Doomed to Fail - Ep 39: "I'm Alive!": William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

This week starts with Taylor taking us through the craziest year in English history - 1066. It started with King Edward the Confessor yelling ‘It was meeeeee’ - just kidding - he died (and probably confessed to a Priest right before). Anyway! Now lots of people think they are the heir to the throne and they start to fight for it from all shores of the British Isles. There are Vikings, there are Normans, there’s Haley’s Comet! It’s wild, and by Christmas, a new King will be crowned starting a whole new era. Photos via the Creative Commons & MidjourneyInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] Sources:Battle of Hastings | History HitThe British History Podcast - episode 391 - https://www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com/the-main-show/ The entire Bayeux Tapestry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry#/media/File:Tapisserie_de_Bayeux_31109.jpg Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for a moment. We are formally officially recording. Taylor, it's Sunday. How's your weekend, Ben? Great. We got to spend the day in Big Bear yesterday, which was super, super fun.

We went to the Big Bear Zoo. We went to the lake. The kids went swimming in the lake. They loved it. Yeah, it was super fun. I saw the, I don't even know if it was Instagram or Facebook or what it was, but I saw the pictures and it did look really, really fun. Is that like Arrowhead or is that a different lake? That's a different lake.

Okay. I confuse it. Big Bear Lake. Yeah. I don't know what Big Arrowhead is. But it's only like an hour and 20 minutes from here, and it's just like a totally different environment. It was like kind of cool weather-wise and there's pine trees. Yeah, it was fun.

Yeah, it's good to be out of nature. I went to a concert on Friday and it just reminded me of how old I am. Like I was there and my hair line is about to touch the back of my neck and my beard is white and every there was just like so young and just like jumping up and down. I was like, does your back hurt when you do that? What concert did you go to? What was it? It's called Slender Bodies.

two guys who I think are siblings and it was very very fun you should watch some of their music videos because I mean I'm not trying to shame anyone but one of the guys is like not great looking and one of the other guys is like a very good looking dude and watching them perform live I was like oh so you're literally here because like your mom told you you have to let the good looking one play with you because all the talent is in the one that's not that good looking the guy can sing like a Incredible. Came up with lyrics. All of this is his, the beats, everything he's sitting in the brother is just sitting there, like just like trying to look hot and like doing like the, you know, smooch kiss lips. I don't know. I guess I have, we've talked about this. I have white man with a beard face blindness. They look the same to me.

They're just two white guys with a beard. Look exactly the same. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So the images that I'm finding, I get it. Yes. the guy with the glasses was like he looks very different in person like he was probably about a hundred pounds heavier than he shows here with like a really gritty looking beer like he's like he's clearly been on the road and enjoying himself you know good for him yeah good for him so anyways went to that realized that i'm too old and i should just i mean it's also like We were in Austin like 12 years ago, maybe. And so a long time ago.

And we were at a bar and my sister and I were hanging out. And then like Juan went to get us drinks. And he was waiting behind the bar or behind someone at the bar. And the girl in front of him turned around, looked at Juan. And then turned back to her friend and said, that guy is so old. He was like 29. Yeah. Well, I can't even imagine what people were thinking when seeing me there.

like trying to like i was doing the robot i was doing the robot i was doing the robot side to left to left up down grease the motor ladies of austin can you believe it um so anyways now that was good and then uh made some smokes of meat yesterday and just chilled so it was uh it was nice it was nice but let's go ahead and kick things off welcome to doom to fail i'm farce this is taylor we are covering a historical thing today today yeah and we'll do the true crime one on wednesday so we i guess we'll start with me uh describing what i'm going to be drinking so my story is going to take us to india oh that's cool i know i know impressive right and because of that and because i tried it for the first time this morning i'm going to go with a dirty chide latte oh how was it

It was really good. Was it? I kind of feel like why, why am I drinking this potpoury whenever I'm drinking chai? But it's like spice. It's like this Indian spicing. I thought it was great. Great. Awesome.

Good for you. Congratulations on expanding your horizons as far as. What are you drinking, Taylor? Well, I'm going to, I think I've done it before. I'm physically drinking coffee, but I do very much, I had some mead because I'm going back. I'm going medieval again. So we're going to go further back.

And I just, I know that they had wine, but I really, I feel like mead is the medieval drink and like a goblet. Yeah, meat sounds, meat sounds like something, it's hardy. It's very hardy. It's something you have when it's cold outside. There's troops at the gate, the drawbridge is up, and you're drinking mead. Yeah, I definitely drank meat in London. We bought it at the Tower of London and drank it on a boat on the Thames. So it was like, so much.

