Dan Snow's History Hit - On the Battlefield of Hastings with Marc Morris

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Marc Morris shows me around the Battlefield of Hastings.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Today, this sparkling October day, is the 900 and something anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. Let's see now, 20... 1066, that's 46 years, 954th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, fought on this day in 1066 that famous year. Now we here at history at light bring you all sorts of stories from the past some familiar others, not so much. But this one every year, see some of our biggest spikes of traffic. People out there love 1066. They love the year of conquest. Don't shoot the messenger. So this year we have that we did yesterday's podcast featuring two brilliant academics talking about the context of the invasions of 1066. Now we've got one of the best, one of the best, Mark Morris, Dr. Mark Morris.

He's a best-selling author. He's an independent scholar of the Middle Ages. He's a friend of the pod. He's a friend of mine. He's a cool guy. He and I walked around the field of Hastings a week or two ago and recorded this conversation about the fighting that took place on that field no one knows this period better than he does no one knows the sources better than he does and he's a brilliant communicator as

you'll hear now this is a very very long extended version of an interview that appears in our feature-length documentary about the invasions of 1066. We visited the north of England. We visited the south coast of England. We went all over the place. And you can watch that on History Hit TV. Because it's Hastings, we have got our ridiculous offer, which frankly drives me crazy,

but our CEO James has always loved throwing out this one at this time of year. You can get three months for just three pounds, euros or dollars in all if you use the code 1066 1066 that gets you a month for free and then the first three months after that for just one pound euro or dollar each of those months it's insane that deep that you'll be deep into 2021 but in the meantime enjoy this interview with the one and only Mark Morris. So Mark, we're staying on the battlefield. Did you get a sense down here in the valley? That's quite a steep hill, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

It's been leveled out over the centuries. I mean, the abbey was founded soon after the battle itself and the abbey was in existence until the dissolution in the early 16th century. So you've had 500 years of monastic management here making this hillside more suitable for the grazing of sheep, and they've definitely landscaped the scarpe of the hill, or rather the crest of the hill, where the abbey stands. So you can imagine it being steeper,

and certainly very difficult to ride a horse up, especially if you've got, you know, five to ten thousand Englishmen hurling projectiles at you. And so we think, well, William would have come up from the coast over here. William's coming up from his camp at Hastings, which is about six or seven miles that way, and surprising Harold, who assembles his army on the ridge, as I say, where you can see Battle Abbey is now. Harold's in quite a strong position. He's blocking the road to London. He's where he wants to be, right? Harold is in a reasonably strong position. But remember, Harold's strategy, according to all the sources, had been to surprise William at night, had been to attack William's camp at Hastings.

Harold seems to have a favourite strategy, which is kind of, ta-da! You know, he surprised the Vikings hard-draught in the north and won that battle by surprise. So he's hoping to do the same thing here with William. But whereas the Vikings were caught literally, you know, almost with their trousers down, with their male shirts off in the north, William's reconnaissance is very good. His spies report that Harold is getting near, and William, on the morning of the 14th of October, marches out to engage Harold. So it's kind of, from the sources it sounds like William surprises Harold, but also that William isn't fully prepared either. So the two sides spot each other and rush to arms.

So neither of them perhaps would have picked this precise site. It's not ideal for either of them. William, because he's rushing up the hill. Harold, because we're told it was a narrow place, so he can't deploy his whole army. So William's able to line up his forces down here. William arranges army, we're told, by the contemporary chroniclers, particularly William of Poitiers, William's own chaplain,

who wasn't on the battlefield but was well informed we're told by William of Poitiers that he arranges his army in three divisions that he has archers who are in the front division then he has foot soldiers infantry men at arms heavily armed foot soldiers and then in the third line he has his mounted men his cavalry now I think it's William of Poitiers who says that because of the rush to arms he had wanted to put the cavalry in the second division and have the infantry behind but again there's that sense in both the main contemporary written accounts, the Carmen and William of Poitiers, that there is a sudden rush to arms and both sides make the best arrangement they can come up with very very quickly. For the English that is they're fighting a fairly tried and tested way right on their feet anchored to the ground shield wall not going

