Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

by John Horace Round

The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They fought on foot in the close array of the shield-wall.[⁴²]

Mr Archer says they cannot have done so.[⁴³] There was also, according to Mr Freeman, a barricade, in front of—and distinct from—the shield-wall, being a special development which, he tells us, 'the foresight of Harold' had introduced on this occasion (pp. 444, 468). The barricade is denied by me, the shield-wall by Mr Archer. Whichever of us is right, Mr Freeman's accuracy is, in either case, equally impugned.

It is essential to remember that Mr Freeman, throughout, treated the palisade and the shield-wall as separate and distinct. Thus he wrote so late as 1880:

Besides the palisade the front ranks made a kind of inner defence with their shields, called the shield-wall. The Norman writers were specially struck with the close array of the English.[⁴⁴]

So in his great work we read of 'the shield-wall and the triple palisade still unbroken' (iii. 467). Later still 'the shield-wall still stood behind the palisade' (p. 487). Even when 'the English palisade was gone the English shield-wall was still a formidable hindrance in the way of the assailants (p. 491). The array of the shield-wall was still kept, though now without the help of the barricades' (p. 491). Here we have the very phrase of note NN, 'the array of the shield-wall',[⁴⁵] and it is shown beyond question that Mr Freeman's shield-wall, whatever Mr Archer may pretend, was quite distinct from the palisade, and was a shield-wall 'pure and simple'.

Let it also be clearly understood what Mr Freeman meant by that 'array of the shield-wall', of which the disputed passage in Wace was, he held, a description. He shows us the whole English army 'ranged so closely together in the thick array of the shield-wall, that while they only kept their ground the success of an assailant was hopeless'.[⁴⁶] He describes them as, 'a strong line, or rather wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields',[⁴⁷] and he ascribes their defeat to their 'breaking the line of the shield-wall'.[⁴⁸]

Of this shield-wall my opponent rashly wrote:

The Reviewer's [sic] theory of an extended shield-wall vanishes like smoke. If Wace is any authority ... the question is settled once and for all. There was no extended shield-wall at Hastings.[⁴⁹]

Of course, 'the Reviewer's theory' here is no other than Mr Freeman's own.