Very, very fun. when I did like a two-week study abroad in London and grad school. So that's where I am right now. That's my vibe. I remember, do you remember that place in, oh my God, it had to be Hollywood, right? The German place, the only German place that there was was like a like a brewery type thing. Mm-hmm. Do we ever go there together?

I don't think so. Yeah, ping pong tables. They used to go there and play ping pong. Well, anyways, winter times were always fun to go there because they always had that like warm wine, muddle wine or whatever. Yeah, I love mold wine. I have like a big, like a big strainer that you fill with spices, then you put it in the pot with the wine and then the sugar and the juice. And then I'm the only one who drinks it. So then all of a sudden, everyone else is like, ooh, I'm sipping on this wine. And I'm like, I've had seven bottles of wine. Like, what's going on, everyone? This is just

delicious juice. What is wrong with you? So you got to share that with me whenever it gets cold, because I would love to be the household that just always smells like warm wine. I love it. And actually, for Florence's birthday, oh, I do. did cider with the mold wine ball and I just filled it with spices, like extra spices and apples and oranges. And then I had honey whiskey. I mean, mixed honey whiskey with the cider and it was delicious. I think that's just a hot toddy. I know. Hot toddy is whiskey and tea. Anyway, it was cider. Well, well, I'll absorb that. They probably drink that in these times as well as well. So did you look at my timeline yet that I shared? Yeah, it's incredible. Thank you.

Isn't it fun? So there's like the big space in the middle. where it's interactive, it's on our link tree if everyone wants to see it. You can click on it and kind of hover over the bubbles to see. It goes in order of the newest or at the top. Our oldest episodes are at the bottom, but then it does like the timeline of the years.

And so there's a big gap in the middle, obviously, that I can see. So I wanted to bring us back to the year 1066 and talk about the Battle of Hastings. Okay. So if you are British, which you're not, even though you were born in the UK, right?

I identify as British because women like British men more than non-British men. 100% true. So if you are a British person and you hear the word, the number 1066, I imagine they're like, oh my God, that's the year. Like that is the year. British history, so much happened in 1066. People fucking love it. I listened to, for this episode, I listened to some podcasts, one called the British History

podcast, which is called British History. It's by an American dude, so he does not, I was surprised he did not have any English accent, but his episodes are all different lengths. I don't mean, this was like episode 300 of his, but it was three and a half hours long about the Battle of Hastings, and he had like, was really well produced, but he had like the same song that would play over and over again when stuff would get like really tense. And so you'd like hear the same song over and over again. And then he'd have other music that would, he'd have other music that would.

was like in at different times. And then at the very end, I was driving in Joshua Tree National Park to pick up my kids from camp. So I'm by myself and this like big, beautiful park. And I'm looking at the, like, the monitor in the car. And I'm like, there's only two minutes left of this podcast. Like I know what's going to happen, but it hasn't happened yet, you know? And I'm like, what is going to happen? So I'm listening. I'm like, do I have it wrong? Is it like a part two that I don't know about? And it ends with a slash. And it sounds like blood, blood, splatter and then it goes into the song the hello darkness my old friend and that's it i was like i yelled i screamed and like put my hand in my mouth and gasped because it was such a good ending of like a

battle battle battle battle battle the guy dies so it was super good i'll link to it um i also purchased a subscription to history hit which we follow on instagram and is you know um i think mostly british history but a lot of like medieval history documentaries that kind of thing so i watched some of those So those were all, those are all great. There was some stuff on history hit about just medieval times and like living in this time. So talking about how, you know, people are religious, but they're not necessarily like prudes. Like we think that they are. People are always having sex.

You know, it's just like not what you write down for the most part. There also was a fun, not fun, but the church, this is a Catholic time. So the church obviously has like their dumb rules. And one of the rules was, like, you can never be naked because, like, being naked can, like, lead to sinful things. So I imagine that, like. What, the Catholic Church? Mm-hmm. Oh, okay.

