The Battle of Hastings

 The Battle of Hastings

Today marks the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.

1066 has already been a tumultuous year in England. On January 5, Edward the Confessor died, leaving the English throne to Harold Godwinson (King Harold II). Harold’s family, the Godwins, were the most powerful in England. Harold was himself an earl, and as well the brother-in-law to Edward the Confessor, the latter having been married to Harold’s daughter Edith. William of Normandy, also known as William the Bastard, claimed that he had been designated as Edward’s successor and that Harold had once promised him that he, Harold, disclaimed any right to the throne, leaving it instead to William. In addition, Harold Hardrada of Norway asserted a claim to the English throne.

Sometime in September, Harold Hardrada had landed his troops in the north of England. After fast marching his troops north, the army of Harold Godwinson met the invading army of Harold Hardrada (supported by Tostig Godwinson, Harold’s brother) at the Battle of Stamford Bridge (HERE IS A LINK to a posting on those events). The invading army was defeated, and Hardrada was killed. Learning of William’s invasion in the south, Harold had to turn his army around and fast march it south in order to respond to this new threat. Those forced marches were some 240 miles each way. Or that is what we thought.  In a recently released book, Harold: Warrior King by Tom License it is argued that Harold's army did not march but rather sailed, an entirely plausible thr=eory in light of the availability of excess ships left behind when Harold Hardrada's greatly depleted army retreated.

For reasons that have baffled many later historians, Harold, upon arriving in London, quickly turned his troops, already exhausted from the march, toward Hastings (again, if License's theory holds true they were not eachuasted from a march). Regardless, he did so notwithstanding that reinforcements were due to arrive the following day. Still, Harold led his forces towards William’s beachhead, leaving word for the reinforcements to actual up as soon as possible. Those reinforcements included the archers.

The Battle of Hastings proper (there was an earlier skirmish) probably began around 11 in the morning. Through most of the day the forces of Harold prevailed – attacks on the shield wall were not effective, and the Norman archers were not effective firing up-hill. Harold holding his own against William would have been for Harold a win. As observed by Frank McLynn in 1066-The Year of Three Battles:

 

[Harold] knew he had only to hold out until nightfall when reinforcements were certain to arrive; he could play for a draw but William had to have a win.

The Norman infantry having failed to break through, William sent in his calvary. Attacking uphill, they did not have the force necessary to break through. When William’s flank started to fail (the Breton forces) and William was unhorsed and rumored to be dead. Harold’s forces began an advance downhill, their shielded wall still intact and functionally invulnerable. But then the advance lost its momentum, perhaps due to the death of its leader Leofwine, Harold’s brother. William’s forces pushed back and in order Harold’s forces reversed themselves back uphill. It was then a battle of attrition, and the Norman invaders were lost at a lower rate than were Harold’s forces. A combined archery and armored calvary assault finally broke the shield wall, and the battle dissolved into combat between small units ensued. Harold and the remaining troops around him were attacked and Harold fell to multiple sword blows and a lance through his chest. 

Maybe an hour after Harold fell, reinforcements, including additional housecarls, arrived.

The accepted, albeit almost certainly apocryphal, story is that Harold fell after being struck in the eye with an arrow. The Bayeux Tapestry may be interpreted as saying such. However, the “King Harold was killed” heading is over two figures (neither wearing a crown), one with an arrow in his eye and the other being struck down by a sword. If the former is meant to be Harold, the famous arrow in the eye as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry may be a later invention. It is not mentioned in the earliest accounts of the battle. In addition, in medieval iconography, an arrow in the eye is the punishment afforded a perjurer. Having gone against his oath to leave the throne to William, some might have felt it poetic justice, even if not based in reality.

By Christmas William was crowned King of England and was in Westminster Abbey accepting pledges of fealty from England’s mobility. Still, the next two decades of his reign would see numerous rebellions and challenges, including one from his own son Robert.

            As for the Bayeux Tapestry itself, HERE IS A LINK is an animated (and translated) version.

                A body of reinactors will this year, the 959th anniversary of the battle, demonstrate what it likely was like to be there that day.

 

            The English like to claim that the Norman Invasion was the last invasion of England. This is not true. For example, during the Barons War, a French force invaded and had control of a significant portion of southern England, and the Isle of Wight was invaded in 1545. But the Norman Conquest is the last successful invasion of England.

