Historians have refought the battle of Hastings regularly since the days of Freeman and Round, and its importance justifies the attention paid it. Part of the reason academic warriors have covered the ground so often is that the battle is by no means easy to understand. It was unusual in a number of ways; so unusual, that the battle demands special care in interpretation. Hastings must be placed in a broader context of medieval military history than it sometimes has been. Only thus can we see the unusual features of the battle clearly and understand better what the battle ‘means’.
Hastings was unusual. It was unlike the unlike the vast majority of medieval battles (and, in fact, most ancient and early modern battles) in three major ways.
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First, it was unusually long. We are told that the fighting lasted from the third hour of the day until dusk, at least nine hours. It is difficult to find more than a handful of ancient and medieval battles that lasted more than an hour or two. Tinchebrai, the other great battle in Anglo-Norman history, was decided fairly quickly, for example: in about an hour, according to one source. In fact, it is hard to find a longer battle until well into the age of gunpowder.
The length of the battle reflects its unusual feature: how hard and evenly matched the fighting was. Two phases of the battle stand out in this respect. First, both armies came close to breaking fairly early in the day. The Normans, believing William dead, fell into a general panic after the failure of their first attack. William, baring his head, rallied them and a counterattack on those Saxons who had pursued. Now it was the Saxons’ turn to hold steady despite this setback. Thus passed the moment when most battles would have been won — one side panics and flees, or one side panics, rallies, and the other side breaks. At Hastings neither side broke, for even the Saxons’ final collapse was not sudden and panic-stricken but grudgingly slow and stubborn.
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The second phase followed this crisis and was strange to those who saw it. ‘There followed an unknown sort of battle,’ says William of Poitiers, ‘in which one side launched attacks and numerous manoeuvres, the other stood like rocks fixed to the ground.’ It was this sort of strange fighting which then lasted the rest of the day, indicating that neither side had a decisive advantage.
The third unusual aspect of Hastings is that it was in the end so completely and far-reachingly decisive. There were, of course, many battles in which one side beat the living daylights out of the other. But few of these transferred rule of a major kingdom from one people to another, with little subsequent opposition after the battle, and few transfers have had such fundamental consequences for the kingdom involved. Much of this is the result of a context for the battle that goes far beyond the scope of this essay. However, our understanding of the events on the field of Hastings must account for this decisiveness.
One way to account for the decisiveness of the Norman victory is by reference to the supposed superiority of Norman cavalry over Saxon infantry. This is in fact a standard view of Hastings, proposed most forcibly by R. Allen Brown and echoed by many others. In this view, Hastings was the inevitable victory of stirruped cavalry over helpless infantry, infantry which was ‘already obsolete in the greater part of western Europe’ and which had ‘failed to keep abreast with the latest developments in military science.’ I see a number of problems with this explanation.
On a level of analysis specific to Hastings, such a view seems in conflict with the unusual length and difficulty of the battle noted above. One would not expect inevitable victories to take so long, to be so hard, or to be almost lost. And the dominant tactics of the day were in fact evenly matched. The English defensive formation was just the sort that would turn back charging cavalry — densely massed infantry — while the hand-to-hand combat along the line matched Norman swords and lances against Saxon battle axes which ‘easily found their way through shields or other armor,’ as William of Poitiers says, with no advantage either way. Furthermore, this view necessarily ignores the large body of infantry, exclusive of archers, which Duke William deployed on the battlefield. While these troops play little or no explicit role in the details our sources give of the battle, it seems illogical to assume that they were mere spectators to the action.
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It is possible to argue that it was not in hand-to-hand combat, but in larger operations on the battlefield that the presence of cavalry on the Norman side was decisive. Briefly, it is alleged that the Norman cavalry, by its superior mobility, forced the Saxon army to remain on the defensive. Thus the Saxons might hold out, but they could not win.
I will note first that this should not be the argument of those who see the stirrup as central to the dominance of cavalry. To the extent that this argument is true, it could be true of any cavalry. But if we grant this advantage to William’s cavalry, the question becomes, did the presence of cavalry on the Norman side force Harold into a defensive battle he could not win? This is essentially a question of Harold’s generalship.
Could Harold have considered an attack? He knew his enemy from his stay in Normandy. His army was capable of attacking, as Harold Hardraada learned at Stamford Bridge. Finally, that Harold thought he could attack William is implied by his actions in the campaign up to that point: his offensive strategy is otherwise incomprehensible.
