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Size of armies (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Hatty
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Imagine you're William and you decide to invade England. So you raise an army of just 8000 men! Only 8000?

It's a considerable achievement, despite the unprepossessing size of the army, considering the logistics of shipping men, horses and equipment across the Manche, he had, presumably, no fear of contending with organised coastal defences (thinking of D-Day landings); even though the invasion was expected it wasn't known exactly when the army would land.

Is it known for sure that there was a battle at Hastings (apart from the Bayeux Tapestry which is hardly 'evidence', Bishop Odo being William's half-brother)? There must have been some conflict but was it the only or even decisive resistance?

You'd better hope that Harold, despite being King of England can only raise a force of the same size and that you face him in a single winner-take-all battle AND that he brings all nobles of note to the battle, so that if he loses, England is yours, since there is no-one else left to fight.

The house-carls, the nub of the English force, would've fought alongside their lord out of loyalty, that's a given surely. I wonder if William was in cahoots with the Scandinavian bunch (Harald's army was almost twice the size of William's, a serious invasion force) and planned his landing to coincide with theirs?
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TelMiles


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I believe you are approaching the truth Hatty. Logistics aside, William still only raised a small force. Why would he do that? The answer is simple, he knew Harold couldn't raise a force to easily crush his. He knew he wouldn't be facing an army of say, 50,000. How did he know? Spies? hardly. I say William knew because he was in cahoots, not with the Scandanavians (he only knew of Harald's defeat when he landed in England), but with the English nobility, particularly those nobles that didn't like Harold because he was a usurper.

There were further struggles between the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, but nothing on the scale of Hastings. Save for William's wholesale destruction of the north.

Also, Tostig, Harold's brother who died fighting for Harald at Stamford Bridge, also spent some time at the court of duke William in the months leading up to Hastings.
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Ishmael


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Hatty wrote:
Is it known for sure that there was a battle at Hastings

I assure you. There was no Battle of Hastings.
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Hatty
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I assure you. There was no Battle of Hastings.

It would be the first of many battles surely. In fact according to wiki the definitive one was at Berkhamsted, not that far from Winchester the Anglo-Saxon capital. The capital, London or wherever, is the crucial factor in a conquest.

Hastings' importance is doubtless over-emphasised just as the destruction of northern England is described in apocalyptic terms to which wiki solemnly attests:

William then devastated Northumbria between the Humber and Tees rivers, with his Harrying of the North. This devastation included setting fire to the vegetation, houses and even tools to work the fields. He also burnt crops, killed livestock and sowed the fields and land with salt, to stunt growth. After this cruel treatment the land did not recover for more than 100 years. The region ended up absolutely deprived, losing its traditional autonomy towards England. However it may have stopped future rebellions, scaring the English people into obedience.

Particularly striking is the mention of the salting of the earth, as we've discussed elsewhere here.
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TelMiles


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But who was fighting for William in these many battles?

And "scaring the English into no future rebellions?" Are they being serious? Good old wiki.
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Pulp History


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Another thing I find perplexing about Hastings is that we are constantly taught that the Normans brought a new weapon with them - the castle!!! I mean, come on!! The bloody castle??

AND soon after the victory at Hastings, William had to rush to Dover to deal with the army stationed at the castle, sorry, defended settlement, there.......... who was there? Why were they there and not taking part in the fighting?? What were they in if it wasn't a castle??
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Hatty
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Do you think the Normans simply took over, or improved, pre-existing Anglo-Saxon forts? We probably equate castle-building with the Normans because they had skilled masons and they set a standard for the rest of Europe; during the age of Gothic cathedrals French stonemasons were still being imported.
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Pulp History


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But the Normans in Wales used English builders - did they just complete a YTS course in castle building enabling them to construct Harlech, Beaumaris etcetera..... or were these skills built up over generations and years of training?
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ReformedSciolist


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Howzit

I'm new, but feel like wetting my toes - so here goes. I hope I don't stuff up the quoting below.

Pulp History wrote:
After reading about the battle of Hastings it struck me that Harold's army was supposed to be the biggest amassed in British history at this point. This army was somewhere between 6000 to 10000 men, consisting of Houscarls and Fyrd.

