October 14th 1066

The story of the events that led to the most famous date in English 

history, 1066 - from the English point of view

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings
here are some excerpts from my novel
Harold the King (UK title)  
https://viewbook.at/HaroldTheKing 
I Am the Chosen King (US title)  
https://viewBook.at/ChosenKing

13th October, Evening. The Hoar Apple Tree, Sussex.

Harold shuffled through the maps spread on the table and selected the one he required. “Now that matter is settled, let us make our plans. William is encamped here, by the Hastings shore. He will be wondering whether we are to attack him where he sits, or whether he will need come to us.” He looked at the men present: his two brothers, the commanders of his own housecarls and those of Gyrth and Leofwine, at the shire reeves, the more important thegns. “He has sufficient spies watching our every movement, as we are keeping close eye on him. Come dawn, we shall both know how many of each other’s men carry the pox!”

Gyrth laughed with the rest, then ran to the tent flap. “So you are watching us, eh? Well, see this and take notice!” He unlaced his braies and thrust his bare backside out into the darkness to appreciative applause.

“You had better not do that when we meet in battle,” someone guffawed. “I hear the Normans are skilled with the bow – that fine rounded bum of yours would make a most tempting target.”

“It is a broad one, that’s for certain!”

Harold joined in the merriment, letting it swirl a while. Laughter was a good tonic. “What we need,” he said as the chuckling subsided, “is time. Another day, two, and all those men summoned will be here. Eadric ought to have the fleet in position, seventy of our craft are blockading the sea-lanes. Within a few days the Normans will not be able to get in or out.”

“Do we wait here, sir? See what he intends?”

“That is what I propose. I have no wish to go down into the peninsula. We have successfully cut William off from moving further into England. He can either wait out the winter, or fight us. And if he decides to fight, we shall be here.” He stabbed his finger at a charcoal line drawn on the map. “On the hill above the Sand Lake, on Sendlach Ridge.”

Countess Gytha left the men to their planning. She could not bear to listen to the talk of death and killing. Outside, she closed her eyes, breathed in the dampness of the earth, the lingering smell of woodsmoke and cooking – the aroma of stewing and sizzling meat, the acrid stench of a part that had scorched. Someone, she mused, has not watched and turned the spit. What would Godwine have thought and said of all this? Of Harold he would have been proud; of Leofwine and Gyrth also. But of their other son? Of Tostig?

She walked through the groups of men, some sitting, talking and laughing, others curled up, trying for sleep. Many of them had their weapons laid across their knees, or cradled within their arms as if the axe or spear or sword were a woman. Where the path was narrow, they shuffled to allow her passage, doffing their hats, bringing their hand to their left shoulder in salute. They all recognised the countess. Had not many and many of them served her dead lord before this one, her son?

14th October - Dawn

As the tent lightened with the dawn, Harold slid from the bed, settling Edyth’s head gently on the pillow. He dressed in tunic and hose, unlaced the tent's entrance flap and stood in the opening, looking out on to the new-born day. Men were awakening, he could hear the sounds of stirring: stretching, coughing and yawning; from the nearer tents, the cruder body functions. So many thoughts in his mind. His wife, the queen, Alditha, and the coming child. His son, Goddwin. His daughters – they at least ought to be safe. Gunnhild was receiving her education at Wilton Abbey; he had sent Algytha to join her there, deciding against her going north. Ulf he had sent to London, to be with young Edgar, the aethling, and the remainder of the court. Edgar had wanted to come to Sussex, but Harold had forbidden it, for the same reasons that he had seen his own sons safe and for the sake of England should things go wrong here. He would rather his own son, should Alditha bear him one, follow him as king, but if William should by chance win his way out of this enclosed peninsula and he, Harold, was unable to take the fight to him again… Edgar remained ætheling. It would be for Edgar to rally the north, to fetch Eadwine and Morkere to London. He must not think pessimistically. William was the one who was caught like a rat in a trap. Not he.

He would like good marriages for his girls – it was by far time Algytha were wed. Perhaps as a wife for Edgar? It was worth considering. He must mention it to Edyth…ah, Edyth. He had not wanted her to come, not where there was to be fighting. Battle was no pretty thing. All the stories, the sagas and songs told of the glory and the pleasure in victory; you never heard the truth from the taletellers’ lips: the cries of the wounded, the screams of the horses, the stench, the spilling of gore and blood.

He was on the very edge of pulling back, of agreeing terms with William. The man could not rule both countries with the efficiency he would crave, would have to appoint some lord to rule as regent.

Would it, Harold thought, damage my own pride so severely if I were to abdicate? To save the slaughter, the widowing of too many wives, the slaying of children’s fathers? Earl of Wessex is no mean title – do I need to be a king?