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Was Harold mistaken? When William’s army retreated after its first unsuccessful attack, at least part of the Saxon army pursued. The duke’s knights were able to rally and cut down a number of the Saxons who had left the solid defensive position. The success of the Normans’ counterattack against their Saxon pursuers would seem to suggest that Harold was mistaken; but I believe the episode may be read in another way. The knights were able to cut down those pursuers who scattered in the advance, but those who maintained their formation in the advance were able to defend themselves. Had the entire Saxon army advanced in close order, densatim progredientes, as it had in taking up its battle position, no opening for the cavalry would have existed. The duke’s army, demoralized, disordered, and thinking him dead, was ready to be swept from the field by a general counterattack. Why was it not?
David Douglas concluded that Harold failed to order an advance and so missed the opportunity, and was furthermore unable to impose discipline and hold back those of his troops who did advance. But the matter is not clear. Failure to attack does not seem consistent with Harold’s record as a general up to that point, including his probable intentions regarding William’s invasion. In addition, there are indications that a general advance was ordered: William saw ‘a great part of the enemy leave their positions, and pursue his troops.’ The question then becomes, if Harold did order a general advance, what happened to it?
Perhaps the answer lies in the deaths of Earls Gyrth and Leofwine, Harold's brothers and main subordinates. No conclusive moment in the battle has been found for their deaths, for the sources are not specific on this point. If Harold had ordered them to lead the counterattack, which is not unlikely, and they were killed in front of the Saxon army just as the advance was getting under way, the whole effort may have collapsed from this sudden loss of leadership. The placement of their deaths in the Bayeux Tapestry is consistent with such an interpretation, coming just after the first Norman attack, before William rallies his army, and well before the climactic battle scenes and Harold's death; and the fact that their deaths were noticed by the sources may indicate that they died prominently. If, moreover, they were near the centre of the Saxon line to lead the attack, which is also not unlikely, this would account for the disordered advances taking place on the wings of the Saxon army, which might not have seen their leaders' fate and thus been halted.
In any case, the Saxon attack was halted, and William was given time to rally his army. The crisis of the battle had passed, and neither side had won. The Saxons were given no more opportunities for a general attack and perhaps by now lacked enough leaders to pull one off. Their resulting immobility gave the Normans the security to carry out their famous feigned flights on the wings, the existence of which I see no reason to doubt. Yet the issue was still not settled; the Saxons were not doomed. The strategic situation meant that the Saxons could afford a draw, while the Normans could not. Had the Saxons held together for an hour more, or through one more Norman attack, they might have won the war without winning the battle.
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So the theory of cavalry dominance does not account convincingly for the details of the action at Hastings. On a more general level, the theory of cavalry dominance based on the stirrup is, I believe, untenable. A full analysis of this issue is beyond the scope of this paper; I shall present my arguments on this subject elsewhere. To state the outlines of my argument briefly, Hastings took place in a period of decreased military effectiveness brought about by the reduced effectiveness of central authority. Medieval armies were closer to armed mobs than were classical or early modern armies. This reduction generally affected infantry more than cavalry. In other words, it takes strong government to produce strong infantry; in the Middle Ages, cavalry did not get better, infantry got worse. Saxon and then Norman England, with their relatively strong governments, were affected less than elsewhere, accounting for the good showing of the Saxon infantry at Hastings, for the discipline both sides showed that day, and for the continuity of the Anglo-Norman infantry tradition after Hastings.
Another way of saying this is that the Saxon and Norman armies on the field of Hastings were the products of two societies which were not all that different in their organisation, their values, and their ways of governing. The Saxons perhaps had the edge in sophistication; the Normans, in vigour. Given the broad similarities of the two societies, should we really expect one side's forces to be radically superior to the other's? Probably not. Hastings as a victory of advanced cavalry over backward infantry is thus a problematical construct.
How then are we to understand the unusual features of this difficult battle? Leadership is crucial to how any army performs. Armies which were somewhat less than disciplined machines magnified the effects of leadership. Leadership, I believe, can account for the unusual features of the battle of Hastings.
First, the length of the battle is a credit mostly to the resolve of the two commanders. William, by personal example and sheer force of his personality, held his army together when by all odds it should have broken. On the other side, as long as Harold stood under his banner, both in the sense of remaining alive and in the sense of refusing to run, the Saxon army stood with him. Their respective armies were disciplined enough to follow their lead, and certainly the length and difficulty of the fighting argues for the relatively high quality of the armies raised on both sides of the conflict. It was the examples of William and Harold (and their subordinates) which prevented either side from giving in. The flight of Robert of Belleme from Tinchebrai provides an instructive counterexample here.
