The Battle of Hastings (13 page)

The line between mercenary and loyal household man could be thin; one might easily become the other. Because troops were paid certainly did not mean that you could expect them to be unreliable and disloyal. They often prided themselves on giving good service, and on many occasions outshone other men in their dogged fighting for their lord. Sometimes such men also came in groups and were hired under a leader, but the age of captains of large mercenary troops was in the future.

Such professional troops were the backbone of armies, but in order to fulfil all the demands of war, other men were required: for garrison work and field armies when the threat was greater, when, for example, invasion was anticipated or undertaken. Northern Europe as a whole had developed systems which obliged the more solid citizens and farmers to assume military duties. The systems varied, rather as creatures vary with evolutionary development, but the purpose was the same, and the methods at least in such a close area as northern Europe were quite similar.

The differences between the English and the Norman systems are often stressed, but in truth the similarities were more numerous and perhaps more important. Thus in one way or another the primary link was between landholding and military obligation. Maldon in Essex had to aid the royal host by sending a horse for the army. Under King Aethelstan, a law read ‘every man shall provide two well-mounted men for every plough’, and that king also took ‘no small mounted force’ with him against the Scots.
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Even to the possession of horses, this is not unlike the demands made on Normans of a similar rank.

This matter has been distorted by the long historical debate over feudalism. Historians have strained to define it, not surprisingly because in a sense it only exists in their imaginations. This in effect means that any historian can define what he or she sees as feudalism. Our only need is to try and see what actually existed. And of course something did exist: there was a system in each area.

If we avoid talking about feudalism, we may reasonably examine how these systems operated without too much heartache. However, it needs to be made clear that, if not a system, there were certainly areas of land which had been given out in both England and Normandy on the understanding that military service was attached to them. In England, king’s thegns probably held in this way. An early law stated that ‘if a noble who holds land neglects military service, he shall pay 120s and forfeit his land’.
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In England as in Normandy, men’s first allegiance was to their immediate lord, whether he was the king, the duke or another. Before the word fee or fief was used, Church lands in particular had often been granted as benefices, with military obligations attached. English bookland had originally been ecclesiastical. Such land had been given to the Church without any services attached, but much of it was later recovered in order to support military obligations. And English loanland compared closely in function to a benefice, neither being necessarily military in origin. In Domesday Book ‘feudum’ or fief was sometimes the word used for loanland.
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The English had developed a method of raising forces which depended upon land assessment. This had been deliberately initiated for the purpose of raising armies during the years of threat from Scandinavia. In essence, land was assessed by a unit known as the hide. This was referred to by Bede as a unit for a family, and no doubt had a real basis in the minds of its inventors, but like all units of assessment (compare, say, the rating system in England of recent times, or the council tax going through the same process now) it became a unit in its own right not exactly related to any other unit of land or money.

The hidage assessment needed to be reviewed and altered from time to time and so moved further and further away from its origins. Some areas received privileged ratings, others developed after the system had begun and so on. But it proved such a useful method that it was retained for centuries, and was still an important unit in Domesday Book even after the Norman Conquest. Roughly speaking, so many men were demanded for military service according to how many hides an estate had been assessed at. If this was gradually altered to allow men to pay so many shillings instead of performing personal service, it still led to the raising of forces.

The common soldier of the royal army was not, in England any more than in Normandy, the lowest social being in the state. A recent work defines the royal fyrd or army as ‘a royal levy composed of privileged landowners and their own retainers, reinforced by the king’s military household and stipendiary troops’.
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All this confirms a long-held suspicion among historians that neither army at Hastings was probably very large. There is no way of being certain, but figures such as the 1,200,000 given by the
Carmen
for Harold’s force can certainly be ignored.
26

Probably the main group of people called up were the thegns, men of some high social rank in terms of the populace as a whole. The term thegn underwent a change of meaning because the thegn underwent a change of status at the Conquest. The thegn of the England of Edward the Confessor was the ordinary man of rank throughout the realm. However, there were gradations in the rank of thegn itself.

It is becoming clearer that a king’s thegns were a special group. These owed their military obligation to the king directly. Therefore, they are strikingly like the lords who owed military service to the Norman duke for their lands. We need not debate in detail the relation between hides and military service, and there are several problems and uncertainties about it. There may not have been a nation-wide arrangement, but certainly in some areas there was a definite link between the land one held, valued in hides, and the amount of military service given: typically one well-equipped soldier from every five hides. Possession of five hides was also seen as a qualification for the rank of thegn.

It used to be said that English thegns owed their military service because of their rank, while Norman lords owed their service for their lands; but the distinction has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Both groups held lands and both groups owed service. It is doubtful that they made the distinction over purpose that historians have when called to the colours. They came because it was their duty to do so. A Norman or an Englishman would need a good excuse to evade a call from duke or king to join an army of invasion or a defence force against invasion.

The main difference between the composition of the English and Norman armies was neither the system of raising nor the type of man who responded, but the circumstances which made particular demands on either side. Harold was calling on his normal national and local system to face invasion; in 1066 to face a double invasion, which made for rather exceptional demands. We shall see this in practice when we examine the events of that year. But it meant that Harold raised a field army from his own resources and from as many shires as he could use, as well as a fleet. His northern earls also raised forces in the emergency from
their
resources and from the local shires.