anywhere. Yeah the English have had a similar strategy for fighting for a couple of centuries against the Vikings which is as you say a shield wall to lock their shields and stand in a line. Now you know because this is an academic type show there are some historians who would say well they did that sometimes in other times they rode into battle so it's not quite as perhaps clear-cut as some would have you believe but on this occasion the English King in particular Harold says we're going to stand to fight and it produces a very unusual battle that was again something said by contemporaries a very unusual battle because one side just stood still and kind of took it on the chin while the

other side charged up the hill and tried to smash through. So it's two utterly different ways of approaching battle, which makes hasting such an exciting and unusual battle to investigate. Because the fighting that started here on that Saturday morning went on all day. I mean, that was quite unusual. It goes on all day, yeah. Well, I mean, some battles went on all day, but normally they're resolved in a couple of hours because one side has superior weapons or

superior numbers and something gives fairly early but in this case it's a war of attrition if you like until they're worn out and it could have quite easily ended in a stalemate as some battles did but it does go on from roughly nine in the morning until the sources say darkness is descending so around about 5 p.m what's your gut about how many people might have been here on this battle approaching the question of numbers i'm going to go back to the sources. The sources say 150,000, 60,000. Now we know this is 11th century sources. In the 11th century we've only got chroniclers and when they use numbers like that they just mean a huge number of people. When we go to the later middle ages where we actually have administrative documents that say,

well this is how many infantry were paid, you never get armies of more than 30,000-35,000 people in the British Isles in the late Middle Ages. Edward I fields about 30,000 people at Falkirk, 1297. No King of England, however, from the better documented later Middle Ages ever gets more than 10,000 men in one go across the Channel. So for William to have had more than 10,000 men, for William to have been into five figures, he would have had to have been able to marshal bigger armies than say Edward III at the height of the Hundred Years' War, which he's clearly not powerful enough to do. So I reckon, based on that analogy with later, better documented centuries, 5,000 to 10, 10 000 men and because it's equally matched roughly the same on the english side but that's i think as far as we can go let's talk about the

french and the normans first is they're all professional soldiers not much in the way of a kind of peasant militia knocking about not much in the way of a peasant militia i mean so you bring across people who are well armed and i think that that's Harold's problem. It's not that he relies on a peasant militia, I think that's kind of an outdated 19th century idea, but the sense that Harold has well-trained professional men armed his household and their servants, you know, sort of the aristocracy, who turn out for him his house cards. And the difficulty for Harold is he's just fought a battle in the north and lost a lot of men he sent them all home twice by this point so for Harold is the sense of he could have probably found better equipped men but he would have had to wait and as I say Harold's strategy

is favourite strategy seems to be surprise and the contemporary sources say he set out before his whole army was drawn up. And the consensus among contemporaries seems to be, had he waited longer, he could have assembled a bigger and better equipped army. So there are quite different styles of fighting on this battlefield. You've got the Normans on horseback, with the different technologies, weapons and things. Not much. I mean, when you look at the bio-tapestry, which is our principal visual source, our only visual source, you can see that the kit is pretty much the same. So they both have the same kind of conical helmets with flat fixed nasals over the nose, they're both wearing male shirts. There are tiny differences depending on whether you're on a horseback or whether you're

on foot, whether you have like a male skirt or male trousers if you like, but broadly the same. One difference which you can see in the sort of the Viking influence on England in the previous 100, 200 years is some of Harold's doubtiest warriors are wielding one-bladed or two-bladed axes, so they have a slightly more Scandinavian vibe going on. The other thing that seems to be very crucial for the battle, which we must talk about, is archery, because the sources make constant reference to the number of Norman archers.