The Death of Pompey Magnus

                                                            The Death of Pompey Magnus

          Today is the anniversary of the death (assassination) of Pompey the Great on his (almost) arrival in Egypt.  Having lost the Battle of Pharsalus (48 b.c.) to Julius Caesar, he fled to Egypt hoping for refuge and the opportunity to raise a new army.  The Egyptians, knowing that Caesar would be on Pompey’s heals, arranged for his assassination before he reached the shore.  For those of you who enjoyed the HBO series Rome, while Pompey was killed in sight of his wife, there were more assassins than the one depicted, and it took place in the boat, not as Pompey walked to shore.

            It was an ignominious end to an amazing life.  He almost defeated Caesar earlier in the year at the Battle of Dyrrhachium. Previously, with Caesar and Crassus, he had been part of the First Triumvirate.  He was three times Consul of Rome, and three times he was awarded a Triumph. According to Josephus as recounted in The Jewish Antiquities, after conquering Jerusalem and settling a dispute as to local control he entered the Holy of Holies of the Temple, but took nothing of its riches.  

        Robin Seager's Pompey the Great: A Political Biography is recommended, as is Pat Souther's Pompey the Great. You might enjoy as well Mike Duncan's The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic.

Today is also the anniversary in 1066 of the arrival of the troops of William of Normandy (soon to be “the Conqueror”) in England. 

The Last Viking Invasion of England and the Battle of Stamford Bridge

  The Last Viking Invasion of England and the Battle of Stamford Bridge

Today is the anniversary of the battle at Stamford Bridge in 1066, it ending, for all intents and purposes, the Viking invasions of England.  Beginning in the 8th century and the famous raid of Lindesfarne (June 8, 793), England had repeatedly suffered both Viking raids and invasions/migrations.  King Canute II (one of only two English kings denominated “the Great”) was an aspect of this chain of events; he was himself Danish.

King Edward the Confessor, who was himself “English” in that he was Anglo-Saxon,  died on January 5, 1066; he was childless.  The crown was assumed by Harald Godwinson.  His dispute with William the Bastard of Normandy over whether Harald had previously agreed to surrender the crown to William would ultimately lead to the Battle of Hastings.  In the meantime, Harald Godwinson had to deal with an invasion from Norway led by another claimant to the throne, Norwegian King Harald Hardrada; Hardrada was supported in this invasion by Tostig Godwinson, Harald Godwinson’s brother. 

Two factors were crucial to the resolution of the Battle of Stamford Bridge.   First, the invading force was dispersed on both sides of the river.  Thus, when the English army attacked the Norse contingent on the south side of the river, they outnumbered their opponent.  Second, the intelligence of the Norse army failed; they did not realize the English army was already present and ready to launch an attack. Another factor whose weight is unknown is that the invading army has days earlier defeated an English army (The Battle of Fulford) led by Earls Morcar (an exiled Northumbrian) and Edwin (Mercia), possibly leading to complacency.

It being a warm day, the invading army had left much of their armor on board their ships. Initially, the English forces largely massacred the Norse forces on the south side of the river.  They then proceeded to attack over the bridge, an effort that, in what was almost certainly an apocryphal story, was delayed by a single Viking yielding an ax who single-handedly killed some forty soldiers before he was himself slain.  With the English having now crossed the bridge, the two armies again faced one another.  Ultimately, the Norse army would collapse consequent to its lack of armor and the deaths in battle of both Harald Hardrada and Tostig.  The few Normans who survived the battle entered into a truce with Harald agreeing to leave and never return.  While the invading fleet filled some 300 ships, the Norse survivors of the battle were able to return home in only 24 of them.

According to an article in The Guardian, Country diary: Before Hastings was the Battle of Stamford Bridge. And it happened right here, 960 years ago today (September 25, 2026), the location of the Battle of Stamford Bridge has now been located. 

Harold Godwinson must have welcomed the end of this threat to his seat on the English throne.  Then he learned that the forces of William of Normandy had landed in the south.

I have in hand but have not yet had opportunity to read the recently released Tom License Harold - Warrior King and am looking forward to his insights including the assertion that the English army sailed, rather than undertaking a forced march, south to meet Willaim.

The Assassination of Flavias Aetius

 The Assassination of Flavias Aetius

      Flavias Aetius was the Roman commander at the Battle of Chalons (451), where along with forces of the Visigothic Empire, it under the command of its King, Theodoric, the Huns under Attila were defeated.  Flavias had been appointed magister militum (essentially “supreme commander” of all Roman military forces) by Valentinian III, a particularly weak (and in this era that is saying something) emperor.  While Boethius is oft identified as the last gasp of the Roman Empire’s (or at least its western components) intellectual life, Flavius Aetius can equally be described as the last of the great western Roman generals.  Gibbons called him the Last of the Romans

      Only three years after Chalons on September 21, 454, Aetius was assassinated by Valentinian.  Within the year, Valentinian would in turn be assassinated by friends of Aetius while Valentinian’s guard watched; the members of the guard had been followers of Aetius. The shrinking remnants of the Western Roman Empire would finally collapse in 476 with the deposition of the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustus.

