Dan Snow's History Hit - 1066: Year of Invasions

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Emily Ward and Pragya Vohra talk about the history of the Viking invasion of 1066.

Welcome everybody to Dan Snow's History. I've got a big treat for you today. This week, in fact today in 1066, the armies of Duke William of Normandy and Harold, King of England, were approaching each other on the south coast. Tomorrow, on the 14th of October 1066, they would meet in a gigantic clash at Hastings, a battle that resonates to the present. Here at History Hit, we are marking the anniversary of Hastings. Today we've got the background, the context. We've got Dr Emily Ward, we've got Dr Pragya Vora, two historians specialising in 11th century England and Western Europe. They're going to tell us all about the build-up to the battle, how three warlords in three very different parts of Europe eyed up the crown of England.

And then tomorrow, very excited to say, Dr Mark Morris, the legendary Mark Morris is back. He and I walked the field of Hastings a few weeks ago and you can listen to his commentary about the Battle of Hastings from the field of Hastings on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, on this podcast. How cool is that? That's cool. You can watch all of these historians and many others besides in our new documentary. It's on historyhit.tv. It's one of our original commissions, a feature-length documentary about the Battle of Hastings. I think it's one of the best documentaries we've produced thus far. It's available at historyhit.tv and only at historyhit.tv. If you use the code 10661066, you get the crazy Hastings special introductory offer. Three months for just three pounds, dollars or euros in all. So head over to historyhit.tv

like you're Harold Hardrada with a long boat full of voracious warriors and use that code. In the meantime, everyone here is Dr. Emily Ward and Dr. Pragya Vora. Enjoy. Let's meet the men who would be King of England in 1066. Old Edward the Confessor is on his deathbed. Here is Dr Emily Ward introducing Harold Godwinson. Harold Godwinson is probably most famous for the fact that he succeeded to the throne of Edward the Confessor and went on to die at the Battle of Hastings. But he's had a long, powerful history in English politics. When he's born, sort of early 1020s, he's a member of a very powerful

Anglo-Danish family. So his mother is Gita. She's a member of the Danish nobility. Her family come from Denmark. She's powerful in her own right as well. She has lands in Exeter. She later plays a very important role in the siege of Exeter after the conquest. Harold's father is Earl Godwin, very powerful Earl of Wessex, and he has lands all across the south of England. He's one of Edward the Confessor's key men, and he's been important under Cnut as well, come to his career under Cnut, played a key role in the succession struggles between 1035 and 1042. And so Harold has been raised familiar with power, basically. He's himself very wealthy, very powerful in terms of land and resources wealth.

He's a wealthy patron of churches, cultural patronage as well. And he becomes first of all, the Earl of Eastern part of England. And then when his father dies in 1053, he becomes Earl of Wessex after his father. And he's got a prominent place at court. He's got a kind of king connection with the king. So Edward the Confessor is his brother-in-law. His sister Edith marries Edward. And his siblings are all powerful across different parts of England. So we have Earl Tostey, his younger brother, who's powerful up in Northumbria, the north part of the kingdom.

And others of his siblings also hold power elsewhere. So Leofween, for example, holds some of the southern lands too. So he's coming from a very powerful family. He's powerful in his own right. He's a skilled diplomat, he's a strong military commander, he's got experience of sort of conflict with the Welsh in the borderlands in particular. So he's a powerful, strong, confident man with a key position in English politics at the time of the conquest. Now let's hear from Dr Pragya Vora on the politics of succession. Harold wasn't the only English claimant. There was also Edgar the Etheling, a young boy,

but he was descended from the royal line of Wessex. He had Alfred's blood in his veins. Harold really gets quite a lot of his power from his father, from Godwin. Harold is the second son of Godwin, and it's part of Godwin's sort of expansion of his power, especially after Edward the Confessor is returned to England after the death of Cnut's sons and installed on the English throne. And Godwin goes about using his connection with Edward the Confessor

to get his son's quite significant earldoms, and that's where Harold sort of begins to get his power from. Edward the Confessor knows that there is going to be a succession crisis once he dies, simply because he does not have an heir of his own. So he's trying to work out who could potentially succeed him without necessarily causing massive upheaval, because that's what succession crises generally tend to do. They generally tend to cause upheaval. From Harold Godwinson's point of view, Edgar Etheling would actually have been quite a good choice because a young child is easy to

