The Invasions of England

by Edward Foord; Gordon Home

Looking at the battle after this length of time, it is clear that William only gained the day by desperate exertions, and that more than once success hung in the balance. Had the English army possessed a proportion of archers the day would have been Harold’s. It has been pointed out that not even a great fleet saved England from an attack by an invader prepared to take the risk of destruction. But it should be remembered that Harold’s flotilla was not a properly organized force, and cannot be compared to a modern fleet able to keep the sea for several months at a time. Even as it was, William was very near destruction though, so far as we can see, he caught Harold at a disadvantage. By calmly taking such risks as few men could contemplate unshaken, William did land in England, but his success was due to a very remarkable combination of circumstances which it would be well to recapitulate.

1. The English fleet, owing to its urgent need to revictual, was absent from the chief danger-point at the crucial moment, and at the rate of sailing in those days the Thames, even with favourable winds, was farther from Pevensey than Rosyth is to-day from Portsmouth.

2. The English army at the moment when the invasion was imminent was called to the defence of the north.

3. The wind which had baffled William for some six weeks shifted in his favour at the precise moment when the English fleet and army were absent.

4. The extraordinary rapidity of Harold’s southward march after his defeat of Hardrada left the disorganized Northumbrian and Mercian levies far in the rear.

5. The English were probably surprised into giving battle when Harold would have preferred to await support.

6. The English army was at a fatal tactical disadvantage owing to its lack of archers.

William’s losses had been exceedingly heavy. The mediæval chroniclers estimate that he lost 12,000 to 15,000 men out of 40,000 to 60,000, and we may fairly estimate from this that his casualties were about a fourth of his fighting strength. But only a mere remnant of the English host survived the day, and with the King fell every man of note in southern England, except Esegar the Marshal, who was desperately wounded. This awful destruction of the leaders was the most disastrous feature of the battle. There was, as after-events showed, a complete dearth of men about whom the English might rally.

In many ways the Battle of Hastings was itself the Norman Conquest, though the events of the following two or three years are rather those which gave William his title of ‘Conqueror.’ The whole south-east of England had been utterly crushed; there remained for William only the conquest piecemeal of the west and north. Kent was conquered with scarcely any resistance, and William, advancing to the Thames, beat back a sortie of the Londoners, burned Southwark, and moved up the river feeling for a passage. Detachments from his army occupied Winchester and the neighbouring towns, and William, crossing the Thames at Wallingford, marched upon London. Eadwine and Morkere, who were there with the forces which had been too late for Senlac, lost their nerve when the Normans threatened their line of retreat to the north. They hurriedly withdrew, and the Londoners bowed to necessity. ‘They submitted then for need, when the most harm was done,’ mourns the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.’

There is no reason to doubt that William, when he promised to govern England well, had every intention of keeping his word. But he probably found it difficult from the outset to control the greedy adventurers who followed him; and in any case he was bound to reward them. When his strong hand was temporarily removed by his return to Normandy, the tyranny of Odo of Bayeux and the excesses of the foreign nobles and soldiers soon produced revolt. Yet there was nothing national in the various uprisings; north, east, and west acted independently, and of cordial co-operation there was not a sign. In 1067 William, returning from Normandy, subdued the west and captured Exeter. Then, marching northward, he overran Mercia and Northumbria. Nowhere was there anything like an effective resistance; such opposition as was made appears to have been mainly inspired by King Malcolm of Scotland. Strong garrisons were placed at York, Lincoln, Nottingham, and other places, and earthworks thrown up, which later were to grow into the frowning castles that have somewhat incorrectly been associated with the Norman Conquest.