![]() ![]() On October 14, 1066, William’s archers fired the first shots in the Battle of Hastings. The two armies met at Hastings, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) from London. However, Harold had returned swiftly from the north with his own army. He had planned to march on London, where he would seize the throne. English Heritage notes that they could not follow Harold’s exact route as “logistics and A roads prevent this”.On September 28 William landed at Pevensey, on the south coast of England, with about 5,000 men. More than 1,066 Norman and Saxon soldiers will gather for a replay of the battle and a group of re-enactors – “Warriors of 1066” – will pay tribute to the soldiers by retracing King Harold’s march from York to Battle after the battle of Stamford Bridge. The size of the armies on either side at Hastings is unknown but neither is likely to have exceeded 10,000 men, Morris said: “Many were killed during the battle but thousands more would die in the years that followed, as English resistance led to Norman repression.”Įnglish Heritage is marking the anniversary with various events. More than 100,000 people died as a result of the Norman Conquest. He founded Battle Abbey on the battlefield site, as penance for the blood shed that day. Harold was killed, the English fled and William assumed the throne, transforming the country’s political, social and geographical landscape. The battle was one of the bloodiest, even by medieval standards, and arguably the most important in English history. His new book, titled William I: England’s Conqueror, will be published in the Penguin Monarchs series on 25 August before the 950th anniversary of 1066.Īt the battle of Hastings, William’s Norman army defeated King Harold’s English army. ![]() Morris is the author of acclaimed books that include King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta and The Norman Conquest. “Without this passage, the evidence of a cheerful and affable conqueror collapses.” This made me want to read his words for myself. What made me particularly suspicious was that none of these historians provided a direct quote from Hugh of Flavigny, only a paraphrase of what he wrote. It’s very hard to find good, trustworthy characterisations of people from 950 years ago, even if they are kings, so a genuine encomium of praise that mentioned all these qualities should be gold-dust. Noting that previous biographies refer to William’s “generosity” and “cheerfulness”, among other adjectives, he added: “The surprising thing to me was how little all these biographers made of this material. It’s clear from looking at academic biographies written in the past 50 years that it has always been mistranslated.” ![]() There’s no good evidence for a genial, jolly, jovial William the Conqueror. Morris said: “So this house of cards came crashing down. The praise was not about William but “this admirable man”, Abbot Richard of Verdun. The new version revealed that the adjectives do indeed appear in the text, but in relation to a little-known abbot. He asked a Latin expert, Professor David D’Avray of University College London, to translate it. “I looked at this passage and thought it doesn’t look right to me.” The chronicle has been in print since the 19th century, in a multi-volume collection titled the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, but only in the original Latin – “flowery Latin at that, not the normal administrative Latin that most medieval historians – like me – can cope with,” Morris said. “Every biography of William on my shelf mentions Hugh’s description of William the Conqueror in the context of the king’s funeral in 1087.” Morris decided to go back to the original text, which was written by a Burgundian monk called Hugh of Flavigny after William’s burial in St Stephen’s Church at Caen in Normandy. He told the Observer: “It’s very difficult assessing people’s personalities at a distance of a millennium, but academics for the past 50 or 60 years have written that … he was quite jovial, cheerful, eloquent, good-natured – not the brute you might suppose.” The discovery was made by a British historian, Marc Morris, while researching his forthcoming book on William of Normandy, whose conquest of England in 1066 altered the course of the nation’s history. ![]()
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