Evolution of the traditional Battle of Hastings engagement narrative

For eight hundred years, historians did not try to reconcile real places on the ground with the landscape or events that are described in Battle of Hastings contemporary accounts, let alone attempt a military analysis.

'Primary sources', with trustworthy original information, petered out in the late 12th century. The first coherrent composite narrative, albeit without commentary or analysis, appeared a hundred years later in the Prose Brut Chronicle. It established some core features of subsequent histories and chronicles, most notably that contemporary account place names that sound something like Hastings or Pevensey referred to modern Hastings and modern Pevensey, and that William's camp was therefore at modern Hastings where he had built a castle. Historians had never contested the seven contemporary account statements that Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield, but Holinshed in the late 16th century was the first to include it in the narrative, explaining that the battlefield was "whereas the abbeie of Battell was afterward builded".

Thus, the first military historians were presented with a centuries-old established narrative: The Normans were camped on the coast at modern Hastings, the English were coming from London, and the battle was fought around Battle Abbey. The Abbey's name seems to be self-evident proof that this is right.

If the battle was fought around Battle Abbey and the Normans were heading northwest along the Hastings Ridge from modern Hastings, the only place where a 6000-man open shield wall could be placed on rising ground is the south slope of 'Battle Ridge' (referred to elsewhere as 'Senlac Hill' and 'Senlac Ridge'). It is not actually a ridge but a 500m section of the main Hastings Ridge that has been eroded to the north and south to give the appearance of a 2km long cross-ridge that faces south - see heat relief map below, Battle Abbey labelled 'x'.

The first person to analyse the battle was the great French historian Augustin Thierry in his milestone 1824 book 'The Norman Conquest', perhaps the first modern history book. We have him to thank for some key components of the traditional narrative: that Harold was hot-headed, prematurely racing down to the Hastings Peninsula with a fraction of his available men due to impetuosity; that the English army arrived at Battle on the 12th October intending to try a surprise attack on the Norman camp; that Harold realised the Norman camp was too well guarded, so was "obliged to moderate his impetuosity"; that Harold "suddenly changed tactics, entrenching himself behind ditches and palisades to await a Norman attack"; that Harold refused to retreat to safety, thinking it would be an abrogation of his responsibilities to abandon land that had been trusted to his care; that Harold deployed his shield wall on a "long chain of hills" at the place "which as ever after been known as Battle".

In effect, every subsequent reputable historian has been trying to insert military and geographical details from the contemporary accounts into Thierry's core narrative. We dispute it all. We think every major aspect of Thierry's narrative is wrong. Historians have been trying to achieve the impossible by providing evidence to prove a false theory, not unlike the way that astronomers tried and failed for 1500 years to prove Aristotle's theory of geocentrism. It should come as no surprise then that they have had many stabs at it without reaching any sort of consensus. 

To be fair, Theirry's narrative is based on plausible interpretations of statements from the contemporary accounts. He could not verify them on the ground because he was nearly blind. He had no reason to think that his theory might be implausible because he was writing before Margary had discovered the route of the Rochester Roman road, before the science of geography had been invented, and before archaeological excavations had proved that modern Hastings was not the place where the Normans camped.

With this in mind, we will romp through the major Battle of Hastings military analyses, to see how the traditional post-Thierry narrative has evolved. Every military analysis tries to match Thierry's theory that the shield wall was deployed as an open line on Battle Ridge. We will note what reasons, if any, each author gives for William's failure to outflank the English line. We will also note where, if at all, each author locates the Malfosse, an immense non-fluvial ditch at the battlefield that is described in the several of the most detailed contemporary accounts.

Major engagement scenarios at the traditional battlefield

The first detailed military analysis of the Battle of Hastings appears in E S Creasy's 1851 book 'Fifteen Decisive Battles'. Creasy says that he was determined to match the geography to the contemporary account descriptions: "It is not difficult to compose a narrative of its principal incidents, from the historical information which we possess, especially if aided by an examination of the ground". Nothing in the text. Perhaps he was referring to his hachure map (above), the first graphical depiction of the battle theatre geography and troop dispositions. If so, a bit more time examining the ground would have been helpful. His map is less accurate than Yeakell & Gardner's made some 75 years earlier, not least in that it omits the eastern arm of Battle Ridge.

Creasy shows the Normans attacking from the south and southeast, with William's middle division on the line of the Hastings Ridge crest. He puts a woodland between Telham Hill and Battle, suggesting that the Normans attacked along the Hastings Ridge from Telham. William, from his position on the ridge crest, could see both flanks and send them commands by voice or hand gesture, as described by Wace. Creasy depicts the English shield wall on the middle and western part of Battle Ridge, straight and extending about 800m from Tony Robinson's bench (which is at the roundabout junction of Marley Lane, Upper Lake and Lower Lake). He offers no reason why the Norman cavalry would not scoot around the open ends of the English line to attack Harold direct, which seems especially incongruous with the unopposed Norman right flank. He does not suggest a possible location for the Malfosse.

