THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF ANGLO-NORMAN ENGLAND

THE FIGHTING BEGINS AGAIN

Once again the Norman infantry and cavalry advanced up that blood stained slope, already strewn with the dead and dying horses and men, again the English war cry echoed over the clashing steel on war board, as the invaders pushed up the slope, and once again that English war cry rose to a loud crescendo, increasing in loudness as the invaders reached the wall of English shields, and once again the bitter hand to hand fighting resumed, but still the Normans couldn’t force the English off of that bloody ridge, or even force away through the wall of shields. Whenever a group of Norman knights broke in the horsemen were brought down or thrown out by weight of num-bers; nor could they outflank the English because of the steeper slopes and the thick vegetation. The only way to disorganize the English line was to lure them out of their shield wall, and to some historians it is not unreasonable to credit William himself with this ruse, after all his Nordic ancestors were very appt at the same tactic. Poitiers explains that, remembering how the Breton flight had encouraged the English to break ranks, William is said to have organized deliberate, feigned flights to achieve the same end. Numbers of knights would suddenly jerk their horses round and gallop back down the slope, so that the English were drawn out in the heat of the fighting and ran downhill in pursuit. This fatal mistake allowed the Normans to halt, wheel about and gallop back through their enemies. Poitiers asserts that such a ruse was twice used successfully, presumably in different parts of the field.

The feigned flights, has long been argued over. Opponents maintain that it was simply a way for the Norman chroniclers to cover up the fact that their own horsemen ran away, perhaps in away this is true, most histories of battles are written by the victors, and not the defeated, so it is obvious that the victors would want to cover up their own weaknesses or cowardice, or the cowardice of their own troops, and there are many instances of this throughout military history. Again the opponents of the feigned flights maintain, say that after running away, they, the invaders, would be able to out-strip their pursuers and would be able to recover. Again this is true after all a man on a horse can out run a man on foot.

However, the earlier retreat was not concealed. It is also stated that such a manoeuvre would have been liable to end in panic, which would, as it did, spread throughout the Norman army into a real flight and that the word could not be passed to numerous horsemen without the English guessing what was going on, after all the English and their King weren’t stupid, which is as some pro-Norman historians have tried to por-tray the English over the past nine hundred years, not to mention in school history. Yet there would have been many occasions when squadrons were re-grouping on the valley floor to recover while their comrades were fighting on, on the hilltop, present-ing opportunities for the strategy to be agreed. The fact that a number of knights fought in a conroi made up of men trained together in arms over the years meant that they were capable of enacting a concerted manoeuvre when necessary. They needed only to wheel and follow the gonfanon of the lord as he led them in the pre-arranged feigned flight. Thus there would be no need to involve large numbers in the exercise, though this may have been done simply by instructing several conrois to act in unison. Such flights are well testified in warfare; the Normans used them near Arques in 1052-3 AD and at Cassel in 1071 AD as well as at Messina in Sicily in 1060 AD.

It is worth noting that, while the chroniclers agree that feigned flights took place, they do not all place them in the same place, or at the same time to other events in that bloody long fought battle. It has been suggested that the Tapestry shows Odo encour-aging the young men during the feigned flight rather than the actual flight of the Bret-ons, and that the disaster at the hillock formed part of this particular episode, an ar-rangement supported by the account of William of Malmesbury who used the Tapes-try when writing his Gesta Regum; Henry of Huntingdon has a similar story. This would then put the rout of the Bretons after the feigned flight. In addition, the hillock and streams of the Asten Brook on the west of the field ideally fit a picture of knights riding over it into the bogs beyond, and this seems to be where the Bretons were sta-tioned during the battle. Since Poitiers points out that they really fled, it seems hardly likely that this would be repeated as a feigned flight at the same place. Wace follows Poitiers in seeing a disaster during the retreat of the Bretons, but places this after the feigned flight, as does the Carmen.