How Long Did The Battle Of Hastings Last

Harold was crowned the very adjacent twenty-four hour period, but soon had to fend off challenges to his rule. The first – an unexpected invasion led by Harold Hardrada, rex of Norway – he successfully overcame on 25 September 1066 by winning the battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire. The second challenge came from William, knuckles of Normandy, who landed at Pevensey in Sussex three days after.

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Where did the boxing of Hastings take place?

The battle of Hastings is something of a misnomer. Although William, having landed at Pevensey, speedily moved along the coast to Hastings and established his camp there, the bodily date with Rex Harold took place some six miles to the northwest, at a site that has been known ever since as Battle. This location has been contested in contempo years, but the arguments for alternative sites are extremely flimsy, whereas the evidence for the traditional site remains overwhelmingly strong.

Having won the battle of Hastings, William was determined to commemorate his victory and absolve for the bloodshed by building an abbey – Boxing Abbey – and happily its ruins even so survive today. According to a host of 12th-century chroniclers (not but, as is often claimed, the Chronicle of Battle Abbey itself) the high altar of the abbey church was erected over the place where Harold was killed. Even William'due south obituary in the Anglo-Saxon Relate, written past an Englishman soon later on the king's death in 1087, noted that Battle Abbey was congenital "on the very spot" where God had granted the Conqueror his victory.

This potent relate prove is supported past the site of the abbey itself, which from monks' point of view was badly situated on sloping ground and sick-supplied with h2o. It is a location that makes sense only if William insisted they build in that precise location, equally tradition maintained was the example.

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3

How many soldiers were involved in the battle of Hastings?

The short answer to this is: we don't know. Medieval chroniclers are notoriously unreliable when information technology comes to providing numbers for the size of armies. William the Conqueror's ain chaplain, William of Poitiers, claims that his master brought 60,000 men with him to England; and two other chroniclers assert that the duke's army was fabricated up of 150,000 men.

A section of the Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidered cloth depicting the Norman Conquest of England and the battle of Hastings in 1066. (Photograph by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

In reality, no medieval armies were ever this large. In the later on Eye Ages, past which time nosotros have more reliable bear witness in the form of muster rolls and fiscal accounts, we can run across that the largest armies raised in the British Isles numbered about 35,000 men. But when they had to fight in France, English monarchs never managed to ferry more than x,000 troops beyond the Channel. If these were the maximums obtained past mighty kings like Edward I and Edward III, a mere duke of Normandy is unlikely to have been able to get together a force that was reckoned in 5 figures.

The conventional figure offered for the size of William'due south army is 7,000 men, but rests on picayune more than than guesswork by Victorian scholars. As to the size of the English forces, we are even less well informed. Harold Godwineson's fighting strength must have been reduced by his clash with Harold Hardrada in September, and several chroniclers maintain that the English male monarch rushed to confront the Normans before all his forces were assembled. Since the fighting at Hastings lasted all twenty-four hour period, withal, the reasonable conclusion is that the two sides were fairly evenly matched.

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4

What weapons and tactics were used at Hastings?

A look at the most famous source for the battle of Hastings – the Bayeux Tapestry – suggests that the weapons used by the English and the Normans were very similar. On both sides we see men wearing mail service shirts and conical helmets with apartment, fixed nasals, protecting themselves with kite-shaped shields and attacking their opponents with swords and spears (though spears are far more mutual). The but notable difference in terms of kit is that some of the English prefer to wield axes – sometimes modest ones for throwing, but often neat battleaxes that required 2 hands to swing.

When it came to tactics, yet, the 2 sides at Hastings had very dissimilar ideas, every bit contemporary chroniclers noted. The English language, after centuries of fighting against Vikings, fought in Scandinavian fashion, standing on foot and forming their historic 'shield-wall'. Significantly this was the case not only for the ordinary soldiery simply also the elite, correct up to and including King Harold himself.

The Norman elite, by contrast, despite their own Viking origins, had adapted during the course of the 10th century to fighting on horseback. The action at Hastings was therefore unconventional, with the English continuing stock still on the superlative of a ridge, obliging the Norman cavalry to ride up a slope in lodge to appoint them.

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5

Why did William win (and why did Harold lose?)

At first it seemed that the English army's tactics would serve them well: despite repeated assaults from the Norman infantry and cavalry, the shield-wall held firm. Some mode into the boxing, however, a crucial turning point occurred. A rumour ran through the Norman ranks that William had been killed, and some of his forces turned and started to flee. It was almost disastrous, and but retrieved by William removing his helmet and riding along the line to demonstrate that the rumour was untrue. But seeing their enemies retreating in disarray persuaded some of the English that the battle was won, then they pursued them down the hillside. In one case the Normans had recovered their composure, and wheeled round to assail their pursuers, they found that the shield-wall now had breaks in it.

