Читать книгу Battles of English History - H. B. George - Страница 7

The contemporary, or nearly contemporary, accounts of the battle of Hastings are numerous, both English and Norman, but their statements differ greatly. Hardly any of them write with knowledge of the ground; none, it may be safely said, with anything like military precision. It is easy to discount the exaggerations of partisanship; it is easy to perceive that some statements made cannot be true, for reasons of time and distance, or because they are based on misapprehension of known facts. Beyond this one can only conjecture, as one statement seems more probable than another, or more easily reconcilable with things ascertained beyond reasonable doubt. Moreover, though the locality of the battle is open to no question, the appearance of it has been so much changed, that reconstruction of its condition at the date of the battle must again be imperfect. Much was probably altered in the building of Battle Abbey, much has certainly been altered in forming the grounds of the modern house, which include the ruins of the abbey church. For instance the slope up to the spot where Harold's standard was planted, a spot fixed for all time by the high altar of Battle Abbey being placed there, is in its upper part scarped to form a terrace. Again, the whole position looks very like one that might have been selected in earlier days for a camp. The ditch which some accounts say covered Harold's front may possibly have been an ancient one; in which case the hollow bearing the name of Malfosse on the other side, where the defeated English turned and smote their pursuers, may have been partly artificial also. But the present state of the ground affords no positive support to this conjecture, though it does not negative it. All that can be done, in attempting to picture the battle for modern readers, without going into wearisome detail, is to tell the story in a form that does not contradict the known conditions, and to refer to the original authorities[3] readers who desire to judge for themselves.

Harold was by the necessity of the case compelled to fight a battle: so far the Norman had prevailed. Tactically however Harold succeeded in forcing the Norman to fight on ground of his choosing, under conditions favourable to the English method of fighting, and unfavourable to the Norman method. He posted his army on a projecting bit of hill, a spur in fact of the South Downs, close to the direct road from Hastings towards London. William of Normandy could not possibly pass the English without fighting: if he did so he was liable to be cut off from his ships. Nor could he wait indefinitely at Hastings: he had no choice but to advance. Further, to receive attack in a defensive position was what gave the best chance of success to the English, practically all foot-soldiers, the best of them clothed in mail shirts and armed with axes. Finally, the piece of ground actually chosen was exactly suitable for its purpose: it was not too large to be fully manned, and it compelled the Normans to charge uphill. On the other hand it is obvious that the Normans, whose main strength lay in mailed horsemen, could not stand on the defensive; attack was what they were fitted for.

Harold's army was drawn up facing to the south, on a ridge somewhat under a mile in length. The ground in front sloped away, gently on the right, steeply in the centre, rather less steeply on the left flank, where the little town of Battle now stands. Behind the right and again behind the left there were hollows, the latter being apparently then the most marked. Behind the centre of the hill was a sort of broad isthmus connecting it with the mass of the Downs. Along the whole or part of the front a palisade[4] of some kind seems to have been constructed, by way of protection against the onset of the Norman horsemen: but this cannot possibly have been an elaborate and solid barrier. In the first place there was not time to make such a thing; as has been already noted, the interval between William's landing and the battle was amazingly short for what was done in it. Harold cannot possibly have had more than one October day in which to fortify his position. Nor is there the least probability that the Norman would have looked on, while the position he would have to attack was strengthened to the extent suggested. Moreover there were no materials for such a work ready to hand, though there may well have been plenty for a slighter fence. A chronicler of later date does indeed say that houses were pulled down for the purpose; but the contemporaries imply, if they do not positively assert, that there were none near: the spot is identified in one English chronicle only as being "by the hoary apple-tree." Again, the narratives of the actual battle describe close hand-to-hand fighting, which must have been across the barrier, if there was one; and this is obviously inconsistent with its having been a massive structure, still more so with its having been double or triple. Whatever the nature of the fortification, whether palisade or ditch, or both, it was only a slight additional protection: the real defence of the position was the stout arms of the English.

The Norman camp was still at Hastings, seven miles off. We hear of spies being sent out by both sides, and of the Englishmen, unused to see shaven faces, coming back with the report that there were more priests than soldiers among the Normans. We hear of formal demands made by William that Harold should keep his oath, or submit to the arbitration of the Church, an obvious mockery, as the Pope had already sent William a consecrated banner in token of his solemn blessing on the invasion. We even hear of William challenging Harold to decide the dispute by single combat. Such are just the details likely to be invented by a narrator desiring to be picturesque; the only intrinsic improbability about them is that they imply a longer time spent by the two armies in the presence of each other than is consistent with the known facts.