But in this, like, everyone's really stinky as well. So I know we talked about that a lot before, but, you know, it's a real gross time. If I just feel like, never naked. I would for sure be approved if I was during that time. Like, who, even just yourself, the smell of yourself, how do you, how would you even get to turn? on like it's yeah god it's so gross if everyone's doing it i mean if everyone smells that way then like how do you even know that it's all bad you probably get used to it that's true sometimes i walk into my house after i've been away for a while i'm like i should really start leaving the windows open

okay um but you know we talked about um this time as well i think i don't know when we talked about it but like no one's ever really clean no one's ever really healthy you know it's just like a whole a time where it's rough being alive is rough during this time it's also like technically the medieval period which is technically like some of the dark ages but as as we've also talked about before you don't see dark ages anymore because like shit was happening it wasn't nothing you know and stuff was happening all over the world um but 1066 is a big year for britain so we're in britain and um how do we know what happened a thousand years ago so that's something I also freak out about a lot is like, oh, it's on this piece of pottery or whatever.

So there are some records, some like municipal records from different towns. The invading armies in this time were taking like censuses because they were planning to tax people. So there's some things like that. William the Conqueror, he's the one who ended up winning. He wrote a book. Well, he had someone write a book for him like 20 years later called the Doomsday book, which is super cool, that has like the history of. of his conquest of the area but mostly is from a tapestry so there's a tapestry called the bayou tapestry

spelled b a y e u x so like french word it is it's 20 inches tall so like i'm i'm doing this for you like a foot and half tall and it's 230 feet long so it's like super short and like so long so it's it's on Wikipedia you can like click on it and it'll show you the whole thing and it's like a tiny little line on your screen and you can like zoom in and go all the way through it but that's how we know what happened it's literally like a hand embroidered step by step of what happened and that's a reason which is cool people spend their whole lives again studying this they're like obsessed with it like oh what does this stitch mean or like there's one where one guy is next to a boat and he's like touching the boat they're like is he touching the boat they're like is he touching the boat? Or is he not touching the boat? I don't know. And you're like, oh, my God, how are you ever going to find out? But that was, when I was in, when I was in Dublin, there's this thing called the Book of Kells, which I didn't have, I never heard of before, but it was at Trinity College, which I went

to, I saw this thing. I saw it, yeah. Wait, you went, you actually saw it at Trinity College? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So it sounds like that because you look at that thing and it's like every, there's like, these people that just stare at this thing and wonder like, why does, why did this thing,

like, why did this letter look this way? It must have been a different scholar that did it. Was that scholar related to this? It's like, warm hole. No, exactly. So, like, we don't fucking know anything. I don't know how we know anything. But, like, yes, a lot of this is from this tapestry.

And, like, from these old documents that you're saying, these, like, all that, it's exactly what you think, all those beautiful, like, illuminated documents that are, like, you know, painted really pretty and all that. So the biotapestry shows the conquest of England by the Normans. And that's where we get a lot of this. It all happens in the one year, 1066. I was actually typing this earlier, and Miles, who's just learning how to read, he's six. He was like, you keep writing 1066 over and over again.

And I was like, yep, that's the year. So all happens this one year. In the very beginning of the year, on January 6th, the king of England, Edward, the confessor dies with no air. So he was an Anglo-Saxon king. So, you know, like, English, you hear Anglo-Saxons. They ruled England post the Roman Empire from the year 450 until 1066. So he's like the second to last Anglo-Saxon king.

And Edward, the Confessor, had a wife but no kids. And everybody's naming this is like super fun. So like Edward and the Confessor, obviously, that's like saying that he's very religious and like very pious. Oh, that's what it was. That's what it means. But I also hope it's a little bit where he's like, I did it. It was me. And you're like, oh, my God, you couldn't have done everything.

Edward, you know. I know. He seems like a meke, like, sad guy. He's just like, he can't blame me. Like, who spilled the juice? Oh, it was me. Like, Edward can't be in you. Like, there's some really fun ones. There's one that was like someone like the undecided or something. And I feel like, I wish that like that was just because you like didn't want to go to dinner with him. You know, you'd be like, where do you want to eat? He'd be like, oh, and you'd be like, oh my God. Like, you're, I can't. You're so annoying. So I don't know, he spent. of his life in Normandy. Normandy is in France and he was exiled there, but then came back to England and became king. He was king for about 30 years. He built Westminster Abbey, where I'm sure you've been to there. So have I. So like, he built that. He was obviously very religious. There were some people who took some like pilgrimages to Jerusalem for him. And he was married to a woman named Edith, but they did not have any children. Whether that's because for whatever reason, they didn't have kids. No one really knows why. Did you, I can't remember if you watched House of the Dragon, did you?