control and he's already an important, wealthy, powerful man. So he could have been the kingmaker in the way that his father was for Edward the Confessor, but we don't get that. What we get is a direct succession for Harold himself. When Edward finally died on the 5th of January 1066, Harold moved fast as first Emily, then Pragya, explain. He doesn't have the strongest claim and it's not your traditional typical claim to the throne. He's brother-in-law to the king, to Edward Confessor, but that's a marital link, that's not a dynastic blood right. His own claim comes through deathbed designation. On Edward's deathbed he's apparently supposed to have made Harold his successor. We have an account of this in a source called the Vita Eduardi Regis, The Life of King Edward the Confessor. This is written

by a Flemish monk during the period of the conquest, so between about 1065 to 67, so really in the middle of the action as things are going on. And this gives a lovely account of the deathbed, but a very conflicting, ambiguous, dubious account of the deathbed. So we have this scene where Edward is lying on his deathbed and he entrusts his wife Edith, who is there at his side, to her brother Harold, and he puts into Harold's protection both Edith, his wife, and the kingdom. But the terminology that's used there and the way in which this source presents it, it's very dubious. He's described as the protector of England, but we don't quite know whether that might entail some form of protection of the boy Edgar Etheling, who's at his side. And it's certain that that deathbed designation, the Norman sources,

although they recognise the deathbed designation, they claim that that was a form of perjury because it broke an apparent oath that Harold was supposed to have made to William beforehand. So his speed in getting crowned so quickly was almost certainly to try and deflect any claim that Edgar Ederling still had to the throne. So Harold himself has taken advantage of a situation, has acted very quickly, but he couldn't do it alone. He's powerful but he's not by himself able to claim the throne. He has to have somebody to crown him, so we rely on Archbishop the Eldred here, and there doesn't seem to have been any dispute that Archbishop the Eldred would crown him. That coronation goes without a hitch, and we know that the Wittam, so that's the representative body of nobles, were almost certainly on Harold's side as well.

So Harold seems to have acted quickly, perhaps for necessity, possibly even worrying about his own brother Tosty's claim, because if Harold himself is about to claim the throne his younger brother could also have seen himself quite easily as a contender and their fraternal rivalry almost certainly would have kind of added and exacerbated that but he himself acted on a situation and whether it was usurpation or breaking of an oath to Edgar is uncertain to tell but the way he acted doesn't seem to have met too much hostility from the people there at the time. There's a few things that make a monarch in this time period, and one of them is the sort of selection of the king by the witan. The witan is the council of wise men, so the king's council effectively,

and any successor would have to have their approval. Next up, let's meet Duke William of Normandy. Here are two experts again. The first decade of William's rule as Duke is really quite turbulent. He's a young boy, seven or eight. His guardians and tutors are very much trying to rule on his behalf, but there's conflict with family members, there's conflict with other members of the nobility, and it's only really from the late 1040s into the early 1050s that there's this process of consolidation in Normandy. But by 1066, William is a strong military commander. He's been on several different campaigns, so campaigns in Brittany, conquest of Maine. So he's already familiar with the way in

which you might exploit a succession or a disputed succession in order to claim another territory in addition to the one that you're already ruling. By the 1060s, Normandy is a powerful principality. It's very much sort of on the European stage alongside other principalities like Flanders. And William has done this process of building new monastic foundations, helping local towns to grow. So really from consolidation to growth and expansion into the 1060s. Normandy itself is a duchy created in the north of France along the coast. It was created

back in 911 when Normandy sort of carved out and granted to Rollo of Rolf who is a Viking chief. Charles the Bald, the emperor at the time, makes that deal basically in the hope that he can stem the Viking raids that are taking place at the time but also use Viking allies against the other Vikings who are showing up. So that's where Normandy comes from and from that point of establishment Normandy goes from strength to strength really in terms of both its wealth as well as its political power. William's claim in European eyes comes to be one of conquest and that is a recognisable form of claiming a throne. It's still highly unusual in certain terms and it's definitely viewed with suspicion by European sources because of the deposition of an anointed king but that claim through conquest is

