went along. The English army covered the 60 miles from London in two days, which was very good going, and arrived short of Hastings on the evening of 13 October. The fighting strength was probably around 5,000 men.
Meanwhile William’s army had established a firm beachhead at Hastings, with the fleet beached or anchored but available to ferry stores or reinforcements from Normandy, and presumably to evacuate the army if things did not go as planned. Much discussion has arisen as to why, having landed against no opposition, William did not head for Winchester, where the English treasury was, or London, the administrative capital. He was on shore for over two weeks before King Harold’s army got anywhere near him and he could easily have taken one, or possibly both, towns. While it is pure supposition, it may be that William wanted a quick victory, and the only way to achieve that would be by inflicting a decisive defeat on the English king. The alternative would be a long drawn out campaign when as he moved deeper inland he would be farther and farther away from his lines of communication back to Normandy. If he could entice Harold into battle, he could complete the conquest with one blow. By not occupying the high ground at Senlac but allowing Harold to take up position there, William may have calculated that Harold would think the temptation to be on the better ground too good to ignore.
On the morning of 14 October 1066 the English army took post along the ridge of Senlac (now Battle) about seven miles north of the Norman position at Hastings. They were in the classic Anglo-Saxon formation, a shield wall with the housecarls as the stiffening of the militia, many of whom would have seen action against Tostig’s raids the previous summer, but a fair few would have had little or possibly no, experience of battle. With the English fleet on its way and the army along the ridge it must have seemed that the English had trapped the Normans. The Norman scouts saw where the English were deploying and William led his army north. The battle started around mid-morning, with repeated Norman attempts to break the shield wall both with infantry and cavalry. Disciplined infantry were quite safe against cavalry as long as they stood and presented a hedge of spears – no horse will gallop straight at something it cannot jump over, and so the Normans resorted to a ruse. After one uphill charge, probably at a hack canter or even a trot rather than a gallop, the horsemen turned tail and pretended to retreat. Now the inexperience of much of the militia told, because men broke ranks to chase the seemingly fleeing Normans down the hill. At the right moment, when the English pursuers were well down the hill, on a given signal the cavalrymen pulled their horses up, turned on their haunches and charged the English. This was a very difficult manoeuvre, for once soldiers are running or riding to the rear it is very difficult to turn them round again, and one distinguished Anglo-Saxon scholar has suggested that in the time that William was at Hastings before the battle this ruse could have been rehearsed time and again until the men were able to execute it almost automatically. It was the critical stage of the battle, for the shield wall was now broken. Had the English had enough archers to provide cover for their men to retreat back to the shield wall all might have been well, for horses were very vulnerable to arrows, but Harold had very few archers and the Normans had very many.
The battle now descended into a melee with knots of English soldiers around their commanders trying to beat off the Norman cavalry, now supported by infantry and archers, and when King Harold was killed, possibly by an arrow but the evidence, from the Bayeux tapestry, is unclear, the result was not in doubt. Both Harold’s brothers, Leofwine and Gyrth were killed, as were many of his thegns and housecarls. This battle was decisive: it was the end of Anglo-Saxon England and although there still remained some sporadic resistance, with the Witan electing the fifteen year-old Edgar, grandson of Edmund Ironside, as king a few days later, William of Normandy was crowned as king of England on Christmas Day 1066.
Everyone remembers Hastings 1066 as the catalyst for the greatest change in English society since the Romans, but few remember Stamford Bridge. It was the decision to go to Stamford that made Hastings possible. Harold Godwinson had a choice: hope that the invasion threat had gone for the year and go north, or let the north look after itself and stay in the south to meet an invasion. Harold made the wrong choice, and everything changed. Stamford Bridge was the tipping point of our history.