Hastings, 14 October 1066

The battle, stage by stage

1. 13 October 1066 (Friday), night

   The 'hoar apple tree'

   Since landing at Pevensey on 28 September, Duke William of Normandy has moved his army east to Hastings, built a castle there and ravaged the surrounding country. King Harold II, back in London after destroying the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge on 25 September, has hurried south without waiting for his whole strength. On the evening of 13 October his army gathers, in the words of the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'at the hoar apple tree', a landmark traditionally placed on Caldbec Hill, where the road from London comes out of the Weald, about seven miles from Hastings. William's scouts report his approach, and the Normans stand to arms through the night.

2. 14 October 1066 (Saturday), dawn

   The approach

   William marches at first light along the ridge road from Hastings, the line of the modern A2100, and arms his men on Telham Hill, where his army first sees the English. Harold has moved forward from Caldbec Hill onto the narrow ridge to the south, where Battle Abbey now stands, and forms his men on foot in a close shield wall along the crest, with the forest behind and the slope falling away in front. The D Chronicle says William came upon him before all his army was drawn up. The line is drawn here about 750 meters long, as most accounts have it; its exact length and ends are not known. Historic England's register entry, English Heritage and the sources agree on this ridge. Claims for Caldbec Hill (just north of the town) or Crowhurst (about two to three miles south) are minority views without support in the medieval sources.

3. About 9 AM

   Arrows and the first assault

   The Normans deploy on the rising ground south of the valley in three divisions: Bretons, with men from Maine and Anjou, on the left (west), Normans under William in the center, and French and Flemings on the right. Each is drawn up, as William of Poitiers describes, with archers and crossbowmen in front, armored infantry behind them and knights in the rear. The battle opens, later tradition says about 9 AM, with archers shooting uphill into the shields. The infantry then climb the slope and close with the English, who answer with spears, javelins, throwing axes and stones lashed to sticks (Poitiers). The ground at the foot of the slope is wet and boggy, and the English line, fighting downhill with the high ground in its favor, holds.

4. Late morning

   'Look at me. I am alive'

   On the Norman left the Bretons give way first: in William of Poitiers' account, both their infantry and their knights are 'turned back', and almost the whole army falls back with them, believing a rumor that the duke has been killed. Men from the English right run down the slope after them. William rides across the fleeing men, 'baring his head and lifting his helmet', and shouts 'Look at me. I am alive, and with God's help I will conquer' (Poitiers). The Bayeux Tapestry shows Count Eustace of Boulogne pointing to the bareheaded duke and Bishop Odo rallying the young men with his staff. The Norman knights turn on the pursuers in the valley and cut them down. The Tapestry shows English soldiers making a stand on a small hillock. It also shows Harold's brothers Gyrth and Leofwine killed, though not exactly when.

5. Early to mid-afternoon

   Feigned flights

   There is a pause as both sides rest and re-form; English reinforcements are probably still arriving. Then the attacks go in again, now with the knights in the lead. William of Poitiers says the Normans, remembering how the morning's flight had drawn the English out, 'turned their backs, deliberately pretending to flee'. When groups of English followed them down the hill, the knights wheeled round and cut them off. He says the trick was used twice. Modern historians disagree. Some see these as real routs dressed up afterward as a planned maneuver; others, following Bernard Bachrach, argue that trained knights could carry it out. Either way, each sally thins the English line, but it does not break.

6. Late afternoon

   Harold falls

   As the light fails, William throws everything at the weakened line: archers, infantry and knights together. The Bayeux Tapestry shows English warriors falling round the royal standards and, under the words 'here King Harold was killed', a man pulling at an arrow near his eye beside another being cut down by a horseman. The arrow is uncertain. The earliest written sources (William of Jumièges, William of Poitiers and the Carmen, which has Harold hacked down by four knights, one of them the duke himself) describe a death in hand-to-hand fighting. The eye wound first appears in Henry of Huntingdon about 70 years later, and the arrow on the Tapestry was heavily reworked by 19th-century restorers. Tradition, recorded within a few decades, puts the spot where Harold fell under the high altar of William's abbey church.

7. Dusk, 14 October 1066

   The Malfosse

   With the king dead, the English line collapses and the survivors flee north into the forest, most along the London road over Caldbec Hill. At nightfall a group of them rallies at a steep bank and ditches (Poitiers: 'a steep rampart and numerous ditches') and turns on the pursuing knights. Many Normans in the dark ride into an overgrown ditch, which Orderic Vitalis and the late 12th-century Battle Abbey Chronicle call the 'Malfosse', the evil ditch. Poitiers says Count Eustace was badly wounded there. No one recorded where it was. Sites both on and away from the battlefield have been proposed, and it is drawn here only schematically. William camps on the field. Casualties on both sides are unknown but very heavy. He is crowned at Westminster on Christmas Day.