Second, I have argued that the peculiar tactical standoff which characterised much of the day's fighting was the result, not of the Saxons' inability to attack, but of a critical loss of leadership. The unusual difficulty of the battle for both sides, contributing also to its length, stemmed not from the Saxons' lack of options imposed by the presence of enemy cavalry, but from a loss of options imposed by a loss of its own leaders.
Finally, the role of leadership in the decisiveness of the battle is clear. The battle William won decided the war because Harold died. Indeed, not just Harold, but a large proportion of the entire Saxon leadership class perished, including any possible effective heirs to Harold's position. In this, the decisiveness of the battle was partly accidental. It is possible to imagine Harold beaten at the end of the day, yet escaping into the darkness to raise new forces. William's road to the throne would at that point have become much longer and harder. Yet the decimation of the Saxon leadership was also partly a result of Harold's decision to stand firm and of William's relentless determination. It seems that both leaders in the end decided to risk all on one throw of the dice; William rolled the sevens.
What can we as historians learn from Hastings? For one, the length and difficulty of the battle support the conclusion that this was a hard-fought battle between armies essentially equal in strength, with high levels of leadership, discipline, and morale obtaining on both sides of the conflict. The Saxon and the Norman military establishments both produced good warriors. If it is true that Hastings was a battle between an army that included some of the best cavalry in Europe and an army that included the best infantry in Europe, it is equally true that the battle was not decided by the inevitable superiority of one arm over the other. Given essentially equal armies, William simply outgeneralled Harold and had a bit more luck.
Hastings should rather be seen as confirmation of the effectiveness of both military establishments. The combined Anglo-Norman military organisation under firm royal control not only continued to produce good warriors, it continued to produce soldiers capable of effective infantry tactics and effective cavalry tactics. From the dismounted knights and English infantry at Tinchebrai through the Assize of Arms to the levies who took up the longbow and fought beside dismounted knights in Scotland and France, this tradition would persist throughout English medieval history.
Stephen Morillo is a Chair of History at Wabash College. He originally wrote this article in 1990 for the Haskins Society Journal and it has since become one of the key studies of the Battle of Hastings.
By Stephen Morillo
Historians have refought the battle of Hastings regularly since the days of Freeman and Round, and its importance justifies the attention paid it. Part of the reason academic warriors have covered the ground so often is that the battle is by no means easy to understand. It was unusual in a number of ways; so unusual, that the battle demands special care in interpretation. Hastings must be placed in a broader context of medieval military history than it sometimes has been. Only thus can we see the unusual features of the battle clearly and understand better what the battle ‘means’.
Hastings was unusual. It was unlike the unlike the vast majority of medieval battles (and, in fact, most ancient and early modern battles) in three major ways.
First, it was unusually long. We are told that the fighting lasted from the third hour of the day until dusk, at least nine hours. It is difficult to find more than a handful of ancient and medieval battles that lasted more than an hour or two. Tinchebrai, the other great battle in Anglo-Norman history, was decided fairly quickly, for example: in about an hour, according to one source. In fact, it is hard to find a longer battle until well into the age of gunpowder.
The length of the battle reflects its unusual feature: how hard and evenly matched the fighting was. Two phases of the battle stand out in this respect. First, both armies came close to breaking fairly early in the day. The Normans, believing William dead, fell into a general panic after the failure of their first attack. William, baring his head, rallied them and a counterattack on those Saxons who had pursued. Now it was the Saxons’ turn to hold steady despite this setback. Thus passed the moment when most battles would have been won — one side panics and flees, or one side panics, rallies, and the other side breaks. At Hastings neither side broke, for even the Saxons’ final collapse was not sudden and panic-stricken but grudgingly slow and stubborn.
The second phase followed this crisis and was strange to those who saw it. ‘There followed an unknown sort of battle,’ says William of Poitiers, ‘in which one side launched attacks and numerous manoeuvres, the other stood like rocks fixed to the ground.’ It was this sort of strange fighting which then lasted the rest of the day, indicating that neither side had a decisive advantage.
The third unusual aspect of Hastings is that it was in the end so completely and far-reachingly decisive. There were, of course, many battles in which one side beat the living daylights out of the other. But few of these transferred rule of a major kingdom from one people to another, with little subsequent opposition after the battle, and few transfers have had such fundamental consequences for the kingdom involved. Much of this is the result of a context for the battle that goes far beyond the scope of this essay. However, our understanding of the events on the field of Hastings must account for this decisiveness.
