Jay transforms the chaos of 1066 into a masterclass of spatial logic, proving that visual clarity is the most effective tool for deconstructing complex historical turning points. This is a rare synthesis of rigorous military analysis and accessible, high-level storytelling.
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BATTLEMAPS: Hastings, 1066Ajouté :
Hi, I'm Jay. I want to talk about the Battle of Hastings. We are back in ways previously unconsidered on this channel because up until now, I've mostly talked about movies and video games, and in limiting us like that, I feel that I have been somewhat disingenuous. I've led you to believe that I am a mere casual when in reality, I contain multitudes of autism. Can you tell? We haven't even really gotten into bugs or fish on this channel yet, which is crazy. Anyway, today we are not talking about movies or video games. We are talking about a secret third option which is the 11th century Norman conquest of England and specifically about the Battle of Hastings and all the things that led up to it. The Battle of Hastings happened in October of the year 1066 between the English army of Harold Godwinson and the Norman army of William the Conqueror. It's a famous battle because it was important. It resulted in the end of the Anglo-Saxon period and arguably in the end of the Viking age, at least as we think of it, as well as William the Conqueror becoming king of England because he did win the battle.
Spoilers. The other reason the battle is really famous is because somebody embroidered like a comic strip version of it on 230 ft of fabric. But we'll get to all that. The reason I want to talk about the battle is because I think it was funny. Medieval battles are usually pretty funny because they're often entirely decided by just which side is standing on a hill. Although Hastings was a rare instance in which the sides standing on a hill lost. High tea.
Before we can talk about the hill though, we have to go way back to set the scene and meet the players. We're going to start with the places and then we're going to meet the people in the places and it's all going to be way more in-depth than you need because I like the backstory part. I wrote a draft of this script that was a much more cursory sweep and I felt like it wasn't unhinged enough and therefore wasn't very me. So, here we are. In an effort to avoid additional confusion on top of the confusion that is definitely already going to happen, some people who are irrelevant for our purposes are going to go unnamed. If that's the case, it's because they have the same name as someone else who is more important.
European nobility are not known to deviate from tradition. We got up to King Louis V 18th. Anyway, let's do it.
We begin our discussion with the three kingdoms involved in the situation. Now, it is actually more than three kingdoms because, as I'm sure you're aware, people during this era like to conquer and seed land all willy-nilly, but for our purposes, there are three main states involved. Starting in the year 1,00 because it's a nice number. Let's take a look at our contenders. In the northern corner, we have the Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark and Norway. Sweden is sometimes also a Scandinavian kingdom in this era, but we're going to ignore them cuz they're doing their own thing. Off and on throughout this saga, Denmark and Norway will vary in how united they are.
Sometimes there's one king for both of them. Sometimes there's two separate kings. Usually, they're fighting against each other regardless. It's kind of a mess. The more important thing you need to know about the Scandinavian kingdoms right now is that at the moment, these guys are doing a lot of Viking [ __ ] What are Vikings? Uh, pirates, basically. Also, just to be clear, Viking is like an occupation or an activity. It is not an ethnicity. I don't know where everyone got that idea suddenly, but so be it. Anyway, so Vikings are random seafaring Scandinavians that enjoy a good page. If you are a 9th to mid1th century European, I would say that Vikings are for sure in your top 10 list of problems. Maybe top five depending on where you live. The Vikings have slightly superior boat technology, and this allows them to [ __ ] over everyone.
Vikings make it as far east as Baghdad and as far west as Newfoundland, but more often they like to raid closer to home in such convenient locations as Great Britain and continental Europe and sometimes Ireland when they feel like taking the scenic route. In the year 1000, the king of both Denmark and Norway is only one guy, which is huge for us. That guy is named Swain Forkbeard. So, he's king of Denmark and Norway. Except actually Norway is being governed by two earls on Swain's behalf.
The Scandinavian branch of our story has the potential to become very confusing because it's kind of just doing its own thing. We'll talk more about them later.
Just for now, key takeaway, Vikings.
Vikings.
There in the southern corner, we have the duche of Normandy. Normandy at this time is a semi-independent thief located within the Kingdom of France. A thief is land that a lord gives to someone else in exchange for that person's allegiance and often military service. So originally Normandy was a part of West Frankia or Francia, however you want to pronounce it. But then the king of West Frankia gave the land to someone else in exchange for their allegiance. Who did he give the land to? Some Vikings. Why?
Um they were attacking his [ __ ] Because they were attacking everyone's [ __ ] So that king said, "Okay, if I give you this land, will you stop attacking my [ __ ] and also stop other Vikings from attacking my [ __ ] Y'all can keep attacking other people's [ __ ] and I won't care. Just don't let anyone attack my shit." And then the Vikings are like, "Yeah, okay." So this is the land they get, Normandy. So Normandy is founded by Vikings, but lots of the people there are Frankish because it's just the people that were here before the land got given away, plus new Viking settlers. What then happens, of course, is that these two cultures kind of merge. By the time we get to the year 1000, Normandy isn't populated by Franks and Vikings. It's populated by Normans.
Also, by that time, West Frankia no longer exists. It's France now. We're sticking with France from here on.
Rather than be ruled by a king, because technically they bow to the king of France, the Normans are ruled by a duke.
In the year 1000, the Duke of Normandy is an irrelevant guy named Richard II.
I'm sure you can't read this at all. It says Richard II. He's the Duke of Normandy, which we're representing with a crown, even though this is not technically a kingdom. You get it.
Anyway, we don't really care about this guy, but we do care about his sister, Emma. She'll come up in a bit. Now, importantly, the Normans have a complicated relationship with Vikings because they're somewhat Vikings, but then they're also in charge of protecting France from Vikings, so it's a whole thing. They are, however, on significantly better terms with the Vikings than basically anybody else outside of Scandinavia. The point is that the Normans have at least some positive political ties to the Vikings.
Finally, in the technically barely western corner, ignore the Pharaoh Islands, we have the Kingdom of England.
It was once a whole bunch of different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, but it becomes one consolidated kingdom in the year 927.
Why did they consolidate? Well, among other reasons, all these smaller kingdoms have spent the past 100 years or so bonding over a shared hatred of, you guessed it, Vikings. Vikings are constantly attacking them and they're all super over it. So, they get together for safety and numbers and etc. It always loops back to Vikings. I should point out, by the way, this is a modern map. I couldn't find any like reliable maps of this area in the year 1066, so I just made this one using modern borders.
So, it's not 100% accurate, but you get the idea. All right, I've moved this light a million times to try to get rid of this glare here. However, the light is currently standing in basically the only place that it physically can. I live in New York City. This is how it is. We're just going to have to deal. In the year 1000, the king of England is this guy, Ethelid. So, those are our three relevant states, England, Normandy, and the Scandinavian kingdoms.
Let's keep going down the line of kings, starting here with our boy Etheld. So, Etheldrid has been the king of England since the year 978 and he has sucked at it the whole time. Part of the problem is that he tends to make like huge swings on a dime and he grows more and more paranoid over the course of his reign. And then another big problem is that his solution to Viking raids is to pay tribute, which is to say when Vikings attack, he just gives them money to make them leave. Yes, that is taxpayer money. This is in fact not a great idea because the Vikings take away from this is hey whenever we attack the English their king gives us a bunch of money. Subsequently the attacks get worse under Ethrid and also he's wasting a bunch of money and everyone hates him.
So Etheld goes okay I hear you but consider this and he deploys a new plan.
He knows that the Normans have a sort of relationship with the Vikings. So he's like, "Okay, I'll just diplomatically marry Emma, who is the sister of the Duke of Normandy, and in doing so, I will forge an alliance between England and Normandy that will hopefully help our Viking situation and also improve our relationship with Normandy itself, which has been kind of strained because they used to be Vikings. So in the year 1002, Etheld marries Emma. He's actually been married once before and already has a son, but his first wife recently died, so this job opening is here." Now, this marriage ends up being very consequential because, as it turns out, Emma is both incredibly devious and incredibly sleigh, but we'll get there.
Ethrid and Emma eventually have three children. Two of them are irrelevant to us. So, for our purposes, they had one child, Edward. Edward is born somewhere between 1003 and 105, and he's born in England. That matters. Around this same time, Swain Forkbeard, the king of Denmark and Norway, starts acting up more than usual. He's been invading England kind of off and on for about a decade now. But finally in the year 1013, he invades and it actually works.