No, I never got around to that one. Okay, well, there's a part, spoiler alert, where, like, the king dies and does this deathbed confession that is, like, bullshit at best, you know, he, like, says something to someone that you think, I think he thought it was someone else and, like, whatever, and it, like, ruins everyone's life because he, like, said one thing in, like, his, like, delirium of being about to die, which is almost exactly what happens now. he edward the confessor dies and on his deathbed he says that he wants harold godwin who is his wife's brother to become king so like who knows that that's what he really wanted but that's what he said allegedly on his deathbed with to who i don't know harold himself it sounds like gladiator where it's like coincidentally the king told the guy that he wants to be air completely in private right before you know exactly that's exactly what happens in the name of throes it's the exact same have you should have now i don't want to go back on this because i know that i like had a different

opinion i think when we're talking about hundred the eighth but you should just like have one son and make a good one like i don't know have one or just have witnesses yeah like rached down or something but whatever for whatever reason harold godwin becomes king of england um he also has he had been an earl before there's a lot of like little earldoms around like little tiny things happening in England. He also has his, so he has his sister, Edith, and he has four brothers. Nope, five brothers. This is real hard for me. Listen to these names. This is like old English slash potentially Viking. There's Tostig, Godwinson, Godwinson. Tostig. There's S-O-S-T-I-G. There's S-W-E-N. There's G-Y-R-T-H. and there's Laosfin, which is L-E-O-F-W-I-N-E.

I've no idea how to pronounce that. And then there's Wolfnoth, which is actually kind of fun. So. His name's G-E-R-T-E-E-H-T-E-E-E-A-T-E-E-A-G-R-T-Eth, G-Yth, G-R-T-Eth, oh, my God. It is probably hard to live up to that name. It's very hard. So he has all these brothers, and then his sister, Edith, and Harold get names that are easy to pronounce, and everyone else is difficult. So it's a very, you know, there's Vikings in the north.

It's Anglo-Saxon. They're still kind of have Roman things around, obviously, because like the Roman cities are still there. But Harold becomes king and is not as simple as that because there's other people who think that they have the right to be king of England because there's no successor. Of course. So there's two big ones. There's the Viking king, also named Harold, who's Harold Hardrada, and the Norman, William the bastard. who lives in France. Why do they call him the bastard?

Why do you think? I feel like I do wish, again, I wish it was like, God, that guys are just a fucking bastard. You know, like, you're a bastard. I don't know, when do you say bastard? I don't think I never say that. I obviously would never say that about a child, a fatherless child. I think that word, like, went out of style as a reason,

or the way to insult someone. Like, I don't think I've ever gone to the far off. I don't think I've ever called anybody a bastard. It doesn't even sound like an insult. salt, you bastard. It's like, dude, you have nobody, like, everybody's parents are not married. Like, it's, it sounds like a little dastardly, like, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. But it's, it's for the, the reason that he was, he was born out of wedlock. That's why. I figured. I figured that. Um, so William the bastard and King Harold Hardrata, um, England itself is not very

big in the context of other countries. It is about 300, I'm going to do miles because that's how I think. That's how it should be. It's about 300 miles across and 600 miles up and down. So that's how big it is. You could obviously drive across it pretty quickly. Like you could drive across it now. But think of this time, you know, it is 1066.

It is very, very hard to get across England. You know, there's you're either walking or you have horses, but your horses are going to get tired. It's going to take forever to make these like long journeys across country. So like keep that in mind. This year is spent trying to figure out how to rule, stop people from rebelling and work with his brothers in the church. So that's what that's what Harold Godwinson is doing right now. He is just trying to figure out how to get everybody together, get everybody behind him as the king. So it's a weird year. The king died in January.

In April, Haley's comment goes by, which is exciting. And like they probably thought it was magic you know of course yeah um last night in in joshua tree was the um the percyoid meteor shower i know i had ambitions of watching it and it just never happened um it's cool uh we were out we went out maybe a little bit early it was like 12 30 we should if you were out like to like 4 a m it would have been nicer um but it was fun people in town were mad because there was like a line to get in the park even at midnight like of cars just trying to get there but um we saw a fair amount of them so It was fun. But Haley's comment, obviously the big one.

Even the last time it went, you know, all those people killed them off. You know, it was a big deal. So some people are like this year, something, some shit's going to go down. Was that Haley's comment or was that Hale Bop? Is that the same thing? Is it different? Was it not Haley's comment? You talk.

I'll look it up. Okay. I thought it was, but it could be totally wrong. It could be something else. So now, it's the autumn of 1066. and shit's about to go down. The first thing that happens is Harold's brother, Tostig, his oldest brother, has been exiled.

