Present Day Contradictions about the Battle of Hastings

Present Day Contradictions about the Battle of Hastings

Even taking present day thinking about the Battle of Hastings there are contradictions in the knowledge that is given out. 

1. Caldbec Hill

The first and foremost is the contradiction of what happened at Caldbec Hill. Many talk of the English scout peering out from between the trees as being on Caldbec Hill. And there are written reports that the English were seen camping on Caldbec Hill. How can we make sense of this?

Since the scout is shielding his eyes perhaps we can assume that it is morning and the sun is shining and that the scout is looking south-ish. Nowhere on the Tapestry does it state that the place is Caldbec Hill. Let us look at the terrain then. 

From Caldbec Hill, the land falls away ( descends) from 103 metres above sea level (m asl) to about 53 metres before rising again to about 62. The land falls away again to 55 metres before rising to 108 metres, dropping to 100 metres before rising again to 141 metres where the Norman lookout post is situated. So Caldbec Hill is next highest point north of the Norman lookout position. 

The scouts only have visibility of the Norman look out post above say 75 metres on the first falling slope. This is only 200 metres from what is supposed to be the main English camp of 7000 soldiers! 

To cap it all however, the Tapestry shows the scout reporting back to Harold, who is sitting astride his horse. This tells me that Harold had to ride to the meeting place with the scout and was therefore newly come to the area. Would Harold go and sit on his horse to listen to a scout that had been 200 metres away from the camp to look at the Normans? Sounds implausible to me. 

So something has to give. 

Could the scout be closer to the Normans than what is thought? I've noticed that on the Tapestry some scenes are framed with trees. Could this be the case here? But as stated previously there is nowhere closer than the top of Caldbec Hill that is better to spy on the Normans. So I think that Caldbec Hill has to stay as the scouts location. 

If the Norman lookouts were wrong, and I believe they were wrong, then Harold must've been in a camp that lay on the same bearing or almost the same bearing as Caldbec Hill. My choice of field for the second engagement lies on that bearing However, if that was the site of the English overnight camp, why Harold is portrayed as being on a horse? It does not make sense.

2. There was only one shield wall

This is regarded as Holy Writ by some especially by the modern day "Housecarls" but this causes untold squirming by modern day scholars. We are forever told that battles of the 1000's lasted no more than 3 hours and that the Battle of Hastings was an exception in that it lasted nine hours. That's 300% longer than normal! 

So what's the story?

Historians and others rely on this single shield wall as a tenet of faith and look no further. So the story they tell is of a scout on Caldbec Hill seeing the Normans and then going to see Harold, who then sets up his troops on Senlac Ridge to meet William coming off Hastings peninsula. Then William wages a war of attrition until such time as he overcomes the defenders. That's it in a nutshell. Okay, it takes 9 hours but what's that?

However , the Bayeux Tapestry tells another story. We still have the narrative of the scout seeing the Normans and reporting back to Harold. Then it says the Norman knights advanced and met the Housecarls and a few archers and gave battle. This could have been where English Heritage now places the battle - under the town itself. Notice that there's no Fyrd or King in the bunch and that the defenders were surrounded. The next scene shows the stragglers being "finished off" and the sons or brothers of Harold being killed. The following scene shows the second engagement which entails unarmoured men ( the Fyrd) killing lots of knights before the Normans overcome this lot of defenders. The King is duly dispatched and the Fyrd heads for the hills. Now 9 hours doesn't seem that long for William to accomplish these feats.  

If anyone thinks that are more contradictions to look into then leave me a message and I'll look into it. 

Regards

Kevin 

Malfosse

Malfosse

After many hours of thought, I came to the conclusion that the location of the Malfosse was unknowable. What everyone is faced with is a report from the Normans that while they were in hot pursuit of rapidly departing Saxons belonging to the Fyrd, they suffered an ambush where the ground disappeared from beneath their horse's feet and the riders were set upon by Saxon fighters.

While the report might have been good enough for their commanders, it does not help us in the future to discover where the clash took place.

The current thinking of English Heritage is, I'm led to believe, is that the battle took place in an area under the monastery and the area under the town with the Malfosse still in Oakwood Gill.

John Grehan also puts the Malfosse incident in Oakwood Gill, explaining it was closer to his choice of battle site than English Heritage's. Unfortunately for him, Time Team put the battle site adjacent to English Heritage's official site because they could find no evidence of the battle ever having taken place on either the official site or John's choice of Caldbec Hill.

I'd stopped looking when I chose my first site at the end of the ridge at Netherfield Down. Nowhere seemed to fit the bill. And there I left it until......

I started to look at the Bayeux Tapestry more closely. On page 192 of David M Wilson's book " The Bayeux Tapestry" he writes " .... Brown ( op cit. in note 113,pp 18ff. Cf. also [G.H. White]'The Battle of Hastings and the death of Harold', The Complete Peerage, xii,i, London 1953, Appendix L, p.42) has convincingly argued that the scene in pls. 65-66 of the tumbling horses represents the so-called Malfosse episode, following William of Malmesbury who may well have been placing his narrative on the tapestry. In this story the Normans were attacking the English, strongly positioned on a hill, and retreating in feigned flight (according to Henry of Huntingdon) into a concealed ditch. A defensive work of sharpened stakes is clearly seen beneath the fallen horses in pl. 65...."

So ask yourself this question. If you're running away on foot from men on horseback determined to hack you to pieces, do you stop, cut down suitable stakes, hammer them into the ground and then turn around to make a stand? No, you keep on running!

Another point to ponder is this. on pl.67 of D.M. Wilson's book " The Bayeux Tapestry ( Scene 54 in standard Bayeux Tapestry form) we have a two cavalryman attacking the back of the hill. Again ask yourself " If this is supposed to represent an ambush what the blue dickens are those cavalryman doing on the wrong side of the main fight?"

