Prologue
England, 1066 AD. After the rout of the combined forces of Haraldr
Hardrada of Norway and Tostig Godwinson of England at the Battle of Stamford
Bridge, the surviving Vikings and rebels had turned and fled back to their
longboats or just run for the hills. At
the end, only a few had stood their ground – an elite group of Norse soldiers,
all former Varangian Guards. An impasse
had been reached, with the few dozen remaining Varangian encircled and trapped,
but Harold’s soldiers too exhausted and battle-weary to try to take the heavily
armoured Norse warriors on. Harold, ever
the bold, ever the fearless, had walked through his men to face the trapped
warriors, and made them a simple offer.
He would give them each six foot of English ground – a little more for
the taller ones – or they would lay down their weapons and pledge fealty to
him. The Varangian were professional
soldiers rather than mercenaries, but with their king dead and his army broken
and fled, they were smart enough to realise that they had nothing left to fight
for on that battlefield, and so they bowed the knee to King Harold II of
England.
Harold, in his wisdom, knew that
if wanted them to fight for him as fiercely as they had fought for Haraldr,
himself a Varangian, then he would need to earn their loyalty. And so he offered that each of them would
become a freeman of England, a ceorl,
and be given a hide of land to own should they ride south with him and fight
against the Normans who were preparing to set sail for England’s coast. They had looked to their leader – not their
captain, for he had died in the battle, but to the warrior considered the most
senior in their ranks. A giant of a man,
nearly as sizeable as King Haraldr himself, he had removed his helmet and coif
to reveal a wild mane of dirty blonde hair and beard, and had barked out in a
loud and clear voice that Harold’s offer was accepted, and that he and his men
would give their sword and their life for their new liege lord. His acceptance was echoed with a roar from
his men, and a palpable sense of relief from the soldiers surrounding them – no
more blood would be spilled on the soil of Stamford Bridge that day.
With
little time to treat the wounded or bury the dead, Harold’s reduced forces had
marched hard for the south, knowing that they had a race against time to
intercept the Norman invaders. They met
just two weeks later at Hastings – tired and bloodied. The Normans, however, were relatively fresh
after their short sea voyage, and had many more archers than England’s
armies. Their cavalry, too, would enjoy
a significant advantage over the mostly unmounted infantry of Harold’s army.
The two
armies met in the morning of October 14th, when Norman scouts foiled
Harold’s hopes of catching the invaders unawares. Nonetheless, the English held the high ground
to render the Norman archers largely impotent, with their shields and the
landscape itself proving adequate protection.
When arrows failed, William sent forward spearmen to break the English shield
wall and while the defenders had few archers to assault their attackers with,
they nonetheless inflicted heavy losses on the approaching Normans with thrown
spears, axes, and even simple rocks. At
last the Norman cavalry advanced to support their infantry but, still, Harold’s
forces stood strong.
As the invaders
broke away and turned to regroup, a portion of Harold’s men, led by his Harold's
brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, broke rank to pursue the Normans, cutting them
down as they ran, only to be caught in a counterattack led by Duke William
himself and his mounted bodyguard. The
English soldiers were routed, and the two Earls slain.
After
the two opposing armies regrouped in the early afternoon, William changed his
tactics. Seeing how effective his counterattack
against English pursuers had been, he ordered his cavalry to attack once again,
and to then feign a full retreat to draw more defenders away from the English
wall. The first time was entirely
successful and the English defensive position was significantly weakened. William commanded his men to repeat the manoeuvre,
seeing that one more break might be enough to turn the battle in his favour and
allow the shield wall to be stormed. Again,
the Normans charged the wall before feigning a retreat, and again English
troops chased after them.
This
time, however, things did not work out quite so well for the Normans, as the
leaders of their pursuit were no ordinary fyrdmen, nor even huscarls, but the
Norse Varangians who had pledged themselves to Harold after Stamford
Bridge. Anticipating the Norman
counterattack, the Vikings checked their pursuit and were ready for the
cavalrymen to halt their retreat and turnabout.
As the Norman cavalry swung around and charged the soldiers chasing
them, they found themselves immediately pelted with javelins and axes. As the two sides clashed, the Norman knights
learned first-hand the devastating effect of the six-foot-long Dane axes, as
their horses were cut down from underneath them. Within minutes, the Norman counter was over,
the cavalry unit massacred while the Varangians and Englishmen still stood.
The
crushing failure of the cavalry ploy hit the morale of the Norman force as much
as it buoyed that of Harold’s men. The
English had now seen how to handle the Norman cavalry, learning from the
example of the Varangian, who were themselves experienced at fighting against
mounted troops during their time serving the Byzantine Empire. By now, the Normans had lost more than a
third of their cavalry, and many of their remaining horses were exhausted or wounded,
forcing the remaining knights to dismount and fight on foot. Perhaps feeling that a failure in the next
attack would lose him the battle, William then made his first real mistake of
the day ordered a full charge against the English shield wall.
With
the Varangians back in the fold, the English initially braced for the charge as
the Norman knights and infantry raced up the hill towards them, supported by
their archers. As the Normans closed,
the soldiers at the centre of the English line fell back, drawing their enemies
in and using their own tactics against them.
Their flanks then rushed inwards, crashing into the sides of the Norman
charge and forcing them to fight on three fronts. Though they took heavy losses in the opening exchanges
of the risky manoeuvre, Harold’s men succeeded in sucking the momentum from the
charge and quickly began to overwhelm them.
William himself was unhorsed for the third time in the battle, after a
Huscarl’s axe took his horse’s head off in one swing. On foot and in the thick of the mêlée,
William showed himself to still be a skilled warrior and seasoned leader, felling
many an Englishman and inspiring his men to keep fighting, even as the flanking
became a full circle, and he and his men were trapped by a closing ring of
English axes.
Bodies
piled up on the Sussex hill and the grass was red with the blood spilled by the
time William gave up hope of a favourable outcome and signalled a surrender. King Harold himself walked out to meet his
defeated rival, the left side of his face a bloody mess after a Norman arrow
came within an inch of finding its mark, instead deflecting off the bone of his
eye socket. He regarded his enemy
calmly, the both of them standing tall and strong despite their injuries and
exhaustion. After some moments of hushed
anticipation – interrupted only by the cries of the dying – William stabbed his
sword into the ground at Harold’s feet and bowed his head. With a nod, Harold claimed the Norman duke’s
weapon and held it aloft to his men as signal that the battle was won.
William, like Olaf Haraldsson
before him at Stamford Bridge, was allowed to return home with his surviving
men on the promise to relinquish all claim to the English throne and to never
again set foot upon English soil. Though
Harold lost an eye at Hastings he survived the battle and continued to rule
England as Harold II, with the country’s Earldoms divided amongst his brothers-in-law,
Morcaer of Northumbria and Eadwine of Mercia, and his younger brothers’ heirs in
Kent and East Anglia.
The surviving Varangians, reduced
now to barely a dozen in number, were hailed by Harold as the heroes of the
day, without whose cunning and staunchness the battle may have been lost. They settled well into the lands that Harold
had granted them in Sussex, close to the site of their finest hour, and
throughout the coming winter found themselves invited to many a feast at the
homes of various nobles who were keen to be seen as grateful to these mighty
warriors. By the Spring, however, the
shine on their victory had started to fade, and the people of England grew less
welcoming of the foreigners living on their soil. Relations were further strained by the Varangians
insisting on keeping to their Pagan ways and refusing to accept the traditions
of the Christian Anglo-Saxons they lived amongst.
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