He used to be an earl. He's been exiled. There's so many little, like, fights happening all the time. And he goes to Norway. And he and King Harold Hardrada of Norway come back and invade England in the north near York. That's the best place for, like, a Viking to invade England, obviously. they come up into the north there's a bunch of rivers they can like start moving their way

into england so they know that they're coming and they come did you look it up it was hell bop is it different what's haley's comment why is it called that hey we don't don't look that up no no no well now everybody's everybody's screaming into their cars of which one is which is which is haley's comet is not called hail bop comet hale bop sometimes written as hail bop comet is completely different comment that's not helpful i just tell me they're different but it's only why haley's comment on the other hand was officially confirmed in 1758 whereas halebop was found in 1995 i don't it doesn't just we can their comments guys thank god we got to the end of that though this is huge okay great anyway either way if you don't know what a comment even if you know what a comment

is it's crazy and if you don't know what a comment is it's even crazier because you're like what the fuck was that that just happened so um that happened in april so now it's now it's autumn the vikings are coming into the north um they end up in the city of york york was founded by the romans a very very long time ago um and they come in and they've been there for a few months and they are just like pillaging and this whole time there's like all these dumb kings trying to be like oh i want to be in control of england and there's so many people just trying to fucking not die you know and you're just like trying to like have your little farm have your like one cow and like not get killed and these fucking vikings are coming in trying to take over and i'm sure people are like i don't give a shit you know

or they're like i do care and i'm going to fight i mean who knows but like you're just trying to like survive for most people and so they're coming in they're ransacking they're making deals with local armies specifically the north umbrians who are some people in the north of england um so you know they're doing terrible things. And King Harold hears that they're doing all this stuff. It's his brother. It's the Viking king. So he's like, fuck, we got to go.

We got to go up there and stop these guys. So in September 1066, King Harold and his troops go up to York, which is very hard. They're already at the bottom of England near Sussex waiting because they know that William the bastard is coming from France. So they're waiting for him to come, but in the meantime, they have this shit to deal with him in the north. And they're like, fine, we'll go up there. And so they run literally just like as fast as they fucking can. They get from the south of England to the north of England.

So it takes like a couple days for them to get there. And think about like, it's not like a car. It's not even like a wagon. It's like a couple guys and horses. Most people are walking like 7,000 men dressed like nights. walking across it had to have taken more than a couple of days but they did it really fast and that's part of the problem so i'll tell you more about it because they're fucking tired you know so they they like barely stopped i'm certain it was raining the entire time you know you're wearing

like pounds and pounds of metal um and there's also like the logistics which i think we've talked about so like what are the who's eating what what are you drinking are there you know herdsmen are their cows who's making dinner there's just so much stuff going on but they get up there And now Harold Hadrata and the brother Tostig have 200 to 300 ships, so a lot of ships and 7,000 to 9,000 men. So it's like not clear exactly how much, but they have a lot of people there. Oh, I actually have a number for the distance. The King Harold and his troops went from the south to the north. It did 185 miles in four days.

So they completely surprised Norwegians. Yeah. It's a lot, especially if you're walking. Yeah. Yeah, especially with the logistics. Yeah. So now it's September 25th, 1066. King Harold brought his forces up from the south. They're ready to fight. They're in a town called Samford. And this is a battle of Samford Bridge. There's also people from around England. Some of them are on the king's side. Some of them are on the Norwegian side. the battle starts with a rider coming up to Tostig and King Harold Hardrata and saying Tostig will give you your earl done back if you just come and fight on our side. And then they were like, Vikings, you guys can just leave, we'll let you go.

And then they said, the rider said to King Harold Haldrada will give you seven feet of English soil because you're kind of tall, meaning like he, that would be his grave. Oh, wow. He's like, we'll kill you and the brother can come back. that's cool that's cool way to say i'm going to kill you yeah you can have seven feet of english soil um but they say no and that rioter was probably king harold himself so he was like listen then we can make a deal real fast and they're like nope so then they start fighting um it is they're literally bottlenecked on this bridge like the two competing armies are on different sides of this bridge and the legend is that there was one really big norwegian guy just on the bridge with like an axe just like err you know like stopping people so he killed like 40 people like allegedly until someone finally went underneath the bridge and speared him from the bottom. So, like, to get rid of him, which is so fun. And that caused a delay, so that each side had time to, like, get ready. And so the English were, like, had, like, their big shields, they'd be, like, a wall of shields.

