1066 New Discovery: The Myth of Harold's March

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Just visit historyhit.com/subscrib. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that dowels into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to poops to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into

rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Here at Gone Medieval, we try to keep you up to date with Breaking News, and sometimes there's breaking news from the medieval world. In this case, we're bringing you something from almost

a thousand years ago that changes the way we think about one of the most critical moments

in English history. The events of 1066 are pretty well known. I thought I had a handle on what happened. Turns out, this one very important aspect we might all have got wrong. I'm delighted to be joined today by Tom License Professor of Medieval History and Literature at the University of East Anglia and a fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge. Tom has some

“news for us that I think you'll find interesting.”

Welcome back to Gone Medieval Tom, it's great to have you with us. Go ahead to your back, Matt. Thanks for having me. Last scene here with Ellen, I'm talking about Edward the Confester, but we've got something that qualifies as medieval breaking news here. This is going to be really, really interesting to get into, I think.

Yes, I hope so. Something to do with Harold's use of the fleets in 1066.

Yeah, right, before we get there though, I mean, most people think they know what happened in 1066. It's usually presented in quite a perfunctory matter of fact way. Harold marches north, fights Harold, hard rider at the Battle of Stamford Bridge and marches south to face William Duke of Normandy at Hastings. I was have to say William Duke of Normandy there as well, because I want to say William the Conqueror, but I'm not sure Harold would

have appreciated us according in that just yet. But you're here with us today to challenge some of that perception, but let's go back and work our way up to that moment if we can. Can you just give us a little brief recap of how Harold has become King of England? Well, on the 5th of January, 1066, Edward the Confester died and Harold emerged from his

bed chamber saying, "Oh, I am King." And had himself crowned the very next day, the day of Edward's funeral, the crown being put on his head, the moment Edward was lowered into the ground. And of course, those around Harold said that he was Edward's chosen candidate to succeed him, but other people had a different view including William of Normandy at Stamford. And that fact that there's no clear kind of rules or direction about this

“succession, it was the door for problems for Harold really, doesn't it?”

They may have been guidance given by Edward the Confester. He seems to have been lining up his great nephew and adopted son Edgar ethyling as his heir, but for one reason or another, Edgar ethyling didn't make it that far and Harold put himself upon the throne with a support perhaps of the great and the good. But this did raise a question because of course he's not of the royal blood and every monarch up until that point had been of a particular bloodline.

So you can imagine today someone coming and taking the throne who wasn't related to the current royal family, just as today back in the 11th century, this raised eyebrows and caused a lot of upset. And it was equivalent to putting a sign on the throne saying, "Anyone may now apply, which is of course what William did and what Harold Hardrada may have been up to as well." And what do we know about Harold Hardrada and his assault on England? Does he believe he

has a valid plane to the throne of England or is he just chancing his arm? It's traditionally being the view that Harold Hardrada is claiming the throne for himself.

“I'm not so sure. I think he was one of these battlehardened warriors who can't sit still”

for very long without having a good fight somewhere. And his wars with Denmark had concluded with a peace treaty a couple of years earlier. He had a lot of troops in the field, he needed to raise money from somewhere. And he might have seen his chance to invade a country that looked a little bit wobbly with a new ruler that was divided because they had recently been a rebellion in the north where the king had fallen out with his brother, Tosti, who of course has

gone dashing to Harold Hardrada, saying, "Come invade with me." I think Harold Hardrada is maybe a

but if it's money or hostages, he's settled for that. And I guess from the north perspective,

England is always looked like fairly rich picking. Of course there's a long tradition of Vikings,

as a Scandinavian seafaring warriors going to England to invade from Denmark, from Norway, from Sweden and then sailing all around the northern coast. So I think yes, England is possibly the most prosperous nation at this point in north west Europe. In terms of its structure and

“the quality of its currency, it's general wealth. So I think yes, which for the pickings?”

And someone else who definitely is going to make a bid for the crown is William Duke of Normandy. So how strong should we consider William's claim to be in comparison to Harold? What is he basing his belief that he should be king not? We know in hindsight that he's definitely going to make this bid. But the interesting thing is that if you leave the contemporary

biography of Edward the confessor, written around about 1065, 1066, the author of that,

who's a court insider, doesn't see it coming. The worst thing he can anticipate is a civil war between Harold and Tosti, who he knows is going to make a comeback. So if William had been planning it, he'd been keeping his cards very close to his chest. And the suggestions from the contemporary chronicles are that Harold doesn't have any word of William's plans until spring when Harold responds by calling together the fleets. And then there's a question Marko as to whether he'll

really pull it off because at the end of the day William is just a Duke and no Duke of Normandy has so far managed to put together a fleet and mounts an invasion of England before. So I want to pass two weeks might have dreamed of doing so. But the idea of England being on red alert because of the ambitions of this pushy Duke is perhaps something that wasn't felt at the time. Yeah, that's really interesting. Don't worry about it. Harold, it'll be fine.

