1066 is perhaps the best-known date in English history. Certainly, I should not have to elucidate that it was the year of the two major battles that secured the Norman invasion of England and put William The Conqueror on the throne. The first of these battle was fought at Stamford Bridge against the Vikings; the second, much more famous, was the Battle of Hastings.
As famous as 1066 and Harold's last battle is the Bayeux Tapestry, a Norman work of art that immortalized events and the final moments of Harold's life. For centuries, the version of history taught as fact is that depicted in the Tapestry; Harold, so the Norman story goes, was hit in the eye with an arrow at the height of the battle. With the death of their King, the English army was defeated. However, the events received as fact for hundreds of years are, in fact, wrong.
It is certainly true that Harold and William brought their armies to Hastings and there met in battle. However, the story related in the Bayeux Tapestry was conceived over a century later by French nuns who had only fragmentary accounts of events on which to base their tapestry. To understand what really happened on that day in 1066, one must be in possession of certain facts that the originators of the tapestry were ignorant.
First, it is necessary to understand that a group of nuns living in a convent in France had little or no contact with the outside world; while they had correct knowledge of the arms and armor used by both sides at Hastings, they were utterly devoid of any military experience; they lived in an age of total female repression where women were utterly excluded from military matters.
Second, it must be understood that the eyeslit of an English helm was little more than an inch (about 3cm) across. While Norman helmets were visorless and sported only a nose guard to protect the wearer's face, English helms at that time were based on the Anglo-Saxon design, featuring a half-face visor that left only the wearer's mouth and jaw exposed. Even at close range, with an unimpeded aim and no distraction, only a highly proficient archer would be capable of hitting such a minute target. At Hastings, as at every other battle of the era, the archers were positioned at the farthest limits of bowshot, well back from the savage melee of swords, axes and spears that constituted the center of the fight. The method of archery used under such circumstances was not to loose specific shots at individual targets, but to shoot upwards, over the heads of one's own infantry, to pour arrows down like rain on the enemy. To prove this it is necessary only to glance again at the helmets worn by fighting men at the time; both Norman and English helms were conical, specifically designed to deflect arrows and weapons falling from above.
Third, Harold's army was constituted according to the Anglo-Saxon method, which derived from the older tribal formations of the Celts and the Saxons; the elite nobility of Harold's army, the thegnes (sometimes rendered "thanes"), fought as a single unit massed around the king. In England at the time, tartan was used to denote rank; the king wore seven-colored tartan, his thegnes and nobility wore five or six colors. Beyond the immediate ranks of the king and his retinue, the peasant infantry and archers then formed the main body of the army. A similar arrangement was used by the Normans; the king at the centre of the cavalry, mainly consisting armored knights, with vast numbers of spearmen and archers in support.
Picture the scene; Harold and his thegnes, a mass of men in identical armor, the king distinguished only by a single additional color in his tartan, swept up in the heart of the battle while archers on both sides rained down arrows. At the maximum range of a Norman bow, it would be impossible to distinguish the king of either side from the battling men around him. While it is not impossible to think that, given the sheer number of arrows fired, a number of shots might find their marks by chance in the eyeslits of English helms, the odds of actually hitting Harold himself are inconceivable.
So what happened? Let us move the camera closer; zoom in to the melee and focus on Harold himself in the thick of battle. An arrow strikes, by chance, in the eye of a thegne fighting close at his side. The thegne falls and a cry goes up among the Norman knights; “The English King is dead!”; they are mistaken, but the same mathematics that apply to the archers also apply to Harold's own men; the vast majority of the English army are far from their king, cannot see or hear him, and in any case have never met the man himself. The cry is taken up, first by the French and then the English; Harold's army begins to crumble, morale shattered by the presumed death of their king.
It is a matter of historical fact that Harold died at the Battle of Hastings, but the evidence thus far leads us to theorize so; to prevent a rout, Harold sweeps off his helm and declares himself to be alive. His thegnes are immediately emboldened, but the Norman knights close enough to hear the king's voice immediately hack him apart.
To prove the theory, let us return to historical fact; before the Norman invasion, it was a saying in England “that man is a coward who leaves his king on the field in death“; with Harold's fall, his thegnes stood their ground and fought to the last man. The rest of Harold's army, peasant levies all, routed and fled, leaving the military commanders of the country to die with their king. Consequently, the Battle of Hastings was decisive simply because following it, there was no one left alive to rally another army to throw back the invaders and England was conquered at a stroke.
But what of Harold? Remember that the Bayeux Tapestry was fashioned long after the events themselves, by women who were not there. However, Norman records following the battle attest that Harold's body was recovered from the battlefield. As was the style among the English nobility at the time, Harold was heavily tattooed; the body presented to William was in pieces, recognizable only by the tattoos on his arms and torso. The same Norman records mention no arrow wounds; Harold was hacked to death by Norman swords, exactly as illustrated above. The story of King Harold dying from an arrow in the eye is a total fabrication, born of a rumour on the battlefield and cemented in history by the fanciful account drawn up long years after his death.