And a lot of people, because it was, like, a real marshy land, you know, on a bridge, a lot of, a lot of, like, you know, England's mushy. So a lot of people just drowned. Many people, thousands and thousands of people died. The Vikings thought it would be super easy. But after some confusion and it kind of went back and forth, the English are able to push them back and they run back to their ships. Like they literally run back to their ships.

Both Harold Hardrada and Tostig, the brother, are killed. And only 24 ships make it back to Norway. So out of the like 200 to 300, only 24 make it. back. And King Harold makes a truce with Harold Hardrada's brother, Olaf, and they're able to, like, go back, go back to Norway. So this is also kind of the end of like the traditional Viking era because they were stopped of fort from invading England. So King Harold Godwinson and his people are in the north and they're fucking exhausted. They just lost a ton of people. There's like, bodies everywhere like both of these battles that i'm talking about like the you know for for a hundred years you could see bones on these fields you know that was just like that totally um so much carnage also like as soon as people battle was over everyone else would go in and take everything off the bodies

so like now it's just a bunch of like naked bodies everywhere because they took their armor they took their clothes they took their shoes you know they took everything from them and just like left them there it's better better than at least when they're naked they can decompose faster because animals will eat them quick i mean i'd rather i'd rather a bunch of naked dead bodies my front yard than closed ones yeah but like what a what a job you know that's what i think about like lifting the shoes off of a dead guy did you ever see the postman the kevin costner movie no he like made all those obviously like water world and dances with wolves and all those like big epic movies but he made one called the postman and it was like a postapocalyptic

world where he became a he like wanted to like go from place to place so he like pretended to be a mailman ended up actually like sending letters and whatever it's like a real time there's a part where Tom Petty's in it and Kevin Costner goes weren't you somebody once man and Tom Petty is like doesn't matter now man anyway but this is a long point to get to this he becomes a postman because he steals a postman like a USPS workers um if you know you know why I'm laughing um like uniform off of someone who's like dead in like a a male car but the body he takes it off of is like a full skeleton it's like from a fucking doctor's office it's so funny it's like is it supposed to be a comedy no it's supposed to be like oh i'm taking this uniform off of this dead body but the

dead body is like no dead body would look like that with a nice uniform on it it's just really really funny um and like laughed out loud and the end of it is terrible so anyway watch don't watch that i don't i don't i don't recommend a recommendation counter recommendation from taylor yes it's both um so okay everyone's fucking exhausted um but they have to go back they have to go back south because now um the duke of normandy william the bastard is coming as expected he um william the duke of normity william the bastard all the same person was actually blood related related to Edward the Confessor, like via an aunt.

So this is like, everyone's lives are being destroyed because these guys like can't figure out who's going to be in charge now. So he says that Edward the Confessor said that he could be, could be king. So that's why he's invading from the South. Makes sense. William the Bastard also is rumored to have the support of the Pope. So he's a flying the Pope's banner. So to show people that like he's on the side of God, which I also feel like,

like you could just make up you know like who's yeah who's gonna fucking tell the book yeah i feel like you could totally make that up but whatever um but william the bastard becomes in this year of 1066 william the conqueror so that's who he's going to be for the rest of the time spoiler alert oh wait oh the bachelors oh wow okay the same guy yeah same guy so when william the conqueror and his people start conquering from France. It takes them a while to get there. I also feel like how I feel England isn't very big. I also feel like it's easy to cross the English channel because I know people have swam it, but I know that I couldn't swim it. So I don't really know how hard it is to get across it. But now you can just like get across it before. But it was really hard at this time. And the weather was fucking terrible because it was the autumn in England. So William the Conqueror left Normandy on September 12th. And you'll remember the Battle of Stanford Bridge was like September 25th. So they thought that he was coming, but he didn't come when he was supposed to because he got stuck.