a recognisable one. So too is this idea of a blood claim although as we say that's quite tenuous but the unusual claims are this idea of deathbed designation that's quite an unusual way of handing over your kingdom. So too is this idea of approaching somebody outside of your dynastic line to inherit when you don't have children yourself and when there already is someone of your dynastic line, Edgar Etheling, in the kingdom. So in certain respects William definitely does have a stronger claim but there are dubious natures of both of their claims and in many of the European eyes by other chroniclers, there's people writing in Flanders, people writing in Germany after the conquest,

the thing that sticks with them and the thing that they remember is the violence of the conquest and the fact that this was acquisition by force. Let's skim the iron grey waves of the North Sea, which, by the way, I recently learned the Danes call the Western Sea. Anyway, here are both historians talking about the Danish claim to the throne. The Anglo-Scandinavian world can really be traced to the Viking raids of the late 8th, early 9th century. We have Scandinavians, people from Scandinavia, coming over to England. England is at the time a wealthy place.

It has particularly wealthy monasteries, which can be attacked quite easily and looted. So it's an attractive target, as it were, for those initial raids. But subsequent to those raids, we start seeing settlement, extensive settlement, migration into England. Really from 980 onwards, there's a renewal of these Viking attacks under King Æthelred. And it's after that that we get this Danish line of kings, or Anglo-D Danish or Anglo-Danish. So the first claim to the throne by a Danish warrior, Svein, comes in 1013. So it's worth bearing in mind there that England is already a land of conquest.

There have been two Danish conquests, Svein's in 1013, which wasn't hugely successful in terms of putting him on the throne, because whilst he was recognised as king, he wasn't crowned, and he unfortunately died only a few months later. So it really only lasts between about summer 1013 and his fine's death in February 1014. King Æthelred is then invited back at that point, but then it's a year and a half later when Svein's son Cnut challenges on Æthelred's dead for the throne, and that's against Edmund Ironside, who is related into Edgar Ætheling's line. It means that England is a land of conquest already, but it also means that England has already got this Scandinavian context.

There are Anglo-Danish families like the Godwins who have managed to achieve prominence within Anglo-Saxon political society and culture. This is a very important part of the English aristocracy at this point, the Anglo-Danish factions, and they're very interconnected and intermarried at this point as well. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed.

We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Harold Hardrada is one of the most remarkable figures of early medieval European history.

So Harold Hardrada is the son of a Norwegian king. He flees Norway himself when he's about 15 years old and then he has this illustrious military career. We know for a fact that he was in Kiev and ultimately he marries Elizabeth, the daughter of the ruler of Kievan Rus. He's also in Constantinople and there's a lot of legends and myths about his time there in the Varangian Guard. He returns to Norway to vie for the Norwegian throne in 1046. At the time the king on the Norwegian throne is Magnus the Good who is his nephew, son of his half-brother and Magnus chooses instead of all-out confrontation, chooses instead to share rulership

with Harald Hardrada. The next year Magnus is dead. Harald becomes sole ruler of Norway. Towards the early 1060s, round about 1063, he comes to a settlement with the Danish king as well. So he himself is the ruler of Norway and he has got some sort of claim into the Danish throne but has come to an arrangement with the king there and they're kind of respecting each other's claims and leaving each other alone.

So he's got quite a settled realm at that point, whereas usually there's a lot of infighting between some of the Scandinavian rulers. While Hardrada weighed his options, William built his case for invasion. William definitely has to convince the Norman aristocracy to invest in his invasion. And there are some members of the aristocracy who are perhaps a little less than enthusiastic about the campaign. It would take a lot of men, it's going to take a lot of organisation. And it's a military campaign men, it's going to take a lot of organisation, and it's a military campaign that's always going to involve loss of life and impact on the way in which the duchy is governed and organised. So the aristocracy aren't necessarily 100% invested right from day one.