And why do we end up in a situation there when Harold has to go north? So he's going to face, we know he's going to face two effectively invasions of England. We know yes.

Is there a reason that Harold arrives first? Is there a chance that they could have both

landed at the same time and caused him even more problems? Well, to answer that second question

“first? Yes, they could both arrive at the same time. William had been planning I think to”

invade earlier in the summer. He'd been delayed by storms in the channel and there's a lot from often a lot of bad weather in the channel in August or September. So William had been planning to arrive earlier in the summer and he had the weather not kept him at bay. Then he and Harold had rather might have invaded simultaneously which would have been a real challenge for Harold face, how do they know? And what do we know then about the events of the Battle of Stamford Bridge?

And presumably we're not talking about the football match between Chelsea and Tottenham in 2016. What we might or might not know about Stamford Bridge is something that I've been busy rewriting in my forthcoming biography of Harold because I think we still have a lot to find out about the Battle of Stamford Bridge, including what Harold used his ships for and whether there are two battles simultaneously, in either main battle in which King fought against King and

Harold, how to drive of Norway and Tosti and were killed, but also possibly a secondary battle around the fleets, the two fleets, which pops up in some of the Icelandic and Norwegian sources.

“The main thing I think we know is that Harold advanced the North very quickly and was able to catch”

Harold, how to drive on the waves. Harold, how to drive a had divided his forces. He had left one half with the ships, and he had taken the other to march to a place called Stamford Bridge to gather hostages from the surrounding shires, having already taken hostages from York. And he felt so secure in his march that he and his men left their armour behind, presumably because it was hot weather and they weren't expecting to encounter an enemy.

And Harold was able to get up to York very quickly, at March through York, and then surprise Harold, how to ride a riding up behind him, presumably very quickly, apps or just beyond Stamford Bridge, where the English did so much slaughter upon the Viking invaders that the contemporary chronicle says that of the 300 ships in which they came only 24 required to transport the survivors back to Norway, which is a fairly destructive image of the dozens and dozens of these

Norse warriors, hundreds of Norse warriors, not making it home. And I guess as you say, the important part there is that Harold has taken them by surprise. He's caught them unaware, isn't caught them unprepared. And without their armour too, because armour, they will would have had male vests, male vests deflect a lot of blows, but if you don't have armour and you're facing sorts and axes, it gets very ugly. Yeah, yeah. And we're going to get to your revelation in a moment.

But what do we know in the aftermath of the Battle of Stamford Bridge? What do we know about how much Harold would have been aware of and need to get back down safe? Does he know what William is up to at this point in the immediate aftermath of Stamford Bridge while he's in the North?

You know, William hasn't come so far. It's getting late, very late in the campaigning season. Once we're in to October, it's sort of a bit after the campaigning season. Perhaps he's hoping or banking on William, you know, not not showing up. Certainly, if he's still in Yorkshire, Battle of Stamford Bridge is 25th September. If he's still in Yorkshire when he hears the news of William Landing and William lands around about 28th, 29th September, probably overnight,

it would have taken a messenger minimum of three or four days of riding as fast as you could to

“get the news up to Harold, if he's still in Yorkshire. He then has limited time, I think, to do”

something, to contain this threat in the south. I think what we need to understand and appreciate

there, which isn't always factored into the accounts that we read, is that whichever commanders

had been left to guard the south in Harold's absence in the north, as soon as they heard of William's Landing, would already have called out the men of the Shires adjacent and probably, you know, further the field. So, some opposition to William will already be organizing prior to Harold's return. And so this brings us to the crux of your research, which is around that, particularly that journey back safe. So again, just to give us a little bit of a recap in the aftermath of Stamford Bridge.

What does the traditional version tell us happens next? The traditional version is that how old here's the news, probably somewhere near York or perhaps on his return journey. And then engages his men in this incredible march, one historian in the 19th century, called it almost

miraculous. This is an incredible march. 250 to 300 miles, depending on exactly where he had the

news and exactly what Rootie took. But over a period that can't possibly have been more than about 12 days all the way from Yorkshire down to battle where the battle was fought. So this march that the forced march has been termed because he would have been forcing his men day in day out, day in night presumably, to cover this distance has been a part of his legend for the best part of a more than 200 years. And doubts have been raised about it before. I mean, since the

1950s historians have been suggesting that such march was impossible. And there was subsequent debate about whether or maybe the men were mounted, could infantry have covered that distance in that time and have been attempts to compare it to other marches where we know infantry have been pressed over long distances in very short periods of time. But the idea of this march has become central to Harold's legend and also central to the question of why the English lost at the Battle of Hastings,

because some scholars and very eminent scholars have accused Harold of recklessness and rashness and impetuous haste in putting his men through such an ordeal to get down south perhaps faster than he should. Yeah, because we've traditionally had this view that Harold won't wait for any kind of reinforcement, his family are encouraging to wait in London and rebuild his forces until he's ready to go. And as you say, he's impetuous and he insists on leaving

London immediately. And then also the impact that that has at Hastings in Harold and a chunk of his men arrived there presumably exhausted from almost a fortnight's worth of relentless marching safe in that that impacts what happens at the Battle of Hastings. Yeah, and presumably having suffered losses of men and desertions along the way and people who couldn't keep up with him and all these questions. And another dimension of it, too, is this idea that William was

goding Harold, you're by attacking his family lands down in Sussex, he was provoking him into this sort of action and how being this sort of headstrong angry figure walks straight into this trap, he'd anxious as he was to avenge, avenge himself against this slight upon his honour.