The last "frame" of the Tapestry as we have it shows a group of horsemen chasing after a bunch of rapidly departing Saxons. Had the Tapestry continued it could have showed the Malfosse incident and it could have looked something like what I've attempted to draw below.

However since Odo was probably not involved in the incident, it would not have been included. ( "if I didn't see it happen, it didn't happen")

When I realised the above and found my new battle site ( see previous post) I looked at Google Earth and saw a sunken road or pathway not 250 metres away from the Fyrd position. I had my "Malfosse"! Now all that remains is find out who owns the land, find someone with a metal detector and put the two together ( Ugh, Forestry Commission)!

Here is what it looks like in real life in relation to the second and main battlefield. 

Alternative Site for the 1066 Battle of Hastings.

Tying down the actual Battle site?

It's been a long time since I posted anything new on this blog. Partly, this is due to my absolute fascination with the computer game "No Man's Sky" ( I'm more than half way through my third galaxy with over 100,000,000 units in hand) and partly me thinking there was nothing new to add to our understanding of the Battle. How wrong I was!

Between my last post and this one I've been to Bayeux to look at the Tapestry first hand and to find out the received wisdom that was being promulgated. I wish I hadn't bothered. The Tapestry is hung in a very nice setting and one is given a commentary device which once started doesn't stop until you reach the end of the Tapestry - that gives you 20 mins to view the whole thing! One can go around again but if you listen to the commentary you have to move at the pace of the commentary and not at your own pace.

The Bayeux Museum also represents a moment of revelation to me. Never before did I feel able to question what I was being told but this visit revealed the "cracks in the plaster"! For instance, the Museum had a display inviting the viewer to guess who had the strongest claim to the throne of England on the death of Edward. Was it William, Harold or some Scandinavian geezer? It then laid out the bloodlines and posed the question "Who do you think...?" Well since Edward had no offspring etc, etc..... Wrong!!! The Norman idea of inheriting the throne DID NOT OPERATE in England at that time. At the death of the old King, the Witan ( a council of hereditary nobles) met together to decide who would make the best ruler for the Country. Sure, they would heed the "advice" of a previous occupant but not be governed by it ( On the death of Æthelred the Unready, Knut , King of the Danelaw area of England was asked to rule) So the Throne of England worked in the same way as the Roman Catholic papacy operates today - namely the person elected to office was elected for life.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted. Back to the matter in hand.

This is what I wrote in "Where's the Battle Site?" published on 22nd September 2015

"My preferred site for the battle is the end of the slice taken above at 56' 29.35"N  26' 53.11"E. This area seems to be on the old London Road, Also it is situated on the end of a east- west ridge which makes sense of Williams decision to split his force into three. The site is more or less undeveloped so there has been not so many unreported finds. A nearby spring could well have supplied the wet ground and remember hadn't there been a big storm within the last 3 weeks? The site also has a steep incline and a not so steep incline to take account of the many different reports we have of the battle."


I mentioned the nearby spring because casualties amongst William's cavalry was light and the battle lasted so long that Harold must have found a way to neutralise the effectiveness of these troops. I think the neutralisation  of Williams cavalry is key in determining the actual battle site.

From what I've gleamed from that guy from the TV who is an expert on medieval weaponry is the mounted soldier has the height advantage when facing infantry. So if the ground was not firm beneath the horses hooves then the guy on the horse would have had half a brain figuring out where was safe to manoeuvre his horse while having only half his brain trying to kill the Saxon warrior that was trying to kill him!

Another way of neutralising cavalry is to overcome the height advantage. In other words, raise up the Saxon or make the cavalry unit fight from a lower elevation. The "official" battle site does this by having the Saxons on top of Senlac Ridge. My current choice of battle site does this too.  However neither site is supported by the Bayeux Tapestry...

If we examine the Bayeux Tapestry on plate 55/56 we see William talking to his scouts ascertaining the whereabouts of Harold quite clearly on a "hill". In the next screen we have an English scout spotting the Normans and reporting back to Harold. Notice the depiction of the ground. The artist clearly saw the ground as being a little hilly. Is this an attempt to say that Telham Hill was at a higher elevation than where Harold was? ( As an aside the commentary on page 192  of David Wilson's book, says that Williams troops "saw " the English troops on Battle Ridge. This would only be possible if ALL  obstructions  higher than 7 metres (Approx 17 feet) had been cleared in what was considered to be a sparsely wooded area between Telham Hill Fort and Battle Ridge).

It is not until plate 65 b do we see any depiction in the change of terrain even though we've seen lots of fighting and dying. This change is a depiction of a "horse trap"which kills a number of horses ( and subsequently a number of their riders) being no match for the unarmoured Saxons fighting from ABOVE the incoming cavalry.

On plate 66 b/67 a we have the Saxons themselves on a substantial mound.In the commentary associated with this plate on page 193 ( The Bayeux Tapestry by David M Wilson)  the author assigns this picture to the action that took place in a place known as "Malfosse" after the battle had been won. To my mind this looks suspiciously like a cross section of a prepared defence against the cavalry. Indeed, the defence was so good that it was as this point that the rumour of William's demise took hold and the troops were routing.

So according to the Bayeux Tapestry we are looking for a site where Harold met his scouts, assembled his troops on reasonably flat ground, found a ridge and prepared anti-horse defences in front of it . He also managed to kill most of William's infantry ( not seen in the Tapestry other than as dead bodies in the lower margins).  The site or area that can match these conditions lie in the area surrounding ...... remembering to obey all laws and regulations concerning metal detecting on important national sites of interest ..... is 50 N 55' 57" 0 E 27' 43".

The ridge is approx 130 metres away running on a bearing of 220 deg.