Mr. Oman issued, so far back as 1885, ‘The Art of War in the Middle Ages,’ so that he enjoys, on this subject, the advantage of prolonged study. In 1894 he contributed to ‘Social England’[68] an article on “Norman Warfare,” to which I shall also refer. I should add that in his first (1885), as in his later work (1898), Mr. Oman received the help of Mr. F. York Powell, now Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford.
The first point I propose to consider is that of the famous English “formation” before the Norman Conquest. Mr. Oman originally wrote as follows:
The tactics of the English axemen were those of the column; arranged in a compact mass, they could beat off almost any attack, and hew their way through every obstacle (‘Art of War,’ p. 24).
This was also the view of the late Professor Freeman, who wrote of the battle of Maldon that—
The English stood, as at Senlac, in the array common to them and their enemies—a strong line, or rather wedge of infantry, forming a wall with their shields.
At the battle of Hastings (“Senlac”) itself he tells us—
The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They fought on foot in the close array of the shield wall.
They were ranged, he held, “closely together in the thick array of the shield wall.” He had well observed that “the Norman writers were specially struck with the close array of the English,” and had elsewhere spoken of “the close array of the battle-axe men,” and of “the English house-carls with their ... huge battle axes,” accustomed to fight in “the close array of the shield wall.”[69]
To this formation, it is necessary to observe, the term testudo was applied. At the battle of Ashdown, Freeman wrote:
Asser calls it a testudo or tortoise. This is the shield wall, the famous tactic of the English and Danes. We shall hear of it in all the great battles down to the end.