“So the way Harold has been constructed in this this story that we tell ourselves, I think put”

him in this light that he's not necessarily the most assured or responsible general. And England, you know, lost as a result of his headstrong very heroic, but sort of headstrong full hardiness. Yeah, I can't keep everyone in suspense for too much longer. I'm desperately trying to was there a specific thing that led you to this research? Were you actually trying to find what you'd found? Was it a response to the disbelief in the possibility of this march that led you

to challenge it? Or is this something that you kind of accidentally came across? I don't know what's accidentally actually, it's not fair, but I was already commissioned to write the biography of Harold for the Alanish Monk series after having written it but the confesser. So I was researching Harold's reign on a conquest scholar and I've had ideas on this for a long time and I have been floating the idea in small sort of scholarly circles for quite a while that Harold might have

“used ships and while I do other historians think the same or certainly are open to that. I think”

what changed was I got to the point in my biography that I really had to look carefully at exactly how he was defending England in 1066 and that meant what he was doing with the fleet, what he was

doing with his troops. And so as I always do with my sort of detective's hat on, I went back to the

assumed over the years to see what they actually said and I was looking for all the references

“to the fleet and its movements in the most early incredible sources and also for Harold's troops”

and I stumbled upon a couple of things that has to put it surprise me for. I mean let's get to it then, what did you uncover? Well the first thing I had noticed is that historians of the conquest going all the way back to Sharon Turner who established the idea of Anglo-Saxon studies and might call it early medieval studies. Now, but so that Anglo-Saxon history as a thing and wrote the history of Anglo-Saxon England and then Freeman, Abid Augustus Freeman, the great conquest

scholar of the mid-19th century who wrote six volume history of the Norman conquest and basically set the field on its footing. All of those scholars had arrived at the idea that in September

1066 after Harold had kept his troops and his fleet waiting for William who never showed that

he sent his troops home and that he had disbanded the fleet. Meaning of course that he had no ships when shortly afterwards he had news of Harold had arrived in the north and that was already

“confusing me somewhat because the chronicle that contains the statement the ships were sent home,”

shortly afterwards tells us that he went up north and marshaled his fleet on the River Warf, a river which in those days was much wider and had the capacity to accommodate a number of large ships. So this reference to him having a fleet up in Yorkshire has never sat easily with historians who thought that he'd disbanded the fleet and they've tried to explain it away in various terms, uh maybe he'd gather a few ships at the last minute or some of those that had been sent back,

he was able to sort of pull back for this operation or maybe it has been suggested the word fleet here doesn't mean fleet at all, it means marine forces or something. So there was this sort of bit of cognitive dissonance going on and I just then asked the question well the chronicle tells us Harold sent home the men, the men will have to go back because they had no provisions anymore so he sent that all the shy forces home. It says he then sent the fleet to London and then it says

and after the ships came home Harold heard the news of how Todd had arrived in the north and it just went through my mind maybe when the chronicle says after the ships came home he doesn't mean

the ships have sent back to their various ports that had dispatched them in the first place,

maybe he just means London you know the ships went to London and after they came home as in home to their home base at London, Harold heard the news of how Todd had arrived and so I thought well I better check how this chronicle uses the word home in relation to the fleet. So I went back to previous instances with the same chronicle writing of the fleet and I found that in 1052 with the fleet he describes the fleet going homeward to London and there's another instance where he's

talking about London being the home of the fleet coming home to London so it clicked in at that point that this statement that for over 200 years had been taken to mean that the fleet was just dispersed and therefore no longer available. Actually meant that the fleet was right there at ready at handed London and it got home and how it had it with him and then everything began to fall into place so the reference to the fleet and the river wolf obviously is just the chronicle tracking the movements

of the fleet and then interestingly the two earliest detailed accounts of the battle of Hastings itself Latin accounts one of them the song of the Battle of Hastings written by Geof Ponto around about 1067 the other one William of Patees is deeds of Duke William written in the 1070s they both describe Harold sending a fleet of hundreds of ships around the coast to trap William after William had arrived that is to say in October so we for a long time had these two sources describing

Harold you're having a fleet of hundreds of ships in October and again historians have been very confused by that and haven't quite know how to handle it it has been suggested that maybe it's hyperbally that the the Norman writers are exaggerating the nature of the opposition that William had to face or that it's some misunderstanding or that maybe Howard had got together a few ships from somewhere

