Inside William the Conqueror’s Victory at the Battle of Hastings

For years, historians discounted the Middle Ages as an era when battles were won by brute force. But William of Normandy’s victory over the Saxons at the Battle of Hastings showed that strategy and preparation also played a part. Likely outnumbered and far from his home territory in France, Duke William prevailed in 1066 through a combination of canny leadership, cutting-edge military technology, innovation, logistics—and luck.

“William was recognized by contemporary sources as … a skilled warrior,” says historian Marc Morris, author of The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England and William I: England’s Conqueror. “Some of that reputation is … brute strength. But a lot of it came from his superior generalship.”

In 1051, William’s cousin King Edward the Confessor allegedly promised to make William his heir. But when Edward died in January 1066, Harold Godwinson, one of England’s most powerful aristocrats, seized the British crown. William disputed the claim and prepared to invade England.

Conquering England in a single, decisive battle was a monumental gamble. As Morris notes, William was a duke—not a king—challenging one of the best organized and best financed states of the 11th century. Kings led their own armies, risking their lives in combat, so such showdowns didn’t happen except as a last resort.

William knew he could not share a crown with Harold, says Morris: “One of them must win, and one of them must die or be exiled. William also knows he must have a decisive victory over Harold because he cannot win a war of attrition with England’s king.”

Some 30 years earlier, when William’s father staged his own attempt to invade England, bad weather foiled the plan. William, who needed to transport an even larger army across the English Channel, learned early that logistics counted.

Nothing in the 11th century matched the scale of William’s invasion effort. To move an army of perhaps 10,000 men and thousands of horses, William recruited fighters from across northern France and built an estimated 700 ships—a feat his contemporaries viewed as extraordinary.

“Fighting a war is not all about charging into battle,” Morris says, noting that it’s more about wrangling, feeding and transporting thousands of men and horses. “It’s an awful lot of organization, and that’s where the skill comes in.”

On September 28, 1066, William’s army landed at Pevensey, on England’s southeast coast. He then marched to nearby Hastings, where he paused to organize his forces.

“Like many other leaders, Williams has to send his troops out to seize food and supplies, and in the Bayeux Tapestry [a monumental embroidered linen textile documenting the conquest], you can see how this foraging quite easily turns into ravaging,” says Morris.

For William, it also served another purpose: provocation. It was designed to draw Harold out of the safety of London and engage his army. Harold obligingly took the bait, says Morris—probably before his army was ready.

Harold’s trademark move was the surprise attack, which he had deployed successfully against both the Welsh in 1063 and the Danish king Harald Hardrada in 1066.

He tried to do it with the Normans, says Morris. But William’s scouts spoiled his plan. Instead, on the morning of October 14, 1066, William marched his army toward Harold—and turned the tables on him.

As the Bayeux Tapestry illustrates, Harold’s and William’s armies were both relatively well equipped with war technology of the era: battle axes, shields, spears, lances, bows and arrows and more. But there was at least one way in which William’s Norman army may have held an advantage: cavalry.

“It was a very unusual battle,” says Morris, “because one side stood to fight, and the other side, at least the elite, rode into battle. We can’t say the English [Saxons] had never used cavalry, but certainly in the 11th century they weren’t using cavalry.” Instead, they preferred to form a shield wall like the Vikings, who they had been fighting for centuries.

The Saxons’ shield wall, perched high on a hill, held for hours, with William’s Norman cavalry initially offering no advantage. Then, the Normans broke their own line, moving down the slope with the Saxons in pursuit, looking to administer what they surely thought would be the coup de grace. Some Norman accounts called the break a deliberate move to lure the English off their line. More likely, Morris says, the Norman line gave way when rumors of William’s death caused confusion and a breakdown in discipline.

According to contemporary accounts of the battle, William then rode along the line of battle, showing his men he was alive. Then, using one of their well-rehearsed tactics, his cavalry wheeled around on their horses and easily picked off the English, who had compromised their shield wall. The Normans’ use of stirrups—a technology that had been around for a few centuries, but was not yet in wide use—gave them the extra stability, maneuverability and control to do this in the midst of battle.

At this point, William’s archers played a crucial role. “It is difficult to be certain from the accounts, but there’s no mention on the English side of archers,” says Morris. “It is likely that Harold left his archers behind in his haste to leave London.”

“The most crucial thing for William is that his strategy works—and Harold dies,” says Morris. “It would have been very easy for Harold, with the sun disappearing over the horizon, to just slip away into the darkness and fight another day.” Instead, he stayed on the battlefield and was killed.

The Bayeux Tapestry appears to show him dying from an arrow to the eye. But for Morris, other accounts offer a more credible explanation in line with William’s goal of a decisive victory: “We’re told that William, as the day was turning to night, personally leads a squad into the battle to kill Harold.”

However it was achieved, Harold’s demise sealed William’s victory. Three months later, on Christmas Day 1066, he was crowned the first Norman king of England. The Norman Conquest of 1066 profoundly influenced English society, governance, culture—including the works of William Shakespeare—and language. It introduced thousands of French words, changed the language's grammar and shaped its literature. The fusion of Norman French with Old English created Middle English, and by Shakespeare's time, Early Modern English.