The English surrender to him and Ethere is forced to flee. So he takes Emma and Edward and the three of them go into exile in Normandy because Emma is part of the Norman court which means she's part of the like Norman royal household except it's a Duke's household but you get it. So having defeated Etherid in addition to being the king of Denmark and Norway, Swain Forkbeard is now also the king of England for 5 weeks and then he dies of what we don't know. Anyway, naturally, the throne is supposed to go to Swain's eldest son, who is this guy, Canute. I have used a picture of him from, I think, Vinland Saga, which I've never seen, because at a certain point, the medieval pictures kind of all start to look the same. Also, on this here, I have spelled Canoot. C A N U T E. The spelling I saw much more frequently during my research was C N U T. Every single time I read that word, I thought it said a different word with those same letters, split the middle, two. I feel like YouTube could have the same problem and wouldn't like it. So, I've written it this way. Anyway, Canute is supposed to take the throne after Swain Forkbeard dies. Only the throne of England, though. The thrones of Denmark and Norway go to other people that we're not going to worry about yet. So, Canute is theoretically supposed to take the throne after his dad dies, right? That doesn't actually happen right away because for the next couple years, there's a wide variety of [ __ ] going on that we're mostly going to ignore because it's confusing for no reason.
The end result is still that Canute does become the king of England in the year 1016. Okay, I'm using this red X to mark Swain as dead. On the other side of things, Etheldrid dies in 10162, leaving behind Emma and their son Edward, who are both still in exile in Normandy. So, what's the sitch now that Ethrid is out of the picture? Well, you'll recall that Emma is both incredibly devious and incredibly slay. She has lost a lot of power and status following the death of her husband. So, what she's going to do is leave exile and marry Canoot, a diabolical diva maneuver. She's like, "Well, I married the king of England, so then I became queen of England, but then he died. So, I guess I'm just going to marry the king of England and become queen of England again." Insane behavior. So, they do get married. This marriage is beneficial to him, too, though, because it will improve his claim to the throne in the eyes of English nobility. So, Emma is queen of England again, and these two also apparently get along super well. So, slay for them, I guess. So, where does this leave Edward? Uh, it leaves him in exile still. Because he's the son of a past king, he very much has a claim to the throne of England, which makes him a huge threat to Canute's reign. Instead of being killed though, which would be the standard move, he ends up just staying in exile in Normandy, probably because Emma pulled some strings. So Edward ends up being raised almost entirely at Norman Court. He grows up Norman, which is crucial for later because, as you may know, Edward is going to become a very relevant figure here. Meanwhile, our two main combatants in the actual Battle of Hastings have yet to be mentioned, and I think neither of them has actually been born yet. Are you following? Let's check in with Canute and see how his reign's going.
Well, first of all, info re the Scandinavian kingdoms at large. Remember how Swain only gave Canute England and other people got the other kingdoms? One of those other people dies in the year 1018. So now very quickly Canute is king of both England and Denmark, but he's still not king of Norway, so he only gets half of the Scandinavia crown.
Also, you know how I just said that Canute and Emma get married? Well, there are some issues with that. Chief among them, the fact that he was already married. So Canute now has two wives, wife one and Emma. And nobody really calls him on that. Anyway, Canute has one son with each of his wives. We're going to ignore the son from his first wife, but the son he has with Emma is a guy named. So now we have Canoot and Hearth, you weirdo. So Hearth is Edward's halfb brotherther. Overall, once we get past the attacking England so he can be king part, Canut's reign goes pretty well. People like it.
They're having a good time. The remaining relevant thing that happens during his reign is that in the year 1020 he appoints this guy Godwin to be the Earl of Wessex which is a very important role because Wessex is the richest and I think the largest Earldm in England at this time. There's a lot of power that comes with being the Earl.
So then who's Godwin? No one. He is not a blood relative of any of the people that we've discussed thus far. I'm putting him over here because he is English but he's not connected to these two at all. He starts out as essentially just a random nobleman, but he enders himself to cane by being an Englishman who is very devoted to England and who is nonetheless willing to be publicly and vocally loyal to a Danish king. He turns out to be a super valuable adviser and eventually marries into Canoe's family, which for Canoot makes him basically ride or die. Godwin's key attribute is that he is speech 100 plus five to charisma. He is really, really good at talking himself into advantageous positions. So, Canute makes him Earl of Wessex, and he ends up with a ton of power and influence. Good for him. Godwin and his wife have seven kids together. We don't care about the wife or five of the kids. So, there's two kids we care about. One of them is named Tostig. I'm putting him on the tree here so that you know he exists, but we are now going to ignore the fact that he exists until it's convenient for me.
Tostig has a big impact on the story, but also is barely in it. So, for the purposes of this video, we're going to treat him as mostly a logistical issue and not as a guy. There's one other guy we will also be treating mostly as a logistical issue. The same logistical issue in fact, but we'll get to him in a bit. The other Godwin kid that we care about is much, much more relevant, and his name is Harold. There are going to be two Heralds involved in this story.
This one is Harold Godwinson, naturally.
And spoilers, his army is going to end up being one of the sides of the Battle of Hastings. Anyway, Canute dies in the year 1035. And because he has two wives, he leaves behind a notable line of succession problem. Parthute, his son with Emma, is supposed to take over the throne of England, but he keeps getting caught up in [ __ ] going on in Denmark.
So eventually, Favor moves over to Canute's son with his first wife, who we have written here as other guy, because guess what? His name is also Harold.
Weird shit's going on with Scandinavia again. So now this guy only gets England. So that guy takes the throne in 10:35. His entire reign sucks and then he dies in 1040. Next, after that guy, Hearth does take the throne. During his reign, his mother Emma convinces him that Edward is cool. Actually, these two are half brothers, remember? So, Edward, after 30 years, is finally allowed to come out of exile. Yeah, he's been in Normandy all this time. But he is English and now he has an honored place at the English court. Parthik rules from 1040 to 1042, at which point he dies by drinking himself to death at a wedding.
Pretty embarrassing to die mid-wing.
Parthikoot had a mediocre reign and no heirs. So, the throne ends up going to Edward.
He gets the throne largely because he has a pretty indisputable claim to it and also because the English nobility are tired of having Danish kings. And at this point in English history, the nobility does get some say in who becomes king. Like there's a mild amount of election happening. The point is in the year 1042, we welcome to the board Edward the Confessor, King of England.
He gets called the Confessor because he's very religious. Now, to complete our prologue, this has all been prologue. We're going to go back and sort out Scandinavia because, as you have probably noticed, the Green Crown is nowhere at this time. So, remember Swain Forkbeard, Canut's father? He died in the year 1014 and before that he was king of England, Denmark, and Norway, but he became the king of Norway by conquering it. So, it wasn't his originally, and he kicked the previous king out. When Swain dies in 1014, the previous king's son, Olaf, returns to Norway from abroad and declares himself king. At that time, the people who were like for all practical purposes in charge of Norway were two earls who were appointed by Swain, but they're still just Earls. So, they don't have ultimate authority here, and the whole thing ends up being a complete mess. So, Olaf does become king until 10:28 when Canon finally gets his [ __ ] together and comes back and reconquers Norway. Then, like we said, in 10:35, Canute dies, right?
At which point, Olaf's random illegitimate son, Magnus, pops up and takes the throne again. Here you go, dude. Hope you're not going to be super relevant. So basically for a few kings in a row, we're just like passing Norway back and forth between the same two families. Anyway, when becomes king of England and Denmark in 1040, did I say that he became king of Denmark? When he became king of England, he also became king of Denmark because Canute was king of both England and Denmark. Anyway, when becomes king of England and Denmark in 1040, he and Magnus start beefing over Norway because they're both like, "Oh, well, my father was king at one point and therefore I have a right to the crown, blah, blah, blah." To deal with their bitching, some noblemen from both Scandinavian countries get the two of them together and they agree to this like very fragile deal. The terms of the deal are that the first of them to die would be succeeded by the other.
Carthagin dies in 1042. So per the deal, Magnus should theoretically succeed to the thrones of both England and Denmark in addition to being the king of Norway.
He does get Denmark, but he ends up not inheriting England because at this point the English nobility has already installed Edward. So, per this [ __ ] deal, Magnus thinks that he's supposed to be king of England and subsequently that that has been stolen from him. Now, Magnus's heir is the guy who's actually important to us. His name is Harold Hardrada. So, we do have two Heralds now. We have Harold Hardrada and Harold Godwinson. To make this easier, I'm going to refer to Harold Hardrada with just his last name. He is the less relevant of the two Heralds. So he loses first name privileges. He is just Hardrada to us now. Magnus actually has two heirs, one for Denmark and one for Norway. Hardrada is only the heir to Norway, which means the Danish crown is immediately coming back off the board and eventually Hardyrada does become king of Norway. The timing of that doesn't particularly matter. Hardrada is the second person that we're going to ignore until it's convenient for me. He is not involved in the Battle of Hastings, but he does have a big effect on it. So like Tostic Godwinson, we are going to treat Hardyrada as a logistical issue rather than as a guy. In fact, we're basically going to end up treating these two guys as a one logistical issue, but we'll get there. Ignore them for now. Okay, that is our entire prologue. It'll help things make sense later, even though it was probably too extensive. Let's move on. So, let's get into the reign of Edward the Confessor.