“else that the last minute but actually if we leave that coming home as I think the chronicle means”

it coming home to London then you can trace the movement of the ships up to the north and down to the south again and that means that Harold is most likely transporting men by ships because he just wouldn't even it's also what he does in previous campaigns and what other commanders doing what William later does so he's transporting men up to the north and down to the south and then that maybe think well if he's transporting some men in ships what do the sources say

about the forced march and do they say anything what do the sources say about the forced march well as a sort of professional research in this field I have to pose a series of questions the sources and I went again looked for that forced march I thought you know that's going to be in there there's going to be references to a forced march surely everyone knows about the forced march and I got hold of the Latin sort of English addition the best addition of the deeds of

sort of the standard edition Knox medieval text addition and I I went to find the relevant

“passage and I got their translation and there it was it said yes he is advancing against you by”

forced marches in the Latin and then later in a reference to yes he speedy up his march okay it's in there and then I looked at the Latin and I looked at the bit that they had translated as advanced to against you by forced marches and all it says is festinous a reddit in te he is coming against you quickly or very quickly or in haste and then I looked at the bit later where it said he's is quickening his pace his speedy up his march in the translation and the Latin just says

accelerabat that is to say he's he's getting a move on he's moving even more quickly because he the point is this was again a light bulb moment because I realized that it's sort of

cognitive bias thing if scholars have been told generation after generation that there's a forced

march and they're translating a Latin text that very moment where this forced march is supposed to occur they will read it in there even if it's not in there we all do this you know we read into

“the sources what we think is in there but if you look at it and what it actually says it doesn't”

say that at all and then I looked at all the Latin sources from the 11th century the old English sources I went into the 12th century sources John of Worcester who is a 12th century English writer using a lost old English version of the chronicle from the 11th century he refers to how old moving his troops use the verb "movia" and you can move troops by land or you can move them by sea but what I discovered is that none of the sources refers to a march none of the sources

specifies whether Harold is moving his troops or accelerating or hurrying by land or by sea there certainly aren't any of the particular words the particular verbs associated with marching turning up in the sources and what there are are lots of references to ships and fleets so two things I can say for certain are that there's no reference to force marching any of the contemporary sources and that there are lots of references to Harold using ships in fact

hundreds of ships throughout the campaigning season I then have a dig around in some of the early modern histories and I at the earliest reference I could find to the force march or marching is in John Milton's history of England of 1670 in which he describes Harold marching his men down from the north very quickly and I can only conclude that this is so my is on Milton's part possibly because Milton himself is very much involved in the English Civil War when there's

a lot of marching of troops up and down and was thinking about marching rather than ships and fleets but that idea gradually crept in that you know Harold was doing well this marching I was surprised that it wasn't there on the sources yeah so you're ending up in a situation where someone has used the word march and everyone has gone oh so he marched and then everything that you look at from that point onwards becomes predicated on the fact that it's a march so

he's moving faster means he's marching faster if he's increasing his pace he's increasing the pace of the march absolutely and I've seen as I mean as a historian working closely with texts and revising alternatives I've seen this sort of thing happen before you know one person suggests something and then everyone else just follows it because that person's a professor of some well they're a father to historian and of course you know we respect what they say

but as I teach my students always go back to the sources and check what they actually say

because we're all prone to this sort of arrow we're all prone to just assuming something's there then yeah and it sounds like you know you've gone back to almost every source that we have for this period in Latin and in old English and they all kind of bear out the fact that Harold is using ships and none of them mention a march it's not even like you know it's half and half or it's a bit muddy it sounds like we've just got this completely wrong for centuries well I

am afraid obsessively thorough and yes I really do drill into every little source and look at every item of vocabulary and I'm not saying that no troops went down the land would rude but here's the thing if you've got ships hundreds of ships possibly a number of ships enlarged by captured

“Viking ships because you remember earlier I said the Vikings came in 300 left in 24 what happened”

to the other 200 also I mean we should be a bit skeptical about these numbers but let's say Harold has captured 200 Viking ships and he's already got 100 or 200 ships within if you've got 200 ships up in the north and an army and you want to get them down south do you a march them all the way down 12 days day and night and break them to exhaustion point and allow the possibility of desertion and collapse of people along the way or do you plot them into the ships where they can

have a nice little break and where you can contain them so that none of them get lost on rude and take them down from the Humber to London in about three or four days allowing yourself time is commander from London to coordinate operations against William obviously it's a no-brainer the thing is though that option has been off the table because of this very entrenched idea that Harold had disbanded the fleet and this even more entrenched idea of this miraculous

who really was Harold's biggest fan he even he displays a little element of doubt by describing