 

The Battle of Poitiers

    The Hundred Years War, which actually lasted 116 years, is famous for the fact that it is remembered for three primary engagements, each of which resulted in a decisive English victory, and still in the end England lost the war. Today is the anniversary of the first of those engagements, the Battle of Poitiers fought in 1356. The other two battles were Crecy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415.

    Poitiers is the outlier among these three; it did not involve an attempted uphill charge of the French against a prepared line of English archers, men at arms and other infantry. In addition it involved an important contribution by an English calvary force. But there the dissimilarities end. The French, while significantly outnumbering the English forces, were again hampered by poor chain of command. And the final casualty count was far in favor of the English.

    The English forces, which included a significant contingent from the French province of Gascony, were led by Edward the Black Prince, son of Edward III and heir apparent (the throne would go eventually to Richard III, son of the Black Prince and heir presumptive while his father lived). At that time Gascony was the remaining remnant in France of the Angevin Empire assembled by Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitain; Bordeaux its capital was larger than London. A dispute over Gascony was the impetus for the Hundred Years War. 

    The Black Prince and many of the force that had fought at Crecy were there as Poitiers loomed; they knew what lay ahead. In October, 1355 they began a chevauchée (think Sherman's March to the Sea) through Southern France, then returning to Gascony. Over the winter and into the spring of 1356 numerous towns were captured with some nobles switching their alliance to the English. Meanwhile in that summer another English army invaded Normandy and did significant damage to French property and alliances.

    In August of 1356 the English/Gascon forse set out north and then north-east in another chevauchee some 50 miles wide, described by David Green as “deliberately destructive, extremely brutal ... methodical and sophisticated." The Black Prince at 51. Meanwhile the French King John continued to focus on unsuccessful seige operations in Normandy, attempting without success to dislodge dug-in English forces at Breteuil, a venture described by Sumption as "a pointless endeavour". Jonathan Sumption,  Trial by Fire. The Hundred Years' War (Vol II) at 224. Eventually he convinced the English garrison to abandon Breteuil with safe passage, an agreement they could take with them their loot and treasure, and a substantial additional payment (a/k/a a bribe). Only then did the French army, buttressed by some 200 Scotsman, move against Edward’s forces, they now each maneuvering for an advantageous field of battle. Meanwhile a French force of maybe 700 was ambushed by the English with some 240 killed or captured. At that point King John turned to make battle while the forces of the Black Prince picked and fortified with stakes and trenches a position from which they, unmounted, would answer a French assault.

    After fruitless negotiations for English safe passage back to Gascony a French army of some 15,000 (maybe 11,000 men at arms, 2000 light infantry and 2000 crossbow men). organized against the English/Gascon army of maybe 6,000 (3000 men at arms, 2000 bowmen and 1000 Gascon light infantry). At dawn on September 19 the French organized some 500 yards in front of the English’ prepared position, but they did not advance for some two hours. The battle began with French mounted forces attacking the bowmen arrayed on the two flanks. On one side they were hampered by a swamp the horses could not traverse. While many of the horses were protected from arrow fire by armor on their chests and heads, their hindquarters were not protected, and a continent of archers moved so they could shoot at the unprotected areas. The first French assault fell largely to the English longbow, although hand-to-hand combat on the English right flank was an important contributor to repulsing that onslaught.

    And then came the second French attack of some 4000 men at arms, an often hand-to-hand battle that waged for two hours. Here the flexibility of the English/Gascon forces proved vital; while the French may be praised for following their orders the English and Gascon proved flexible in responding to threatened breakthroughs; Green in his Battle of Poiters (pp. 52-53) commended "an extremely flexible tactical response" while Hoskins in In the Steps of the Black Prince: The Road to Poitiers, 1355–1356 (p. 192) observed that having fought together since 1355 the Black Prince's army was disciplined as a unit. Eventually the contingent fighting with the dauphin (the French heir apparent) and two of his brothers retreated, which it seems all the French forces took as a signal to disengage. From the French perspective the timing might not have been more disadvantageous; at that point all English reserves were committed.