One way to account for the decisiveness of the Norman victory is by reference to the supposed superiority of Norman cavalry over Saxon infantry. This is in fact a standard view of Hastings, proposed most forcibly by R. Allen Brown and echoed by many others. In this view, Hastings was the inevitable victory of stirruped cavalry over helpless infantry, infantry which was ‘already obsolete in the greater part of western Europe’ and which had ‘failed to keep abreast with the latest developments in military science.’ I see a number of problems with this explanation.
On a level of analysis specific to Hastings, such a view seems in conflict with the unusual length and difficulty of the battle noted above. One would not expect inevitable victories to take so long, to be so hard, or to be almost lost. And the dominant tactics of the day were in fact evenly matched. The English defensive formation was just the sort that would turn back charging cavalry — densely massed infantry — while the hand-to-hand combat along the line matched Norman swords and lances against Saxon battle axes which ‘easily found their way through shields or other armor,’ as William of Poitiers says, with no advantage either way. Furthermore, this view necessarily ignores the large body of infantry, exclusive of archers, which Duke William deployed on the battlefield. While these troops play little or no explicit role in the details our sources give of the battle, it seems illogical to assume that they were mere spectators to the action.
It is possible to argue that it was not in hand-to-hand combat, but in larger operations on the battlefield that the presence of cavalry on the Norman side was decisive. Briefly, it is alleged that the Norman cavalry, by its superior mobility, forced the Saxon army to remain on the defensive. Thus the Saxons might hold out, but they could not win.
I will note first that this should not be the argument of those who see the stirrup as central to the dominance of cavalry. To the extent that this argument is true, it could be true of any cavalry. But if we grant this advantage to William’s cavalry, the question becomes, did the presence of cavalry on the Norman side force Harold into a defensive battle he could not win? This is essentially a question of Harold’s generalship.
Could Harold have considered an attack? He knew his enemy from his stay in Normandy. His army was capable of attacking, as Harold Hardraada learned at Stamford Bridge. Finally, that Harold thought he could attack William is implied by his actions in the campaign up to that point: his offensive strategy is otherwise incomprehensible.
Was Harold mistaken? When William’s army retreated after its first unsuccessful attack, at least part of the Saxon army pursued. The duke’s knights were able to rally and cut down a number of the Saxons who had left the solid defensive position. The success of the Normans’ counterattack against their Saxon pursuers would seem to suggest that Harold was mistaken; but I believe the episode may be read in another way. The knights were able to cut down those pursuers who scattered in the advance, but those who maintained their formation in the advance were able to defend themselves. Had the entire Saxon army advanced in close order, densatim progredientes, as it had in taking up its battle position, no opening for the cavalry would have existed. The duke’s army, demoralized, disordered, and thinking him dead, was ready to be swept from the field by a general counterattack. Why was it not?
David Douglas concluded that Harold failed to order an advance and so missed the opportunity, and was furthermore unable to impose discipline and hold back those of his troops who did advance. But the matter is not clear. Failure to attack does not seem consistent with Harold’s record as a general up to that point, including his probable intentions regarding William’s invasion. In addition, there are indications that a general advance was ordered: William saw ‘a great part of the enemy leave their positions, and pursue his troops.’ The question then becomes, if Harold did order a general advance, what happened to it?
Perhaps the answer lies in the deaths of Earls Gyrth and Leofwine, Harold's brothers and main subordinates. No conclusive moment in the battle has been found for their deaths, for the sources are not specific on this point. If Harold had ordered them to lead the counterattack, which is not unlikely, and they were killed in front of the Saxon army just as the advance was getting under way, the whole effort may have collapsed from this sudden loss of leadership. The placement of their deaths in the Bayeux Tapestry is consistent with such an interpretation, coming just after the first Norman attack, before William rallies his army, and well before the climactic battle scenes and Harold's death; and the fact that their deaths were noticed by the sources may indicate that they died prominently. If, moreover, they were near the centre of the Saxon line to lead the attack, which is also not unlikely, this would account for the disordered advances taking place on the wings of the Saxon army, which might not have seen their leaders' fate and thus been halted.
In any case, the Saxon attack was halted, and William was given time to rally his army. The crisis of the battle had passed, and neither side had won. The Saxons were given no more opportunities for a general attack and perhaps by now lacked enough leaders to pull one off. Their resulting immobility gave the Normans the security to carry out their famous feigned flights on the wings, the existence of which I see no reason to doubt. Yet the issue was still not settled; the Saxons were not doomed. The strategic situation meant that the Saxons could afford a draw, while the Normans could not. Had the Saxons held together for an hour more, or through one more Norman attack, they might have won the war without winning the battle.