It's likely that the part where your source says it was the biggest army amassed in British history is just plain wrong. It's typically propagandist (makes for great history if written by folk from the "smaller", "weaker" - but miraculously winning - side). It's also the sort of thing that it is said time and again. I recall Maddas Hussein offering us the Mother of all Battles. It turned out to be the Mother of all Stuff-Ups for him; but of course he was duty-bound, like any warlord, to talk it up. In any event, our ancient sources talk of many times that number being amassed by the Iceni in the revolt against Rome, so somewhere there's a lot of magic-wand waving going on.

Now, if this was Harold from England calling upon all 'English' people to defend their country against the Norman hopefuls, then why under 10,000 men from a population of what?? 2-3 million!! OR did the army consist of a small ruling elite who could only gather 6 -10,000 men - or even fewer using some locals forced to fight who fled at the first opportunity??

I'll take the bait offered by Mr Harper in his book and say that if Harold was English-as-in-Anglo-Saxon, as against English-as-in-aboriginal-inhabitants-of-what-we-now -call-England, then it makes perfect sense that a muster of all the English capable of bearing arms would number in the few thousands or tens thereof. If the Anglo-Saxons were a minority warrior elite, then (a) there would not be very many of them and (b) the proportion vis-a-vis the entire population would be very skewed.

In addition it's a basic tenet of warfare until the French Revolution (with, as always, notable exceptions throughout) that the majority of a population did not take part in warfare. They are needed to till the soil after all. As is pointed out in other posts, it's not just a matter of mustering the numbers. In order to be effective, a soldier must be armed. In order for the arms to be effective, the soldier must be trained in their use and in conjunction with other soldiers. A peasant rabble is seldom effective. Simply put, it was a hideously expensive exercise to field and adequately equip an army comprised of an entire nation (with the possible major exception of certain nomadic cultures) until the Industrial Revolution.


What are people's thoughts on the sizes of armies in times past? How can a relatively small invading force not convince indigenous people to join up in droves to beat them off???

I have read (I recall offhand in the Osprey guide to Ancient Armies of the Near/Middle East) that a standard convention in military history is to lop a zero off the absurdly large figures given in ancient texts, including the Bible. The archaeology for one doesn't support the sorts of numbers claimed in the texts (you can only cram so many men into a walled city the size of say Jerusalem, or into the countryside around). The logistics is also out of whack in many cases (more in another post). Command and control in ancient/mediaeval warfare is also limited by the distance the commander can see and convey orders by horseman, heliograph or whatever; so battlefields necessarily are limited in size and so in turn limit the ability to deploy troops. Long story short though is that armies were not necessarily that huge in the past and often if they were, a large part played little or no part in the important fighting (at least if Granicus and Issus are anything to go by).

All that being said, a small force of armed and armoured warriors who know what they are doing are infinitely more frightening to a rabble than the reverse; which is why the Spartans (et al) could hold off the Persians at Thermopylae; which is why Israel keeps on kicking ass; which is why the Wehrmacht could penetrate 1000 km into Russia; which is why Clive could claim India; which is why the Vikings could rule large swathes of Britain and so forth ad nauseam. Would *you* join up if your mates said "There's a bunch of blokes with armour and swords and stuff coming to kick the asses of the blokes already here with swords and stuff; grab your pitchfork and let's go muck in. Shore hope we don't get stuck in the middle!"???

I sure as hell wouldn't; but then again I only ever did cadets and rifle-shooting, so probably wouldn't be much good with a pitchfork.
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ReformedSciolist


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I'm still awake, so "hi" on this thread as well and here's my two cents:

I find it implausible that 40,000 men and 7000 horses made this journey with the technology of the time.


Of course, the answer is as simple as "well how did anyone ever cross that much desert" - or was there no direct contact between Babylon and Phoenicia?

The short answer (there's usually a short and a long) is a five-letter word called an "oasis". Fortunately, they crop up every so often and they're bladdy handy, because they have lots of water - enough that some have lasted from then until now and enough that entire Bedouin (or what-have-you) tribes could water their camels and flocks and themselves. Of course there are arid routes through the desert and it is likely that, whatever the ancient histories say, Alexander rather went by a watered route (eg via Palmyra).

