YEAR 7 HISTORY NOTES
THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS [ continuation of the written notes}
Trick Tactics
For the rest of the day, the Normans repeated their assaults on the English shield wall. At least twice
they pretended to flee in mid-battle, to encourage the English to break ranks and pursue them. They
were partly successful, but the English line still held.
We can only imagine the grim scene: the hillside slippery with blood and littered with bodies, arrows,
and discarded and broken weapons; the tiredness, hunger and fear of the surviving combatants; and the
commanders shouting to rally their exhausted forces. William of Poitiers recorded that the Anglo-Saxons
were so tightly packed together that ‘the dead could scarcely fall and the wounded could not remove
themselves from the action’. William is said to have had three horses killed beneath him.
The Death of King Harold
With the autumn daylight fading, the Normans made one final effort to take the ridge. By that time,
Harold’s two brothers and other English commanders were almost certainly dead.
Then came the decisive moment: during the final assault, Harold himself was killed. There are differing
accounts of how he died. One describes how an arrow struck him in the right eye, an event possibly
depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry.
The Battle Ends
The Normans now began a last fierce assault. Leaderless, and lacking hope, the English forces finally gave
way and fled. William of Poitiers described the scene:
the Normans, though strangers to the district, pursued them relentlessly, slashing their guilty backs and
putting the last touches to the victory. Even the hooves of the horses inflicted punishment on the dead as
they galloped over their bodies.
At a time when such contests were frequently decided within an hour, victory at Hastings was not certain
until dusk, some nine hours after the fighting began – an indication of just how evenly matched and led
the two armies were.
THE AFTERMATH
Of course, the Battle of Hastings was only the start of a massive upheaval. After his victory, William
marched on London, and he was crowned King of England on Christmas day 1066. A generation later, the
Normans had fundamentally transformed the country they had conquered – from how it was organised
and governed to its language, laws and customs, and perhaps most visibly today, its architecture. Soon
after the Conquest a wave of castle building began across England, in order to secure the Normans’ hold
on power.
The end of the battle also marks the beginning of the history of Battle Abbey. In about 1071, the king
himself founded the abbey on the site of the battle, to atone for the carnage of the Conquest. According
to an early tradition, its high altar was placed, on William’s orders, ‘on the very spot’ where Harold’s
body had been found.