So the theory of cavalry dominance does not account convincingly for the details of the action at Hastings. On a more general level, the theory of cavalry dominance based on the stirrup is, I believe, untenable. A full analysis of this issue is beyond the scope of this paper; I shall present my arguments on this subject elsewhere. To state the outlines of my argument briefly, Hastings took place in a period of decreased military effectiveness brought about by the reduced effectiveness of central authority. Medieval armies were closer to armed mobs than were classical or early modern armies. This reduction generally affected infantry more than cavalry. In other words, it takes strong government to produce strong infantry; in the Middle Ages, cavalry did not get better, infantry got worse. Saxon and then Norman England, with their relatively strong governments, were affected less than elsewhere, accounting for the good showing of the Saxon infantry at Hastings, for the discipline both sides showed that day, and for the continuity of the Anglo-Norman infantry tradition after Hastings.
Another way of saying this is that the Saxon and Norman armies on the field of Hastings were the products of two societies which were not all that different in their organisation, their values, and their ways of governing. The Saxons perhaps had the edge in sophistication; the Normans, in vigour. Given the broad similarities of the two societies, should we really expect one side's forces to be radically superior to the other's? Probably not. Hastings as a victory of advanced cavalry over backward infantry is thus a problematical construct.
How then are we to understand the unusual features of this difficult battle? Leadership is crucial to how any army performs. Armies which were somewhat less than disciplined machines magnified the effects of leadership. Leadership, I believe, can account for the unusual features of the battle of Hastings.
First, the length of the battle is a credit mostly to the resolve of the two commanders. William, by personal example and sheer force of his personality, held his army together when by all odds it should have broken. On the other side, as long as Harold stood under his banner, both in the sense of remaining alive and in the sense of refusing to run, the Saxon army stood with him. Their respective armies were disciplined enough to follow their lead, and certainly the length and difficulty of the fighting argues for the relatively high quality of the armies raised on both sides of the conflict. It was the examples of William and Harold (and their subordinates) which prevented either side from giving in. The flight of Robert of Belleme from Tinchebrai provides an instructive counterexample here.
Second, I have argued that the peculiar tactical standoff which characterised much of the day's fighting was the result, not of the Saxons' inability to attack, but of a critical loss of leadership. The unusual difficulty of the battle for both sides, contributing also to its length, stemmed not from the Saxons' lack of options imposed by the presence of enemy cavalry, but from a loss of options imposed by a loss of its own leaders.
Finally, the role of leadership in the decisiveness of the battle is clear. The battle William won decided the war because Harold died. Indeed, not just Harold, but a large proportion of the entire Saxon leadership class perished, including any possible effective heirs to Harold's position. In this, the decisiveness of the battle was partly accidental. It is possible to imagine Harold beaten at the end of the day, yet escaping into the darkness to raise new forces. William's road to the throne would at that point have become much longer and harder. Yet the decimation of the Saxon leadership was also partly a result of Harold's decision to stand firm and of William's relentless determination. It seems that both leaders in the end decided to risk all on one throw of the dice; William rolled the sevens.
What can we as historians learn from Hastings? For one, the length and difficulty of the battle support the conclusion that this was a hard-fought battle between armies essentially equal in strength, with high levels of leadership, discipline, and morale obtaining on both sides of the conflict. The Saxon and the Norman military establishments both produced good warriors. If it is true that Hastings was a battle between an army that included some of the best cavalry in Europe and an army that included the best infantry in Europe, it is equally true that the battle was not decided by the inevitable superiority of one arm over the other. Given essentially equal armies, William simply outgeneralled Harold and had a bit more luck.
Hastings should rather be seen as confirmation of the effectiveness of both military establishments. The combined Anglo-Norman military organisation under firm royal control not only continued to produce good warriors, it continued to produce soldiers capable of effective infantry tactics and effective cavalry tactics. From the dismounted knights and English infantry at Tinchebrai through the Assize of Arms to the levies who took up the longbow and fought beside dismounted knights in Scotland and France, this tradition would persist throughout English medieval history.
Stephen Morillo is a Chair of History at Wabash College. He originally wrote this article in 1990 for the Haskins Society Journal and it has since become one of the key studies of the Battle of Hastings.
Click here to read the original version of this article, which includes footnotes.
You can also read this article and others by Stephen on his Academia.edu page.
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