Edward reigns from 1042 to 1066. And in the beginning, it's kind of tense because Edward doesn't really want to be king, but the English nobility really want a king from the English royal line.
And at the moment, there are only two people in the world that fit that description. One of those people is Etheld's grandson via his first marriage, but that guy has been in exile in Sweden andor Hungary andor Keven Roose for his entire life and nobody knows if he's alive. The other person is Edward the Confessor, who is marketkedly easier to track down. So Edward kind of has to be king, and as a result, he is.
A few things to know about Edward. First of all, he takes a largely diplomatic approach to politics, especially in the early years of his reign. Apparently, he's a pretty sincere dude. Also, he's allegedly super hot, according to one source I read, which was a book written by an Englishman in 1877. However, this book did describe every single English and/or Anglo-Saxon person as extremely hot. So, do with that what you will. The other thing you should know about Edward is that while he is technically half English, he's effectively completely Norman. Like, he was born in England, but he was raised in exile in Normandy.
He speaks French better than he speaks English. He understands Norman customs better. he identifies more closely with Norman culture, etc. This has multiple repercussions. In some ways, it's good because he's both English and Norman, and therefore he's overall liked by both England and Normandy. Over time, though, it starts to create a lot of division within the nobility because Edward starts putting Normans in a lot of highlevel positions in the English court. And pretty quickly, the culture of the court is much more Norman than it is Anglo-Saxon. Throughout most of Edward's reign, Godwin is still a very relevant figure. He's the most important and powerful Earl in England. and he does hold a lot of sway among the other nobles. Edward actually ends up marrying one of Godwin's daughters even though she's like half his age and theoretically he doesn't need to do this for political alliance. These say father-in-law and son-in-law, you get it. Overall, for a while, Edward seems to be willing to go to basically any lengths to stay on good terms with Godwin, including but not limited to pardoning one of Godwin's irrelevant sons who keeps kidnapping people and murdering his own cousins. But, you know, again, I'm American. It's not the most unreasonable pardon I've ever seen.
Anyway, it might seem weird that the literal king is worried about being on some nobleman's good side, but the thing is Edward is still an outsider here and all of the English nobility are more loyal to Godwin than they are to him. If Edward loses Godwin's support, he effectively loses all of the English court members. So, while he's trying to be on his good side and everything, Edward does not like Godwin. In fact, he probably actively hates him. Godwin is a huge challenge to his authority. And also, I left this out earlier, but in 1036, Godwin very probably played a role in the political assassination of Edward's irrelevant brother. Godwin was never convicted of that, but a lot of people suspected him, including Edward.
So, Edward hates Godwin, but he needs him because of the nobles. As time goes on, though, and more and more noble positions at court become occupied by Normans, Edward needs Godwin less and less, which Godwin does not like. He starts leading some pretty strong opposition to the influx of Normans at court. And eventually tensions boil over to the point that Godwin and his family actually get exiled from England in 1051, only to return with an army a year later and force his way back into power.
Welcome back immediately. Godwin finally dies in 1053, apparently mid Easter brunch. Pretty brutal. And his super important position as the Earl of Wessex gets taken up by his son, Harold, who is one of our main guys. Now, Harold is apparently even more speech 100 than Godwin was. Also, he too was apparently very hot. Thank you, weird Anglo-Saxon supremacist writer circa 1877. Edward hates Harold less than he hated Godwin, but it's still not great. Also, because Edward is inexplicably married to one of Harold's sisters, these two are brothersin-law. Anyway, things go on being relatively normal for a little over a decade here until we finally get to the year 1066 when after being very sick for a while, Edward the Confessor dies.
Now, you may have noticed that we never discussed any bloodrelated heir for King Edward. That would be because he did not have one. And this is a huge problem because when Edward dies, we find out that there are three separate people who all think they're supposed to be his heir. One of those people is Hardrada, the Norwegian king that we're ignoring right now. So, actually, we don't care that he thinks he's supposed to be the heir. So, there are actually two separate people that we care about that believe they're supposed to be Edward's heir. One of those people is Harold Godwinson. His reasoning is that allegedly on his deathbed, Edward declared Harold his heir. Pretty straightforward. Obviously, we have no proof that that happened, but that's the claim. And then we finally come to the other person who believes he has a claim to the English throne, and that is our remaining big player, William the Conqueror, who is not a conqueror yet.
At the moment, he is just William. So, let's talk about William. William is the Duke of Normandy from 1035 onward.
Remember, the Duke is the guy full-on in charge of Normandy. The line of succession in Normandy is much more straightforward than it is in England.
William is a direct descendant of the Viking leader to whom Normandy was originally given, bequeafd perhaps. He is the grandson of Richard II, who was Emma's brother. So, Emma is William's great aunt. But yeah, this line from the original Viking leader is direct. Ruling Normandy though is a bit less straightforward because since Normandyy's founding in the year 911, there has always been a lot to do. For the early Dukes, the concerns are largely internal civic stuff, borders, cultural clashes, etc. By 1026, we've kind of sorted that out, but now we have problems in the court. These are pretty standard nobility problems, like this guy wants to do fracturide, this guy suddenly hates the church, this guy has a bastard child, all of those guys are actually the same one guy. You get it?
By 10:35, when William becomes Duke, he has like a whole new set of problems to deal with. One of those problems is that he is the bastard child that I just mentioned, which actually isn't as big of a deal in this period as it will be in like the later Middle Ages, but it's still not great. And also, he's like 8 years old when he becomes Duke. So, he's in a very precarious position and everyone is always trying to assassinate him or manipulate him or etc. Finally, in 1047, when he's about 19, he's able to quash one of the like major rebellions going on in Normandy. And because of that, he's able to start like actually establishing his authority within the duche. But then after that, he still has to establish his authority outside the duche because people from the continent are always trying to invade or overthrow him or assassinate him or manipulate him or etc. It isn't until about 1060 when the last of his big enemies on the continent die that he's like really locked into his role.
So if you're wondering why William hasn't been in our story up until now, um it's because he's been really busy.
But he's here now and that's what counts. William is generally considered a pretty smart dude who is very prideful, very ruthless, and very ambitious. He believes in his ability to get the [ __ ] that he wants, which makes sense. He's become a very successful duke, despite many different people trying to prevent that from happening throughout the course of his life. Like we said earlier, in terms of relations to people that we already know about, William is related to Emma, who is his great aunt, and by extension, he's related to Edward, who would then be his first cousin once removed. Right. First cousin. Yeah, first cousin once removed.
Overall though, this whole time, William has basically been completely separated from anything going on in England or Scandinavia. By the way, William is not hot according to the book I read from 1877, but he is hot according to a different book I read from 2021. So, make your own decisions. Now, we said that William is the final person who believes he is Edward the Confessor's heir. Based on what we've just learned, you might be wondering why the hell he would think that. Well, let's go back again. Remember how in the year 1051, Godwin and his family were like very briefly exiled from England? During that same period of time, William, the not yet conqueror, took a trip to England to visit his first cousin, once removed, King Edward. As the Duke of Normandy, William was a close ally to the king of England, especially to this king of England. Because, as you'll recall, Edward was not only raised in Normandy, but raised at Norman court, like within the Duke's household, as was William.
William's father and Edward were first cousins, but they grew up pretty much as brothers. Edward and William know each other very well. So, William then goes to visit England in 1051, notably when the Godwin family is not there. And allegedly during that visit, Edward makes a promise that William will be his heir. We're not 100% sure that that promise was like the reason that William went to England at all, but given the timing, it's pretty likely that it was.
It would have been easy in this period of political instability to step in and offer security, right? We have no proof that Edward actually promised anything officially. But in practical terms, that promise is the reason William believes he's supposed to be Edward's heir, right? Like whether or not it actually officially happened and whether or not Edward meant it, William believed it.
That promise is made in 1051, but William just keeps it in the back of his head forever, I guess. And like 15 years later, as Edward's health begins to fail, our boy here really wants to lock that down. So, here we come to a major juncture in our story that is potentially total [ __ ] but you can be the judge. In 1064, 2 years before Edward dies, Harold Godwinson goes to Normandy to visit William. Why? Well, he was there to help with like a military campaign in Britany, but motive-wise, we don't really know why he would agree to do that. Accounts differ wildly, and everyone both back then and now is super mad about it. The point is during that visit, Harold allegedly swears an oath to William that he will support William's claim to the throne. So essentially, he promises to not do any funny business and just let William be king of England when Edward dies. Now, you might be asking, why would Harold do that? Well, first of all, this is before Edward's alleged deathbed promise to him, so he theoretically isn't heir yet.