Mark Anthony Lower proposed the first reasoned location for the Malfosse, at Oakwood Ghyll, and a subtly different engagement scenario in his 1853 paper 'On the Battle of Hastings'. His theory is rooted in the Chronicle of Battle Abbey for which he was the first translator. CBA says that the Normans dressed for battle at Hechelande. It goes on to say that Hechelande was a hill near Telham, which Lower interprets to mean Telham Hill. Lower suggested that the Normans attacked from this battle camp rather than along the Hastings Ridge crest, in other words that they attacked from the south rather than the southeast.

One clue in Lower's favour is that Wace says the Normans cross a valley and a stream during their attack. Some historians, Ramsay for one, think this valley refers to the dip in the Hastings Ridge between Battle and Starr's Green. But the dip is just a downward undulation in the constantly undulating crest of the Hastings Ridge. It is not a valley in the normal sense of the term and it has no stream at the bottom. Wace and Carmen say that the enemy camps are visible to each other. Carmen says that the battlefield was untilled because of its roughness. Notwithstanding ambiguity about the valley, none of this would apply if the Normans attacked along the Hastings Ridge crest, but they would all apply if the Normans attacked from Telham Hill.

Subsequent historians are divided between Creasy's attack along the ridge crest from Telham and Lower's from Telham Hill. Creasy's narrative makes more military sense, but only matches a couple of the most general battlefield descriptions in the contemporary accounts. Lower's better matches the contemporary account battlefield descriptions - albeit still weakly - but makes less military sense. The slopes are much the same, so why would William choose to fight on gloopy fields to the Abbey's south rather than the firm dry Hastings Ridge crest to the Abbey's southeast?

Lower makes no more effort than Creasy to explain why William might have failed to send his cavalry around the open ends of the English line to lop off Harold's head in the first 15 minutes. The first to try was Edward Augustus Freeman, in his enormous three-volume 1869 reference 'The History of the Norman Conquest, Its Causes and Its Results'.

Freeman's idea (above) was to stretch the English shield wall to the tips of Battle Ridge, where he says that the western flank would be protected by a ravine and the eastern flank by a boggy stream confluence. He proposed that the front of the shield wall was protected by a palisade, the rear by the edge of the Andredsweald. His shield wall would have been 1.8km long and 150m deep, stretching from Saxon Wood in the west to Battle Sewage Works in the east (50.912, 0.477 to 50.917, 0.504). He clearly thought that John of Worcester was wrong that the English were "drawn up in a narrow place", and Wace was wrong that William ordered his flanks to stay within voice command distance, although he does not say why.

Freeman was the greatest Battle of Hastings scholar of his generation. His erudite and detailed analysis of the Norman Conquest became the standard reference for decades. His towering reputation suppressed naysayers, even about some of his wilder speculations, most famously that the English constructed a palisade in front of the shield wall. Tolerance of critics did not improve much after his death in 1892 because he left Thomas Archer as a Huxley-esque champion to swat detractors in his stead.

It is unfortunate then that many of Freeman's novel battlefield theories are faulty. His nemesis was J H Round who had a running feud with Freeman and Archer for 20 years. Freeman tried to bully Round into renaming the Battle of Hastings to the Battle of Senlac. Round retaliated by documenting Freeman's errors in his 1895 book 'Feudal England'. His main gripe was that there is no possibility that the English built a mile long palisade in the few hours they had to fortify the battlefield. Daniel Defoe, the novelist, says that the ground in this area was so muddy that it took 22 oxen to pull a cart with one log and progress was so slow that it sometimes took two years to drag a log to Chatham. There is no reason to believe that the ground was any less gloopy in the 11th century, so it might have taken a year to build a mile long palisade. Practical considerations aside, as Round said, there would be no point in having a shield wall behind a palisade.

More relevant here, Round spotted that Freeman had: passed off speculation as fact; supported his theories with falsified translations; hid weak reasoning with Homeric rhetoric; used biased interpretations of some contemporary account statements; and retrospectively hid retractions of false claims in footnotes. Round does not mention, perhaps because he was stronger with genealogy than geography, that Freeman also invented the ravine that is supposed to have protected Harold's western flank and that the 'boggy stream confluence' is easily firm enough to support mounted horses. Moreover, it subsequently transpired that the Andredsweald, which Freeman claims to have protected the English rear, was no closer than three miles from Battle.

