The Battle of Hastings (11 page)

42
.  Symeon of Durham, ‘History of the Kings’ in Stevenson, viii, pt II, 1855, p. 547.

43
.  L. Thorpe (ed.),
The Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Invasion
, London, 1973, p. 46.

44
.  J.B. McNulty, ‘The Lady Aelfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry’,
Speculum
, lv, 1980, pp. 659–68; M.W. Campbell, ‘Aelfgyva: the mysterious lady of the Bayeux Tapestry’,
Annales de Normandie
, xxxiv, 1984, pp. 127–45;
Bayeux Tapestry
, pl. 17, 18.

45
.  
Bayeux Tapestry
, pl. 19–24; Bates,
Normandy
, p. 83.

46
.  
Bayeux Tapestry
, pl. 25–6.

47
.  William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, ii, p. 160; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 103.

48
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 53.

49
.  Bates,
Normandy
, 241–3.

50
.  Bates,
Normandy
, p. 57.

51
.  K. Thompson, ‘Family and influence to the south of Normandy in the eleventh century: the lordship of Bellême’,
JMH
, xi, 1985, pp. 215–26; Bates,
Normandy
, p. 152.

52
.  William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, ii, p. 128; Douglas,
William
, pp. 369–70: her remains were re-examined in 1961, but had previously been disturbed, so that there must remain a doubt about the bones being hers.

53
.  This granting of the banner has been questioned, e.g. by Bates,
Normandy
, p. 189, but it is difficult to see why William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 155, should not be accepted on this.

M
uch has been written about the advantages which one side had over the other in the battle of Hastings; in fact, in terms of the arms used there was very little difference. The state of war and its technology spread beyond any single state, county, duchy or kingdom. The English and the Normans had more in common than they had differences in 1066. On the Bayeux Tapestry, one can not easily tell English from Norman by either the arms they carry or the armour they wear. Indeed, to show a difference the artist often resorted to the use of distinguishing hairstyles: short for the Normans, long for the English. Both sides wore similar helmets and armour, both used similar swords and spears.

Historians have been clear for a long time now that the English army was well armed and well organised. Any lingering ideas that readers might retain of native troops armed only with clubs or similarly crude weapons, called together haphazardly and acting as a rabble rather than a trained army, should be dismissed at once. It seems probable that every army called into being in England by the kings consisted largely of trained men, if not quite professionals in our modern sense.

The main composition of the fyrd or army consisted of the household warriors and landed retainers of the king and of the great men who owed him allegiance. They might be seen as ‘royal war bands’ rather than national armies in a modern sense. The royal force, or indeed a local force acting for the king, could call upon shire levies too. Local shire levies seem to have been prepared to act in an emergency, for example, against invasion. Men from Somerset and Devon turned out against Harold Godwinson when he returned to England against the Confessor in 1052. But even shire levies consisted largely of the middling to higher social ranks, armed men mostly with some experience of war. This is not to say that no men of lower rank participated. Ceorls, not the lowest of the low, did join the fyrd, as we see at Maldon, and the poem called the
Carmen
speaks of peasants at Hastings.
1
But it is not likely that large numbers of untrained troops were used. The whole process of assembling an army was geared towards ensuring the reverse: bringing together selected men, chosen because they would be useful in war.

Housecarls were military retainers, probably introduced by the Danish Cnut, and they were to be found in the household of an earl or ealdorman as well as that of the king. Such men appear to have been paid wages, and may in a sense be seen as mercenaries or stipendiaries, as probably were the Danes employed in the royal fleet in 1015.
2
But housecarls were sometimes granted lands and a place to live. They were not so much mercenaries or some sort of standing army as they were household men.

Military households are a common feature of the medieval world, both before and after Cnut. The meaning of ‘housecarls’ after all is household servants, and this is essentially what they were. There were 15 acres of Wallingford where housecarls dwelled, presumably employed as a garrison there, and Domesday Book records various other examples.
3
We shall look at the English system in due course, and find that it provided well-trained men quite capable of fighting any force of the day.

Increasingly too it is becoming apparent that although there were some social distinctions between English and Norman society, and although armies were raised by slightly different methods, that the differences were not as great as once thought. This is not the place for a lengthy discussion on feudalism and what we mean by it. It was not a medieval word for a start. For our purposes, what can be said is that although the actual process of raising forces was not quite the same, the underlying rationale was not so very different. Both powers, for example, raised some troops on the basis of the land held by individual warriors, and the service owed in respect of that land.

There were some differences in the composition of the armies. Two stand out and will need to be considered in detail. Firstly, at Hastings, the Normans had archers in some numbers whereas the English appear to have had few. Secondly, the Normans made considerable use of cavalry whereas the English, although they had horses and were experienced riders, seem not normally to have fought as cavalry. In the end these two factors might be said to have made the difference between two well-matched forces which stood against each other in the field for practically the whole length of a long autumn day. It is important to examine the reasons for these points of contrast.

A
RMS AND
A
RMOUR

Let us begin by examining what in general the two sides had in common, the normal arms and armour of a fighting man in the middle of the eleventh century. Archaeology has provided very few useful objects from this period, virtually none from England and Normandy. Until this is remedied, we rely heavily on the images in the Bayeux Tapestry.

There has been some discussion over the date and provenance of this remarkable work. Suffice it for the present to say that there is general consensus, about which we see no need to quarrel, with a date very shortly after the battle, in the late eleventh century probably between 1077 and 1083, and also with its being made in England and possibly at Canterbury. The artist is anonymous, and he was not present at some of the events portrayed, but by and large the more research goes into the Tapestry, the more respect historians have for the accuracy and care of his work.