But more relevantly, he was likely just under duress. William had some hostages that were family members of Harold's that were given to him by Edward. That's a whole thing. And then separately, there's like a situation at the beginning of this visit where William gets Harold out of being arrested. So, he owes him. There's a lot going on. We don't know the exact content of this oath or whether Harold was acting freely or even whether he actually made an oath at all because all of this information comes from William. But the point is that William in some capacity believed that Harold had promised to support him becoming king. and he believed that Harold had sworn an oath for that on like holy artifacts which means it's like religiously binding like it would be a slight against God if Harold were to break that oath. So now we come back to the year 1066. Edward the Confessor has just died and there are two three but two separate guys who think that they're supposed to take his place but only one can be king. And the crown goes to Harold Godwinson. Woo.
As we know, Harold has no blood relation to the previous king, but he is technically his brother-in-law, and in the eyes of the English nobility, that's close enough. They also think he's kind of the only option. So, because they do have a say, in January of 1066, Harold Godwinson becomes king of England.
Here's someone who does not like this.
William of Normandy. He's like, "Hey, what the hell? Mom said it was my turn to be king of England." Notably, though, William's interest in England is largely opportunistic. Like, King Edward has died with no heirs and the kingdom is in a state of unrest, so it's easy for someone to step in right now. And William is in a very good position to do so. He's got a lot of connections on his side. First of all, he has the support of Normandy where he's from. He has the support of Flanders where his wife is from. He has the fact that he's a relatively close cousin of the previous king. And randomly, he also has the support of the pope because of bribery.
He didn't build these connections specifically for invading England, though. They were all for other stuff.
They just happen to line up very well for this situation. And then the final piece is that Ari England, the timing works out really well for him. He was dealing with a whole bunch of [ __ ] up until recently. Remember, he only became like secure in his control of Normandy in 1060. Prior to then, it would have been very hard for him to try to leave Normandy to conquer any other place because somebody easily could have usurped him back home. So, the fact that Edward the Confessor dies in 1066 is super convenient for William because at that time, he happens to finally be in a really good position to invade someone.
Congrats. Plus, he has this whole oath thing on his side where he can claim that Harold betrayed him and also betrayed God and stuff. So upon considering all of this, William decides to get his [ __ ] together, invade England, and go for the crown, which means we are gearing up to get violent.
So in terms of battle ability, let's take a look at what our combatants are working with tomorrow. What ho. So most of our knowledge about the arms and armies involved in the Battle of Hastings comes from something called the Bayou Tapestry, which I mentioned very briefly and not by name at the beginning of this video. The Bayou Tapestry is a 230 foot long stretch of fabric that is embroidered with the story of the Battle of Hastings and the events leading up to it. It probably also used to have a little section of the events post the battle, but the final section we think has been lost. The tapestry is believed to have been made within about 10 years of the battle itself. And we think it was commissioned by a Norman bishop who was notably William the Conqueror's half brother. So bear in mind it's a fairly Norman biased account, but archaeological finds and firsthand accounts from this area and period are very scarce and in fact both are completely absent for this battle in particular. So the tapestry is what we have and it's where we get most of our arms and army info. The tapestry distinguishes between sides of the battle via hairstyle, which I think is iconic. Soldiers with long hair are English and soldiers with short hair are Norman wig. Decisive fashion choices. We love it. Anyway, based on what we know, it seems that both sides were working with pretty similar soldiers in that the vast majority of their guys would have had real training. Several are probably even full-time soldiers. Those are going to be like castle guard types, like they're of the king or of nobles who are loyal to the king because usually if the king makes you like a lord or an earl or whatever, that station comes with the understanding that you will lend military aid if needed. And then in England, there's also this thing where lords can call on civilians that live on their land to act as soldiers in an emergency. That setup is called a Shire levy system, which is the most British term I've ever heard. Usually, you'd only call on people from areas like immediately adjacent to a given battle because this is a thing you're doing on very short notice. Also, the guys who get called via Shy Levy bring their own weapons and armor. So, whatever they have to fight with is just according to their wealth, which seems like a pretty big roll of the dice, but okay. At Hastings, a lot of the English guys are of like middling to higher social rank because it's a lot of servants from rich households. And then Normandy doesn't have the Shy Levy system, but they do also have like a core group of more permanent or trained soldiers. And then they bulk out the army with a bunch of other guys from all over the place. So in terms of the soldiers themselves, we're basically the same. Each side gets one poor [ __ ] infantry, even though our infantry isn't particularly poor. I just like the card. All in all, it's estimated that each army had about 5 to 10,000 guys. The estimates do swing pretty wildly, and we have no way to know like an actual number. Some of the medieval chronicers like to claim that one side or the other had like a 100,000 guys, which is for sure just retroactive dick measuring, but good to know we've always done that. Normandy and England were also working with very similar weapons and armor, which is mostly just a product of being in this area in the 11th century. There just aren't that many resources available, and there's only so many ways you can cover your body in metal. Your average guy on the battlefield gets a helmet that is either metal or leather. The leather one is basically just a hat, and it's not going to do much for you, but it's nice to feel included. The metal one is definitely going to be more help because it's metal and also because it has this fun nose guard. Very famous, very good at stopping you from breaking your nose.
Very much has the potential to like bend inward and stab you in the face, I feel like, but I'm not a doctor. This type of helmet, like the nose guard just on a regular skull cap helm, is usually just associated with Normandy. And then a lot of guys are also going to be wearing a type of chain mail shirt called a howber, which generally has full or half sleeves and goes down to like mid thigh or knee. They usually weigh about 30 lbs, which is kind of brutal. Also, this picture is Henry of Scollets from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. He's up here because he's an icon and he slays.
And also, this is one of the better pictures of a howber I could find. From here on, you will note that the pictures I use are not going to be historically accurate. In terms of weapons, some of our [ __ ] is still the same on both sides, especially for basic melee stuff because it is the 11th century, which means at the moment the game plan for any given fight is hit guy with spear, perhaps with sword or with axe if you're bougie. This belongs to my girl Shadow Heart. This belongs to my girl Buffy.
This is the ruins great sword from Elden Ring, which deserves more love because I think it's super funny to be like, "This is a great sword." And then pull out a stone pillar. The point is spears acts as swords. Most often you're going to be fighting with a spear. Apparently in old English there were eight different words for spear. We are very into spears. It's Britney, [ __ ] By the way, spears at this point are being held and thrown, so there is some ranged attack capacity.
And then as far as shields go, we're pretty into those, too. But the shield of the era is like a very large kit-shaped thing that's overall just really inconvenient. It's not going to be around for much longer though. Some guys are already using smaller shields.
Keep up with the times. Now, in terms of differences in weaponry between our two sides, there are two that are very important. The first of those is archers. Harold Godwinson has very, very few archers in his army at Hastings.
That's largely due to logistical issues that we'll talk about in a second. But I think it's also worth noting that at this point in history, England is of the general opinion that archery is for losers. Like it's normal to use it for hunting, but it's considered a cowardly form of fighting people because it's ranged. You're supposed to face your opponent headon. You know, slaughter that teenager with a sword, like an honorable political pawn. William, on the other hand, has a lot of archers.
It's not looked down upon for fighting quite as much in Normandy. And also, William had a much easier and luckier time with logistics. The second difference in weaponry, and the one that is probably the most impactful is horses. I know you don't think of horses as weapons, but they effectively are in this instance. England during this time has no cavalry. They do use horses in war, but pretty much exclusively as transportation. They think that fighting on horses is weak [ __ ] because if you're on a horse, then you have the ability to run away. Classic. Again, humans have always loved dick measuring, especially if it's to the point of self-sabotage.
Somebody should really tell them about legs. But like, you'll see in a minute here that the English even pull up two Hastings on horses and then they get off the horses and leave them in the woods so that they can go fight on foot.
You're crazy for that. Normandy, on the other hand, is on the cutting edge of cavalry. They've got these fancy battlerained horses and a whole bunch of guys who know how to fight from them. At this point in history, we are not armoring our horses yet in Western Europe. However, stirrups have just made it to the area, which is a huge development for fighting from horseback because you now have the ability to lean more than like 5° left or right, and you no longer fall off at the slightest inconvenience. The Normans are so committed to horse fighting that they literally bring their horses from home like across the English Channel. Do you know how hard it is to get a horse on a boat? It is a historically documented problem. Horses are one of the most anxious and poorly built animals that exist on Earth at this time. This time and this time. My degree is in geology and my sub field is in paleontology.
