Harold gathered his army of 8,000 but only 1/10 of them were professional HouseCarls most of the 8,000 were made of Fyrd (part time soldiers that weren’t as disciplined as the HouseCarls) and the rest were the Fyrd Militia(not at all experienced and didn’t have proper weapons or armour) and prepared for the Norman invasion at the South of England but as the Normans didn’t arrive and his men were getting hungry he had to send his men home but then Harald Hardrada had invaded northern England so Harold had to go and fight them and just after that William had arrived in England and started burning up villagers so Harold had no time to rest and marched down to the south, so he wasn’t really prepared at all in the end but it wasn’t really his fault it was more down to bad luck. William on the other hand was well prepared for the battle and he was getting his army of 7,500 men made up of fully professional soldiers split into three groups: archers, cavalry and infantry and he was getting some of his men from as far as Italy. He made them swear an oath to William and told them it was a Holy battle. He had a great store of weapons and had built many ships to carry him across the sea but because the wind blowing in the wrong direction he couldn’t cross the sea but that turned out to be a good thing for him.
Harold Godwinson had a lot of bad luck at this time and Harold’s bad luck is equivalent to William’s good luck so William had a lot of good luck. William was ready to cross the channel but the wind was blowing in the wrong direction so he couldn’t cross, at first he thought it was his bad luck but Harold and his army were waiting at the south of England but then they ran out of food so they had had to go back home then Harold Hardrada invaded the North of England so they had to go up to the north and battle the Vikings, luckily the Vikings were not ready for the battle and it was easy for the English to defeat them but nonetheless some of Harold’s best men were killed which was good luck for William and at the end William told his archers to fire over the shields and luckily one of arrows hit Harold in the eye, that also falls down into leadership. Also, Harold’s men were exhausted after the battle had finished but they had to walk down to the south to fight another battle.
William was an amazing leader, after Harold had finished battling Harald Hardrada and needed to rest, William started burning villagers to get Harold’s attention and make him go to the south without enough rest plus in the middle of the battle he changed his battle tactics and told a part of his army to pretend to run away knowing that Harold’s inexperienced soldiers would chase after them to try to slaughter them and by doing that they would make the shield weaker. He repeated this process successfully making the shield wall weaker and weaker. He knew this would work because earlier on in the battle one flank of the Norman attack (The Bretons) had retreated because William’s horse had slipped and his standard went down and the English had acted this way before. Harold was a good leader too, positioning his men on top of Senlac hill and engaging the shield ready for William’s army to attack, but William did leave his archers in the North when he came down with his army to the South which really was a bad decision and gave him a major disadvantage against William. Overall, both were good leaders but William’s change of tactics in the middle was pure genius.
I think there were two reasons why William won. The first one was luck, because of the wind William crossed the sea later and he happened to reach England when Harold was still fighting in the north plus some of Harold’s men were killed up in the North and the men surviving in Harold’s army were exhausted by the time they had got to the battle and were not ready to battle. The second one and the one I think was more important was leadership, William was a true leader, if it wasn’t for his clever tactics the shield wall wouldn’t have broken and Harold would have a much bigger chance of winning so even if you have a good army you can only win with a great leader and that’s what William was, a great leader and that’s why William won, great leadership and a bit of luck.