1066 (14 page)

It is the tense morning of Saturday, 14 October 1066 [scene 44]. William has put on his armour. He stands proudly in his full-length chain mail; he wears a helmet with tassels at the rear; his sword has been placed in his belt and his lance has been planted in the ground; a little banner tied to the top flutters in the wind. His prized warhorse is now led to him by a squire, a virile stallion which (if we are to believe later twelfth-century evidence) had been given to him by King Alfonso of Spain and brought back to Normandy by Walter Giffard, the lord of Longueville.
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William's troops, like him, are already in armour, and they are now setting out from Hastings and advancing towards the place where it is believed that Harold's army lies assembled. In the border above there are two erotic images of a man and woman, neither wearing a stitch, and with arms outstretched they are about to embrace;the naked man's moustache reveals him to be English. In the first image he is carrying his fighting axe with his tunic draped in his arms; in the second, having discarded them, he is ready for amorous action with his genitals exposed. Have the English been indulging in the delights of the flesh on the eve of battle?Duke William has sent scouts to ride ahead, and from the top of a hill they peer down to ascertain Harold's position. One of them is now returning with fresh intelligence [scene 46;plate 9]. HIC WILLELM DUX INTERROGAT VITAL SI VIDISSET EXERCITU[M] HAROLDI (Here Duke William asks Vital whether he has seen Harold's army). The reason why this second comparatively unimportant knight is named is again obscure and Vital's identity and significance will have to be carefully unravelled.

Harold has sent out a scout of his own. His lookout has ventured on foot but he is fully armed and dressed in mail. From behind a thicket of gnarled trees, he peers through lush foliage; and with his hand raised over his eyes he can see that some of William's men are already dangerously close, just on the other side of the wood [scene 47]. The lookout returns hastily across rough terrain in order to report back to King Harold. No doubt the king would have wanted more time to prepare. Reinforcements were on the way and his ships were planning to move round the coast to cut off any Norman escape by sea. His elite bodyguard of housecarls had suffered many casualties at Stamford Bridge and they, like him, must have been utterly exhausted by the hard battle in the north and the long journey south - not to mention any other, on the whole rather unlikely, activities in the night. All in all the decisive battle looked like it was going to come rather too quickly for King Harold of England. He would have preferred a little more time.

William of Poitiers describes the two sides exchanging provocative messages (he even says that the duke offered to fight Harold in a single combat) but if Harold thought that this kind of posturing could delay matters for another day or two, he was wrong. This time it was his enemy who was advancing upon him before he was entirely ready. Clearly Duke William wished to engage the English in a decisive encounter without risking any further delay. Nevertheless, Harold, a native of Sussex, had the advantage of local knowledge and he assembled his army in a strong defensive position at the top of a ridge. The Normans and their allies would have to attack uphill from marshy ground a few hundred metres below. Now was the time for waiting, waiting nervously for the battle to begin.

9

The Battle of Hastings

Down on the Norman side, the embroidered duke is strutting proudly on his horse [scene 48]. Holding up his club, like a baton, he makes a last-minute rousing speech to his men.
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He exhorts them to prepare manfully and wisely for the battle against the English army: HIC WILLELM DUX ALLOQUI-TUR SUIS MILITIBUS UT PREPARENT SE VIRILITER ET SAPIENTER AD PRELIUM CONTRA ANGLORUM EXERCITU[M]. It is known that he placed his Normans in a central position, with allies from Brittany arranged on one flank and the French and Flemings on the other. The lines are now drawn and, according to William of Poitiers, the moment the battle began was signalled by a harsh bray of trumpets.