Okay. Like fossils. We happen to have a very good fossil record of horse evolution. Like we have specimens representative of pretty much every stage in their fogyny. And truly it is just a series of L's worse and worse as you go down the line. Like what do you mean you're a K- selected species and a million different things are lethally toxic to you but you also don't have the ability to vomit? Why do your lungs bleed when you run too fast given that running fast is like your whole thing?
What made you think it was a good idea to have legs made of finger bones? The whole plan sucks. New strat. go back to being the weird rat thing they were before. Take a slight pivot. Become a pig. It's a great time to be a pig.
They're everywhere. They're really good at existing. The point is, it's a nightmare to get horses onto boats. The Normans did it anyway because they were so committed to cavalry and it's going to end up making a huge difference.
Horse girls to their core. Okay, that's about it for our arms and armies. Now, let's get into my favorite part, logistics.
Okay, we've laid the historical groundwork. Now, let's look at what people are doing in the direct leadup to the battle itself. I find military logistics fascinating, especially when we're operating pre- electronics when nobody has the ability to like communicate with any level of efficiency. Like, a battle is an inherently chaotic situation. You have a ton of people in fight orflight mode, any number of unknown variables from the other side, and massive potential for things to go wrong. There's ultimately only so much you can do in the moment, which means almost all of the work has to happen before you ever even set foot on the battlefield. Other people's logistical decisions might ruin your whole [ __ ] without even meaning to or they might accidentally be super helpful to you. Battle tactics also live and die on logistics. We love coordination. We love knowing what is happening and when and where and also how we are getting to that location. I'm starting to sound like my mother, but that's okay because my mother is lovely and I listen to everything she says. Anyway, for Hastings, as is often the case, the biggest tactical and logistical decisions happen before the fight ever starts. So, let's look at some of those decisions and how they lead up to this battle. Getting into crunch time, the move that kicks off this whole thing is made not by William or Harold, but by a secret third option. The two guys we've marked as a logistical issue. Everyone, please welcome back to the board Tostig Godwinson, King Herald's brother, and Hardrada, the current king of Norway, who is also the third guy who believes he has a claim to the English throne. We have been ignoring that and ignoring both of these guys. But it's now a convenient time for us to stop doing that. They will be representing Scandinavia, specifically Norway. So why the hell does Hardrada believe that he has a claim to the English throne?
Remember and Magnus? Those were the guys who several decades ago now were beefing over Norway and they made that weird deal wherein when one of them died, the other would succeed him. Was king of England and Denmark at that time and he died first. So Magnus in theory was supposed to inherit both England and Denmark, but he ended up only inheriting Denmark because Edward the Confessor had already been installed on the English throne. So Magnus basically always believed that he was like kind of supposed to be the king of England.
Hardrada was Magnus' heir to Norway. So his reasoning with this claim is, hey, Magnus was supposed to inherit England and I'm supposed to inherit everything that Magnus had, which by the transitive property means that I'm supposed to inherit England. Now, this is a very shaky claim. The deal between Magnus and Hearthude was never like super legit. It was mostly just a peacekeeping thing.
And regardless, both of those guys are dead now, and we've moved on. For the record, Hardrada knows that his claim to England is very shaky. He probably wouldn't have done anything about it if it weren't for Tostig. So, here's what's going on with these two. For a long time, Tostig was the Earl of a random northern area in England. Okay? Then he gets overthrown because he's cruel and his people hate him and they want him to be exiled. Tostig then goes to his brother Harold and he's like, "Hey, can you help me get my Earlm back?" But Harold says no because he's like, "Dude, your people hate you and you suck at being Earl." So Tostig's former people's demands go through and he gets exiled.
Now, this is where Tostig decides to make a big move. He starts plotting revenge. Classic. So, in January of 1066, just after Harold becomes king, Tostig [ __ ] off to go find allies for his own invasion of England. He travels all around Europe for a while, but nobody wants to help him until eventually in May of 1066, he heads up to Norway and talks to Hardrada and Tostic's like, "Hey girl, so you have a super vague connection to the throne of England because of a very fragile deal between two people who are dead now, right?" Okay, perfect. So, I have all this insider information, and I think with my help, you could totally overthrow my brother, who I hate. In response to this, Hardrada says, "Well, I did just fight a war against Denmark during which I got my ass handed to me, and as a result, all of my provisions and resources are pretty low, but work. Let's do it." So, now the pieces are in place for these two to start invading England. Now, also starting in January of 1066, William is acting up because he too is getting ready to invade England. And he is doing the most. He's already well set up in terms of those connections that we talked about earlier, like the support of Flanders and the Pope and all that, but also he is working the propaganda machine. He's making deals with baronss.
He's flexing that he's friends with the Pope. He's convincing Norman nobles that Harold really did swear a holy oath and then break it. He's doing everything he can to publicly justify invading England because invading England is frankly kind of a crazy thing for him to do. It's on an island and has been fighting off Vikings for hundreds of years. And as a result, it has at this time arguably the best navy in the world. Normandy, on the other hand, has no particular navy. This to say that if William tries to cross the English Channel, there's a very good chance that he immediately gets swarmed by like a million guys that are way better at boat than he is. William, of course, is going to cross the English Channel anyway and bring all his troops and horses with him. But at the moment, there aren't even enough boats in all of Normandy to do what he's asking. So before he goes to England, he has to build a whole bunch of new boats and borrow a whole bunch of old boats from France, Britney, and Flanders. He starts construction on all of this in January with the intent to invade England before next winter. We don't know exactly how many ships he had, but the lowest estimates I saw were around 700. You're building and sourcing minimum 700 ships in less than a year in the 11th century.
It takes us months to years to build ships today. I mean, granted, we have done it faster. By the end of World War II, we were consistently building Liberty ships in like 40 days, but that was with steel and welding and defense contractors there to make sure no ethical things were happening. How many people did you have working on this?
Anyway, at some point during this time, King Harold gets word that William is planning to invade. So, in May of 1066, Harold gathers an army and starts monitoring the southern coast of England. Here comes some guys to monitor England. Can you even see those? Kind of. Not really. Well, so be it. They're risk pieces that I glued onto magnets. I have a lot of magnets these days.
Harold's plan is not to stop William from crossing the channel. He doesn't want this to be naval combat if he can help it because naval combat, especially at this time, is very unpredictable. He doesn't really want to leave the outcome of this fight to wind. So instead, his plan is to watch the coast and pinpoint the exact location where William plans to land. Harold wants to meet William basically right after he disembarks so that the invading army doesn't have much room to push north and then he'll have the English navy come around on the channel to block the way back to Normandy. Box the Normans in so that they can't retreat and then come at them from both sides. So that's Harold's plan. Now Harold assumes that William is going to be invading sometime in the summer. That's why he musters his army in May. And to be honest, that's a fair assumption. As we know from extensive evidence, it's a bad idea to invade places during winter. However, throughout the summer, William keeps not invading. By September, he still hasn't shown up. And Harold can only hold his Shire levied men for so long. At a certain point, their contract is up. And actually, they've already stayed overtime. You better be paying overtime.
So, in early September of 1066, King Harold disbands his army and navy, and he himself heads back to London. Here comes London. So, Harold heads back to London and his army is disbanded. He still has some troops like his knights and stuff and he can recall everyone in an emergency using the Shire Levy system, but that's not going to be like instant mobilization. Like it'll take days for people to get to him. So on the other end of things, why has William not invaded England yet? Well, he wanted to.
William actually left Normandy in July.
He brought his fleet out through the River Dev, which is about here. But just as he gets his whole new fleet set up on the coast, the wind shifts north, which means he's [ __ ] out of luck because this is Western Europe in the 11th century and we are still very into using square sails on our boats. And consequently, we really can't sail directly against the wind. The winds force him to reroute and move along the coast until he eventually stopped at the mouth of the river some, which is currently in France, but at the time was in Flanders. So William is just stuck here waiting on the coast in Flanders for several weeks. There he is.
Oh, I should put names on these places.
Hang on. Nice. And just like Harold, he can only hold his army for so long. So, he needs the wind to shift soon. I took off my bracers to eat a snack, and now I don't want to put them back on. This is what my arms look like. So, we get all the way to midepptember like this.