“the march as almost miraculous that is to say it was a near impossible feat so I think the combination”

of there being no march in the sources and lots of ships coupled with water commander and Harold's position had done in the past himself which is send men by sea and would do in such circumstances there's a nice set of currents in the north sea that conveniently travel north south down the east coast so riding that current in fair weather is a very easy thing to do for me it's it's it's pretty clear what would have happened

after civil war, regicide and cromwell's republic the monarchy returned but Britain would never be the

same I'm professus is an ellipsicum and this month on not just the tutors where transported back to the age of restoration royalty from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the empire join me on not just the tutors from history hit wherever you get your podcasts and do we know can you trace back to the point at which someone has sort of mistranslated that idea of the fleet going home or misinterpreted it from going home to London to going home

being dispersed is there a point where that clicks into place and we've just followed it ever since yet so I'm thorough I haven't checked every permutations of various 18th century histories but the point I identify as being influential does think about which books were read and well and by whom and which you which ones prevailed in the sort of construction of the story which one didn't

it would be Sharon Turner's history of Anglo-Saxon England in 1801 he was the first person I think

to influence other scholars writing later who in interpret that as meaning that how to send the fleet back to various ports and locations that had supplied it that is to say the fleet had been dispersed disbanded no longer available no fleet how it is on his own to march up north and then people like Freeman and others were building on the narratives created by Turner but it's a really

“important point you raise here because I think it just underlines the fact how much of our history”

was constructed was written in the 19th century by so nation builders and sort of the past nation identity builders like Freeman Turner and hasn't been subjected to the sort of rigorous scrutiny that academics today would would normally apply to to the sources yeah I mean anyone who listens to me on gone medieval often enough will know my slight obsession with the idea that we we are still so heavily influenced by an a wiggish history that that wants to see the creation of the British

state moving closer to empire as almost inevitable and so anyone who contributes to that is good and anyone who does anything that doesn't appear to contribute to that is bad that still holds such a sway over our view of of particularly medieval history I think absolutely and the interesting thing looking at Freeman's writings of course is in the 19th century you've got these with some discourses around nationhood but also colonialism empire race as well and 1066

“becomes such an important part of our story because I'm afraid there is this idea of the sort of”

the de Germanic tutonic Anglo-Saxon blood mixing with the second generation Viking blood of the

Normans which is seen as also sort of tutonic blood to create this this super English race whose mission is then to go on and conquer the world that sort of narrative is being peddled by Freeman and some of his contemporaries in the 19th century happily not one we subscribed to in contemporary history but it it does partly explain why 1066 was seen as so important and why it became such a landmark in what the Edwardians coined as our island story yeah yeah so in your kind of reinterpretation of these

events should we think of Harold sailing north too does he march north or does he sail north do we know the Chronicle should some light on this so after tracing the movements of his army and fleets towards the north it then says that he arrayed his forces at Tadcaster just southwest of York and marshaled his fleet there on the wolf so he has a land army and a ship army which is standard incident I mean if we look at all the previous campaigns Harold's previous campaign in

Wales in 1064 with his brother Tosti they have a land army in the ship army sewards campaign against

but the thing to bear in mind is we don't know where that land army had come from they're not

“necessarily many have marched up from London they might have been men who've been notified by a rider”

from different shires to muster at a certain point in the men who had been deployed yet perhaps in the Midlands or the North there's a question mark over over where those troops originated from and this is something we have to keep in mind to that Harold's army throughout the campaigning season

of 1066 has to fight first against Harold our driver and then against William it's potentially

a fluid body some men will be serving for part of that and then then leaving behind or some men might be serving on land and then joining the fleet some shires might be coming along halfway through or towards the end while other ones are being sent home to rest and recuperate I don't think we should see it as one monolithic body of men much up and down the country all the time either and so what does this understanding that Harold was moving troops in this kind of way

that he's using a fleet that he's sailing north that he's sailing back down south that isn't this kind of force mark what does that do what impact does that have on that understanding of Harold as a general and the resources at his disposal because we often think of him being

as you said rash an impetus and poorly you know I don't want to say poorly advice because his

family we're told was telling him not to do what he did but not you know a competent general

“not clearly thinking through the best way to deal with this but it's not as we thought it was so”

does this does this change our view of Harold as a general as a military leader in 1066 I think it has to I mean to put it mildly I think some of that stuff has to go in the bin now everything we know about Harold's career as a general before 1066 suggests very sophisticated operations combining movements by land and sea and this impression we have of this rather desperate landlocked figure dashing from one into the country to another faced with seaborne invaders who are

using both the ships and the land really does a great injustice to English military and naval power in the 11th century in ever the confessors reign the English fleet is the talk of the northern seas when sphernesterson the king of Denmark is at war with Harold Hardrada in the 1040s he sends to ever the confessor for English ships he says can you send me 50 ships to help me defeat Harold Hardrada. Harold Hardrada signs a peace treaty with ever the confessor because he doesn't

want to fight the English particularly at sea and then the German emperor also requests the help of English ships in 1049 to blockades the counterflanders in so this idea that England is somehow not a naval power and that we'd end up in a situation I say we the English would end up in the situation where Harold has to dash from one end of a land to the other without having any ships at his disposal really does a great injustice to to Harold and and English maritime capabilities

