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

THE FIGHTING ENDS IN NORMAN VICTORY

With the death of their good lord and true King, the resistance of many of the English Fyrd began to crumble. The English Dragon windsock was still standing high above the fiercely and stubbornly fighting Huscarls, who were now surrounded by the exul-tant Norman knights as they began to hack and slash their way into the crumbling English shield wall, while the banner of the Fighting Man was seized and carried off, later to be sent to the Pope in thanks for the gift of his own banner to William the “Bastard”. The death of Harold no doubt began to precipitate the flight of a number of the Fyrd, who had lost all heart for the fight, and who began to slip away along the neck of land in the rear towards the safety of the forest. This, together with losses from wounds, had caused the English shield wall to contract just enough for the Normans to force themselves to the crest of that heroic and so stubbornly held blood soaked ridge, probably initially at the western end. At last the Normans were able to attack the flanks of the crumbling English shield wall, and slowly beginning to roll up the still stubbornly fighting English line. Though lesser Fyrdmen may have lost their will to continue the fight, and were beginning to find away off of that bloody ridge, the Royal hearth troops, the hard, stubborn heroic Huscarls and King’s Thegns, began to gather around the blood soaked body of their heroic King and beloved lord and began to sell their lives dearly. Better to die beside their English king than be regarded as null and run, and ancient warrior theme.

Lesser Englishmen were now making a desperate bid to escape the bloody carnage on that blood lake ridge. The horses tethered in the rear were seized, with scant regard to their rightful owners. The thick forest that loomed beyond Caldbec Hill in the gather-ing gloom offered potential safety especially from the Norman horsemen, who were unsure of the ground. Wounded Englishmen were hauling themselves into the woods to die there forgotten and alone; others were found lying by the track-ways.

The sun had disappeared, and a dull darkness had fallen on that hard fought for blood lake ridge, the remaining Huscarls and Thegns continued their struggle against the invaders of their homeland, now in little pockets of fearlessly struggling warriors, the largest and perhaps the most hard pressed were those who’d formed their last ring around the corpse of their beloved lord and King, refusing to submit they fought on even though, the stars were out, those hard stubborn English Warriors were still fight-ing, for they fought for their dead lord and King, for their Hearths and Homes, and their kin Folk, but as that ring of blood socked stubborn men under the only standard that hadn’t already fallen into the hands of the usurper William the “Bastard” the English Dragon standard of the line of Cerdic, the ancient House of Wessex, they were doomed as the tight ring began to contract. Beset from all sides they were the last to hold out, and as their strength began to fail they were the last to fall, until around the bloody corpse of our last true native King, lay the heroic stubborn butchered corpses of English manhood.