Movement behind interrupted his thoughts, a hand on his back, an arm slipping round his waist, the summer-flower scent of Edyth. He raised his arm brought her closer to his side so that she too might see the glory of this autumn morning. No, he had not wanted his beloved Edyth to come, yet he was glad that she had: something beautiful to see and touch, to ward away the ugliness of conflict.

He looked southwards, towards Hastings. Was William standing, questing with his mind and instinct to help him decide what to do? Or did he already know?

Small in the distance, a man was galloping down the incline of Telham Hill. An English scout. Harold’s arm tightened around Edyth’s waist. He dipped his head, lightly placed his lips on the crown of her hair, guessed the news the rider was bringing. They had known, last night when he had walked through the camp, they had all really known. He had known when he had lain and loved with his Edyth, that William would not wait.

Sendlach Hill. 9 a.m.

The English were ranged along the high ridge of Sendlach Hill, a seven-hundred-yard line of men, seven or eight deep. The front rank of more than one thousand men stood in close order, their shields before them, overlapping in place, forming a wall almost as solid as anything that could have been built. In the centre, the area more vulnerable to cavalry attack, were the housecarls – the experienced, elite warriors. On the flanks were the fyrd, protected by the sharp drop of land, forest and marsh to east and west of the ridge. The ridge itself dropped down ahead a full hundred feet in every four hundred yards, before rolling on across a shallow valley towards Telham Hill, more than a mile away. Sendlach was a high, dry watershed for the Brede river and the Asten brook – the sand-bottomed water channel that normally meandered sluggishly across the low-lying ground between the rise of low hills. Only the Asten Brook had been dammed with logs, soil, brushwood – the carcass of a dead sheep – anything the English could quickly lay hands on. With its outlet blocked, the water had nowhere to flow across the narrow, flat level, could only seep into the lower ground. For most of the summer – and the summer before that – this ground had been waterlogged, a quagmire of boggy marsh. The surface had only dried out these last few wind-blown and sun-drenched weeks; the grass looked safe, green and lush…until the first of William’s men, the Bretons, set foot on it.

*

It took less than an hour for William to see his men deployed into line. The Bretons were to his left flank, facing what had become bogged, heavy clay ground but a shallower incline; the Franco-Flemish to his right, with firm, dry but perilously steeper ground. In the centre, under William’s two half-brothers, the archers with bows and slings waited. Behind, the ranks of infantry and behind them the cavalry. Morale was high and the weather was holding good; rain would have made the ascent of that fearsome slope impossible. Rain, which had fallen so incessantly this year, would have been a Godsend for Harold on this one day.

William sat on his fidgeting horse, gazing out over the mass of men, the sun glinting on mail and weapons, on banners and pennants of blue, green, gold, red. From the position of the sun it was near nine ante meridian; Mass would be beginning in monastery and church, as God’s judgement must begin here. William fingered the relic pouch that hung around his neck then looked to his trumpeters who stood, attention fixed on their lord duke.

He raised his arm. Let it fall.

“Ut! Ut! Ut!” Sword or spear beating upon shields, feet stamping; the noise slammed down from the English ridge as the Norman army started to advance. The cries of Harold’s own battle call of Oli Crosse mingling with Godamite! reverberating between that continued, fearsome, “Out! Out! Out!”

The Normans began to fan sideways and forwards as they marched, the line stretching longer and thinner, filled with foreboding at the view ahead. One hundred and fifty yards ahead, fifty foot higher, rank upon rank of bellowing, spear-edged, axe-sharpened death bringers.

Between the two lines lay green, untrodden grass, dotted with the occasional golden-flowered gorse bush and pock-marked by the last fading blooms of field speedwell and red campion. To the left, a copse turning autumn russet, the trunks twined about by briars, bearing the last few blackberries. A rotting alder tree, tumbled by some past storm lay aslant halfway up the hill. On one of its skyward-pointing dead branches, oblivious to men and weapons, perched a robin, incongruously piping his territorial song.

Duke William smiled, complacent, as the first wave of arrows arched into the blue sky like a black, hissing storm cloud. And another, and another. And 

The English Shieldwall - the Fyrd

The Norman centre reached the top of the ridge, found, as had the left wing, an undamaged English wall of shields and men with death-tipped blades. The thing was hopeless! The Bretons broke, turned, and fled back down the hill.

Confusion and panic spread as fire fanned by a wind. Their flank undefended and exposed, the Norman centre milled in disorder, wavering. The cavalry, coming behind, saw that the Bretons were fleeing and that their own infantry were beginning to turn also, starting to dodge through the excited, almost uncontrollable horses, running back down the hill in fear and terror of those English, standing, the line barely depleted, up on the hill. 

Harold’s orders had been to stand firm. At all cost. Stand. He had ridden along the length of the ridge, talking to the men, reassuring, jesting, praising, swelling the high morale of battle lust. Repeating, again and again, his order. “Stand firm. If we stand William cannot break through. Unless he can break our line, he can do no great damage to us. Until I give command, stand firm, my brothers, stand firm!” 