In the embroidery, a squadron of mounted knights, the elite of the invaders, starts to make its move; each knight is seated upon a stout warhorse; each is protected by chain-mail armour and a conical helmet; each grips a lance in one hand and a wing-like shield in the other; each glares through his narrow eyes at the enemy ahead. The horses quicken pace. The knights are tilted forward in the saddle as they move steadily ahead of a body of archers who, just now, have launched a volley of arrows against the English position. Spurs have been kicked and muscles tensed, and now the knights are charging forward at full speed, hoof is thundering upon hoof in a magnificent, breathless attack across the wide open ground, up towards the distant wall of coloured shields behind which the English have made their stand. Some of the knights are holding their lances ready to be thrust or thrown; others tuck them underarm, to be used as a sharp battering weapon. Up on the ridge the English have ducked and caught the lethal rain of arrows on their wooden shields. Now they stand again, and the linen air is scored with spears, and some men lie already dead, as the first horseman arrives and thrusts his couched and bannered lance into the arrow-pierced shield of a standing Englishman [scene 49]. The Englishman stands firm. He is defending his land. He is rooted tree-like to the spot, at least for the embroidered moment, and he even retaliates with his own spear. Battle is truly joined.

The English repel the attack. They are clustered on foot in close, disciplined formation behind their tall, kite-shaped shields. Harold's elite troops, his housecarls, are wearing the same armour as the invaders; but their special weapon is the two-handed battleaxe, 'murderous axes' William of Poitiers calls them, which 'easily penetrated shields and other protections'.
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In the midst of the phalanx, a lone English archer, without armour, does his best to repel the invaders. Harold'sarmy seems to have had fewer archers than the Normans and his men fought on foot, without cavalry. Another attack is launched by the invading cavalry, apparently from the other flank [scene 50]. The charging knights must be losing momentum as they reach the top of the ridge. Their spears pour down on the English, but the English still stubbornly stand their ground. A moustachioed housecarl prepares to swing his great axe into a horse's neck but the rider plunges his lance into his attacker's chest before he is able to do so. 'The loud shouting, here Norman, here foreign, was drowned,' William of Poitiers writes, 'by the clash of weapons and the groans of the dying.'
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The tapestry illustrates the slaughter in all its terrible confusion. The lower border becomes a mass grave for the mute and mutilated bodies of the dead, bodies whose nationality, so important in life, is now appropriately indiscernible. One has died of arrow wounds in his mouth and leg; some have suffered lance blows to the back, throat, chest or shoulder;another's severed head, still wearing its protective helmet, lies some distance from the body to which it was formerly attached.

At some point during the day Harold's brothers, Earl Gyrth and Earl Leofwine, both perished while fighting loyally by his side. The death of both in close-quarter combat is remembered in the embroidery [scene 51]. HIC CECIDERUNT LEWINE ET GYRD FRATRES HAROLDI REGIS (Here died Leofwine and Gyrth, King Harold's brothers). Leofwine is stuck in the back by the lance of a mounted knight before he has a chance to swing his great axe at the attacker. Gyrth, holding a round shield, is felled by another laniferous lance plunged into his mouth. Many more men and horses are struck down in agony and tumble over and die and their bodies, broken swords and severed heads lie strewn across the lower border.

There are innumerable casualties. HIC CECIDERUNT SIMUL ANGLI ET FRANCI IN PRELIO (Here English and French fell together in the battle). In the midst of it all, a moustachioed English housecarl strikes his axe deep into a horse's head, the horse recoils in agony, but from behind another knight uses such venom with his sword that not only does he kill the Englishman but knocks the head off an axe of another surprised fighter as well. Many horses are now falling. They twist and turn and are upended on to the ground, as the riders lose their grip and tumble off. One knight struggles to throw his lance as his horse collapses underneath him. Duke William himself is said in the written sources to have lost two or three horses during the battle and he had to remount on others. On the top of an isolated hillock, a group of lesser Englishmen, with shields and spears, but without chain mail protection, continue a manful defence. They are suffering heavy losses [scene 52].

