14 October: The Battle of Hastings

The one date in British history most people remember is 1066 - The Battle of Hastings. 14 October, 1066, to be exact. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Battle of Hastings.

1. Why did it happen? In a nutshell, because the previous king of England, Edward the Confessor, didn't have any children, so it was unclear who should succeed him. The one distant relative they could find, Edgar Aethling, died before he could be made king. Enter Harold Godwinson, who claimed Edward had, on his deathbed, promised the throne to him. Meanwhile, in France, William, Duke of Normandy recalled that Edward had promised him the throne back in 1061, and he was jolly well going to make sure he got it.
2. It didn't actually happen in Hastings. The battle took place on Senlac Hill, six or seven miles away from the town. Today, the area is known as Battle.
3. We know it was here because after the battle, William ordered an abbey to be built on the site of his victory, and the ruins are still there today. The high altar is situated at the spot where Harold was killed. It's not the ideal place for an abbey to be due to the sloping ground and inadequate water supply, so building an abbey there only made sense if William had a sentimental connection to the spot.
4. It's not known how many soldiers fought in the battle. Writings by William the Conqueror's chaplain, William of Potiers, put William's army at 60,000 men while other contemporary writers say there were 150,000. These numbers are thought to be exaggerations, however, since armies of the time were never larger than about 35,000 men. What's more, William, as a mere duke, not yet a king, was unlikely to have been able to muster more than about 7,000 - and get them across the Channel. All we know about the numbers on the English side is that Harold rushed into battle before all his troops were assembled.
5. Likewise, we don't know how many men died. Just that there were a lot. William, it's said, buried his own dead but left the English soldiers to be eaten by wild animals. Among the first recorded fatalities was a man called Ivo Taillefer (which means "Hewer of Iron"), William the Conqueror's jester. He went out onto the field, juggling his sword and singing mocking songs at the English. Taillefer struck the first blow of the battle when he killed the English soldier who challenged him; but was subsequently engulfed by that soldier's companions.
6. The battle raged all day (which is unusually long for a battle of the time), which suggests the two sides were fairly evenly matched, with the deciding factor being the death of Harold. Contemporary accounts say it was starting to get dark when the cry, "Harold is Dead" was heard around the field. Even so, the battle went on into the night as a bloodthirsty Norman cavalry pursued English soldiers as they ran away - but doing so proved to be their downfall when they rode their horses into a ditch in the dark, falling on top of each other and getting crushed to death.
7. The Normans won by using a sneaky tactic called "feigned flight", that is, pretending to be scared and running away. The English soldiers then broke their defensive formation to run after them, whereupon the Normans turned on them and killed them.
8. It's said that both sides took a break from fighting to have lunch in the early afternoon and also used the lull in the fighting to assess their tactics. While it's a nice idea, there's no actual evidence to suggest they all stopped for lunch.
9. Harold died from having an arrow shot into his eye. Or did he? The idea that Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye came from the Bayeux Tapestry, which was made a few years later. The tapestry shows a picture of a knight with an arrow in his eye but there's no way to be sure this was Harold. Harold could just as easily have been the knight nearby, being trampled by a horse. Also, the medieval tapestry makers no doubt made use of some artistic licence and borrowed scenes from other manuscripts. No other contemporary account says anything about Harold getting an arrow in the eye. One of them, Song of the Battle of Hastings, states that Harold's cause of death was being hacked down by a Norman death squad.
10. There are even claims that Harold didn't die at all but escaped and lived out the rest of his life as a hermit in Chester. Nobody knows for sure where he is buried but accounts from the time say he was buried on a Sussex clifftop, where he could "continue to guard the seashore".

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