As part of his Blog Tour to celebrate the release of
Three Kings One Throne
author Michael Wills has shared his thoughts on....
Three Kings One Throne
author Michael Wills has shared his thoughts on....
The
Days of Wooden Ships and Iron Men
Thank
you, Helen, for inviting me to contribute a post to your blog. I thought that I would
air some ideas about the physical prowess we expect of the characters in our
novels. What do I mean by this? Well, my novels rely on plenty of action and
sometimes involve pushing my characters to extremes of physical endurance. When
I am writing an action scene I find myself wondering whether the physical
effort required of my subject to achieve whatever I am writing about, is really
within the realms of possibility. We are all writing fiction, but generally in
non-fantasy historical fiction, the reader has to be able to believe in the
credibility of the story. For example, is a particular feat of arms, or an
extreme physical feat realistically achievable? To make that judgement we
perhaps subliminally consider whether a well trained, well built individual
could do the same thing today. In the case of my novel, Three Kings – One
Throne, I was writing about warriors in the eleventh century. I reasoned that
surely a thousand years of human evolution cannot have significantly changed
the physical characteristics or abilities of the average man or woman.
But is this
so?
Consider
the outstanding “yomp[1]”
which British Marines made on the Falkland Islands in 1982, from San Carlos.
They walked 56 miles in three days carrying 80lb loads, and then fought a
battle. (An average of 19 miles a day). This physical achievement is rightly
considered to be truly historic. And yet, a little more than 900 years earlier
a column of marching men, also carrying loads, though of unspecified weight,
journeyed from London to Stamford, around 220 miles. They did it in a maximum of
six days. (An average of 37 miles a day).
I make
this comparison not in any way to belittle the courageous achievement of the
Marines. I want to use this illustration to suggest that our ancestors really
could achieve physical performance which today is unrealistic. Yes, you could
argue that trained athletes could easily outperform the soldiers who followed
King Harold’s Fighting Man banner in 1066 on his forced march north. But a
large proportion of Harold’s troops were fyrdsmen, not trained warriors. They
were farmers, fishermen and merchants, performing their required annual duty to
their king.
As a
young teacher I was once foolish enough to agree to join some of my pupils in
the Kent Messenger 50 mile walk. Apart from being physically fit, (in those
halcyon days before my spare tyre appeared, my second teaching subject was
P.E.), I was acutely aware on the long walk of three other vital factors. These
most important things were nourishment, weather and footwear. Food and drink
was provided at regular intervals, we walked at night to avoid the heat and I
had excellent walking boots. And by the way, I was not carrying anything. Yet
when I arrived at the finish after twelve hours, I was good for nothing apart
from a very long rest. I have to be honest and relate that two of my pupils
finished before me, they were both asleep on the grass verge when I crossed the
line.
A well-shod
modern soldier can expect to be provided with a calorie intake of around 3,500
per day. For men and women on strenuous duties, British and American Army
regulations state that between 4000 and 5000 calories a day are to be provided.
What of King Harold’s army of fifteen thousand men marching with the burden of
their weapons and equipment, wearing simple unsprung leather shoes or boots?
Would they have been provided with sufficient food of a quality which could
have given such daily nourishment? It
seems very doubtful. Yet, when this weary army reached Stamford they fought like
tigers in a tremendously physically exhausting battle, on a hot day.
Shortly
after, the survivors of the battle had to march back to London or wherever
their homes were. And then, within three weeks, many of them made a second forced
march, this time in wet conditions, to their deaths at Hastings.
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| Senlac Hill (where the English formed their Shield Wall) |
There
are of course many other historical examples of extraordinary physical feats.
But it seems that they were, to the people involved at the time, no more than a
normal part of a warrior’s occupation. An example in my book is when, in 1031,
Prince Jaroslav in Novgorod ordered his army of Varangian mercenaries to launch
an attack on the Læsir, (Poles). The warriors travelled 150 miles by boat and then marched
the final 420 miles over rough terrain at an average of 20 miles a day. They
then fought a series of hard battles before embarking on the return journey.