Harold knew this duke’s tactics, knew also his own vulnerability of cavalry against infantry. He and the men were tired; they had marched, fought and marched again. Add to that, not all the fyrd were yet here. He had to contain William, hold him back in this peninsula, and to do that, had to let William do all the work. Let him charge up and down to the ridge, let him weary himself on the slope and in the mud at the bottom. The English were going nowhere, were to stand.

Firm-footed. Stand.

Harold’s right wing of fyrdmen saw the Bretons running, the Norman centre confused, bleating and threshing like sheep frightened by the stench of a wolf. They heard a roar of victory go up from their own centre, saw the Norman line give ground and begin to retreat. It was all over! They had won! The Normans were running, were beaten…and the fyrd, experienced militiamen but without the hard- ranked discipline of the housecarls, dropped their shields and erupted from the ridge, running down the hill, in pursuit of a broken enemy, jeering and shouting. 

Both commanders watched in growing, sickened horror. Two men in their prime, capable and gifted warlords. Two men who claimed the same crown, the same kingdom. Harold, four and forty years of age, six years his opponent’s senior, stood surrounded by his personal guard beneath his two standards, set into the high ground to the left of his centre. William, astride his impressive black stallion, observing from the lower slope of Telham Hill. The rules of engagement were changing as the fight unfolded, here on this battlefield, on this day, the fourteenth of October in the year of Our Lord 1066. Rare it was for battle to last more than an hour or two. Never had mobile cavalry gone against a line of static, immovable infantry. Never had William been beaten.

Without consideration, he clamped his jaw, sat deep into the saddle and spurred his horse from a stand into a gallop. The impatient beast responded with the swiftness and stamina of his breed. He half leapt, half stumbled through the churned quagmire, heading for the turmoil of the Norman cavalry to the left of the centre division. Bellowing and shouting, the duke turned those riders at the rear, who milled, uncertain.

“Turn back, turn back! Fight, you bastard scum – turn back 

Several hours later...

Morale was running high among the English; twice, now, had they beaten off the Norman whoresons; their casualties – even counting those fool men of the fyrd who had not heeded the king’s orders – amounting to less than half the Norman dead strewn over the battlefield. Aye, the line had dwindled to only two or three men deep in places, but shortened, gathered in towards the centre, they ought to be able to withstand a third assault.

Food and drink were passed from man to man, those women who had come – wives, mostly, who had no childer to care for – issuing flat-baked barley cakes, wheaten bread and recent-picked sweet and juicy apples. It was from the women, too, and the priests, that the wounded sought aid, hobbling, being carried or supported to the safety of the baggage line. Not that there was much that could be done for many of them, beyond the comfort of a clasped hand or a pretty smile and the offering of prayers.

Harold threaded his way to the front of the wall, clasping men by the hand, gripping their shoulders as he passed, praising, encouraging or sympathising with those who sported minor wounds. Pointing to a bloodied rent in one man’s byrnie, he exclaimed, “Godfin! Is that a wound to your side?”

“Nay, my lord, ’tis nothing serious. An arrow poke to me belly. Could ’ave been worse ’ad it been lower. Might have nipped me in the family tool department, eh!” He offered a skin of ale to his king, with a laugh and nod of appreciation. Harold accepted, lifted the pig’s bladder to his mouth and drank a mouthful. It was strong-brewed, stuff for men.

“By the Christ,” Harold jested, wiping his lips and handing it on to another man, “we ought give some of this to those bastards down there – it’s strong enough to blow their balls off!”

It was easier to laugh and joke, for the terrible carnage at the front of the line would be too sickening if there were not something to balance its horror. The stench was appalling. A horse wandered, broken reins trailing, lamed in the foreleg by an axe stroke that had gouged part of his lower shoulder away; another stood, head lowered, bewildered that he could no longer see, for a sword had slashed across his face. A third struggled to rise, not understanding that he no longer had a hind leg. Not four yards from the shield line, a man lay, moaning, calling piteously for water, his stomach and entrails exposed, black blood oozing. Already the ravens were circling the field. One, more brazen than its companions, landed a few feet from the dying man, hopped closer, its beak preparing to pick at the exposed flesh. They went for the eyes, these nauseating scavengers, the soft flesh of the eyes, not caring whether a man or beast still lived. Thrusting aside two of the men who stood in the front rank, Harold pushed his way through to the open hillside, his dagger in his hand. A ruffle of unease spread through the men as he stepped out of their protected shielding, but he ignored it. He waved his hand menacingly, chasing the obnoxious bird away, bent and touched the man’s shoulder. A Norman, a young lad, no older than his second son, Edmund.

“Give me water, please!” he croaked in French, and Harold answered him in his own tongue.