There are some details over which one is uncertain of the artist’s intent, and there may be some errors since he was probably not a man with military experience, so we must beware of accepting everything without question, especially when the Tapestry seems at odds with surviving contemporary chronicles; but for the most part we can accept the Tapestry as the best evidence for the arms and armour of the time.

Let us examine what the typical soldier on the Tapestry is wearing, and what arms he is carrying. Firstly, let us consider those troops portrayed as fighting on foot. Occasionally on the Tapestry one gets hints of clothing worn under the armour. This obviously existed, but from its nature is impossible to describe with any certainty for this period. Almost certainly both head and upper body would have been covered with enough clothing to give some padding effect to metal armour.

The two main pieces of armour were a helmet and a byrnie, or hauberk. The eleventh-century helmet was made of either leather or metal, and was conical in shape: Normans, English and Scandinavians all wore much the same kind. Leather helmets were not much more than caps but offered protection against the weather as well as against weapons. Better armed soldiers, and especially wealthier ones, would have had a metal headpiece. This could be made of one piece of metal, as is proved by a surviving example in the Museum of Armour at Vienna. Most of the helmets on the Tapestry appear to be of the type made of separate plates of metal, riveted together on to a framework of metal strips. In one helmet from the early Saxon period, the plates of the helmet were made from horn.
4
The most important feature of the helmet of our period was the nasal. This was normally made from a metal strip in the centre at the front, projecting down beyond the level of the helmet so that it covered the nose, thereby offering some protection for the eyes and face.

Some Tapestry helmets appear to have projected at the back in order to cover the neck. One must assume this to be an occasional rather than a regular feature. A helmet found in York from the Viking period has a curtain of mail fixed to cover the neck.
5
The head could also be covered, under the helmet, with chain mail. This might be in the form of a hood attached to the main mail coat, or as a separate piece. The word ‘hauberk’ itself derives from Frankish ‘halsberg’, meaning neck protection, so the hood may have been an original feature.

The hauberk became a symbol of status, only a man of some rank would own and use one. When his horse was killed at the battle of Dreux in 1014, Hugh of Maine buried his hauberk, put on a shepherd’s cloak and carried shepherd’s gear on his shoulder as disguise in order to escape.
6
Indeed, the unit of land which provided military service was known as the ‘fief de hauberk’. The byrnie, or hauberk, or mail coat, was shaped rather like a tunic or tee-shirt, and had to be donned by slipping it over head and body.

Both infantry and cavalry wore a similar mail coat, as seen on the Tapestry. William of Poitiers confirms that the second line of the Norman army, consisting of better armed infantry, wore hauberks.
7
Modern efforts to reproduce this form of armour are illuminating in terms of giving some idea of the difficulties and advantages to be gained from the garb. It feels quite heavy to lift, and it was thought a feat of strength that the Conqueror on one occasion returned to camp smiling, having carried his own and the rather large William fitz Osbern’s hauberk on his shoulders for some distance. And yet, once put on, the mail coat balances on the shoulders and is less restrictive to movement than one might suppose.
8

The hauberk is constructed from circles of metal looped through each other. There are various possible variations on this method of production, some coats given double or even triple layers of protection; some being soldered, some riveted. It is also possible to assist the comfort and usefulness of mail by varying the size of the metal rings: smaller rings at the edges make it fit more snugly to the body. Mail provided some protection from certain blows, more from slashing than thrusting efforts; but it could always be pierced, for example, by a direct shot from an arrow, bolt, spear or lance, and it did not cover the whole body, so that there were always vulnerable spots – the face, the hands, the lower part of the legs.

There are some points to examine with regard to the armour of cavalrymen. Their hauberks were much the same as those of the infantry, but two possible differences need to be considered: the appearance of a rectangular piece on the chest, which in the Tapestry and elsewhere seems to be applied to cavalry rather than infantry armour; and the question of how the tunic shape would need to be adapted in order to make riding possible and comfortable.

There is some interest in a feature of some mail coats in the Tapestry, and elsewhere, which have a rectangular shape over the breast. They do not appear on all examples on the Tapestry, and feature most prominently in a section before the battle. They are not worn always by the great men. It could be that the artist only included when he felt like it, what was actually a normal feature.

One explanation of this rectangle, which seems to be edged with leather, is that it was an extra plate attached in order to give added protection to the chest. Illustrations other than the Tapestry look as if this could be the case, where the piece is coloured differently and looks like a single piece of plate armour. However, on the Tapestry there appears to be mail within the rectangle, though it could still be a separately made piece.

The best explanation seems to be that this was the way the hauberk was made easier to put on, having an enlarged opening which could be closed up once it was on, like buttoning up a shirt at the neck once in place. At any rate, a story that, on arrival in England, the Conqueror put on his hauberk the wrong way round does suggest that the tunic was not uniformly constructed front and back. The suggestion is made that the rectangle, clearly visible in the illustration above, was a flap of mail, part of which needed to be secured by tying in place. The only question then is why it appears to be rectangular, an L-shaped flap might seem more likely. One suggestion does not necessarily exclude the other: it is possible that an extra piece of armour was tied on over the neck opening.

Another suggestion is that it might have been a contraption of leather straps to allow the shield to be tied in place. One Tapestry illustration shows a Norman grasping part of a rectangular arrangement of straps, which looks exactly like the rectangle over the chest, but is clearly independent of the mail.
9

The other question is whether hauberks were made differently for mounted men. Ian Peirce believes that they may have been trousered, and certainly that is how some appear on the Tapestry. This would have been extremely uncomfortable for mounted men and very inconvenient. It is more likely that they were always, for both infantry and cavalry, tunic-shaped. The tapering of rings towards the edges would have made the metal cling round the limbs and give a trousered appearance.