Like many other areas of the world, western Europe underwent significant changes in the wake of the migrations and invasions that characterized this period of world history. The collapse of Roman political and military structures left Latin Christendom pieces of a tradition to work with. But the changed social and economic context of warfare meant that the fragments of Roman tradition would be merged with many new elements and that Latin Christendom ultimately would have to reinvent itself politically and militarily. In the century extending roughly from 950 to 1050, the various elements that had developed over the preceding 600 years came together into a new sociomilitary system based on castles, knights, and urban soldiery.
The system reflected a world of underdeveloped government and insecure control of society by a somewhat crude and violent aristocracy. It fostered a political structure that connected lordship to economic development, both agricultural and mercantile, and to an unusually mutual, contractual notion of political rights, liberties, and privileges. Underdeveloped government and insecure aristocratic control extended such notions not only to towns, where merchants began to carve out a world of their own, but even to peasants, who benefited in favorable tenure terms from the competition among lords for laborers on their estates.
In short, the period 350-1050 in western Europe produced a civilization whose elites were never fully able to unify and monopolize power, prestige, and privilege—were never able, in other words, to cement a truly traditional civilization. Instead, a culture emerged that would prove unusually prone to political and social flux and conflict and, so, to innovation and change. The military development of this civilization since 1050 is one ongoing symptom of this result.
Figure 7.3 The Campaign and Battle of Hastings
Edward the Confessor, king of Anglo-Saxon England, died at Christmas 1065. Harold God- winson, greatest earl of the realm, took the throne but faced rival claims by William, duke of Normandy, and Harald Hardraada, king of Norway and a veteran of wars in Russia and the Byzantine Empire.
To launch an invasion, William first had to gain the support of his own nobles. Aggressive diplomacy obtained papal approval for the expedition. By midsummer, he was camped at the mouth of the Dives, attracting adventurers and mercenaries from all over northern France with the promise of plunder, and gathering and building a fleet. Meanwhile, Harold Godwinson had mobilized the fyrd in May along the south coast of England, responding to a raid by his rebel brother Tostig, and stationed himself with his fleet on the Isle of Wight, ready to fall on William’s force when it landed. But the mobilization proved premature. Harold kept the fleet and army on guard through the summer, rotating two shifts of the fyrd. But despite remarkably effective supply arrangements, provisions ultimately ran out, and on September 8, the fyrd dispersed and the fleet returned to London.
William’s invasion force was ready to sail in early August but did not. Whether the delay was deliberate, in expectation of Harold’s supply problems, or a result of contrary winds is a matter of much dispute. In any case, by September, it was growing dangerously late in the sailing season, and on the 12th of that month, perhaps in response to Harold’s demobilization, William attempted to invade. A squall blew his fleet to St. Valery at the mouth of the Somme, where contrary winds held him up for another two weeks. In the meantime, Harald Hardraada appeared off north England with an invasion fleet of at least 300 ships, landing near York on September 18. He defeated the northern fyrd under the earls Edwin and Morcar at Gate Fulford on 20 September, took York, and camped nearby at Stamford Bridge. Harold moved with astonishing speed on hearing of the invasion, covering the 190 miles from London in under a week. On September 25, he surprised the Danes in their camp and won a decisive victory in which Hardraada and the rebel Tostig perished.
But two days later, the wind having finally shifted, William landed at Pevensey and shortly moved to Hastings, building motte-and-bailey castles at both sites. He then began to ravage the countryside, hoping to draw Harold into a battle that was his only real chance for conquest. It was the only time in his career that William adopted a battle-seeking strategy.
Harold complied. He hurried south with his battered army, pausing only a week in London to gather more troops.
He may have hoped to repeat his success at Stamford Bridge with a sudden attack, or he may have meant to blockade William on the Hastings peninsula and let the Normans exhaust their supplies. But William, a master of reconnaissance, learned of his approach on October 13. The next morning, William seized the tactical initiative, advancing on the
Saxon army at dawn. Harold occupied a strong position at the top of a ridge, but was forced initially to fight a defensive battle (Figure 7.3).