Freeman reckoned that the Malfosse was the stream valley adjacent to Battle Cemetery, immediately north of the left flank of his shield wall. That would match CBA's description of it being near to "where the fighting was going on", but would contradict CBA's description of it being non-fluvial, precipitous and deep enough to kill those that fell in.

Hereford B George was an expert in mapping military history to geography. He applied this technique to many battlefields in his 1895 book 'Battlefields of English History'. Like everyone else, he struggled with the Battle of Hastings, failing to match events to the geography at Battle. His excuse was that: "the appearance of it [the landscape] has been so much changed, that reconstruction of its condition at the date of the battle must again be imperfect". He was not helped by apparent conflicts in the contemporary account battlefield descriptions: "Beyond this one can only conjecture, as one statement seems more probable than another".

George's compromises resulted in an engagement scenario very similar to Freeman's. His shield wall (above) is similar to Freeman's, only 30% longer at 2.5km. He does not depict the Norman troop dispositions, but says in his copy that they attacked in three divisions from Telham. He does not say what might have prevented William flanking the line, but he depicts a stream at one end of the line and the Malfosse at the other. His Malfosse is the Battle Sewage Works feeder stream below Little Park Farm road. It is a poor match to the contemporary account descriptions, 500m from where the fighting was going on, fluvial and in a shallow-sided 3m deep valley that would not kill anyone.

Freeman says of the army size that: "I fear that the exact number, or even any approach to the exact number, either of the Norman invaders or the English defenders, is one of the things that historians must, however unwillingly, leave uncertain." Yet, he was clearly hedging because a 2.5km shield wall would need 5000 men per rank and it was many ranks deep. How many? Freeman points out that some contemporary accounts describe the English spears as looking like a forest, so perhaps 8 to 10 ranks deep. Oman reckoned 10 to 12. Using the same model, in the first edition of his book (much reduced in later editions), Oman estimated that Harold had 25000 men. Presumably George was thinking 30000 to 40000.

The larger the armies, the easier it is to devise a defendable position at Battle but the worse the match to the contemporary account battlefield descriptions and the more fanciful the logistics of getting men and horses across the Channel to disembark in less than a day. In 1896, Willhelm Spatz calculated that neither army could have had more than 7000 fighting men. Every subsequent engagement analysis, bar Lawson, assumes that both armies had less than 10000 fighting men, most assume 6000 to 8000.

Wilhelm Spatz published his battle analysis in 1896, calculating that neither army could have had more than 8000 men. Most subsequent analyses agree. Sir James Ramsay was the first to analyse the battle with this revised army limit in his 1898 book 'The Foundations of England'. It also contained a new engagement scenario. Ramsay noticed that while some contemporary accounts say that the English were attacked in their camp, others reckon that they were on the move when they encountered the enemy. He therefore deduced, for the first time as far as we know, that the English camped at Caldbec Hill. He proposed that they were heading towards the Norman camp at Hastings when they encountered the Normans coming the other way. He thinks they did as Carmen suggests, immediately occupying the nearest hill, which happened to be at the place now known as Battle. This part of his theory has a wide following, including English Heritage and Kelly DeVries on behalf of the Royal Armouries.

Based on his engagement scenario, Ramsay devised new troop dispositions (above). He shows the Normans attacking from Telham in three divisions, as usual, but with huge gaps. He shows a 500m gap and a wood on one side, a 250m gap and the Hastings Ridge to the other. He clearly rejects Wace's statement that William ordered his flanks to stay close enough to receive commands by voice and hand signals, but does not explain why.

The English are deployed as "three sides of a square" on the southern side of the Hastings Ridge. His proposed shield wall is more compact than predecessors, closer to the summit and following the contours to make it all on rising ground. But the English are not guarding the Hastings Ridge crest, thereby implausibly allowing the Normans to ride up the ridgeway and lop off Harold's undefended head while the shield wall faces in the wrong direction. Ramsay reckons that the Malfosse is the Western Avenue stream, which seems unlikely, being fluvial, shallow-sided, only 3m deep and 500m from his battlefield.

Louis Salzman produced a Battle of Hastings account for Volume 1 of the Sussex Victoria County Histories, first published in 1905. He depicts the Normans attacking along the Hastings Ridge crest from Telham. His engagement scenario (above) features the first dogleg shaped shield wall. His idea is that it better follows the contours, keeping more men on rising ground. Not as many as he thinks though, because his contours are wrong. Morillo's diagram below has a similar deployment and accurate contours (we have relabelled his 270' contour to 82m). It shows that Salzman's shield wall has both flanks on level or falling ground. He does not mention what might have prevented William flanking the English line in his text, which is a shame because he leaves a 200m gap to the western streamhead, a 100m gap to the eastern streamhead. These gaps are easily wide enough for the Norman cavalry to slip behind the English line with impunity.