    A lackluster third attack had no real bearing on the battle, while the fourth, comprised of maybe 4000 men at arms, some fresh and some survivors of an earlier wave, around the French king John, marched at the English position with the French national banner, the Oriflamme unfurled - under it all French were forbidden to take prisoners; all combat was to the death.

    While the details are debated, the English took a two prong approach to this now forth onslaught. First, a group of unknown size mounted their horses, rode around the flank, and from the rear attacked the French forces. At the same time, the main body, led by the Black Prince, moved forward from their secured position, advancing on the main French body. Eventually the French force collapsed and disintegrated. The bearer of the Oriflamne was killed and that national banner captured as was, eventually, King John himself and his son Philip.

    While casualty figures are notoriously difficult to ascertain, the French likely lost 2500 men-at-arms, and an equal number of other soldiers. Meanwhile, the English likely lost 40 men-at-arms and an unknown number of infantry and bowmen. 

    The Black Prince’s army retreated to Gascony with the French king in hand. After several fits and starts including a treaty providing for John’s ransom that the dauphin rejected as too costly, John was freed in return for the French transferring to the English significant territory in France and a ransom of 3 million ecu (the 1360 Treaty of Bretigny).

    David Green’s The Black Prince (2011) is a good resource, as is Peter Hoskin’svSteps of the Black Prince: The Road to Poitiers, 1355–1356 (also 2011). Still, Jonathan Sumption’s monumental five volume history of the Hundred Years War (The Hundred Years War I – Trial by Battle; The Hundred Years War II – Trial by Fire; The Hundred Years War III – Divided Houses;The Hundred Years War IV – Cursed Kings; and The Hundred Years War V - Triumph and Illusion) is without a bout the definitive treatment.

The Death of Theodore of Tarsus

 Theodore of Tarsus

Today marks the anniversary of the death, in the year 690, of Theodore of Tarsus. At the time of his death, he was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Probably you have never heard of him. That’s unfortunate; he led a most interesting life. 

Theodore was born in Tarsus (the same city as was born Paul the Apostle) on the southern coast of what is today Turkey. He grew up at a time of conflict between the Byzantine Empire controlled out of Constantinople and the Sassanid Empire out of what was then referred to as Persia (today’s Iran). At this time, pre-the rise of Islam, most of the Sassanid Empire was Zorastrian.  By the early 600s and the rise of Islam, the Sassanid Empire converted to Islam. As such, through this stage in his life, Theodore had been immersed in classical Persian and then Muslim cultures even as he studied classical Western and Christian studies. Ultimately, he relocated first to Constantinople and then to Rome, where he entered a monastery and continued his studies. 

Following the death, before consecration, of a man intended to be the Archbishop of Canterbury (a certain Wighard), Theodore was chosen by the Pope to fill that vacant See. He was consecrated as the Archbishop of Canterbury in Rome, and at some point thereafter departed for England. Once in England, he took steps with respect to a variety of issues ranging from the calculation on what day Easter should be held to a variety of matters of church discipline. He is well served as a mediator in a number of political disputes, and founded a famous school at Canterbury. Many factors of his time as the Archbishop of Canterbury are known through Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. 

He would ultimately die in Canterbury at the age of approximately 88.

So there you have it. Theodore was born in southern Turkey, lived under both the Persian Sassanid and then the Persian Islamic Empires, studied in Constantinople and then in Rome, and spent over 20 years as the Archbishop of Canterbury. This suggesting the people in the Middle Ages did not travel far from where they were born is simply not accurate.

The Passing of Dante

                      The Passing of Dante

On this day in 1321, in the city of Ravenna, his home after being exiled from Florence, died Dante Alighieri, author of numerous works but especially the epic Comedy.  Today better known as the “Divine” Comedy after Boccaccio a generation later informally amended its title, Dante wrote his greatest work in his native Tuscan dialect of Italian, abandoning the more typical approach of writing in Latin (and thereby earning the enmity of Petrarch), and in so doing fixing that dialect as “proper Italian.”

Dante’s remains remain in Ravenna; his “tomb” in Florence is a cenotaph, and numerous request to return his remains to the Florence have been rejected. 

The post-death story of Dante’s influence is recounted in Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy by Guy P. Rafa, while his best biography is Dante: The Story of His Life by Marco Santagata.  If you are looking for some help in reading the Comedy, Joseph Gallagher’s A Modern Reader's Guide to Dante's The Divine Comedy may be for you. Another good resource is The Cambridge Companion to Dante by Rachel Jacoff.