A History of War in 100 Battles. Richard Overy

On 20 September at Fulford, near York, an army of 10,000 Vikings under Harald Hardrada and Harold’s brother, Tostig Godwinson, annihilated a force of perhaps 6,000 under earls Edwin and Morcar. Collecting levies from the south, Harold rode north from London, moving so quickly that his 5,000 men found the Viking invaders unprepared on both sides of the River Derwent, near a small village at Stamford Bridge. Charging the forces on one side of the river, the English soldiers slaughtered them all before crossing the narrow bridge and falling on the rest of the invasion force. Some 7,000 corpses littered the battlefield. Only 24 out of the 500 ships that had carried the Vikings to England were needed to take the survivors home.

      Harold’s victory ended any prospect in the near future of Scandinavian intervention in English affairs. If Hardrada’s invasion had been his only problem, the battle would be hailed as the start of a different English history. But messengers told Harold that another enemy awaited him in Sussex, ravaging the countryside, burning villages and towns and seizing their goods. He rode south with his tired and battered army and arrived at London on 6 October, where he was joined by other levies and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine. Harold had at his command a mixed army of Anglo-Saxon nobility, their ‘housecarles’ or professional soldiers, and the trained militia, the fyrd. He was joined by a number of Danish mercenaries, or lithsmen. The housecarles and nobility wore long protective mail coats or ‘hauberks’ and carried spears, daggers and the deadly double-handed battleaxes that could cleave a man and horse in two. The fyrd were more lightly armed, and wore only thick leather jerkins. The principal tactic of Harold’s army was the shield wall, composed of lines of housecarles with heavy shields, forming a solid barrier of the toughest soldiery against which enemy attacks were designed to be broken by sheer physical power and the courage of the defending fighters.

      Harold moved south, arriving opposite William’s army on 13 October, and camped near the shallow Caldbec Hill. His army left their horses and proceeded early on the morning of 14 October to take up position at the top of a long but shallow slope, protected on both sides by swampy ground, where Harold set up a solid shield wall some ten or twelve men deep and perhaps 7,000-strong in total. Although he had successfully used a cavalry charge at Stamford Bridge, Harold chose to fight without cavalry and with very few archers. The shield wall, in contrast, was a primitive tactic to choose against William and left very little flexibility. The Norman army was drawn up in the early morning in a way that made the most of the mixed force William had brought with him. There were three sections: Flemish allies on the right, a Breton force on the left, and 3,500 cavalry and heavy infantry in the centre led by William. Throughout the day the Norman duke displayed a shrewd tactical judgement, making the most of his cavalry and his archers, probing to find a way to wear down the shield wall. Occasionally, as the legend of Hastings has it, his cavalry made feints as if to retreat, tempting Harold’s soldiers to run after them, only for the Anglo-Saxons to suddenly be surrounded and cut down.

      Battle was joined at around 9 a.m. Since the Normans were attacking up a slope, Harold had some advantages. His spearmen could throw more powerfully downwards, while William’s archers had to fire uphill, and his cavalry were forced to charge against the gradient. Most medieval battles were over in a couple of hours, but Hastings, contested by two battle-hardened and professional forces, lasted the whole day, at a terrible cost to both sides. At one point, the ferocity of the English stand broke the left flank of William’s force and threatened a more general retreat, rather than a ruse to lure the enemy into pursuit. Accounts of the battle have William removing his helmet to show he had not been slain and shouting to his men to hold firm and rally. They did so, just as a large group of English militia chased after them, thinking the whole army was in flight. The Anglo-Saxons were surrounded on a hillock and, despite a desperate effort to save themselves, each one was bludgeoned or speared to death where he stood.

      William then opted for attrition. Small groups of horsemen and heavy infantry attacked, taking casualties but also eating into the shield wall. Hour after hour of gory combat left all the men exhausted, desperate with thirst, and covered in wounds, great and small. The corpses were so many that it proved hard at times to fight on the slope made slippery with their blood. After six hours of slaughter, William could see that attrition was taking a greater toll of the enemy. He ordered a charge against the shield wall by all his surviving army. The Anglo-Saxon line gave way, and small groups of housecarles rallied round their lords as the Norman wave washed over them. Harold and his brothers were killed, the king so mutilated by the hacking Norman swords that his body could only be identified later by his mistress.

      There was no concept of surrender and Harold’s surviving men could be butchered where they were found. Some 4,000 of the Anglo-Saxon army died at Hastings, 2,000 of William’s men. William marched north to London, where he was crowned king in Westminster Abbey. England became a Norman province, united under one monarch. It is easy to be sentimental about Harold’s defeat, but he, like William, was just one of a long line of warrior noblemen, with Norse blood in their veins, who fought to the death for land and wealth. What made William different was his sharp military mind, shown in his ability to ‘manage’ the battlefield in an age of primitive combat. Crude though the fighting was, William’s victory rested on solid military understanding and bold leadership.

No. 6

BATTLE OF ZHONGDU 1215

      There are few military leaders in world history with a more elevated reputation than the Mongol tribesman Temüjin, better known to history as Genghis Khan, or Chingghis Khan. Conqueror of half of Asia, his name became a byword for military ruthlessness and competence. No ambition was more vaunted or, in the end, more successful than his conquest of the vast northern Chinese Empire of the Jurchen Jin in the first decades of the thirteenth century. Few battles are more symbolic of the shift in the Asian power balance than the fight in 1214–15 to capture the Jin capital of Zhongdu on a site near present-day Beijing.

      Temüjin left few records and many of those who knew him well were illiterate. He was an outcast from his Mongol tribe following the death of his high-ranking father, and was said to have learned how to judge others and exploit their differences from his mother, Hoelun. He overcame the disadvantages of his youth and became a successful Mongol prince and warlord, his exploits and his political cunning attracting Mongol warriors to his side. Since the tribal rivalries of the Mongolian plain were a constant source of jealous friction and political uncertainty, there seems little doubt that Temüjin’s own astuteness, ruthlessness and shrewd judgement, as much as his success in almost constant fighting, explain his emergence as the dominant figure over the Mongol peoples. By 1206, he had become at last Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongols, the name by which he is commonly remembered.

      In 1211, he embarked on the conquest of northern China, then ruled by the Jurchen Jin dynasty, which had captured the region from the Song some years before. His army probably totalled about 120,000, though the exact figures are not known. Mongol society was organized for military operations, since all men between the ages of fourteen and sixty were liable to serve when required. They learned to ride and to fire the powerful composite bows of the steppe horsemen from an early age; large hunting trips were used as surrogates for military training. Genghis Khan insisted on tough discipline, executing anyone who abandoned the fight or began to plunder before the order was given. The Mongol army was organized into units based on a decimal system: 10,000 men made a division, or tümen; each division was divided into units of 1,000, those into hundreds and the core unit was one of ten men. They were adept at ambushes and feints, and retained exceptional mobility.

      © Sayf al-Vâhidî

      A print showing the Mongol emperor Genghis Kahn (c.1162–1227). After uniting all the Mongol tribes under his leadership, Genghis Kahn conquered the whole of northern China, ruled by the Jin dynasty, including the siege and conquest of the vast capital city at Zhongdu.

      The standard Mongol military practices, however, could not easily be deployed against large cities unless