Casualties at the Battles
Just a quick one looking over the ramifications of casualty rates in the Norman and English Armies.
1. Norman Army
Let's start off with we are told
a) The Norman Army consisted of equal numbers of archers, infantry and knights.
b) We are not told the actual numbers of dead but we are told that they were similar to the English ones.
c) The Army totalled about 7000 in number.
Okay, let's make some assumptions
1) We'll assume for arguments sake that the split in William's army was
2500 Infantry
2500 Knights and
2000 Archers.
2. English Army
The only thing we know for sure was that the English army was comparable to the Norman Army.
3. The Calculation
I'm going to assume a casualty number of 3000 with 80% of the Norman infantry making up that number
3.1 Norman Casualties
80% of 2500 = 2000
that leaves 1000 coming from the Norman knights ( 40% casualty rate)
I'm assuming the archers never got close enough to engage with hand to hand fighting
3.2 English Casualties
Not knowing the split between the Huscarls and the Fyrd means we have to solve a set of simultaneous equations with a few assumptions.
I'm going with
1) All Huscarls perished at Hastings
2) Same number of casualties as the Normans
So the two "equations" are
Huscarls( dead) + Fyrd (dead) = 3000
Huscarls (alive ) + Fyrd (alive) = 7000
so Huscarls (dead) = Huscarls (alive)
It's very interesting if you do multiple calculations with different casualty rates for the Fyrd. For instance, if you assume a casualty rate of 30% amongst the Fyrd then the maths say that approx 1700 of approx 5100 Fyrd perished along with just over 1200 Huscarls. If the Fyrd casualty rate is dropped to 10% then the numbers change to approx 444 of approx 4444 Fyrd perishing but the number of Huscarls swells to approx 2600.
There is a upper bound to the dead Fyrd of 3000 but that would leave us without any Huscarls!
Conclusion
The conclusion I come away with after doing these calculations is that the written accounts of the Battle are more or less accurate if you take into account the two battles and the Norman infantry not performing well against the Huscarls. It's funny that on a plain reading of the accounts they do not make a believable narrative but adding in what I've found out the accounts sort do now.
I will endeavour to write a blog post incorporating everything.
Regards