He had to like kind of, the weather was terrible. A couple of ships sank. So it took him a while to actually get there. But when he did get there, he got there on September 27th, which is two days after the Stanford Bridge battle up in the north. He arrived in Sussex with about 7,000. men and they started destroying shit like immediately there were like burning villages coming through being like we're going to be in charge now you know like everyone needs to like be on my side so they just started like destroying shit in sussex in southern in southern england so

harold king harold has to run there from the north from york where he just finished a battle everyone's exhausted they traveled 240 miles in three days to get there it was like lightning feed speed running marching through England so the English channel at its narrowest is only 21 miles

I bet you could swim that I don't think I could swim I can barely swim across in a pool I'm just giving you hope that's all I appreciate you sure sure

so Harold's King Harold and his men get there there's other men coming from kind of all over but the King Harold's army is mostly like infantry people who like have to leave their villages you know it's like a deal where it's like

this month this this this percentage of our male population has to be in the army you know yeah like it always is so as those those people there's people called the furred fyrd they're like people who are like ride horses and like can like come in and help so there's a lot of people who like aren't that organized but they're all coming together to support king harold so now it's October 14th, 1066. This is the Battle of Hastings. So they got back down to Sussex, spent a couple days for figuring things out. Now this is the battle itself. And this is a day. So it starts off. The Normans had archers. The English didn't. So that actually made it harder for the Normans because the first, after they did their first, like, arrow attack, they didn't really get arrows back.

You know, they kind of like just kind of went out and they never got them back. So they didn't have a ton to do. There's also a rumor in the very beginning that William the Conqueror is dead. So his men start to retreat because they're, because like also like, I don't know how you would know fucking anything on this battle when it's loud. And like the, the council like all you heard was like you hear like you see in a movie.

You know, people are yelling. You hear swords hitting each other like metal on metal. Like I don't know how you would hear anything. I can't even follow those scenes in movies. Whenever I watch those scenes, I'm like, okay. How do you know? The camera angle, just pans real quick.

Like, who do I like, who I not like? I can't imagine me in the middle of that. Yeah, everyone looks the same. You're just kind of swinging, like, I don't know. But William has to ride with his helmet off past his men going, I'm alive. So that. That's fun. That's fun, Dave.

Yeah. Like, hey, guys, I'm alive. Keep going. King Harold brothers, Girth, and Leifwood are there with him as well. They both die early in the day, but they have their own like little armies that are kind of going around and doing different strategies. Their poor mother is still alive. So all of her kids died this month. Like her son Tostig died up north on the other side.

Now her two other boys are dead and Harold's going to die. So it sucks to be their poor mom. They probably also stopped for some breaks. You know, you don't really know what's going on. on, but like it's all day long. There's no records of prisoners, so it seems like everyone was killed. You know, like they just, you know, they didn't take anyone. There's a lot of shield walls, some fights where they would like pretend to leave,

but like not leave and like trick each other. There's like little things happening all around. It's like a field where all, it's like a field where, you know, 20,000 men are fighting. So it's all this stuff happening. So it's pretty awful. The whole day, there's tons of blood. Everyone's super injured. Eventually, so King.

Herald is killed. We don't really know how. This is where the tapestry, it shows King Herald potentially with an arrow through his eye. So they're like, maybe that happened. But then like people can't agree if it's really him or not. So it's just like we were saying before, like no one really knows how he died, but he definitely did die during this battle. After he dies, everyone then retreats on his side. Again, I don't know how you would know that because there was like that rumor in the morning about William like why would you believe someone saying that Harold was that right just retreat anyways like what are they going to me just like start going the other direction like yeah run away just do that trick it's like that trick

the thumb trick your uncle always he does when you're if you do that with an arrow in the eye and just like hold the air really close you're like oh my god it's in my eye and you're like I'm I'm going to go have some meat and chill out. That's hilarious. So, yeah, so the king is dead. So everybody starts to retreat and the Normans have won William becomes William the conqueror. The next day, King Harold's body is officially found. His poor mother offers William the body's weight in gold to have him back.

And he says no. I know what happened to his body. They probably threw it in the ocean or like burned it or something. And then William and his troops go north to London. And it's like not perfect because there's battles all around. And poor regular people are trying to live their fucking lives. They're like, all right, you're in charge now. I don't care.

You know, whatever. I don't want to die. I want my men back that went out to this war. So William the Conqueror is crowned King of England on Christmas Day, 1066 in Westminster Abbey. So the year went from January 6th to the king dying, new king, tons of battles. Haley's comet, tons of tons of battles, Vikings of North. Normans down south, the Normans come in and conquer, and there's a new king on Christmas Day, 1066. So that's the whole. Wait, how many years is that? One. It's all in one year.

Wow. It all happens in 1066. Yeah. So this ends Anglo-Saxon rule in England. And I mean, I'm so sorry to any English scholars listening to this, but essentially, you know, the medieval period is now with William the Conqueror, Henry the 2nd, Richard the Lionheart is happening now. In 1215, the Magna Carta kind of limits the power of the monarch. Later, you know, then there's the first Tudor Kings in 1485. That's Henry the 7th. And we have Henry the 8th and then so on. It just kind of like keeps going.