Early on the morning of October 14, the Norman host marched out from Hastings, and passing over the intervening high ground, halted on the hill of Telham, whence they looked down on the English position, a mile and a half away on the other side of the valley. Here the knights assumed their heavy armour, and the duke by accident put on his coat of mail hind part before. His superstitious followers were shocked at the evil omen, but he readily turned it, as most such supposed presages can be turned, in his own favour, saying, "That means that my duchy will be turned into a kingdom." Hearing from one of his spies that Harold's standard was displayed, so that there was no doubt that the king was there and meant to fight, William went on to vow that in case of victory he would build an abbey where that standard stood. The centre of the army, when drawn up for attack, consisted of the native Normans, the left of the auxiliaries from Brittany and Maine, more or less dependent on Normandy; the right was formed of the French adventurers who had joined in the expedition in hopes of sharing the plunder of England, but was commanded by William Fitzosborn and Roger of Montgomery, two of William's most trusted nobles. The sole idea of battle being an attack straight to the front, the whole line was formed in the same way. The archers went foremost to do what mischief they could to the stationary English. Next came the heavier armed foot-soldiers to break down the defences (whatever they were), and open the way for the mounted knights, who constituted the third line, and on whom the chief stress of decisive fighting would fall. In the centre rode the duke himself, with his brother Odo bishop of Bayeux by his side, each armed, as the tapestry shows them, with the heavy mace.

It was about nine a.m.,[5] according to the chroniclers who note the hour, that the battle began. About the centre of the English line were planted the twin royal standards. The red dragon of Wessex, which had waved over many a battle-field and had but rarely seen defeat, appeared now for the last time. Beside it Harold's own personal device, the Fighting-man, the figure of an armed warrior embroidered in gold, marked on its first and last field the spot where the king and his brothers fought. Harold's housecarls, and the men of London and Kent armed in like fashion, formed the centre of the line. On their left were seemingly men less heavily armed, but quite able to hold their own against their opponents. On this part of the line the fighting throughout the battle seems to have been obstinate, equal, and uneventful; the great oscillations of fortune, the murderous repulses, the ultimate success of the Normans, are at the centre and on the right. From the present appearance of the ground there can be no doubt that the access to the English right was by a much gentler slope than elsewhere. Nevertheless the ill-armed portion of the English host, peasants with no defensive armour, carrying javelins or clubs, a few possibly with bows, were there placed. A modern general would certainly have guarded with special care the flank that was most easily assailable. Harold doubtless took for granted, and quite correctly, that wherever he planted his standard, thither the principal attack would be directed.

While the archers covered the general advance with a flight of arrows, a minstrel named Taillefer rode forward singing "of Charlemagne and Roland, and those who died at Roncesvalles." Throwing his sword into the air and catching it again, he made straight for the English, and killed two, one with his lance and one with his sword, before he himself fell. Behind him the Norman foot-soldiers charged up the hill, met by darts and stones, and as they reached the line by the deadlier hand weapons. Finding that they made no impression, William led in person the charge of the mailed knights, to be equally repulsed. Horse and man went down under the blows of the terrible axe. The Bretons and others on the Norman left fled in confusion, pursued by some of the English right, who contrary to orders broke their ranks to follow up the flying enemy. Panic and disorder spread more or less to the centre: there was a cry that the duke was slain: the battle was almost lost. Baring his head, William in person stemmed the tide and drove the fugitives back: they rallied and cut down such of the English as had ventured far in pursuit.