Regarding techonology, the wagon, water skin and much else besides had been invented long since by that time and it is obvious that with the assistance of a little local knowledge Alexander would have prepped accordingly. It is said that the later Arabs managed to strike over vast desert distances by force-feeding their camels and binding their mouths - creating mobile water tanks that were later slaughtered at need. Alex was a clever fellow; he may well have hit on the same idea. He also had the indispensable guide of Xenophon, which was a sort of warring Greek's AA book on the Persian empire.

it would still have been an impressive achievement, but it's certainly not beyond the bounds of probability - and how else do we account for the fact that the Greeks did get even further east than that?
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ReformedSciolist


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Howzit

Pulp History wrote:
But the Normans in Wales used English builders - did they just complete a YTS course in castle building enabling them to construct Harlech, Beaumaris etcetera..... or were these skills built up over generations and years of training?


I've not quoted the other posts leading up to this one, but here are some thoughts to add to the discussion:

1. There were mighty impressive stone fortifications in Britain long before the Normans arrived - after all, the Romans fortified the "Saxon" Shore, built Hadrian's Wall .... and in addition the Anglo-Saxons certainly had the motte-and-bailey castle design that the not-so-dissimlar Normans had. The big difference seems to be that the Normans took castle-building further and produced more in stone than had the Angles themselves. The archetype is the (White) Tower (of London).

2. The best "Norman" castles, such as the already mentioned Beaumaris and Harlech, may well have been built stone-by-stone by English workmen - but they were designed and the building supervised by an Italian, Master James of St George, whose very English-sounding name should not fool you (like most names, we have long since transliterated it). In any event, they were built under the Plantagenets and not the 4 (if you conflate Matilda and Stephen) monarchs of the Norman dynasty proper.

There definitely was some sort of fortification at Dover prior to the Normans, including a Roman stone built lighthouse that stands to this day.
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ReformedSciolist


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Pulp History wrote:
... who was there? Why were they there and not taking part in the fighting?? What were they in if it wasn't a castle??


I didn't think to deal with this apect of the discussion, viz. why did Harold not have his entire army at Hastings, specially when there were so few Normans to overcome.

Again the answers are based on sound common sense:

1. Harold could not be sure that the Normans had landed / would land only one force;

2. Nobody leaves the countryside & lines of communication unguarded;

3. This is particularly so if you're (a) one of a few thousand elite warrior lords ruling a large native population and (b) considered by some to be a usurper;

3. Dover is a particularly strategic spot that must be garrisoned to control England, for painfully obvious reasons - you're in dire straits otherwise.
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ReformedSciolist


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ReformedSciolist wrote:
Howzit1. There were mighty impressive stone fortifications in Britain long before the Normans arrived - after all, the Romans fortified the "Saxon" Shore, built Hadrian's Wall .... and in addition the Anglo-Saxons certainly had the motte-and-bailey castle design that the not-so-dissimlar Normans had. The big difference seems to be that the Normans took castle-building further and produced more in stone that had the Angles themselves. The archetype is the (White) Tower (of London).


Continuing the thought above, a good example of the continuity of occupation of a fortified site but of the Normans repairing or upgrading it is Pevensey Castle.
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nemesis8


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William didn't need a big army as he knew the great majority of the English would collaborate. His judgement was correct. They did.

It seems to me collaborators are given a rather bad press....hated by those they assist, and hated by those that resist.

You really only get passed down historic myths based on the great conqueror (William) and the heroic losers (Harold, Hereward).

I suppose the dull reality of day to day pragmatic collaboration, deal making, does not make for a good tale.... how much better to throw in a few great battles........Hastings, Ely etc.....?
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Pulp History


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I feel that the real reason for the historical outcome was that old Harold Godwinson was stitched up..... with many plotters agreeing to help in taking the throne from him. This obviously would not make it into the historical record as it extinguishes self congratulatory histories which make one out to be a warrior hero.
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