But this ends Anglo-Saxon period, moves us over to the Norman and the Plantagenet Dynasty's ruling England. And then later there'll be the tutors and the stewards and whatever. we have now. Another fun thing, one fun thing that happened during this as well and because of this is it began the transition from Old English to Middle English, like the language. So old English is like for me, impossible to decipher. Middle English gets a little bit easier. But because the French were the conquerors, they were became the ruling class. So French words became the words we use in English for more fancy things. So like the English, the French, the French, word for how and like is like beef the that's like what you call it the food so that that we took that word from France you know what I mean so we use like cow for the animal because that's what the poor people were doing and then beef for the food because there are people were actually eating it so like we did get some fun like French words move into the English language that kind of clarifies some things and starting to have like one language around around England but yeah that's it that's the crazy 1066 year where

thousands of people died so that whatever one dude could be in charge of england um i had several thoughts while you were talking so one of one of them was one day just to really confuse everyone i'm going to drive by i'm going to spend the entire day driving by all my friends houses and just shouting i'm alive like how can he and then they start texting each other like did far as just drive by shouting he's alive like no context whatsoever um and the other thing was man you look at like king charles right now and it's like that guy that guy probably like she couldn't hold a sword of his life depended on and you had these no you what was one of the the lionheart the conquer the whatever and it's like dude these guys

were like they weren't like politicians they were freaking savages i know and they and some of them were like like not young you know like playing the conqueror was like out of shape and like like a big guy and like just did it he just was out there with them um my dad always regrets not giving us the middle name the lion heart yeah that was a big miss yeah uh sweet awesome cool story yeah yeah again like again that's something that people spend their whole entire lives doing the history hit um documentary you know there's several dudes who spend their whole life just walking around those fields trying to imagine the um the formations and find the bones and all of that so lots of history but a crazy year that we know we know about because of art which is cool

so i thought that you were doing a seven-part series on volcanoes i am but i'm not doing them in order because then there would be a volcano podcast and who would want to listen to that well volcanologists how many volcanologists are there seven if you're a If you're a volcanologist, can you please write to Doomedepalpod at gmail.com, please, and let us know. Taylor's, again, for the silent portion of the podcast, Taylor's researching how many volcanologists there are in the world. There's 2,000. And one of them is Pierce Brosnan. Can you believe it?

Are a vulcanologist in demand? It's going to grow 7% in the next 10 years, which is higher than the average profession. Yeah, speaking of that, of volcanoes, no, I do one. I'm going to do volcanoes. I plan to finish a series by the end of the year, but I don't want to do them like back to back because then it would be like, I feel like that would be a lot.

But since we were talking about volcanoes last week and in talking about volcanoes, we did mention in Hawaii. I did make a donation to the Aiana Momana Fund. I'll put it in our stuff, but I did it on our behalf to help people of Maui this week. Yeah, I thought that we should, since we were talking about, natural disasters and shit is very very very bad in Maui right now so I made a donation from

Taylor and Fars so we can help you know get some help to those those poor people who lost everything and I think as of now there's like a thousand a thousand people missing um Jesus it's real bad yeah real bad well thank you for doing that and thank you for sharing your story and are there any Acknowledgements or shall we cut this off? That's it, cut it off. But I, again, we're on TikTok now. Everything is doomed to Philpod. I'm getting the transcripts up on our simple cast site.

We're on YouTube. You can definitely find us there if you want to. I'm adding some fun mid-journey AI stuff to our YouTube videos. And the ones from last week were really funny because it was like, I was like, do like a Neanderthal man? And one of them had like three arms. And like you can't really tell originally, but then so I put like little comments in the video that made me laugh. So we made people left too. They had like the Neanderthals with like spears that kind of looked like guns.

They're like spears where they had like a gun also on it. And so I was like this is probably actually from the future when like everything goes back and we're like planet of apesing it. Yeah. That's how we're devaluing. We're to go backwards. Yeah. So I'm putting, I'm trying to, you know, make those little more interesting. So I was putting a bunch of images in those. But yeah, find us there. Please tell your friends. We have about a hundred solid listeners every week. Tell someone. And we're trying to grow that to three million a week. Uh-huh. So we got a ways to go. So the more people you tell, the better will be for us.

We'll get there. We'll get there. Awesome. We'll go ahead and cut it off. Thank you, Taylor. Thank you.