The size of the armies cannot be determined with any accuracy, but probably neither side had more than 6000 men. Harold’s housecarls (his elite household troops) fronted a shieldwall of thegns and local fyrd. He was short of archers, and none of his troops fought as cavalry. William commanded a mixed force of heavy infantry, archers, and heavy cavalry. The mix of arms distinguished the two armies, but their levels of training, discipline, and armor were nearly identical, and the fight would be very even.
William attacked first around 9:00 am, and immediately ran into difficulties. The Bretons of his left wing retreated in confusion, and the panic spread to his whole army with rumors of William’s death. Harold may have ordered a general counterattack at this point, but if he did, for unknown reasons (the deaths of his brothers leading the advance?), it failed to materialize. William, baring his head, rallied his troops and cut down the scattered pursuit that did leave the shieldwall.
Most medieval battles would have ended by now, but this one lasted the rest of the day. Harold now had little chance to win, but he could still avoid losing. “A strange sort of battle” ensued, according to one chronicler, in which the Normans launched attacks and drew more defenders from the hill with feigned retreats, while the Saxons stood fixed like rocks. The Saxons were worn down but not broken, and had William’s last assault of the day not succeeded, his strategic position would have been dire. But he ordered high-angle fire from his archers; Harold may have been struck in the eye by an arrow from this barrage. A final attack by William’s infantry and cavalry at last broke through the shieldwall, and Harold was cut down under his dragon standard. The king’s death made the victory decisive.
The Bayeux Tapestry
Norman cavalry charging Anglo-Saxon infantry. Note the similarity of arms and armor on the two sides, and the overarm use of the lance by the Normans.
Campaign and battle proved both leaders to be fine commanders. William outgeneraled Harold slightly but mostly was much luckier. After the battle, he made a cautious approach to London, ravaging as he went. With the death of the king and his brothers, no effective resistance could be organized, and in mid-December, the main Anglo-Saxon leaders submitted to William. He was crowned on Christmas Day, 1066. William the Bastard had become William the Conqueror.
Abels, Richard. Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. A close examination of the institutional and social arrangements that supplied military manpower in Saxon England. See also his Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo- Saxon England (London: Routledge, 1998), a readable study of the great English king.
Bachrach, Bernard. Merovingian Military Organization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972. An important work by a leading military historian of early medieval Europe, who stresses (in an extreme way) the element of Roman continuity in the period; his views have not found wide acceptance. See also his Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) and Fulk Nerra, NeoRoman Consul (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), as well as other books and numerous articles. Contamine, Philipe. War in the Middle Ages, trans. M. Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Dense, but the most comprehensive single-volume introduction to medieval warfare. Halsall, Guy. Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450-900. London: Routledge, 2003. The essential work on this period. Brilliantly traces the coevolution of military force and social structure, with theoretically sophisticated attention to questions of barbarian identity and valuable use of archaeological evidence.
Hooper, Nicholas, and M. Bennett. The Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare. The Middle Ages, 768-1487. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. An extremely well-illustrated overview of medieval warfare—a touch Anglo-centric but with good maps and sound judgments. An excellent introduction.
Keen, Maurice, ed. Medieval Warfare: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. A solid edited collection.
Leyser, Karl. “The Battle at the Lech, 955: A Study in Tenth- Century Warfare.” With other useful articles in Leyser’s Medieval Germany and Its Neighbors 950-1200(London: Routledge, 1982), a scholarly analysis of war and politics under the Ottonians.
Morillo, Stephen. The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretations. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1996. A collection of primary sources and secondary articles on one of the decisive battles of the early middle ages.
Reynolds, Susan. Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. The leading revisionist view of feudalism in medieval history.
Sawyer, Peter. Kings and Vikings. Scandinavia and Europe. London, Routledge, 1982. A solid overview of the Vikings’ impact on European society.
Scragg, Donald, ed. The Battle of Maldon, ad 991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. A collection of studies that uses Maldon as a window onto tenth-century warfare.