One of Freeman's confederates was Major E. Renouard James who provided topographic advice. It sounds like he was ashamed of his involvement. Forty years later he said:  "As to my share in it, I can only vouch for the comparative topographical accuracy (the Ordnance 6-inch map did not then exist), but disclaim all responsibility for the way in which the position of Harold and the details of the battle are shown." He commissioned Frank Henry Baring to make a new topographic survey - above with extract below - and wrote a military study with troop dispositions for the 1909 Royal Engineer's Journal. It is still popular today. R Allen Brown considered it the standard engagement scenario in his 1982 book 'The Battle of Hastings'. He labels the Malfosse at the most northerly of the Powder Mill stream tributaries, adjacent to the Battle Recreation Ground tennis courts.

Major James reckons the English had 8000 to 10000 fighting men in a gentle curve with refused flanks. This army size is plausible, his troop dispositions are not. The English line is 750m long, about the post-Spatz average. The Norman divisions are in a 1.5km line. The Norman middle division is so long that it faces the entire English line, leaving the Norman flanks with no one to fight. The Norman right flank is on the far side of the Hastings Ridge, 1km away from William and unable to take commands. It is also so far north that they could just walk up behind the English line to attack Harold direct.

James' diagram shows streamheads preventing the Norman cavalry from flanking the English line but James realised they would provide no significant barrier. He simply says that Harold must have known that the Normans would not try to flank his line, so something must have been there to discourage them. James' Malfosse is up by the Claverham Community College. It looks unlikely, fluvial, shallow-sided, less than 5m deep and more than 800m from his battlefield.

F H Baring wrote his own Battle of Hastings analysis as an Appendix to his Domesday Tables, first published in 1909. His engagement scenario is similar to that of his erstwhile employer Major James, but he elaborates that the slope north of the English line was steep enough to discourage the Normans from outflanking the English line. Baring does not give a reason why they would not simply ride 200m past that slope onto the ridge crest from where they could attack Harold from behind and above. It has not stopped successors jumping on his bandwagon, claiming that the steep slope north of the church prevented the Normans outflanking the defence. It is nonsense. Not only would it have been trivial to circumvent, but it is not that steep anyway. It is crossed by two public footpaths that even geriatric old crocks like ourselves can climb with relative ease. Virile young Norman treasure hunters would barely have noticed the slope was there.

Edward Foord published his Battle of Hastings theory in 1915. His troop numbers are creeping back up again, to around 15000 per side. His shield wall is the same length as James's, so twice as deep. His rather implausible novelty is to have the Normans only attacking on the most adverse terrain in the middle and left of the English line. He reckons that the English right flank on the shallowest slope was 'probably not attacked'.

James was not the only Freeman associate to have a change of heart. In the first edition of his standard military reference 'A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages', published in 1885, Charles Oman agreed with pretty much everything that Freeman said. For example, he describes the shield wall as "a mile long and 150 yards broad". In the second edition, published in 1924, his shield wall had been reduced to 1km by 50m with deeply refused flanks. Considering that the refused flanks would have thinned the line by 50%, presumably Oman was thinking that it is more difficult to outflank because the flanks cross streamheads. As far as we can see, it just means the Norman cavalry would have to ride an extra 250m north, which is nothing in this context. Never the less, Oman's 1924 disposition was adopted by the U.S. Military Academy as a teaching aid. Their reworking (below) is used by Wikipedia.

There was a 20 year hiatus after Oman. Then, in 1943, Frank Stenton published his standard reference book 'Anglo-Saxon England', which proposed a new troop deployment and new engagement scenario. His Battle of Hastings analysis is complicated by a nonsensical description of Telham Hill being: "the highest point on the nine miles of road between Hastings and the modern town of Battle". Perhaps he was referring to Telham, which is on the road, rather than Telham Hill which isn't, but both of them are 30% lower than the five mile stretch of road between Ore and Blackhorse Hill. We assume it is an aberration.

Stenton's engagement scenario assumes that the Normans were heading west along the Hastings Ridge ridgeway from Starr's Green Lane, and kept going to form their three divisions to the south of Horselodge Plantation. He proposes a straight shield wall that stretched from 450m west of the ridgeway to 250m east. He reckons that Baring's topography maps (reproduced by James above) show that the "ground falls away steeply enough to protect the flanks". Only Baring's topography maps show no such thing, and even if they did, it would not prevent the Norman cavalry riding around the ends of the line.

Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred H Burne analysed all the Battle of Hastings engagement scenarios that had been produced up to 1950, concluding that there is a "disparity of views". He said: "How are we to judge between such eminent authorities? When the doctors disagree, who shall decide?" He tried to be Surgeon General himself, going back to basics to recalculate the most likely events for himself. Alas, it just begat another different engagement scenario (above), albeit reminiscent of Stenton's, especially with the route of Norman deplpoyment. He presumably realised that Stenton was wrong about the ground falling away steeply beyond the shield wall, so he - implausibly and without explaining why - extends and redirects the eastern stream to provide that protection instead.

Burne includes a couple of novelties. One is the location of a hillock, labelled 'H', where he thinks a company of English troops made a stand after being drawn out of the shield wall. He proposes that this it the location of Tapestry Panels 53 and 54, depicing the Normans attacking a hill with the English fighting back-to-back. He does not explain why it is not there now. Secondly, he proposes a new position for the Malfosse, adjacent to the most northerly of the Powder Mill stream tributaries, immediately opposite the tennis courts. It could be important because he marks it away from the stream valley, presumably having correctly interpreted the non-fluvial nature of the Malfosse from the contemporary account descriptions. We went to look. There are no ditches there now and no evidence any earlier ditches. It is a shame that Burne does not explain his thinking because, as far as we know, he is the only person, apart from ourselves, to have deduced that the Malfosse was non-fluvial.

Burne makes one important point. Every account hitherto gives the impression that Battle Abbey is on the western slope of the Hastings Ridge, 50m or so from the crest. Burne is the first to point out that the original Abbey is not on the side of the ridge. It is on the original ridge crest (shown with dotted lines on his diagram). It just seems to be 50m from the crest because the ridgeway was diverted around it. It is important because one of English Heritage's major arguments in defence of the orthodox Battle Abbey battlefield is that ther eis no obvious reason why William would have commissioned the first Battle Abbey on the side of a hill, other than that it was where Harold died. But it is not on the side of a hill. It is on the ridge crest, exactly where it would have been built for ease of construction, good line of sight, usefulness as a defensive garrison.

Major General John 'Boney' Fuller covers the Battle of Hastings in his monumental 1954 work 'A military history of the Western World - Volume 1'. He depicts the shield wall as a 600m gentle curve across the summit of Battle Ridge. Alas, his map is riddled with errors: labelling 'Marley Road' as 'Sedlescombe Road', labelling the A2100 south as 'To Telham Hill' when it goes to Telham on the ridge, etc. Worse, his shield wall places no part on rising ground. However, being a military man, he has thought about why the Normans did not outflank the English line, depicting ravines at both ends of the English line, labelling the ground east and far north as 'Closely wooded', implying that it was impenetrable woodland, and labelling the ground to the west as 'Probably marshy'. He says in his text that the ground to the immediate north was cut into impassable ravines 'covered with brushwood'. Of course, none of these geographical features were there, and there is no such thing as impenetrable mature deciduous woodland.

Colonel Lemmon's 1956 Field of Hastings (above) is the one shown to us on our school visit for the 900th anniversary. He depicts the shield wall as a 700m straight line, equally distributed either side of the Hastings Ridge crest. As far as we know, he is the first to propose this symmetrical disposition. He endorses Lower's Malfosse location at Oakwood Ghyll, even though it contradicts all the contemporary account Malfosse descriptions. He depicts the Normans attacking along the Hastings Ridge crest from Telham, with the right flank on the far side of the crest. It is incoherent with the English right flank on level ground, and the left flank on falling ground. It has the Norman right flank on the far side of the ridge crest, out of William's sight and unable to see or hear his commands. It has no flank protection and 100m gaps between the shield wall and the flanking streams, with no explanation for why the Norman cavalry would not ride through the gap to attack Harold direct.

George Slocombe published his initial troop deployment diagram in his 1961 book about William. Inexplicably, he positions the English line 300m north of Battle Ridge on a level part of the Hastings Ridge. He depicts the Malfosse as a 250m long ravine behind and partially beyond the English line even thought there is nothing there now and no reason for it to be there then. And, most bizaarly, he posts Harold's small number of Huscarls defending the entire eastern side of the battlefield while his thousands of fyrds defend the western side. We imagine he is even more confused than most of these other initial troop deployments.

Franklin Hamilton published his unique take on the engagement in his 1964 book '1066'. He depicts woodland on the crest of Battle Ridge protecting the English rear, presumably having miscalculated the southern edge of the Andredsweald. He omits the ridgeway that should pass through the English line, and he imagines the Normans with a bazaar left-skewed cavalry disposition. It is doubly odd because he shows the west side of the battlefield to be bounded by a marshy stream (which was not there). If he had skewed the Norman cavalry towards William's right flank, they could have ridden around the unprotected end of the English line to attack Harold direct. Unfortunately, there is no mention of what he was thinking in the text. What he depicts is one of the two least plausible possibilities. 