The duke, as soon as order was restored, led a fresh attack on the English standard. This time his horse was killed under him, but he himself escaped unhurt, to deal with his own hand, if one is to follow Professor Freeman's account, a very serious blow to the English cause, by slaying Gyrth, Harold's brother and most trusted counsellor. Harold's other brother Leofwine fell, according to the picture in the Tapestry, about the same time with Gyrth. Still the English line remained unbroken; though the defences must have been by this time more or less broken down, the men behind were as firm as ever. Had not William possessed a ready insight, prompter than anything we find elsewhere in mediæval warfare, the Norman chivalry would have exhausted itself finally in vain charges, and Hastings had been as Crecy. The Norman duke however had noted that the only thing which hitherto had disturbed the impregnable line of the English was the rush from the right in pursuit of the flying Bretons. He ventured on the bold experiment of bidding his left make a fresh assault, take again to flight, and if the English rushed forward, turn suddenly on the pursuers. The stratagem succeeded; again the English, out of reach of their king's direct authority, broke their line entirely. When the feigned flight was converted into a fresh charge they were taken utterly at a disadvantage, and though they filled the hollow round the right of the position with French dead, they none the less were routed. The Norman horsemen could now easily reach the level of the hill top, and charge along it towards the standard, instead of toiling up the slope in front. Even yet the battle was in doubt; the Normans could bring the weight of horses and men to bear more effectually, and the English had lost the protection such as it was of their palisade, but the horsemen could charge only on a narrow front, the width of the ridge, instead of up its whole face. Once more William's ready skill suggested a combination against which mere courage and strength must ultimately fail. His archers had obviously been useless while the direct charges up the slope were going on, and of little avail in the intervals, when the English could protect themselves with their shields. He could now use both archers and horsemen together, for the ground to the south was free[6] for the archers, when the knights had reached the hill top on their left. Bidding his archers shoot into the air, so that their arrows fell like rain about the standard, he led the horsemen on once more. The device was fatal. The English could not ward off the arrows, while engaged in hand-to-hand conflict: they must perish or give way, unless darkness came to their rescue. Just before sunset the final blow was struck: an arrow pierced Harold's eye, and as he lay in agony at the foot of the standard he was despatched by four knights. If we could believe the exulting French poet they mangled his body brutally; but this is happily inconsistent with the certain fact that his corpse was found and buried. The standards were trampled down, the position was at every part seized by the Normans; still the desperate English fought on, and hardly a man of Harold's personal following, or of the nobility of southern England, survived the day, except those already too badly wounded to move. Under cover of the darkness the light armed English fled, again inflicting serious loss on their pursuers, who rolled headlong into the hollow that afterwards bore the significant name of Malfosse.

Had Harold, or even Gyrth, survived the battle, the conquest of England, it is said, need not have ensued. The remark is a futile one; under the peculiar conditions there was no third alternative. Harold, we may safely say, never dreamed of the possibility of surviving defeat: and his brothers, once in the field, would share his fate, whether victory or death. The Norman duke, we are told, to taste the full flavour of his triumph, had his tent pitched where the English standard had stood, and passed the night there, surrounded by the piled-up dead. Next day William superintended the burial of his own dead; the corpses of the English he left to the dogs and birds, except such as their kindred carried away. Two monks from Harold's own abbey of Waltham came offering large sums, in their own name and in the name of his aged mother, for leave to inter the fallen king within the walls he had built. But the conqueror was inexorable: he bade one of his knights bury the body of the accursed of the Church beneath a cairn of stones on the Sussex shore.[7] Little as William meant it, he was giving the noblest of sepulchres to the fallen hero, the one English king who has died fighting for his fatherland.

Our sympathies are naturally with Harold and the English, defending their homes and their independence against unprovoked foreign aggression. William's claim was based on falsehood, supported by fraud, established by violence. Nevertheless when once king he ruled well and wisely. If he rewarded his followers with English lands, he prevented the intrusive nobles from obtaining the position and privileges which would render them a mere curse to England. In the fifth generation their descendants had become the leaders of a fairly united nation, winning for all ranks and classes the Great Charter of liberty. Without the Norman Conquest, without the new blood mingled with the English race, without the new ideas introduced into church and state through closer intercourse with the continent, the subsequent history must have been totally different, and so far as conjecture is admissible, far less eminent than it in fact has been, alike in arts and arms, in commerce and in government.

From the point of view of the art of war, the battle of Hastings is also important, marking an epoch there too very decidedly. For more than two centuries after Hastings infantry are of no account in western Europe. The battle had indeed been won by the skilful combination of archery with the charge of mailed horsemen. It is at least doubtful whether the latter would finally have prevailed without the rain of arrows to smite and perplex those whom they were attacking in front. The horsemen however did in fact trample under foot the last relics of Harold's heavy armed foot-soldiers, and feudal pride did the rest. It was taken for granted on all hands that mailed knights, and they alone, constituted strength in war, and this fell in with the political ideas of the age only too well. Seven generations were destined to elapse before the tables began to be turned on the knights.