at that point in time and to restore the fleet into the story doesn't number of things first of all it puts him on a level with his two opponents certainly at least or level with how Harold Hardrada and William who are operating by land and by sea secondly it shows him as a much more versatile and resourceful general who's able to coordinate a very complex and sophisticated operation opposite ends of the country using both in maritime and and land with tactics and

some troop types and then then finally it demolishes I think this idea of recklessness I mentioned Alan Brown who's a great sort of figure in conquest studies through the 70s and 80s he wrote a great book on the Norman conquest he was one person who accused Harold of reckless hasten who

always trumpeted the superiority of Norman arms as a factor in defeat of the English the

exhausted English I should say but actually when he recognised that Harold in most likely sent most of his troops by ship in three or four days rather than of March in the May of 12 days you're resting moment coming to London and commanding operations from there and when we also

“add into the picture because this is an important detail I think we need to add to the fact that”

not only did he march down himself at the head of an army to block William on the road out of what is now back all but he also sent a fleet a large fleet around the coast to blockade William from the rear we see him trying to capture William in a pinch the movement on the Hastings peninsula now in those days the Hastings where the land around that part of Sussex was more like a peninsula there were water courses either side of a ridge of land and William had his ships in

pevency bay to the west he had it made his headquarters in what is now Hastings castle and then there was a little ridge of land from which he had to exit that peninsula onto the main road network which he needed to do in order to conquer England and Harold as a very sort of

that peninsula by blocking him off at the bottle neck which is exactly where Battle Abbey is where the ridge dips down before rising up again in thickly wooded rough terrain as it was then and sending a fleet around behind him to trap him so Harold was actually trying to trap William in a pinch the movement if that's not part of the story we're told so all these sort of these new elements

“begin to kick in and weigh in in important and surprising ways”

after civil war, regicide and cromwells republic the monarchy returned but Britain would never be the same

i'm professus is an ellipschum and this month on not just the tutors where transported back to the age of restoration royalty from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the empire join me on not just the tutors from history hit wherever you get your podcasts yeah i mean i was going to ask next whether there was any suggestion that Harold had used ships down to Hastings too you mentioned earlier there's a couple of Norman sources that

sort of hint that he had but this i mean this completely changes what we had thought we understood about the Battle of Hastings because we we've for so long we've had this image of these desperate

exhausted Englishman and it's these kind of relentless super powered Normans and it was almost like

“you know just how long could they possibly hold out but it seems now that Harold had a genuine”

master plan you know he knew what he was doing he was doing more than one thing at once as you said much more sophisticated than it would have appeared and i guess then do we have to think about Hastings you know we get those retreats by the Normans that are often framed you know the Normans were later claim it was a joke it was a famed retreat it was a tactic and all of this kind of thing but it starts to feel like maybe that's more genuine because they're trapped and they kind

of run away but they can't get away because they're trapped by Harold's forces and they almost

have to go back and fight but it's got to completely change our understanding of the dynamics of

the Battle of Hastings hasn't it well it focuses the light squarely on the operation around the Battle itself if we take out the equation this idea that the English were exhausted and that there's

“this mad dash then we have to explain the English defeat in other terms so you're quite right”

it focuses the lens whatever the metaphor is it focuses attention on the battle i would say we should focus on two things the troop types that are available to both sides and the flexibility or lack of flexibility they allow and the events of the battle as narrated in our earliest battle accounts so obviously you mentioned the famed flights and this idea that some of the Normans might have famed our retreat to lure the English down the hill at certain point or points in the battle

wheeled round and trapped them in executed so large numbers that way that may well have been something that happened in the battle i don't know whether necessarily the defeat of the English can be pinned on that alone the other thing to think about though is what types of troops both armies had and this is also where it gets very interesting in relation to the fleet because if you look at the battle tapestry for example or you read the earlier accounts we know that

William has cavalry he's got foot soldiers he's got archers he's got crossbow men harald has foot soldiers no cavalry but then he doesn't really want them because he's fighting a defense position on the hill so it's not a sort of place he would deploy cavalry he wants a shield wall and charging up hill against a shield wall is not good for cavalry so effectively by adopting that position harald is largely neutralizing William's cavalry but he's got foot soldiers

what about archers if you look at the tapestry the Normans have a lot of archers there both in the main freeze and in the border particularly towards the end where they're coming into play and the English have all got arrows sticking in their shields and in their bodies but there's only one archer depicted on the English side and that must be either deliberate or it shows an awareness on the part of the tapestry's designer that the English had fewer archers considerably fewer

archers at the battle than the Normans. Now questions have been raised over that in the past and why should that be given that all generals this period realized the tactical value of archers um where all the archers you killed that stand for bridge where they able to keep up on the march perhaps the Norwegian sources say that how hydrider was killed by an arrow to the throat you presumably it wasn't a Norwegian arrow so there must have been some English archers up there if

you know reigning arrows down on the Normans as their column bunches up in that dip before

that the land rises to the battle site and if you read accounts of naval battles at that time uh we have some accounts from Icelandic poets and from uh William of Apulia and Norman