The carnage at Hastings began at the third hour after dawn. It continued for the whole day, neither side gaining a decisive advantage until late in the afternoon. The account in the tapestry is, of course, an abbreviated one. The artist presumably got his information at second hand; he reorganised some of the events for artistic, dramatic or iconographical effect;and he ignores, for example, the role played by Duke William'slesser-born foot soldiers, who probably made the first assault. The extent to which some of the details of arms and armour derive from conventional artistic templates rather than the real battle is debated. Nevertheless it is undeniable that the artist captures the essence of the contest in a flowing series of brilliant and memorable pictures. Most sources agree that there were times when the English came very close to winning. At one point, a breakout by some of Harold's troops, probably undisciplined, pursued the retreating Bretons and inflicted heavy casualties before William was able to stem the tide with own Norman cavalry.

Earlier in the day there had been another moment of panic;the ducal army almost took to flight when a rumour spread that the duke himself had been killed. The tapestry now highlights this incident and makes it the turning point of the whole encounter [scenes 53-55]. First Bishop Odo of Bayeux, named and depicted once more, rides unexpectedly into the thick of the fighting, waving his baton and shouting words of encouragement to the younger knights [plate 10]. HIC ODO EP[ISCOPU]S BACULU[M] TENENS CONFOR-TAT PUEROS (Here Bishop Odo, holding a baton, cheers on the young men). The rumour is flying around that the duke is dead, so William raises his nosepiece to show his face and reveal that he is still alive. HIC EST DUX WILEL[MUS] (Here is Duke William). At his side is Count Eustace II of Boulogne, his name displayed prominently in the upper border - EUSTATIUS [plate 11]. Eustace is carrying the greatest banner in the whole of the tapestry; it flutters high in the upper border, as he swings round on his horse and points to the indomitable duke. Battle recommences swiftly under the words HIC FRANCI PUGNANT ET CECIDERUNT QUI ERANT CUM HAROLDO (Here the French do battle and those who were with Harold fell). The momentum is now regained and the final stage of the embroidered contest draws near.

In quick succession three combatants for the Norman side are named by the artist - Bishop Odo, Duke William and Count Eustace - and these are the only three who are named. The duke, of course, could hardly be ignored, but the choice of his only identified battle companions is much more surprising. The tapestry's flattery of Odo has been noted and often discussed by many historians. The image of Odo in battle is as noteworthy as his other appearances. According to William of Poitiers, Odo was present at Hastings but only for the purpose of helping by prayer, a feat of war that was presumably accomplished at a safe distance from the action.
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The tapestry is alone amongst contemporary sources in placing him in the thick of fighting and giving him such a remarkable starring role. Consistent, however, with his status as a bishop, Odo is not wearing chain mail but rather a padded tunic and he encourages the troops with a mace, not a sword. Less commented upon, but even more remarkable, is the named appearance of Count Eustace II of Boulogne. A thousand books and postcard images persist in calling the pointing Eustace a 'Norman', but he was, of course, not a Norman at all but rather a Frenchman whose lands straddled the border between northern France and Flanders. Count Eustace II of Boulogne, a noted descendant of the Emperor Charlemagne, was the most high-ranking and prestigious of William's foreign allies and he was Duke William's equal as a grand feudatory of the king of France. He had previously been hostile to the duke and he had only recently joined forces with him, perceiving that the risk of leading his Frenchmen in the fight against King Harold was worth taking. What is more, some time in the autumn of 1067 Count Eustace attacked Odo's castle at Dover and embarked on a mysterious, though ineffectual, rebellion against his one-time Norman allies. He may even have been attempting to advance his own rival claim to the English throne. As a result of this abortive invasion, Eustace was disgraced, and lost his share of the spoils, although he was able to contrive a remarkable reconciliation with the Normans during the early 1070s.
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Contrary to popular belief, very few of William the Conqueror's companions at Hastings can be identified with certainty. William of Poitiers names a small roster of men. He singles out for special praise Robert of Beaumont, and names several others whom he viewed as Normans such as William fitzOsbern, Walter Giffard, Hugh of Montfort and William of Warenne.
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None is named in the tapestry. Poitiers also confirms the presence of Count Eustace; but he was writing after Eustace was in disgrace and perhaps because of that describes him as a rank coward. According to William of Poitiers, Eustace's most notable contribution at the battle was to advise the duke to retreat, before receiving a blow between the shoulders and being carried away half-dead by his men, with blood streaming profusely from his nose and mouth. This, then, was the Norman view of Count Eustace II of Boulogne, after his disgrace, and it is quite clearly different from what we see in the Bayeux Tapestry. What is going on?Why, out of a ducal army of thousands, is the artist choosing to highlight the 'rebel' Eustace, of all people, and to ignore so many high-ranking Normans? The date when the Bayeux Tapestry was made is not certain, but whether it was made before or after Eustace's reconciliation with Duke William in the early 1070s, the appearance of such a rival and enemy at the pivotal moment in the embroidery is striking. It deserves much greater attention than it has ordinarily received.