Brigadier C N Barclay says that he became frustrated by poorly researched analyses of the Battle of Hastings, explaining that historians had misconstrued the contemporary account engagement descriptions because they are not soldiers. Major James, Lieutenant-Colonel Burne and Colonel Lemmon are obvious exceptions, but Barclay was unimpressed by their work. He outranked them and decided to set the record straight for the 900th anniversary, in his 1966 book 'Battle 1066'. It is unhelpful. His geography is distorted with 'Senlac Hill' and the English shield wall and Asten Brook (which he labels 'Sandlake Stream') inexplicably shifted 250m northwest. His hield wall is straight and implausibly long at 1250m. He says in his text that the English line is "admirably protected by sloping ground", but depicts the English left flank on level ground. He explains that the Norman cavalry was prevented from outflanking the English line by "precipitous ground" beyond the ends of the shield wall - perhaps taking his lead from Stenton - but it is not on his diagram and not on the ground.

David Armine Howarth published '1066: The Year of Conquest' in 1978. He depicts a 1km long straight shield wall with the Normans attacking from the south and along the Hastings Ridge crest to the southeast. His scenario looks unlikely, with nearly half the English army on level or falling ground, and a 200m gap to the flanking streams. As far as we know, he is the first to depict a ridgeway on the crest of Battle Ridge, following the route of the modern '1066 Country Walk'. It makes the big issue even more obvious: the Norman cavalry could simply ride west along the 150' contour to the ridgeway, then ride northeast along the ridgeway to lop off Harold's unprotected head with the entire English army facing in the wrong direction. No excuses are offered in his text. 

Smurthwaite devised a troop deployment watercolour (above) for his 1984 book 'The Complete Guide to the Battlefields of Britain'. It is pretty but less than complete. Indeed, it looks like an inferior variation of Ramsay's weird troop deployment, in which the English do not bother guarding the Hastings Ridge. Even though the Normans could ride up the ridgeway to lop off Harold's undefended head in the first 15 minutes, Smurthwaite seems to think they tried instead to squeeze into the only formation that might allow the English to hold out all day.

Perhaps there was some nostalgia for Ramsay's theory in the late 1980s because Amanda Clarke's 'The Battle of Hastings', published two years after Smurthwaite, also depicts the English not bothering to guard the Hastings Ridge (above). Her scenario is doubly implausible because she adopts James' Norman troop disposition with the Norman flanks so far wide of the shield wall that half of William's army is too far away to receive commands and they have no one to fight, while William's hard-pressed middle division are left to fight Harold's elite huscarls on the most disadvantageous terrain. She offers no reason why the Norman flanks would not march or ride around the unprotected ends of the shield wall to attack Harold direct. He engagement and troop deployment scenario is the least implausible of all the post-Spatz scenarios we have seen.

William Lace published 'The Battle of Hastings: Library Edition' in 1996 (above). He has the Normans attacking from Telham Hill, mainly from the south. He has a very odd English troop deployment with the shield wall some 1250m long and 400m deep, and Harold up near the modern museum on Western Avenue. We guess that the diagram has been corrupted somehow. Lace endorses Lower's Oakwood Ghyll location for the Malfosse and (wrongly) depicts marshland preventing the Normans outflanking the shield wall.

Michael St John Parker published 'William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings' in 1996. It is aimed at children, so he simplifies as much as possible. His contours make it look as if the shield wall is entirely on rising ground, but they are wrong. He has the Normans attacking along the ridge crest from Telham, mistakenly captioned 'Telham Hill'.

Stephen Morillo created a synthesis of shields wall proposals (above) that had been suggested hitherto for his 1996 book 'The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretations', published by Boydell. It has a straighter version of Salzman's dogleg shaped shield wall, more evenly divided across the Hastings Ridge crest. He implies that a stream protects Harold's right flank, but shows nothing protecting his left flank, and does not mention any protections in his narrative. He depicts the Norman right flank on the far side of the Hastings Ridge crest, out of Williams sight and unable to receive his commands.

Frank McLynn published '1066: The Year of the Three Battles' in 1998. His diagram (above) is a reshaded and re-typefaced version of Fullers, without attribution as far as we can see. It even repeats Fuller's error in labelling the Marley Road as 'Present Sedlescombe Road'. It therefore repeats all the problems with Fuller's troop disposition. McLynn switches Fuller's ravines at the ends of the shield wall - shown as square dots on his diagram and as shading on Fuller's - for 'men on hillocks', protecting the flanks. Considering that Harold had no archers, it is difficult to imagine what he thinks these men might achieve and there are no hillocks where they are depicted.