William’s position was quite different. He had to persuade men to join him on a dangerous expedition which was beyond the normal demands of military service. He therefore had to search more widely for men to come, and needed to cope with the problem of keeping a force beyond the usual time limits. Only the offer of extraordinary rewards could succeed. It used to be thought that William had a fully organised feudal system by which to raise his forces. Now this is less clear. It is certainly true that, as in England, there were Normans who owed military obligations. But a good deal of the duchy was held in alods, without obligations. The duke, like the English king, also relied on household troops and mercenaries. In a campaign against the Angevins we hear of him paying fifty knights.
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One problem of troops raised through obligation related to land was the attachment of an understanding of the time limit for it, whether it be forty days, or two months, or whatever. If an army were to be kept in the field for a considerable length of time, there must be additional rewards offered, and therefore even troops which came to fulfil an obligation might stay to be paid, and could in a sense also be considered as mercenaries.

There was also the important and related problem of provisioning an army for a prolonged period: food and the necessities could be collected for distribution, but in the end there would be a resort to foraging. Harold found the problem of keeping a force in the field difficult in 1066. By September ‘the provisions of the people were gone, and nobody could keep them there any longer’.
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Harold in fact disbanded his fleet before the vital battles occurred, having to recall it in the emergency. For William the problem of fighting overseas made more acute the problems of both long service and provisions.

With the glittering if uncertain rewards offered by the possible conquest of England, and thanks to the high military reputation he had won by 1066, William was able to attract into his ranks a variety of men who might term themselves allies or who had some link to him but who could not be described as obligated: men, for example, from Flanders, the county of his wife, Brittany, Maine and other parts of France.

William also put efforts into not only collecting ships but also building anew. The Tapestry portrays both the making of ships and the loading of provisions, including wine, for transport over the Channel.
29
Success in war depended as much on the ability to keep a force in the field and to feed it, as it did upon tactical brilliance. In 1066 both Harold and William showed themselves to have abilities above the average in these respects.

Both sides had fleets and sailors available. The Norman fleet was hastily raised, collected and built. The Viking founders of Normandy had maritime expertise, and Normandy has a long coastline with many inhabitants who made their living from the sea. But Normandy had not engaged in naval war and had no naval traditions, apart from its Viking past. William’s fleet was a temporary expedient. It served its purpose, since William’s primary need was for transport.

The English had the more difficult task of using a fleet for defence, but they had a well-ordered naval organisation going back over many years to King Alfred. In 1008 Aethelred II had ordered the building of new ships, one from every 310 hides.
30
On other occasions it seems land assessed at 300 hides was expected to provide a ship. The English ships, like those of the Normans, were probably derived chiefly from Viking models. There is a lengthy description of one ship given to Edward the Confessor by Earl Godwin:

A loaded ship, its slender lines raked up

In double prow, lay anchored on the Thames,

With many rowing benches side by side,

The towering mast amidships lying down,

Equipped with six score fearsome warriors.

A golden lion crowns the stern. A winged

And golden dragon at the prow affrights

The sea, and belches fire with triple tongue.

Patrician purple pranks the hanging sail, …

The yard-arm strong and heavy holds the sails.
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And John of Worcester recorded ‘a skilfully made galley with a gilded prow’ given to Harthacnut.
32

Men were obliged to serve at sea in much the same way as in the army on land. A number of ports had special obligations in this respect. The Isle of Wight seems often at this time to have been used as a base for the south coast. But in September 1066 Harold had to disband his fleet because it had been kept active too long, and William luckily, or perhaps through good planning, was able to cross without opposition. Harold did recall the fleet, and it posed some threats again to William’s security in England.

T
HE
K
EY
D
IFFERENCES

We have already suggested that there were two vital differences between the armies which met at Hastings: the Norman possession of groups of archers, and the Norman use of cavalry. Each of these factors helped to decide the outcome of the battle, and deserve careful consideration.

Why the English did not have many archers at Hastings is not easy to explain, but it does seem to be true. None of the sources give any indication that English archers played any important role in the battle. None of the reliable literary sources mention English archers. On the Bayeux Tapestry there is one solitary archer among the English ranks, but not portrayed as in any way significant in the fighting, and his bow looks rather unimpressive in size. Yet the word bow itself is an English word, appropriately meaning ‘flexible’ or ‘that which bends’.
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Before 1066 there is not a great deal of evidence about English battles, let alone about the composition of English armies, but there is sufficient to believe that the English did possess archers, as indeed probably to a greater degree did the Scandinavians, so that unlike the matter of cavalry it was not a question of any fundamental difference in the way battles were normally fought. Indeed, whereas the difference over cavalry troops is explicable, the lack of archers in Harold’s army remains puzzling.

The eighth-century Franks’ Casket (from Northumbria) shows a man using a bow in defence of his home. At the beginning of the tenth century, an archer killed a noble by shooting him with an arrow through the window as he relieved himself in the privy. At Maldon in 991, ‘bows were busy’, though it is not said on which side. Elsewhere in the poem there is mention of a Northumbrian hostage, Aescferth the son of Eglaf, who ‘did not shrink back at the war-play,/rather he sent forth arrows swiftly –/sometimes he hit a shield, sometimes pierced a warrior,/time and again he dealt out wounds’.
34
Riddle number twenty-three in the
Exeter Book
is about a bow, spelled backwards, which must be guessed: ‘Wob’s my name, if you work it out;/I’m a fair creature fashioned for battle’, which clearly suggests that these weapons were not only for hunting. A letter of Aldhelm confirms this, with ‘the warlike bowman in the midst of battle’, though he is quoting from a classical source.
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