To be fair, they are Norman sources, which are the more verbose ones. But they talk about William having archers and they talk about the lethal volleys, the sort of shower of missiles being projected towards the English. They don't mention the English archers at all. None of the sources refer to English archers, with the sole exception of the biotapestry that has one guy on the English side, one little guy with a bow and arrow. Later sources, early 12th century ones, actually denigrate the English and say they were so stupid they didn't even know about arrows, which is of course nonsense. You

know, people on cave paintings have bows and arrows hunting bison, so clearly the English had archery but, and it's an argument from silence but it's a reasonable one, it seems that Harold didn't have archers in any great numbers and this was undoubtedly to his disadvantage. Famously it looks like some of the English do occasionally run down thinking those Normans rather than withdrawing are actually retreating. Yeah you bring us on to the crucial point of the battle because the crucial point that all the sources agree on so that the detailed sources are the Carmen, William of Poitiers and the Bayeux Tapestry they all agree on the fact that at some point the Normans started to run away. They disagree as to whether it was feigned or whether it was real. So real or ruse,

you know, feigned or genuine. The Normans start to run away and the English follow them down the hill, as you say, and then the Normans wheel round and turn it to their advantage. Now, it's impossible to unpick which source is right there. I think the most credible one is perhaps the Normans tried to feign it. The Carmen says a flight that was started off as a ruse, as a trick, then became a real one as it went wrong. But they managed to get the line back together. It's the Norman line that starts to collapse in the first instance. There's lots of chronicle accounts.

We've got famously William himself on the tapestry and in the written sources riding along the battle line, lifting up his helmet, because this is pre-heraldry, they can't identify who the king is, lifting up his helmet to show his face, exposing himself to that personal risk, and shouting at his troops, look at me, I'm still alive and with God's help we'll win, come on, pull yourself together, reform the line. You know that sort of bit in Lord of the Rings, reform the line, reform the line.

The Normans pull that off and they manage to sort of encircle the groups of Anglo-Saxons who have come down from their ideal position on the top of the hill and pick them off. And it's that breaking of the shield wall that does for Harold and the Anglo-Saxons and the English because once there are gaps in the shield wall, then the Norman cavalry can break through and pick people off individually and encircle them. So the integrity of the shield wall is all. Once it's compromised, it's game over. So in the 19th century, a lot of comparison, if you like, stalemate, endless French attacks all day.

It's a little bit like the Battle of Waterloo. Well, what's interesting about it, it's interesting you mentioned the Battle of Waterloo because I'm a medievalist, not a modernist like yourself. And the only thing I know about the Battle of Waterloo is historians, contemporary historians at the time, were so keen to know what happened at the Battle of Waterloo, they had people who participated in the battle write down very detailed events about who they were,

who they were with and where they were at what precise time, and they were all completely contradictory. Which just goes to show you how difficult it is to try and recover the action of a battle that's nearly a millennium ago with these accounts that we've got by people who weren't even there, you know? So we can only describe this battle with very, the broadest of brushstrokes, you know? It was a war of attrition. At some point late afternoon, something went terribly wrong for the Normans at first,

that they turned to their advantage, and then it was, the shoe was on the other foot and the English line was compromised. Okay, Mark, we have climbed to the top of that hill. Is this where the battle reached the climax? Well, yeah. The turning point, the thing that decides the battle, and the sources agree, as you'd expect, is the death of King Harold, the elimination of one of the two contenders for the throne.

And this is the spot where it almost certainly happened. This is the place where, this is the whole abbey site, but we are stood at the east end of the Abbey church, which contemporary sources tell us was erected on the spot where Harold was slain. How do you think he was slain? Well, of course, famously you see Harold on the Bayeux Tapestry. The famous thing you see on all the tea towels and the key rings and the bookmarks is Harold with an arrow lodged in his eye socket. And so everyone knows that from childhood.