What of
the battles themselves? I was quite surprised when I first watched a re-enactment
Viking battle. It was so pedestrian! Propaganda has it that the Vikings leapt
from their ships and sprinted up the beaches to raid their victims. I challenge
anyone to leap into waist deep water carrying a heavy shield and sword, and
then to try running. Yes, if the Vikings were lucky they might find that there was
a sandy sea bottom to stand on, but more likely a stony or very muddy one.
Incidentally, anyone who has spent several days at sea and then immediately
tries to run on land is likely to fall over; it takes a while to correct your
balance.
However,
when battle commenced it was a long hard slogging match which demanded
super-human effort. Apart from the use of bows and arrows as a prelude to hand
to hand fighting, men wielded swords and axes for hours on end. They smashed
and bashed at each other’s shields seeking to weaken their opponents. There was
no chivalry; a fighter was as likely to get an axe in the back as a spear in
the front. The effort was simply enormous and for those who were lucky enough
to survive at the end of the battle, there could have been few with no wounds.
So what
do I conclude? Everything I read about soldiers of the Middle Ages leads me to
believe that we, as authors, are on generally safe ground when we portray our
characters as being as physically capable as well nourished, medically fit
modern man. Indeed, if anything, the people we write about were fitter, tougher
and much more resilient than we are today. And forget the image of a muscle
bound, sword wielding warrior, so loved by designers of historical novel front
covers, your average Middle Ages soldier was just that, an average person of
his time. The short, the tall, the thin, the pinch faced and the double chin.
So I
have allayed my worry that I was being unrealistic in my novel Finn’s Fate,
when I described a winter journey, north of the Arctic Circle, by three
brothers before they were conscripted as Vikings. And I have stilled my concern
that the even more momentous travels and battles of the last of the Viking and
Anglo Saxon kings, as told in Three Kings – One Throne, really did happen.
For many of the true feats of our ancestors are incredibly exciting, exacting
and really almost beyond belief.
Helen says:
Interesting post Mike, as authors we can only do our best to imagine what things were like in the past - and double our best to attempt to be as accurate as possible. I would assume that Medieval Man (or woman *laugh*) was used to walking, far more than we are now, because we've grown used to the car, bus, train, bike. I recall walking two miles to school (on my own) when I was 9 years old. There are many of the generation before me who walked much further every day, in every weather, to school and back. Now it would be unthinkable for a child to walk more than half a mile to school (and never alone!) There are countless stories of young men between WWI and WWII (and shortly after) who walked or rode their bikes miles every evening to see their "sweetheart". I do think we are somewhat softer now!
Many of my readers know that I have my own novel relating to the year 1066 and I did extensive research to write it. May I mention...
Harold did not march all the way north to Stamford Bridge with a complete army. He only took his "regulars" the official, full-time army - his Huscarls. He was joined on his way north by the Fyrds of the areas he passed through i.e. Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire... so the "ordinary" men did not march the entire distance, and the huscarls were very probably mounted - it is also possible that these men fought on horseback at Stamford Bridge (apparently many horseshoes were found on what is believed to be the battle site). Then of course, the fyrdsmen went back to their homes, and the huscarls and Harold rode back to London. Which resulted in the horses being too tired/lame etc to use against Duke William. And yes, Harold and his standing army were perfectly capable of fighting on horseback. Harold bred his own horses (one of his studs was at Crowhurst in Sussex, near Battle)
When the call came to meet at the hoar apple tree, several miles from Hastings, it was the southern Fyrd who were called out (although it is very probable that men from the north did decide to accompany Harold south - again, those with horses to ride). So Essex, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Surrey, Wessex, Devon were the men called to fight in October 1066, not those from the north - although many of them did march with Harold, and many more came down as soon as they could - but by then, it was too late...
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| The field at Battle (photo courtesy Alison King) |
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