“in southern Italy writing of naval battles there the key thing you do when you you get your”

ships together as you load them up with archers because men on ships are sitting ducks and if you can get within range of your enemy and they're all on ships you've just got to rain lots of archers or sort of maybe spears on them to kill them all. The the Icelandic poets call these these uh these showers of archers Odin showers um they talk about these sort of showers of arrows the Icelandic poets the poets they call them Odin showers and really what any commander

is trying to do at this point is kill as men of the enemy as possible with minimum lost yourself in if it gets chivalry it's just about a maximum execution with minimum cost of to life and to resource so it could well be um that if Howard is planning a naval attack from the rear or to assault Williams men who are on their ships he put his archers or a lot of his archers on his ships along with other cracked troops and of course William hears that the ship

“is coming around the coast and he decides I'm not going to stick around here I'm going to make a”

break for it and punch through Harold's army before it's up to full strength the ships arrive it's too late and Howard has lost his archers those sorts of discussions then come into play as to why the English might have lost at the Battle of Hastings. Yeah I told Tom this is blowing my mind because also I guess we have to think about Harold is taking up a defensive position at the top of a hill you know why is a king of England fending off an invasion by taking up a purely

defensive position isn't his job to go on the attack but if his part of the army's job is to form a barrier ready for that fleet to come around and attack from the other side with the archers that explains why he's doing what he's doing as well it's part of a bigger plan. You you said it you got there before I did but yes this is the argument I make in my book here's a containment operation basically he also knows as a general that fighting up hill

defending a position on the hill always favors a defender they're very few examples of

battles that go the other way I mean Alexander the Great at Granicus perhaps but charging up hill is not great for cavalry certainly or offering infantry as the reenactors who do it every year will tell you they will get exhausted the Norman's haven't charged up hill against the English again and again. Harold is I think yes he's fighting a defensive battle he's able to obtain the advantage of the terrain where he positions himself and his job I think as he planned it as he

force or it was to stop the Norman's escaping the only point they could escape at the bottom that pinch point of the peninsula while being carried from the rear by his the forces he'd sent on the ships and the way William managed to outmaneuver Harold was in the recognition that the

“pencil movement was also a division of Harold's forces and the only way William could escape it”

was to leave camp very quickly before the ships had a chance to get near him and do his best to punch through that that royal army which Harold was probably thinking he won't dare he went dare take me on at the royal army because Harold knows from the Brittany campaign that when at the end of the campaign Geoffrey Vaughn's use shows up to give backing to Conan of Brittany William decides not to go head to head with this massive force but to retrieve back into Normandy Harold's knowledge

of William is of a cautious general which William certainly is more in his later years perhaps less so in his earlier years. But Harold knows him as a cautious general and he's taking a risk an acceptable risk that Harold that the William isn't going to solve would come and attack the king on the hill with his great army. What he might not know is that William has inside intelligence that one or two people Harold perhaps thinks are going to show up for him aren't going to show up

and one of them is Robert Fitt's Y Mark. So when we put here as a count the deeds of the Norman Duke tells us that Robert Fitt's Y Mark is a Norman by birth and the kids when they're able to confess her he's Sheriff of Essex and he's a stroller which is like a senior figure in the royal hall. He writes to William or sends a spy to William saying I'm secretly backing you I'm on your side and then the question mark is did he show up the Sheriff's job was to muster

the shy forces so when the rits are going out of the messages are going out saying Essex come to fight for me and meet at the old apple tree. Does Robert Fitt's Y Mark decide to drag his feet to the Manor Essex turn up at all and at how many other people does William know aren't going to show for Harold. We think about 1485 when another English king dies in battle we know about the Stanlies

sitting at the side of the battle in which the third thought they were going to fight for him

but the Stanlies sit out the battle for little while seeing which way it goes before eventually

Did William know that Harold might not be up to strength? It's an interesting question simply

because the sources when the blame game begins and the Hastings inquiries underway and everyone's

“blame me everyone and saying why the English lose in the English accent chronicle?”