Richard Tames published '1066: a decisive battle' in 1998. It depicts the shield wall as 1000m and straight. It is a brief overview aimed at children, so he strips down the engagement details. His engagement scenario (above) is based on Howarth's, only rotated clockwise by 20°. He shows a breakdown of the Norman troop dispositions and proposes an English camp in the fork of the west flanking stream, near the modern Post Office. Absence of contours makes it difficult to see what is going on but it has the same issues we mention about Howarth above: half the English army are on level or falling ground and there is nothing to prevent the Norman cavalry riding around the open ends of the English line to attack Harold direct. He offers no reasons why the Normans might have failed to outflank or loop the shield wall.

Christopher Gravett published 'Hastings 1066: The Fall of Saxon England' in 2000 (above). His troop deployments are identical to Tames', 1000m long and straight, with the same tactical weaknesses. He reintroduces Howarth's ridgeway on the crest of Battle Ridge, highlighting one of the great weaknesses of the traditional shield wall, that the Norman cavalry could ride west to the ridgeway, and use it to attack Harold direct. He offers no reasons why the Normans might have failed to outflank or loop the shield wall.

Julian Humphrys included a Battle of Hastings analysis in his 2006 book 'Clash of Arms: Twelve English Battles'. It should have been the most important assessment of recent years, having been published by English Heritage and endorsed by the Battlefields Trust. It is better described a quirky. His shield wall is one of the shortest ever proposed, straight and barely 500m long. He explains that the English position: "... was a strong one, with the rear protected by ravines and forest, the flanks by sharply falling ground. English and the front by steep slopes and a marshy clay valley". None of these natural protections were there, but it would make no difference if they were because his shield wall is 250m shy of the western end of Battle Ridge (which he labels 'Senlac Hill'). The Normans could have ridden around the open English west flank on level ground even if there were ravines and/or forest beyond.

Kelly DeVries produced a more pictoral engagement scenario for his 2006 book 'Battles of the Medieval world : 1000-1500 : from Hastings to Constantinople'. He is a renowned medieval warfare expert, professor of medieval history, editor for the Journal of Medieval Military History, and Honorary Historical Consultant to the Royal Armouries. It sounds like he knows what he is talking about. He depicts (above) a 600m shield wall on Battle Ridge, which he refers to as Senlac Hill. He depicts the Normans attacking from Telham Hill and along the Hastings Ridge, to the south, southeast and east of modern Battle. His diagram implies that woodland prevents the Normans riding around Harold's left flank, but he does not mention any protection in his narrative and depicts nothing protecting Harold's right flank. He offers no reasons why the Normans might have failed to outflank or loop the shield wall.

John Malam published 'The Battle of Hastings' in 2007. He depicts the shield wall as 750m long and gently curved. It is another brief overview aimed at children. His engagement scenario is similar to Tames', only with some relief reintroduced. He disguises the weakness that half the shield wall is on level or falling ground by showing a general indication of 'High ground' and 'Low ground' rather than contours. He offers no reasons why the Normans might have failed to outflank or loop the shield wall.

DeVries updated his engagement theory for the 2017 magazine '1066 The Battle of Hastings', published by Medieval Warfare. It is something of an embarrassment for someone of his reputation. His 3D relief map erroneously combines the Hastings Ridge and Battle Ridge, under the single name 'Senlac Hill'. So, his diagram shows only one ridge, with an East-West orientation, like Battle Ridge, but carrying the A2100, labelled 'Hastings Road' and 'To London', like the Hastings Ridge. His engagement scenario is therefore even less coherrent than the others. It is a shame because he is the first since George to indicate the Malfosse where it should be vis-à-vis the battlefield, which is to say immediately adjacent. There is no ditch on the Battle Ridge crest now, and DeVries does not explain his thinking.

What it all means

A H Burne went through much the same analysis as above in his 1950 reference book 'Battlefields of England', producing the composite shield wall diagram above.

As we mention earlier, Burne concluded, euphemistically, that there is a "disparity of views". He does not mention how big the disparities are. Armies have been proposed with as few as 5000 men and as many as 25000. The shield wall might have been as short as 500m or as long as 2000m. It might have been straight or curved or doglegged. It might have had refused flanks or might not. The Normans might have attacked along the Hastings Ridge crest or from Telham Hill or both. The English might have been attacked in a camp at Battle, or they might have been attacked while they were marching from a camp at Caldbec Hill. William might have been prevented from flanking the English line by any combination of streams, ravines, bogs, steep slopes and/or impenetrable woodland - none of which could have been there - or he might have spurned a quick and easy victory in favour of an uncertain outcome by fighting on the most adverse terrain. The Malfosse might have been adjacent to the English left flank, or 500m north of the left flank, or 500m or 800m or 1500m north of the right flank, although none of these places fits any of the contemporary account descriptions.