Things are overall pretty tense on the coast of the English Channel. And then in swoops, our secret third option, the logistical issue duo of Tostig and Hardrada to make things even more tense in the north of England. Because in early September, these two and a big ass army cross the ocean from Norway and start invading England. Here's the path of the Norwegian army. They are represented by green risk pieces. They don't get any katan villages, though, because they're not going to be here long enough to build bases. Now, all summer, King Herald has been aware that William is planning to invade. He has not been aware that Hardrada is planning the same thing. News of this scheme never made it to him. As such, when Hardrada and Tostig make landfall on the coast and start heading for York, which is hereish, Harold is still 200 m away in London with no army. For the record, we're not sure exactly how much Hardrada knew. Notably, he had Tostig on his side, who obviously knew a lot about England and also had traveled around the rest of Europe seeking allies before talking to Hardrada. It's entirely possible that Tostig knew about William's plan and that he and Hardrada planned their invasion accordingly. It's also entirely possible that Tostic didn't know [ __ ] and therefore Hyrada didn't either. Regardless, these two pull up to England with about 7 to 10,000 men in 300 or so boats. And pretty quickly, they head down to York, which is about there, where they then proceed to get into a fight with two local Earls that they win pretty soundly. They make a couple of deals with the Earls during like surrender negotiations, and there are some deliverables that the Norwegians need to wait for. So, they tell the Earls in York to send everything through to Stamford Bridge, which is about here.
Whoop. That's where Tostig and Hardyrada and their army are going to be camping out while they wait. This is kind of a dumb play. You don't usually want to tell your enemies exactly where to find you, but okay. Also, around September 20th, way down south in London, Harold receives word that the Norwegians are invading. And he's like, "Oh, [ __ ] I've been out here waiting for William to invade, but now there's other [ __ ] going on up here. I fear I must scadaddle."
So, he leaves London and basically immediately starts marching north. and he calls Shire levies as he goes.
Basically, as he passes an area, he's like, "Quick, everyone, come join the Congo line. We've got to go fight some Vikings." And this like weirdly accumulating army marches all the way up to York in 4 days, which according to Google Maps should be like almost exactly 72 hours away on foot. I'm sure for these guys it's longer because we have a lot more roads these days. So, of the 96 odd hours that it takes them to travel to York, at least 72 of them are spent actively walking while wearing armor, like Harold himself and his fancier knights are probably on horses, but everyone else is on foot. That sucks so bad, dude. Anyway, clearly Harold has decided that he needs to act fast to make up for how behind he is. When he finally gets to York, which is the last place that he knows the Norwegians have been, the people there tell him that Hardrada is camping out at Stamford Bridge a few miles east. This is why you don't tell your enemies exactly where to find you. Harold pretty much immediately takes his guys over to Stanford Bridge where they arrive on the 25th of September and they catch the Norwegian army completely by surprise. Like so by surprise. Harold shows up in the early morning. People are still in bed.
Brutal. Anyway, the ensuing fight is called the Battle of Stamford Bridge.
We're removing these two guys and replacing them with this green circle to denote where the battle happened. Now, aesthetics wise, hear me out on this. I originally had big plans to make the Norwegians yellow instead of green. The idea being that then when this battle happens, the yellow side and the blue side meet up and the battle is green.
You see the vision? It didn't happen that way because for some [ __ ] reason I could only find a version of Risk that didn't have yellow pieces, which feels like [ __ ] but I'm telling you what the plan was so that so that you know it was going to make sense and now it doesn't. Perfect. Anyway, the battle of Stanford Bridge happens and it is a massacre for the Norwegians. Something like 300 boats arrive with Hardrada.
Only 24 leave and they leave very much without Hardrada because both he and Tostig die on the battlefield. This defeat is so crushing that it pretty effectively marks the end of the Viking age. Hardrada ends up being the last Norseman to attempt a large-scale invasion of England. But so Harold's surprise attack is incredibly effective.
In part because a lot of the Norwegians had to move so fast that they didn't have armor on. The battle takes most of the day and Harold does sustain some losses, but overall this is a very decisive victory for the English.
So this battle is done. But guess what's going on on the other side of the English channel at this same time? The wind is shifting. The timing of this is absolutely insane and from what we can tell, not at all intentional. We have no reason to believe that William knew anything about Hardrada's invasion. But regardless, on the evening of September 27th, just 2 days after the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the North Wind lets up and William and his fleet cross the English Channel. Now, this might be another situation where you say, "Hey Jay, shouldn't these be red and not orange?" Yes, they should. Guess what color pieces are absent from the version of Risk I found? Red and yellow are two of the colors that you're going to skip.
Primary colors. Anyway, William is crossing the channel. And honestly, this is so brutal for Harold. My dude has been staring at this coastline for months, waiting for William to show up, only for him to finally pull up in the 2 seconds that Harold isn't there. And again, not even on purpose. This isn't some 300 IQ Oceans 11 distraction plot.
This is just the medieval equivalent of there was a blizzard, so we got stuck at the airport. Must have been the wind.
Anyway, William lands in Pavvenzi, which is about here. And obviously, his landing goes really, really well. The Normans face absolutely no opposition because there's nobody here. Although it's pretty clear that they were expecting somebody to be there. The Normans pull up like weapons in hand ready to fight and then they're just like, "Oh, okay." So, the fleet lands in Pavvenzi, which is a village in what is now Sussex. And they mostly stay put for a minute. Pavvenzi is actually a very good defensive position both because of geography and because there's already a fortress here. It's a Saxon shore fort built by the Romans when they were here.
And it is, say it with me, an oval.
That's huge. We hate square fortresses on this channel. You never want corners in your fortress. Corners are structurally weak. They create blind spots. One guy with a pickaxe can destroy your whole [ __ ] Mary, don't let me catch you in a square fortress during a siege. You're getting clowned. Anyway, within a few days, William actually leaves Pvenzi and heads a little bit east to the cliffs at Hastings. We got there. The cliffs are an even more defensible position. So he establishes his camp there on September 29th and he builds a Mott and Bailey castle here as a base. Personally, I think that's [ __ ] up because in a traditional Mott and Bailey castle, the keep is square.
Granted, it's also wooden and like at the very top of a hill, so it's a little bit better, but we're on thin ice.
Anyway, William posts up in this castle, which is a pretty unusual move.
Generally, an invader would make a push against a major settlement. You know, you're trying to put the pressure on.
You want to be in control of big centers ASAP. and London is very close to here.
Evidently though, William has decided to basically break this invasion down into distinct sections. Rather than doing everything at the same time, he's going to deal with Harold first and then start taking over cities, which is a pretty good tactical move. A kingdom with no king is much easier to conquer. However, Harold, of course, isn't here. He's way up north in York celebrating from Stamford Bridge, which again was like 3 days ago. So William, in an effort to get Harold's attention, makes himself a huge nuisance on the coast. Like he's raiding towns, stealing provisions, setting stuff on fire. Although apparently he does let people leave their houses before he burns them down, which is more than can be said for what we do now. And also more than can be said for what he's going to do in a few years, but we'll get there. The thing is, obviously Harold is going to be mad that he's attacking any part of England, but also the specific area that William is in happens to be land that's been like in Harold's family for a long time.
Like at the time, this is Wessix. This is the area that Harold's father, Godwin, and company have been Earls of for so long. Harold was Earl of this area himself. Harold is therefore dutybound to the people that live here.
So, William attacking them specifically is also like a personal insult to Harold and etc. But yeah, William is rans sacking on like a pretty crazy level because frankly, he's on the clock now.
He's landed in foreign territory and is very much in a position to be boxed in whenever the English Navy finally shows up and his army is now surviving just on their own provisions and on looted provisions. Eventually, they're going to run out and they can't really backtrack because the Navy is going to be there.
So, William is making a huge scene to try to get Harold down here as fast as possible. Meanwhile, in the north, Harold is like still actively dealing with Stamford Bridge stuff when he receives word that William has landed in England. And he's like, "Bright, of course. When else would he get here?" So Harold basically has no choice but to march all the way back down to the other end of the country. The thing is though, his men are obviously exhausted, and again, most of them are on foot. Harold is on a horse and is trying to move much faster than his soldiers reasonably can.
So he takes his fancier knights and anybody else who's actually on a horse and he leaves most of his army behind.
Then he rushes back to London where he once again uses the Shire levy system.
He calls on men from areas much closer to London to raise basically an entirely new army. This is probably the main reason that Harold ended up with so few archers at Hastings. Any archers he might have had up north weren't able to make the trip fast enough because they wouldn't have been on horses. And then on top of that, like we said, archery in England is almost exclusively for hunting at this time, especially in wooded areas, and there are way more wooded areas in the north of England than there are in the south. So for Hastings, where he levied men from southern counties and left behind his men from northern counties, there were likely just not that many archers available to him. Anyway, the reason he's moving so fast is because A, it worked on Hardrada, so maybe it'll work on William, too. and B, Harold can't really afford to let William make friends in England because Harold is king, but ultimately his claim to the throne is basically non-existent by normal succession rules. He's not related to any previous king. The closest he got is that his sister was married to Edward the Confessor, which has nothing to do with him at all.