A lot of those writers say William attacked Harold before all his forces had been drawn up or they give the idea that not everyone showed up on the day and it may well be that William's intelligence because we know his intelligence is very good they all use spies and heads of contacts in the country. He might have known that although this is a great role force of Harold as his head is staring him down from a hilltop he might have known that not everyone was there

was going to be there and then that meant that he could use that intelligence to outmanoeuvre Harald's tricky maneuver and punch through the Royal Army which is exactly what he did and the fleet arrived to late which is why we don't hear anything more about it. Yeah but it just completely changes the dynamic on the battlefield is absolutely fast at mind blowing I mean hopefully listeners are sitting there with their minds blown as well as much as I am. As you mentioned you're writing this

biography of Harold has this changed what you thought of Harold when you started writing it did you have an idea and just you know this a simple word in a chronicle has changed what we understand about that campaign does that change what you think about Harold? Yes there are a lot of different things coming together that were in the chronicle the absence of the march the joining of the dots you know when you realise that there are lots of ships floating around. I came at Harold with a fairly

open mind I mean my my approach always in writing biographies I've written it but the confessed

beforehand is that I tried to approach people in the past on their own terms I tried to respect them I try not to judge them by modern standards because there's a lot of that I try to sort of understand the worldview that they're inhabiting and where they're coming from what makes them tick and why they do what they do and also why they wrote down what they wrote because whenever they're writing something they've got an agenda and I didn't have a particular attitude towards

“Harold I mean I think when I was a boy who was on my heroes but I'm a grown man now that's in the”

past I was curious I suppose to find out more and I knew there was a lot of myth being spun around him just as I understood there's a lot of myth spun around able to confess it when I wrote his biography so much of what we think we know is a Victorian invention. I was fairly open-minded but when this all came together and I began joining the dots I realised this is a very different, very different perspective on the Battle of Hastings and on the Harold as a military commander so yes it certainly

it took me from a place of open-minded unknowing to a place of I think more knowing I feel I know a lot more about Harold I can't quite describe the feeling but it's like you discover something from the past and you know that somehow some justice has been done to that person yeah and I guess

the you know the million billion trillion dollar question is what else have we got this wrong for

this long that is the result of a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation and I guess it's impossible to know isn't it but it's it's I don't know it's tempting to wonder what else might turn up I mean it takes people like you to be trolling through archives and and being able to to understand all of that and interpret it and and access those sources and and know what you're doing with them and that requires an awful lot of resource on your part to find this but it's it's got to feel like it's worth it and I'm just

wondering what else might one day turn up in that same kind of way I'm sure that there are big and bigger things that we you know we think we know that we don't there are so many unknowns and the further back you go in a way the bigger those unknowns become you know obviously working the 11th century as I do there are far fewer sources than there are say for the 19th century so it's more question of like having a jigsaw puzzle you've got the bits around the outside perhaps a one to bits

in the middle but there might be something massive in the middle that you can't even see because there's

“a big gap there I think there's a lot a lot still to be discovered and what I like so much about this”

discovery is just that it's such a central part of English history everyone thinks so we know if things we're ever going to know about tons of six you know no one's going to come along and say oh no that's all wrong and actually we don't we don't know everything we you know we can very easily fall into the habit of thinking that we do because we've been told that we do but it really I think validates the role of historians and and researchers generally in in gang back and just posing those fundamental

questions to the sources and just saying well I know everyone says that but is that actually what's in there yeah and history is continually asking those questions isn't it even if you think you know the answer it's asking you know why why am I so sure about that it should be that I think that's what good history should do I mean we use history we use the pastoral sorts of purposes in the Victorian period they used it for building narratives of nation and identity and indeed race and

and that empire and other things I think now though with academic history we interrogate the past more

paint figures in the past in our own image there is still a certain amount of wanting to paint

people in the past in our own image in how in how being modeled as their model Englishman by Freeman Freeman is effectively taking Howard and setting him up as a role model in the hero

“for generations of young sons who are going to go off and fight and die for empire that's what”

Freeman's doing he's creating heroes saying say Alfred the Great is another one I'm much more interested

in in who the real Harold was and the world he and habitives or indeed other other people I

work on in the past you know where are they coming from why do they do what they do studying history is putting ourselves in someone else's shoes it's seeing the world from their perspective and I think for that reason it kind of develops empathy and curiosity and even in our days say compassion

“in us that's what it's about for me and when will people be able to look forward to seeing your”

book it's available for pre-order but it's due out in August it's called Harold Warrior King with the series yearling which monics and of course I already have ever the confessor in that series but it will be due out in August round about the time sort of to be ready for the arrival of the Bayer tapestry of course wonderful perfect timing thank you Tom I am going to go and have to sit in a dark room and rethink everything I thought I knew about 1066 and the battle of Hastings

but in a really really good way I have found this absolutely mind blowing I've really really enjoyed talking this through with you thank you so much for sharing all of this with me and with the god medieval audience thanks Matt I really appreciate it thanks for having me well what do you think

“does this reshape our understanding of those crucial events in 1066 what does it mean for our”

assessment of the battle of Hastings it's incredible that academics like Tom can still find new

information that shed different light on the events of almost a millennium ago if you enjoyed this we've got several episodes around the events of 1066 in our vaults from an explainer on the battle of Hastings to the children of 1066 and exploration of what the norm and conquest meant to the next generation of Anglo-Saxon mobility there are new instruments of god medieval every Tuesday and Friday so please come back and join an honor and eye for more from the greatest millennium in human history

don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval you can also sign up to history hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe anyway I bet let you go I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit