I will fall with him. Stay for as long as you can be useful to the King, then make haste to your loved ones. Take this to Torfida.’ Hereward handed Einar a small purse of leather, which held a lock of his golden hair. ‘God be with you, my friends.’
‘God be with you, Hereward,’ all three replied in unison.
Preparations in the Norman ranks were equally well advanced.
They numbered over 9,000 and were organized into three army groups: Breton allies to the left on the western side, French and Flemish supporters and mercenaries to the right on the eastern side and the bulk of the force, the Normans, in the centre. William had adopted an unusual pattern of deployment. He sent his archers forward, just out of range of the English bowmen, his infantry arranged in deep columns behind them and his squadrons of cavalry drawn up in the rear. His own command position was central to the last squadron of cavalry, identified by the papal pallium, held aloft by Pope Alexander’s legate to Rouen.
Flying next to the pallium, stiffened by gusting winds from the English Channel to the south, were William’s standard, the Leopard of Normandy, and the standards of all the warlords of Normandy and surrounding territories: Eustace, Count of Boulogne, an opportunist with a brutal reputation; Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, who led the prayers before the battle; Hugh de Grandmesnil, a warrior of great repute; Hugh de Montfort, a resolute soldier of fortune; William’s half-brother, the ruthless and ambitious Odo, Bishop of Bayeux; and William’s trusted henchmen who would go anywhere for a fight — Walter Gifford, William of Malet, William of Evreux, William Fitzsbern and William Warenne.
The Duke’s battle cry was short and to the point. He rode out in front of his infantry, in the space between them and the archers, and above the distant din of derision from the English, bellowed in his deep, coarse voice.
‘You have travelled with me on a great voyage to fight on a distant shore. You have done so in the noble tradition of our Viking ancestors. This fight was not of our making, nor was it born from the desire for naked conquest; this land was rightfully granted to me by King Edward of England, a wise and gentle king. We are here to claim what is rightfully ours. The Pope knows this and gives us his holy blessing; the rest of Europe knows this and lends its support. The richest land in northern Europe is before you. Fight to make it a Norman kingdom for your children and your grandchildren. You are the bravest of the brave.’
As the Norman roars echoed up the hill, the English hollered back, until the whole countryside was filled with the ear-splitting tumult of almost 20,000 indomitable men.
Now, there was nothing left for either army to do but fight.
On William’s signal, his archers and crossbowmen advanced within range and began their fusillade at the English shield wall. As they did so, his infantry launched its first assault, making slow progress towards Senlac Ridge. They sang the ‘Song of Roland’ as they went, but the melody soon faded, to be replaced by the shocking clash of sword against sword and the agonizing cries of foe against foe.
After almost an hour of fighting, neither the Norman archers nor their infantry had made much impact on the English shield wall. Every time there was a minor breach, it was filled by equally formidable housecarls from the King’s reinforcements. The circular shields of the English allowed them to close or open their wall at will, gave them much more freedom to brandish their battle-axes and meant that they could adopt the Roman ‘testudo’ — the turtle — to cover themselves against hails of arrows.
The Normans’ kite-shaped shield was much better suited to combat on horseback, where the narrow base could protect the legs of the mounted warrior. As the Normans withdrew, the ground was littered with their dead; hundreds of men had perished — almost five Normans to each Englishman.
It was time for William to launch his much-vaunted cavalry.
His powerful destriers, despite carrying 200 lbs of man and armour, managed a reasonable gallop, even up the significant gradient of Senlac Ridge. As their ground was less steep, the Bretons reached the shield wall first, but did not have enough momentum to dent it. They had to turn sideways to strike with their axes and swords, making them easy prey for the defenders. Much the same happened on the French-Flemish right. In the centre, the much more formidable elite Norman squadrons did make some breaches, but they were easily filled; Hereward and his companions rushed to any vulnerable points to reinforce the wall until replacements arrived from the rear.