William, though, is related to Edward and somewhat closely. If William can convince the English nobles that he's supposed to be king, Harold doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. So, my guy is moving fast to try to prevent any discussion between William and the nobles. Harold makes it to London on October 6th, where he plans to wait a bit to let his levied men gather in one place. And this is where we run into what is arguably Harold's fatal mistake.
He only stays in London for 6 days.
There are two issues with that. First of all, that's not enough time for all of his reinforcements to get to him. And second of all, like we talked about, William is boxed in. The longer Harold keeps him waiting, the more precarious his position gets as he burns through his provisions. All this to say, Harold can basically only benefit from waiting longer, and yet he doesn't. He leaves London after 6 days still tired and with a smaller force than he could have had.
I get where he's coming from. Like, yes, it's bad that William is ransacking towns and also hurting your honor or whatever, but letting him do that for a few more days, incurring some property destruction and etc. is a lot better than leaving London early and losing the battle. Because spoilers, losing the battle does mean that William is going to slaughter like 75% of your population, which seems like a much bigger deal than property damage in a couple towns. But anyway, after about 6 days in London, Harold gathers his troops and marches toward Hastings. On the other side of things, William already knows about Harold's victory in the north at Stamford Bridge thanks to an informant, but he only finds out that Harold is coming to Hastings the night before the battle. A scout comes back to camp and he's like, "Hey, I saw a big ass army out there. Crazy [ __ ] We should make Haste. Haste is a really good game." As such, William gets all his guys ready and starts marching north to meet Harold wherever he is. He doesn't want to let him make it to their camp essentially, which is fine, but you definitely don't need to meet him where he is. He's already coming to you and you know how far away he is because of the scout, which in theory means that you could pick where the battle happens.
You can march until you find an advantageous spot and then stop, get your guys arrested, have enough time to put everyone where you want them. But that's not what William does. Instead, he gets all his guys together and they march out in the very early morning.
They have about 7 miles to walk until they meet Harold. William has his guys marching in like roughly their battle formation. So they're in more or less the right place if they get snuck up on.
But the order of that formation goes archers in the front, then other infantry, and then cavalry with William himself in the middle of the cavalry line, which is a pretty standard arrangement, classic, straightforward.
On Harold's end, he knows that William is camping by the cliffs at Hastings. So he is marching south from London. in between London and Hastings. He and his guys emerge from a forest onto the top of a hill and they're met with Williams army at the bottom of the hill. Now, I have come to understand that among historians, there is quite a bit of debate about this hill. The girls are truly fighting. Traditionally, it has been accepted that the battle was fought on this one specific hill, but there are some young upstarts who think it might have happened like three hills to the left. One book I was reading was published in 2021 and there was a line where the author was like, "Yeah, I've changed my opinion about the hill in the years since 1985." I have questions.
What happened in 1985? How hard have you been thinking about this one hill for 36 years? Anyway, I desperately don't want to get into the finer points of these arguments because I have read so many hill related debates in the past few weeks and I don't need more of that right now. Overall, what matters is that the battle happens on a hill. There is a hill. The battle does happen on that hill. That's what's important. Anyway, Harold has apparently organized an assembly point on top of this hill, which is kind of weird. In theory, you were assembling your guys in London, but whatever. It's possible that they were just camping there overnight. We don't know exactly how long the English army stopped there, but regardless, on top of the hill is where he happens to be when William's army pulls up. So, Harold definitely did not succeed in his attempts to catch William by surprise.
If anything, he got surprised by William. So, the date is Saturday the 14th of October, 1066. Our two sides have officially met at the battlefield.
See how it's purple? This was the whole plan, which means it's finally time to talk about the minute-to-minute action of this battle. Yeah, remember how this video is supposed to be about the actual battle of Hastings. Me neither. Also, this part of the video is probably going to be relatively short because the battle took a total of like 9 hours and up until now, we've been discussing the past like 60 years. So, let's do it tomorrow. Greetings. I'm going to assume that this lighting is drastically different than it was yesterday. That's because there was a [ __ ] ton of glare on this poster. However, like we said, there is no place on the floor for the light to stand where that doesn't happen, which is why this is now our setup. That's Beloo there in the middle.
He's cool. You can say hi. Also, not sure if you can tell, this is not an official map. I made this on the program that I used to make Dn D battle maps.
This is like supposed to give topography. Are we feeling good about that? I don't know. This is the top of the hill. This is the bottom of the hill. Okay. See the shadow? You get it?
Okay. Let's get into it. The first thing that the English are going to do is dismount and get rid of any horses that they have. There will be no cavalry. And then they're going to group up together on top of this hill and form a shield wall, which is a very common tactic at this time. Everyone's going to post up really close to each other and overlap shields to make a nice defensive wall.
Now, I like this formation. I don't like it nearly as much as its more extreme cousin, the testudo formation, which is technically a type of shield wall, but it's inherently better due to turtle.
These guys have decided we don't need a roof at the moment, though. Anyway, surprised or not, Harold's tactics here are solid. His main concern, at least at the start here, is going to be defending against that cavalry. Traditionally, that's the exact purpose of a shield wall, so he's making a smart choice there. But also, famously, he's on top of a hill. Bad terrain is one of the absolute best defenses against cavalry.
Like we said, horses are very bad at existing. If they break their leg, it's over. In this instance, though, it isn't the horse's fault. It's just that it's really hard to run full speed up a hill.
Now, if Harold had trained cavalry, his position on top of the hill would be even more advantageous, provided he holds it. Because while it is hard to run uphill, I'm sure you know that it is not hard to run downhill. Cavalry does work if you're the guy on top of the hill, but Harold has no cavalry. So, remember at the beginning of this video when I said that medieval battles are usually decided by just who happens to be standing on a hill? I meant it.
Naturally, using cavalry against the hill is William's plan anyway. His tactics at the moment are overall very simple, very classic. He wants to hit the shield wall over and over again until it breaks. So, let's get started on that. At around 9:00 a.m., the Normans start to close with Herold's army, which is where we are here. The archers are still first in the Norman formation. This line is archer risk pieces. I'm sure you can't see them at all, but I want you to know that they're like that. So, with the archers first in the formation, they're also going to be the first to attack. That might sound like it doesn't make sense. Why not put your melee guys in the front and your ranged guys in the back? Quent rules, right? Well, the archers are only supposed to be in front for a couple minutes. They're basically going to take advantage of what distance they have to pick off as many guys as possible. And then when the army gets close to melee range, they're going to go hide behind their friends. Having the archers in front is a good idea in particular because we do have some crossbow guys and crossbow bolts are fast enough and heavy enough to punch right through a wooden shield. So, that gives us some opportunity to weaken the wall. Soon enough, the Normans close to the point that they can start using melee guys and cavalry, at which point the archers fall back to the flanks. This is also the point at which they find out that cavalry charges don't work super well uphill. This to say that through the first of William's kind of waves of attacks, the English hold the line. The shield wall is sturdy. The hill is doing its job. She stays putting in the work.
After tanking that first wave, the English do start pushing forward a bit.
Now, moving as a shield wall is a little bit risky because it leaves opportunity for people to get separated and therefore leave gaps in the wall, but also sometimes that can be the point. A shield wall is meant to absorb impact, right? If a cavalryman breaks through and hits the wall, it is better that it splits a little bit to allow for fewer people to get hit. But anyway, in this instance, the English want to keep the high ground, but they also want to do everything they can to push the invaders into getting overwhelmed and running away. Mass panic is a huge concern in all battles, but especially with armies like these, ones that are mostly made up of people who are trained, but not full-time soldiers. There are some full-time soldiers who are likely more disciplined, but the majority of these guys are almost entirely reliant on like momentto- moment guidance from their commanders. It's also worth noting that medieval battles are very physically difficult. You're carrying an enormous amount of extra weight in weapons and armor, and you're engaging everyone in what is more or less hand-to-hand combat. You simply cannot do this for very long before you have to take a break. That's why Williams attacks are happening in waves like that. They try a bunch of [ __ ] for however long and then they're like, "Okay guys, let's take five and then get back out. They're going to give coach 110%." But anyway, the English pushing forward actually does kind of have the desired effect. It results in a mix of the Norman army being forced back and the Norman army being squished together, which leads to the infantry and the cavalry kind of being all mixed up. It also has the effect of some of the Normans getting spooked and starting to like half retreat. The kind of skittishness, chaos, and slight retreating is then drastically exacerbated by an event that I still don't really understand, which is that apparently during this phase of the battle, a rumor starts spreading among the Normans that William has been killed. Now, that's a big deal, and we'll get to it in a minute, but first, I need to talk about the logistics of this. Every single source that I read used that specific phrasing, a rumor starts spreading. And I just want to know what the [ __ ] does that mean in practice? Thousands of people are in the middle of pitched combat and amid that they're like telling their friends that they think XYZ thing happened over yonder and then that person turns to their friend and is like you're never going to believe what I just heard. What are you talking about? Was it like we all saw something that led us to believe that William is dead? It's like one guy yells out that William is dead and then we all just go with it. What do you mean a rumor? Anyway, a rumor goes around somehow that William has been killed.
