First of all, Harold Godwinson had just defeated Harold Hardrada (another contestant) ‘s Viking army at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, which took place near York. He could hardly believe his bad luck when message came that William had landed in the south, so he had to march his battered and bruised army all the way from the north of England to the south. This also meant that although they managed to collect more men and weapons on the way, they weren’t nearly as prepared as the Normans.
Secondly, William had a strong army of about 10,000 men, this consisted of: well trained and fully armed knights which rode strong war horses, foot soldiers and archers. Harold had fewer men and most of them were poorly trained, local peasants or fyrd; he did have archers and well-armed housecarls, but no horses. Horses were a very important part of the army as they can charge better than men, so they made breaking through Harold’s shield wall a lot easier for William.
Moreover, William himself was a very skilled and courageous soldier. He led his forces tactically, holding them when they turned to run, giving them courage, sharing their danger. He was more often heard shouting them to follow him than ordering them to go on ahead. At about two hours into the battle, a rumour started to spread that nobody had seen William for half an hour. William wasn’t dead at all, he bravely lifted his helmet and shouted, “Look at me! I’m alive, and with God’s help, will be the victor.”
Not only did this give William’s army courage, but also they were blessed the pope. This was because that Harold had sworn on a box of holy relics to support William to the throne. Afterwards, Harold broke his promise and oath-breaking was a very serious matter, so the pope gave William a special banner to say that his invasion was a holy crusade.
Furthermore, at about 3.30 p.m. William had a stroke of a genius. He ordered some of his men to pretend to run away (this can be very dangerous in case it turned into a real escape), just as he had planned, some of the Saxons chased them down the hill. Immediately, the Normans caught up with them and cut them into pieces. They repeated this process several times and each time some Normans chased them and were killed. The shield wall was gradually weakened like this. After about three tries, William ordered his archers to rain arrows down on Harold’s men. This was a very clever tactic because the Saxons had formed a shield wall on the top of the hill, so the only way to kill people behind the wall was to fire arrows over the wall and let them rain down.
At about 6pm Harold was killed, an arrow in the eye may have wounded him first. The disembowelled body was identified by the Normans that evening and buried near the seashore.
Now I’ve made all my points, why did William win the battle f Hastings? Was it William’s great courage or Harold’s dreadful luck or maybe all of these points combined? There are secrets still yet to be uncovered…