What William does by getting the papal standard is he boosts morale, he makes his men far more enthusiastic about this. It gives them the backing of basically a just war. A source after the conquest called the Penitential Ordinance describes the war as a publicum bellum, a public war, and that's used in terms of justifying William's claim. It's seen as a war against a tyrant, against a traitor, against an oathbreaker, a perjurer. So it really reinforces the impression that William wants to present of his own claim to the throne, and it likely boosts morale of his men as well. to present off his own claim to the throne,

and it likely boosts morale of his men as well. William is going to invade the realm of somebody who has been anointed in God's eyes as a ruler of the English people. And regardless of the legality of Harold's claim, that is an important thing to remember. In fact, there's some suggestion after the conquest, so a letter we have to Pope Gregory VII, a later pope, that definitely reflects on the fact that there was criticism of the pope sanctioning such violence and bloodshed. And

it's very clear there that William needed that papal support and that papal approval. Harold didn't just have to worry about these two foreign warlords. He had trouble close to home. In fact, he had trouble within the bosom of his own family. Tostig was the former Earl of Northumbria. He was Harold's younger brother, but he'd been exiled with Harold's blessing after he'd alienated the Northern Lords. Tostig's been exiled in 1065. He's gone to the Flemish court. His wife is Judith, related into the Counts of Flanders. And he's probably got some reinforcements there.

He then starts to raid on the south coast places like the Isle of Wight and Fannet. Harold is clearly concerned about the south coast at this point, but probably more likely for William's campaign. He moves his army down to the south, but that's probably after Tosti has raided. Tosti was probably a nuisance. He was probably an expected nuisance. But there was no awareness that Tosti might turn to Harold Hadrada. So this is the surprise that Tosti might turn to Harald Hadrada. So this is the surprise that Tostig goes off to unite with the Norwegian king. However, having said that, Harald was aware that Tostig presented a serious challenge, and he's probably more concerned about

the challenge that Tostig might have presented up in the north, because that's where Tostig was the Earl of Northumbria, and his exile came as a result of a rebellion against Tostig's rule of the Northumbrian earldom. And it's very clear that Tostig saw that he had been unrightfully removed from that and the earldom had been handed over to Earl Morka instead. So probably the kind of the vision of a Northumbrian threat was still there in the back of Harold's mind as well. It seems more to have been an alliance of convenience. Toste had spent some time in the north, in York especially. He was the Earl of Northumbria for a while and in fact that's really at the heart of what drives his rebellion in the first place

is because the people of Northumbria are incredibly upset with him. They don't like him. He's a southerner. And, you know, he's the first southern earl of Northumbria in a very long time. And he treats them quite badly, levying quite harsh taxes. So he's not popular in the north. However, strategically, he would have had knowledge that would have been quite useful to Harald Hardrada. Tostig and Hardrada joined forces and sailed west.

Harold Hardrada brings 300 ships and picks up extra men in Orkney and in the Shetland Islands. So this is a real sort of North Sea collaboration. And Tostig is clearly recognised by Harold Hardrada as a useful man to have on side. And there's some suggestion that perhaps had they been successful, Harold Hardrada would have ruled the kingdom or would have gone back to Norway,

but leaving Tosti as Earl in Northumbria again under a Norwegian king. Here's Pragya on Hardrada's invasion. We don't have very much by way of sources that detail Hardrada's invasion. What we do have is accounts in, for instance, the King's Sagas collected in Heimskringla, which is a 14th century Icelandic source. What we're told is that Harald Hardrada sails from Norway, he joins up with forces from Orkney, picks up his allies basically from there and travels down the north coast of England, occasionally raiding in various places. The biggest impact really is on Scarborough,

so we've got raids all the way down the northern coast around sort of Cleveland, the Tees Valley, and then the big one is Scarborough, which he lays to waste. And that's a phrase that the Chronicles really like to use. And it's the fate of Scarborough, apparently, that then makes the rest of Northumbria capitulate to Hardrada and Tostig's forces. And then they meet the armies of the earls, Edwin and Morcar, at Fulford. It's a village just outside York. The earls are comprehensively defeated. The city of York itself capitulates without hostilities.