Hereward was issuing vital commands in between close-quarter encounters with Norman knights who had breached the defensive line. He brought several down by scything their huge destriers from under them; others he hewed out of their saddle with a single sweep of his legendary axe. At crucial moments, Harold rode along the line, encouraging his men, but they hardly needed it. Their line was holding and the Normans were dying in droves.
William sat impassively on his destrier and waited. He knew the day was still young and that this would be a bloody battle of attrition at the cost of many lives. Eventually, in what appeared to be an English breakthrough, the Breton left reeled and retreated at a gallop. Naively thinking the battle won, large groups of fyrdmen on the English right broke ranks and hurried after them.
Hereward and his comrades were off at full pelt even before the King issued his urgent command: ‘Stop them! Hereward, get them back into the shield wall! Hurry!’
William had also seen the English fyrdmen break ranks and immediately galloped into the fray with his Matilda Squadron. English housecarls had followed the Fyrd to try and re-establish discipline. When Hereward and his companions arrived, they organized a redoubt on a small hillock. Martin sounded his horn to summon a recall and Hereward ripped the jerkin off a dead Norman archer and waved it above his head on a spear to signal a rallying point for the fyrdman, now scattered far and wide. Within minutes, a new wall was formed on the hillock and the fyrdmen had closed ranks behind the housecarls.
Harold ordered the English archers to put up a lethal volley of arrows above William’s advancing squadron just as it got within 100 yards of the redoubt. William’s horse took an arrow through its neck and collapsed under him, violently throwing him to the ground. A great cry of alarm went up from the Normans, who feared their leader was dead. But the Duke quickly regained his feet and was soon on a new mount, raising his helmet to show that he was still alive. He waved his Baculus furiously, berating the fleeing Bretons and demanding that they turn and fight. His dramatic intervention worked and the Breton cavalry formed up behind his Matilda Squadron to launch another assault.
Hereward tried to keep the fyrdmen in tight formation as he ordered the housecarls to make a disciplined withdrawal back up Senlac Ridge. But when William’s elite cavalry careened into the wall, many breaches were forced. Hereward had no choice but to order the shield wall to disengage and retreat en masse. Despite the valiant efforts of small groups of housecarls to defend the escaping fyrdmen by using their spears to try and slow the Norman momentum, chaos and carnage were inevitable.
William recalled his cavalry. Fortune had smiled once more on one of Harold’s battles — but this time on his opponent. The headlong rush by the Fyrd was a folly which might prove to be decisive. There had been heavy casualties all along the English shield wall, so much so that when Harold ordered it to tighten its formation, a line of defence that had started at over 750 yards was now barely 500 yards long.
Hereward and his companions were among the last to get back into position, marshalling the final laggards and helping some of the wounded to get back to relative safety.
Both William and Harold looked at the sun as it moved towards the tall trees in the woods to the west. Morning had turned into afternoon. Reports were coming in that hundreds of housecarls were approaching from London and would soon reinforce Harold’s position.
With the battle hanging precariously in the balance, Harold turned to Hereward.
‘I need an hour less in the day, or five hundred more men. If William continues to throw his cavalry at the wall, it will break before the sun falls behind those trees.’
‘Sire, if we’re still holding at four hours past midday, William will have to retreat and we will have him in the morning.’
‘Yes, Hereward. But I don’t think we can hold for four hours; two and a half, three at the most. Let’s rally the men. Somehow, they will have to buy us that hour.’
William had also done his calculations. After twenty minutes of regrouping, he ordered attack after attack: first infantry, then cavalry. Then, after a brief respite for regrouping, the onslaughts were repeated again and again. Like the English housecarls, he was battling against the hourglass as well as a ferocious enemy. The fighting was savage, with both sides taking huge losses, as William sacrificed his men to shorten Harold’s shield wall.
Crucially, as it shrank to protect its own flanks, it began to turn into a crescent, allowing the Normans to reach the flat terrain of Senlac Ridge. From there, their cavalry could gain much more momentum and their infantry