The Bayeux Tapestry's treatment of Count Eustace is more akin to the
Carmen de Hastingae Proelio {The Song of the Battle of Hastings)
than it is to any Norman source. The
Carmen
is the very earliest surviving account of the battle. Its author, Bishop Guy of Amiens, was a close kinsman of Count Guy of Ponthieu and Count Eustace II of Boulogne. In the decade after the Battle of Hastings there was a very lively polemic between the Normans and their less numerous French allies as to who had really made the most telling contribution to the victory. The non-Norman French got in first with the
Carmen.
In the
Carmen's
account of Hastings, the Normans are hardly mentioned at all; indeed the only Norman mentioned by name is the duke himself. Instead, the stress is placed on the contribution of the non-Norman Frenchmen
(Galli
or
Franci)
and, like the tapestry, their leader Count Eustace II of Boulogne. William of Poitiers seems to have written his pro-Norman account shortly after the
Carmen.
Without doing so in express terms, he set about correcting what he perceived to be an unsavoury downgrading of his fellow Normans by the Bishop of Amiens and especially the latter's heroic portrayal of Count Eustace.
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With more than a hint of exaggeration, he concluded that 'Duke William with the forces of Normandy subjugated all the cities of the English in a single day . . .without much outside help.'
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Since the
Carmen
was only rediscovered in 1826, and William of Poitiers' work was known, directly or indirectly, to later medieval writers, it is the Norman account that has dominated subsequent historiography and popular myth. In the process it is the Norman account that persists in colouring interpretations of the Bayeux Tapestry and obscuring some of its extraordinary meanings.

The momentum of battle is regained in the tapestry under the specific words HIC FRANCI PUGNANT (Here the French do battle) [scenes 55-56]. For the second time the tapestry calls the invaders 'French'
(Franci).
Nowhere, in fact, does it call them 'Normans'
(Normanni).
'French' was an ambiguous term. It could mean the people from Francia generally, the French-speakers, and in that sense, common enough in England, it included the Normans as well as people from Paris, Picardy, Boulogne, Maine, Aquitaine and many other regions. In the more restricted sense, which is used both by William of Poitiers and in the
Carmen de Hastingae Proelio,
the
Franci
are quite distinct from the Normans; but the term undoubtedly includes men from north-eastern France who were the followers of Count Eustace II of Boulogne.
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We are so used to thinking of the Battle of Hastings in purely binary terms, as a conflict between Anglo-Saxon and Norman, that the rivalries between the disparate elements of Duke William's army are easily overlooked. It is, however, improbable that the artist of the tapestry, an obviously well-informed person, was so naive as to be unaware of the lively polemic that was going on between the French and the Normans in the aftermath of the battle. Once more, he is playing a dangerous double game. Does he mean FRANCI in the inclusive or exclusive sense? He is, in fact, purporting to illustrate the Normans at all in these famous battle scenes?