And there is some sense from the sources that this was a deal struck to avoid any damage, any looting, any pillaging within the city of York and that is quite understandable in many ways because this is a very wealthy city, it's a trade hub, it's an ecclesiastical centre so it would be seeking to avoid damage that can come in with an invading army. So York's capitulation is quite understandable. And then we're told that Tostig and Hardrada return. They're attempting to return to York to finally move into the city when Harold Godwinson meets them at Stamford Bridge. With England's second city at his mercy, Hardrada was confident. Overconfident.

So I think the repercussions are probably pretty huge at that point. You've quite quickly, within a few days of landing in Yorkshire, had the capitulation of one of the main cities up in the north. Howard Hardrada can probably be pretty confident at that point that he would be able to secure Northumbria and the rest of the earldom. So he's probably riding on the back of the triumphs of that. Tosti himself himself perhaps envisioning this reinstatement as the earl where he believes he should be and perhaps even looking forward to

a place alongside a future king, Harald Hadrada of England. Their confidence is betrayed by the fact that they don't know that Harald is coming to meet them. So they've had the capitulation of York on the 24th of September and the promise from the Yorkshire thanes that they will bring hostages. So this is a way of securing the land, this is a way of securing Northumbria for Harold Hadrada and Tostig and they've promised to bring hostages from across the county down to Stamford Bridge. So that's where Harold Hadrada and Tostig are supposed to be meeting their hostages and that's where this then becomes on the 25th of September quite quickly a terrible defeat for the two of them and both of them lose their lives in that fighting. The Battle of Stamford Bridge was a brutal if slightly one-sided affair. Harold's

English army caught the Vikings by surprise and without their full force or much of their armour they were destroyed. Hardrada was felled with an arrow to the throat after going on a bloody rampage. Rada was felled with an arrow to the throat after going on a bloody rampage. Tostig was also killed. It was a decisive victory. But a day or two later, Harold heard the shocking news that England had been invaded again, this time in the south. Here's Emily on William's invasion force. All we know really for definite about Harold's army at this point is that it's large. So the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one of the versions of that, tells us it's probably

the biggest army they have ever seen. William has had months to prepare for this invasion and there's a lot of preparation that needs to go in. So one of the problems that he faces is he's creating quite an ad hoc group of forces. So he's got men under his command from all parts of northern France and even further afield. We know there are men from Bologna, from Maine, from Normandy, from Flanders. His wife definitely with her connections into Flanders almost certainly gets some Flemish mercenaries to come and join them. There's also troops from Lotharinge so even further afield towards Germany. He's got to get supplies, horses, food. This is a large campaign. You need a lot of supplies for this.

And one of the problems he's consistently facing is obviously the coherence of his forces, but he's also facing trying to find a tactical moment to cross over the channel. We think he was delayed for about six weeks by bad weather. Again, the Norman sources are the sources that really overemphasise this idea of bad weather, bad winds. But we can take that semi-seriously because we know that some of William's troops were actually killed en route to moving up the coast in Normandy itself so even before having left England he had faced a problematic naval voyage travelling from Dievesermeer up the coast to Pontier and to St Valery. They cross over the channel overnight possibly 27th or 28th of

September we're not sure which of those nights. And once they've arrived, they arrive likely at Pevensey in Sussex and almost immediately move parts of the army up to Hastings. There's the construction of a motte, potentially, that's depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. So construction of a motte at Hastings. And Hastings itself has this old Iron Age fortress as well, which provides further defence. So setting up defence, the next thing that they do is they start to ravage the countryside. That's quite a classic military political tactic at the time, both to diminish the morale of the men in the local area and of the person that you're coming to fight, but also for necessity you need food if you haven't brought large amounts of supplies over with you, that's another way of gathering food and resources. Again the Bayeux Tapestry has this image

of houses being set alight and women and children fleeing. And one of the other sources for the conquest of the Carmen tells us that perhaps William was also taking captives at that point to young women and children. King Harold tried to pull the same trick twice. Having made a lightning march north to take on Hardrada outside York, he now galloped south to take on William

against the advice of some of his most trusted companions. The scene was set for a battle that would decide the fate of England. Listen to history hit tomorrow for the brilliant Mark Morris on the field of Hastings, talking to me about how the battle played out. See you then. iTunes wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps basically boost up the chart, which is good. And then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favour. Thanks.