More than 20 different initial troops deployments are depicted above. Dozens of others are described in books and papers about the Conquest, of which there are nearly 1000. Assuming that most of them have something novel to add, there might be hundreds of different engagement scenarios. It is no wonder that R Allen Brown once lamented that the only certainty about the battle is that the Normans won.

One point to take away is that when historians claim almost universal agreement that the Battle of Hastings was fought at Battle Abbey, there is a natural assumption that they also agree on how the battle was fought, but they don't. As Burne says, it is a case of "quot homines tot sententiae", there are as many opinions as there are men, only worse because some of them have more than one opinion.

Another is that no engagement scenario at the traditional battlefield matches more than a handful of the 30 plus battlefield clues described in the contemporary accounts, and then only the most general of clues, as we explain here. Each author is saying that his engagement scenario is less implausible than the others, but the other authors disagree. They are right to disagree. 'Less implausible' should not be mistaken for 'likely' or even 'credible'. The only chance that any of them are right is if all the contemporary account battlefield descriptions are wrong, apart from one or two paragraphs in seven of them that say or imply Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield.

In practice, historians only agree that the Battle of Hastings was fought at Battle Abbey. They only think this because they believe these seven contemporary accounts which contain statements that say or imply that Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield. We explain here why we think they are duplicitous or have been misinterpreted.

Without 'Abbey on the battlefield' evidence, the traditional Battle of Hastings narrative is baseless. It only fits a handful of the most general battlefield clues from the contemporary accounts, while contradicting dozens of others. It contradicts the geography, military tactics and events described in the contemporary accounts, as we explain here. The engagement depends on the Roman road from Rochester passing along the Hastings Ridge, which Margary disproved fifty years ago. It also depends on the Normans camping at modern Hastings, which has been disproved by dozens of archaeological excavations and twenty or so other inconsistencies, as we explain here and here. The confusion about the Norman landing and sea camp is caused by a misunderstanding about the location of a place named 'Hastinges' or 'Hastingas' in the contemporary accounts. We explain here the source of this confusion. 

In our opinion, the traditional Battle of Hastings narrative is baseless, and the battle was fought elsewhere, as we describe in our Sedlescombe Battlefield blog here.


Extracts used from our Battle of Hastings library

Brigadier C N Barclay - Battle 1066, 1966
R A Brown - The Battle of Hastings, Anglo-Norman Studies, 1980
A H Burne - The Battlefields of England, Methuen, 1950
A Clarke - The Battle of Hastings, Dryad Press, 1988
E S Creasy - Fifteen Decisive Battles, Richard Bentley, 1851
K DeVries - Battles of the Medieval world : 1000-1500 : from Hastings to Constantinople, Barnes & Noble, 2006
K DeVries - 1066 The Battle of Hastings, 2017, Medieval Warfare
E A Freeman - The History of the Norman Conquest, Its Causes and Its Results, Clarendon, 1869
H George - Battles of English History, Methuen & Co, 1895
C Gravett - Hastings 1066: The Fall of Saxon England, Osprey, 2000
F Hamilton - 1066, Dial Press, 1964
D A Howarth - 1066 : The Year of Conquest, Viking Press, 1978
Julian Humphrys - Clash of Arms: Twelve English Battles; English Heritage, 2006
Major James - The Battle of Hastings, The Royal Engineers Journal, January 1907
Colonel Lemmon - The Field of Hastings, Budd & Gillatt, 1956
W Lace - The Battle of Hastings, Greenhaven Press , 1996
Lawson - Observations upon a Scene in the Bayeux Tapestry, the Battle of Hastings and the Military System of the Late Anglo-Saxon State, Society for Medieval Military History, 2017
M A Lower - Observations on the landing of William the Conqueror, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 1849
M A Lower - On the Battle of Hastings, Sussex Archaeological Collections, Volume VI, 1853
J Malam - The Battle of Hastings, Cherrytree, 2007
S Morillo - The Battle of Hastings. Sources and Interpretations, 1996
F McLynn - 1066 The Year of Three Battles, Pimlico , 1999
C Oman - A History of the Art of War 378  - 1515, Methuen; First Edition 1885, Second Edition 1924
Sir J Ramsay - The Foundations of England, Swan Sonnenschein, 1898
J H Round - Mr. Freeman and the Battle of Hastings, EHR, 1894
J H Round - Feudal England, Swan Sonnenstein, 1895
J H Round - The Battle of Hastings, Sussex Archæological Collections, (vol. 42) 1899
George Slocombe - William, The Conqueror; 1961; G P Putman's Sons
F Stenton - Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford University Press, 1943
R Tames - 1066: a decisive battle, Oxford : Heineman Library, 1998