The coronation of William, duke of Normandy (as well known equally William the Conqueror) taking identify amongst protests. The rex holds his crown and a sword as he watches the turmoil in the church. Original artist: John Cross. (Photo past Rischgitz/Getty Images)

Another factor that helped make up one's mind the battle was the relative numbers of archers on both sides. Our two gimmicky narrative accounts (The Song of the Battle of Hastings and William of Poitiers) make frequent reference to Norman bowmen sending thick clouds of arrows against the English, merely do not one time mention the English replying with similar volleys. Similarly, the Bayeux Tapestry shows many Norman archers, but just a lonely Englishmen is depicted with a bow. Information technology seems possible, therefore, that Harold's army contained fewer bowmen, mayhap on business relationship of the haste with which it was assembled, and that this could have proved decisive, given the way in which the English king is traditionally said to have died – more on that below…

6

How and when in the battle did King Harold die?

What ultimately decided the battle was the death of Rex Harold. Darkness was already descending, says the Song of the Battle of Hastings, when the report 'Harold is dead!' flew around the field. The long-established story is that the king was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye – a tradition that seemingly goes back to the Bayeux Tapestry, which was stitched only a few years later.

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry showing the death of Harold II. The long-established story is that the king was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye – only there are reasons to doubt that he really did die this way, says historian Marc Morris. (Photo by Universal History Annal/Getty Images)

There are, withal, reasons to uncertainty whether Harold really did die in this way. In the first identify, multiple questions have been raised about the tapestry itself (which is technically an embroidery): is the effigy with the arrow in his eye really Harold, or is the king represented by the effigy to the left, being ridden down past a Norman knight? Is the arrow really an arrow, or was it a spear that has been customised by overzealous restorers in the 19th century? And even if the tapestry artist did intend to show Harold with an pointer in his eye, was this really what happened? It can exist demonstrated beyond whatsoever doubt that the designer based sure scenes on images he found in illustrated manuscripts kept in the monastic libraries in Canterbury, and it seems possible that Harold's death is an occasion where such borrowing has taken place. No other contemporary source mentions the arrow in the middle, and moreover the Vocal – our primeval account of the battle – describes Harold being hacked down by a dedicated Norman 'decease squad'.

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How many casualties were there at the battle of Hastings?

Over again, nosotros don't know for sure, but all the sources agree that the battle of Hastings was a very bloody matter. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, laconic as it is, speaks of "neat slaughter on both sides". William of Poitiers, describing the aftermath, wrote that "far and wide, the earth was covered with the flower of the English nobility and youth, drenched in claret".

For the Godwinson family in detail the battle was catastrophic, for not just King Harold, only two of his younger brothers, Leofwine and Gyrth, were among the fallen. (Another brother, Tostig, had been killed 3 weeks before at Stamford Bridge). According to The Song of the Battle of Hastings, William buried his ain dead, but left the bodies of the English "to be eaten by worms and wolves, past birds and dogs".

Nor was the heavy death cost at Hastings confined to the site of the battle itself. Throughout the night that followed, the Normans pursued those English who had fled afterwards Harold's death but came undone when, in the darkness, they rode their horses headlong into an unseen ancient ditch, later dubbed 'the Malfosse'. As the chronicler Orderic Vitalis explained in the early 12th century, the Norman cavalry "savage one on acme of the other, thus crushing each other to expiry".

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Where is King Harold cached?

The discovery in 1954 of a grave in the parish church of Bosham (West Sussex), containing the remains of a well-dressed Anglo-Saxon man, prompted speculation in some quarters that Harold's final resting place had been found. But ignoring this on the grounds that other well-dressed men are known to have died in Anglo-Saxon England(!), we have 2 more credible alternatives. I is that Harold was buried at Waltham Abbey in Essex, a church he had re-founded and richly endowed during his lifetime. The story that the king was buried there, notwithstanding, does not appear in the abbey's chronicle until the late 12th century, and past the early 13th century the monks of Waltham were claiming that Harold had actually survived the battle of Hastings and lived out the rest of his days every bit a hermit, supposedly in Chester.

A view of the celebrated Waltham Abbey Church in Waltham Abbey, Essex. King Harold II, who died at the battle of Hastings in 1066, is believed by some to have been buried in the churchyard. (Photo by Getty Images)

Contemporary accounts, by contrast, tell us that the king was cached on top of a cliff in Sussex, under a mocking inscription to the outcome that he could continue to baby-sit the seashore. This is the story told by both the Song of the Boxing of Hastings and William of Poitiers, and is arguably more apparent. Poitiers in item is ever at pains to defend the behaviour of his master, William the Conqueror. Had William permitted Harold to be cached at Waltham, it would be very strange for Poitiers not to have said then.

Dr Marc Morris is a historian of the Center Ages whose acclaimed books include King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta ( Hutchinson, 2015) and The Norman Conquest ( Windmill Books, 2013) . He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and appears regularly on radio and boob tube.

This commodity was first published in October 2018.

Source: https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/battle-hastings-facts-where-why-weapons-casualties-how-won/

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