The problem is, there's lots of problems with the biochapistry. The main problem with the biochapistry is it's an artistic source done years after the event by someone who wasn't there. And how much trust can we place in it? They'll also say, is the figure with the arrow in the eye, is it actually an arrow or has it been improved by 19th century French restorers? Was that figure originally holding a spear? It might have been. The main difficulty for me is even if you say okay let's assume the guy with the arrow in the eye,

one it is an arrow and two yes it is Harold, the main problem for me is that as I say it's an artistic source and it borrows from other artistic sources. So the tapestry artist was constantly going through the illustrated manuscripts in Canterbury where it was made saying, oh that's a nice picture of the Last Supper, that can be the Normans having their pre-battle feast. So he's copying all the time. And it seems in the case of The Arrow in the Eye that he's copying the story of King Zedekiah a king who rebelled against his overlord Nebuchadnezzar and he was punished by having his sons murdered in front of him,

which you see in the margin of the tapestry, and by having his eyes put out. So this is a king who was blinded, and that scene on the tapestry is very, very similar to illustrated manuscripts of roughly the same time showing the death of King Zedekiah. So it could be that the tapestry, which is our only contemporary source for the arrow in the eye, is merely just copying a book he had to hand of another consummatious vassal rebelling against his rightful overlord, which is of course how the Normans saw this struggle. So there's very little to go on with the arrow in the eye story. Later chroniclers of course will mention it, but they're

probably back referring to the tapestry. So you it might have been the norman hit squad that goes in sees his banner hacks their way into the shield wall you're referring of course to the account in the carmen which is a poem with all the problems that that entails but it is very closely contemporary we think that the carmen was created before the spring of 1068 so within 18 months of the battle and the carmen said nothing about getting an arrow in the eye, the Carmen suggests he was done in by a dedicated Norman death squad, including William himself. Now all of these sources, this is 950 years ago, none of these people were present on the battlefield, you'd take them with a big, big dollop of salt, but remember William needs Harold

to be dead, you know, this isn't a war that can be solved by negotiation, this is a succession dispute. He doesn't just need Harold defeated, he needs him eliminated. And so, like later battles, like, for example, the Battle of Evesham in 1265, when Edward I decides Montfort must die, we're in a very similar situation. If Harold had sloped off into the darkness, William has to fight battle after battle after battle. So it perfect sense I think for him to go for broke as the sun is starting to set that day and try and kill Harold and Harold very obligingly dies on that spot. Why did Gap start to appear in that shield wall just the attritional effect of all day fighting? Well no it's not the attrition in the case of the shield wall the sources are all in accordance the shield wall breaks because the Normans start to run away whether because they're feigning it or because they were really frightened we don't know we can't decide but there's a point

in the battle like very much like another 66 date like 1966 when the English think it's all over you know they run down onto the pitch you know celebrating they think the battle has gone from battle to rout they think they're going to chase the Normans into the sea and then the Normans surprise them by wheeling round reforming their line and killing them, killing the English. Once the shield wall has holes in it then really that was the English's primary advantage, you know that was the fact that that was what was keeping them alive, the fact that their shields were all locked together. As soon as they've got holes in it then the Norman cavalry have the advantage of being able to ride quickly among them, pick them off in small groups.

Even then, though, it could have been a stalemate, it could have been a draw, had Harold decided, like William Wallace did, for example, at the Battle of Falkirk. It's a defeat for the Scots, but Wallace escapes on horseback. He can ride off to fight another day. That's the situation William is in. If he loses, they will be killed and driven into the sea. And Harold is still king. So from William's point of view, Harold has to die. They can't let him disappear and raise another army. Why didn't he run when he had the chance?

Well, it's a good question. I mean, partly I think it was probably just too late. It was too late in the day and he was being surrounded, you know. I think there would have been no ignominy in him fleeing at that point. I mean, lots of famous warriors do the same. So I think, I mean, possibly he was wounded. Possibly he got an arrow in the eye or in the chest. We don't know. But the fact that is not up for debate is the fact that he died here on this battlefield

and the thing that is almost certain is this is the very spot. On van Ilken Stjorde, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review.

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