And this is of course very bad news for the Normans. The army starts to panic.
Some of the commanders, like lieutenants effectively, stay locked in, but there aren't that many of them. And overall, things are looking pretty dire for the Normans in William's absence. The thing is though, William is not dead. He's fine and is actively yelling at everyone to stop freaking out, but they're freaking out too much to hear him again.
How did this rumor start and spread?
Finally, a group of Norman cavalry actually do start properly fleeing and some of the British shield wall break off to chase them down. If they kick up a big enough fuss that everyone else starts to flee, it's game over. At that point, the fight is absolutely lost.
Once your troops are panicked, it's very hard to reorganize them on the fly.
Lucky for this group, William catches them before they can go very far. And very famously, as is depicted on the tapestry, William has to drop everything he's doing and take his helmet off to show his face. And he's like, "Guys, holy hell, it's me. I'm fine. It's chill. Don't even worry about it." In response to that, this group of cavalry goes, "Oh, sick." And with William leading them, they start to turn around.
But like we said, when this group started running, some of the English decided to press their advantage and go after them, which is kind of a dumb move, seeing as the English are on foot trying to chase after guys on horses, but the guys get a bit impatient and do it anyway. Which means that when the Normans see that William is alive and decide to turn around, these Englishmen are completely caught out. They get surrounded and subsequently slaughtered.
This is like the first substantial hit to the English army that the Normans have managed all day. Up until now, they've just been kind of picking people off the sides and charging at the shield wall very slowly. I should add, by the way, the shield wall has spears coming out of it and like people throwing spears over it. So, the English aren't just standing there doing nothing. But anyway, now this retreat was real. These Normans actually did start running away, but obviously it ended up being helpful for them. So, naturally, some of them follow this line of thought and decide to start pretending to retreat. A group will be like, "Oh my god, suddenly we're terrified." and they'll turn and run and then some of the English will follow them and then the Normans will just kind of turn their horses and go attack these guys who are no longer in a defensive position. This sounds like a pretty straightforward plan, but honestly it had a lot of potential to go wrong.
Generally speaking, turning your back to your enemy is not a great plan. This particular version is a bit safer because they're on horses, so they're going to be able to outrun spear throwing range pretty quickly. But still, regardless, any of these figned flights could have pretty easily turned into real ones. But this plan happens like three or four times and it seems to go the Norman's way every time. The faint flights are able to draw some Englishmen out of the shield wall, right? So small gaps are finally starting to form, but every time someone falls, other people just come up to replace them. So none of those gaps are quite weak enough to be taken advantage of yet. Overall, the English are still holding the line. At no time during the day is this battle a sure thing in either direction. The real tipping point comes at about 300 p.m. and that would be the death of Harold Godwinson.
William knows he's starting to run out of daylight, so he rallies his guys to make one allout effort. He first instructs his archers to angle their shots upward to try to lob some arrows over the shield wall. Some of the books I've read were skeptical about this because they were like, "Well, if you aim arrows up, they lose all their power." I personally am not at all skeptical because like this happens all the time. Lobbing arrows is a super common thing for archers to do in a battle historically. It's not like they're firing the arrows straight up.
It's an arc. It isn't going to lose all its power. Now granted, lobbed arrows are slower and are a lot less likely to kill someone. They might if they hit you in a bad spot, but generally the goal with doing that is not even to hit people. It's to get them to move. Nobody wants to stand still while a bunch of arrows come down around them, even if those arrows are slower than normal. In this instance, though, it's possible that during William's barrage, a lobed arrow does hit someone, King Herald.
There's a very famous image on the tapestry of him with an arrow in his eye. Now, you'll be shocked to hear that there's a lot of historian infighting about this event in several respects.
most relevantly whether or not Harold was even killed by an arrow in the eye at all. Historians throw crazy amounts of shade in books, too. Like, they'll publish books that's like so and so in his book title said this, and he's [ __ ] stupid for that. Girl, I don't know if you need to read a [ __ ] so publicly that you publish it. But anyway, early accounts of the battle don't say anything about the specific method by which Harold died. Later accounts say that he was just cut down by a sword at some time. Overall, this is a very contentious point, but what matters is that regardless of the method, Harold dies at around 3 p.m. And when he dies, things finally really start going to [ __ ] In a European medieval battle, the death of a commander usually means you lose.
There's not really a chain of command.
Like, it's just kind of commanders and soldiers. And at this point, for the English, all of their commanders are dead. They had three, Harold, and two of his younger brothers. So, knowing that his opponent is weak, William orders one last big cavalry charge. And this time, it works. They pick a point and the shield wall finally breaks. When it does, the English get all split up and they have no choice but to flee. The last scene on the tapestry shows a group of Normans chasing after them. In some sources, there's then this weird extra event after the English retreat in which a bunch of the Normans that are on horses accidentally run like directly into a ravine that is just kind of hidden by tall grass. And some other sources also say that there's a last little bit of English resistance that happens also at the ravine. I don't know how I feel about the ravine. The point is, the Normans win the Battle of Hastings. And that brings our account of the day itself to a close. With the battle now over, William has a lot to do because, if you'll recall, he decided to split all of this up. He was going to deal with Herald first and then do the conquering second. So now there's quite a bit of conquering to do. Before leaving the field, William arranges for the burial of his own dead and let the English do whatever they want with theirs. Although he does not let the English have possession of Harold's body. After Hastings, William marches onto Dover, which was kind of already his due to an old agreement. at which point a lot of his army gets dysentery which is to be expected. Dysentery is very much on the list of top five problems for Western Europeans in the 11th century. From Dover he moves on to Canterbury which surrenders and then he heads to London which at first does not surrender. Instead about 500 knights come out to make a last stand against the conqueror. So naturally William sets London on fire and then [ __ ] off to go take a couple more cities. And then by the time he gets back to London the people are like okay fine we'll surrender. Just stop running the city.
It takes a few months, but overall in the early phases, everyone who William needs to surrender does surrender.
Finally, on Christmas Day of 1066, which is less than 2 weeks before the one-year anniversary of the death of Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. During the coronation, some Norman guards set London on fire again for no reason. At the point of his coronation, William effectively only actually holds the southeast of England.
In the following years, he continues to face a fair amount of opposition, and he continues to be super ruthless in response. In particular, he severely and indiscriminately [ __ ] up the North and everyone in it in 1069. So, William does eventually control all of England, and there are some big changes that come from that. Notably, Anglo-Saxon rule has ended forever. We enter the Angloorman period. Instead, the English aristocracy more or less disappears, and they all get replaced and/or superseded by Norman nobility. Through the Normans, the country's political focus starts to move away from Scandinavia and towards the continent. Also, through them, England undergoes a lot of cultural and societal changes. We were already using a feudal system, but it becomes much more strict under the Normans. Everyone gets even more into social stratification. The English language is also forever changed. Norman French gets like half merged with and half added to pre-existing old English. And this is one of the reasons why the whole [ __ ] is such a mess. Oh, that spelling doesn't make any sense. is because of secret hidden French. Very [ __ ] in my opinion. The Angloormans also built on the long-standing English tradition of [ __ ] over Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. That tradition of course already existed, but the Normans make it much more official. Full-scale armies and famines and stuff. William the Conqueror himself goes on to have four children.
And you might say, "Oh, good. That means he has heirs. We won't end up dealing with the exact same problem that led us here." And you would be wrong to say that because William's youngest son eventually ends up on the throne. And guess who that guy is? King Henry I who has no legitimate male heirs and as a result when he dies we start the cycle over again with a period in English history that is famously called the anarchy. So we're going to go ahead and call it there. Thanks so much for hanging out. My other socials are in the description. My Patreon is there too if you want to support me and get some cool rewards for this video. It'll be outtakes and behind the scenes stuff.
Let me know what you think of this video and of this video concept. I have too many magnets for what is reasonable. I do like maps a lot though, so I'd be down to make more. Guess what the next video will be.
>> Anyway, bye.
>> Apparently, there's demons in the castle.
>> If they weren't before, you surely just summoned them here yourself.
>> What? How?
>> Every time you say the word demon, one shows up. Some words just shouldn't be used.
>> You just used it yourself.
>> You tricked me.
>> Demon. Stop it, you mad
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