“There’ll be water in plenty awaiting you, son.” With his dagger, he slashed neat and quick across the boy’s throat. Aye, he was a Norman, but no one deserved to die that way. Except perhaps William himself. No. Harold, shouldering his men aside, returned behind the lines, dismissing the idea from his mind – no, not even Duke William, for if he thought that, then he was no better than him. Uncaring, unfeeling. Ordering this day of death, causing this mighty pain and suffering for no reason except his own wanting of something that could not, by any lawful right, be his. No, Harold was not like that.

“See to those beasts,” he ordered. “End their torment.” He made his way back, all the while exchanging cheerful banter. All the while driving and driving away the knowing that hammered and screamed in his mind: My brothers are dead. Both my beloved brothers, both are dead! 

Gyrth, killed by a spear through his throat, Leofwine, a Norman sword slicing through his stomach as he had raised his axe to strike. Both Harold’s brothers slain and left among the dead, for during those hours of furious fighting there had been no opportunity to help with the wounded or to remove the corpses. Harold halted as he cleared the straggle of ranked men. Looked over his shoulder, along the lines. Men standing, sitting, lying. Leaning on spears, eating, resting, drinking. Hurting, wounded. Nigh on exhausted. Was it worth it? This death, this carnage?

Ah, no! No crown was worth this dreadful taking of life – but then, no crown ought to be surrendered without it, especially not to a man who could so casually cause it all.

“They will come again,” Harold said to those who could hear, knowing his words would be repeated along the line of sprawled men.

“A last time, he will try for us again. It will be worse. I can guarantee.” He forced an encouraging smile, raised his fist in a gesture of victorious defiance. Shouted, “But then for them, we shall make it worse still!”

Alas, it was not to be...

Epilogue

The Battle Place – 15th October 1066

More than six hundred horses and four thousand men lay dead along the six hundred yard ridge of Sendlach Hill, the place of battle. The place of death. In the drizzle-misted dawn of the fifteenth of October the carnage and destruction was staggering. Had it taken so much death to achieve such a little kingdom? William stood, exhausted and unshaven, near to where Harold’s standard had flown proud until the moment that everything had ended for the English. He had not slept during the hours of darkness – had not sought a bed until after the midnight had passed and then his mind had whirled with thoughts that would not, would not, be banished. Thoughts of how close he had come to defeat, of how many had died and in what manner. The unbelievable realisation that he had won. Harold was dead and the crown of England was his for the taking. But the winning was empty. The nightmares had been there instead, hammering with galloping hooves behind his eyes, trampling his brain, howling with the cries of the dead and the dying. Harold was dead, but William now knew the manner of his dying and it would haunt him until the day of his own passing, knew how brutally Harold had died.

Walter Gifford had struck the first blow, slicing his sword through Harold’s left thigh, shattering the bone. As the king had staggered, half- fallen, de Montfort’s lance had pierced his shield, penetrating through to his chest. Harold’s axe had remained in his hand; he had attempted to rise, the ground drenching with his blood; he had fought on. Bleeding, dying, he had fought on. Eustace de Boulogne’s sword had slashed through his neck, below where his helmet had protected him; he was already dead as the Norman removed his head from his body, and as Guy de Ponthieu, with deliberate savagery, dismembered and disembowelled England’s king before also hacking at those English housecarls who had fought to their deaths to protect their lord.

Few of the Norman army had slept well because of that dishonourable death. They had curled beneath their cloaks where they had dropped, unable to carry their aching limbs far from the carnage of the battlefield. Too many crowding, weeping spirits walked over-close at heel for easy rest. 

By flaring torchlight they had searched through the bodies, heaped several deep, around the standard of Wessex, looking for Harold. Could not find his head, could not identify what remained.

Angry, the duke had thrust his face closer to de Montfort’s, had stabbed his finger into the older man’s broad chest. “I suggest you search again, and keep searching, until you find the body of the man who dared to call himself king!” Incompetents and fools! Why was he surrounded by such? He must have Harold’s body, to prove that he was dead.

Come morning, the anger had increased, fuelled by the lack of sleep and the first stirrings of conscience. He had not undressed to sleep, but had lain, clothed, on his cot. As the sun rose and the day began, he strode from his tent that they had erected to the leeward side of Telham Hill and looked up at where, yesterday, they had fought. He would build an abbey, he decided, up there on the ridge, where the victory had been his. An altar would cover where Harold had fallen. A small voice flickered to the back of his mind. Was thrust immediately aside as he bellowed for his horse to be brought up. 

The voice of honesty: to honour a victory? Or to honour a king whom you had no right to kill?

The battlefield and Battle Abbey

as it is today

Harold the King (UK title) 

https://viewbook.at/HaroldTheKing

I Am the Chosen King (US title) 

https://viewBook.at/ChosenKing