William the Conqueror is probably the best known soldier and
general of the eleventh century. The conquest of England in 1066 was not only a
major historical event, it was also one which has stuck in the minds of at
least the English-speaking world. William was a minor when his father died in
1035, and the struggle to impose himself upon Normandy was long and bitter. It
was only with the help of his overlord, Henry I of France (1031–60) that the
greatest rebellion against him was defeated at the battle of Val-ès-Dunes in
1047 of which we know almost nothing. However, the rebel leader, Guy of
Burgundy, took refuge in the castle of Brionne where he held out for three
years. Thereafter, although William’s position improved, the propensity for
rebellion remained. In the wake of his capture of Tours in 1044 Geoffrey
Martel, count of Anjou (1040–60), turned his attention to Maine, where the
major city of Le Mans was captured in 1051. After the count of Maine’s widow,
her son Herbert and daughter Margaret had fled to the Norman court, Geoffrey
seized both Domfront, a fief held of the count of Maine by the Bellême family,
and the Norman town of Alençon, offering as an inducement to their soldiers a
licence to ravage in the Norman lands. William failed to take Domfront by coup
de main and built four castles, probably earthwork and wood structures, to
blockade it while maintaining an active posture which enabled him to rally his
troops against an effort to relieve it by Geoffrey, whose forces retired intact
and watchful. William now faced a difficult situation for their presence
prevented him from ravaging. However, William had apparently kept a close eye
on Alençon in the meantime, and, when he realised that its defences were weak,
suddenly seized it, dealing so harshly with its garrison that Domfront decided
to come to terms. The campaign certainly illustrates William’s generalship,
with its tight control over events. It indicates how the castle and its supply
dominated war yet not at the expense of mobility which was the key factor in
William’s victory. It should also be added that Geoffrey was a good general,
but here he was at the very edge of his authority, so his power was attenuated
and his ability to bring it to bear without enormous effort limited. William’s
own stabs against Maine failed for much the same reasons, until after
Geoffrey’s death in 1063 when, taking advantage of the internal conflict then
rending the house of Anjou, he advanced against Le Mans with fire and sword as
described by William of Poitiers.
In the years 1051–2 there occurred a major shift in
alliances in northern France. The Norman dukes had long been close allies of
the Capetian royal house. William’s father, Robert I, had sustained Henry
against the revolt of 1031 and in return the king had supported his son as we
have seen. But the Capetians had also long been friendly with the house of
Anjou, who had been their allies against the grave threat posed by the counts
of Blois-Champagne, most recently accepting their conquest of Tours in 1044
from the Blésois.6 When these two allies quarrelled over Maine, King Henry
supported the Angevins, posing a grave threat to William whose régime was still
far from secure after his recent minority. In 1053 William of Arques, a great
lord of upper Normandy with many allies, rebelled and his castle of Arques,
newly built and well-fortified, was the focus of events. William’s men at
Rouen, his principes militiae, tried unsuccessfully to interfere with the
preparation of Arques, but when William arrived he built a counter-castle and
settled down to a siege. King Henry led an army into Normandy, ravaging as he
went, but was ambushed and, although he got supplies into Arques, his force was
so weakened that the castle fell soon after his withdrawal. In the following
year Henry tried again with two armies, one under Odo, his brother, striking
into Eastern Normandy and the other under his own command, supported by the
Angevins, advancing via Evreux. The duke adopted the classic tactic of
shadowing his enemy, and one of his detachments fell upon French ravagers at
Mortemer causing such loss that both French armies withdrew. The same tactics
of shadowing the French, preventing them from spreading out to forage, were
employed in 1057 and this time William fell upon the French and Angevin army as
the tide cut it in two crossing the Dives at Varaville, causing very heavy
losses. It was at this battle that, according to Wace, archers played a notable
role. There is much to admire in William’s generalship in all these campaigns.
He was a master of the contemporary techniques of war and succeeded in
impressing his vassals and preserving their loyalty. Perhaps even more
important is to notice the scale of effort which he managed to sustain despite
his internal difficulties. He, and indeed his opponents, mounted major
campaigns interspersed with sieges and lesser affairs over a period of very
nearly ten years. This obviously says a great deal about the economic
efficiency of the manorial economy, but it also says a great deal about the
ability to organise, recruit and sustain armies. It is a theme not much
discussed by modern historians of the period, but it was of course a vital
skill in the circumstances of the crusade.
Even William’s admiring biographer, William of Poitiers,
admits that he evaded battle whenever possible. Indeed, Varaville was the only
occasion before Hastings when he engaged on any scale in the open field and it
was then only in the most favourable circumstances. The qualification ‘on any
scale’ is important, for there were many occasions during these years when
there were fights, but they were of a limited kind which could only have
limited results. In 1053 and 1054 King Henry simply absorbed minor defeats.
William’s was not a technique without battles – rather he committed himself to
a style of war which avoided heavy losses and conserved his forces, preferring
the tactics we have noted above. In this he showed wisdom, for battle on any
scale could be very expensive and was terribly hazardous. The battle of Cassel
on 22 February 1071 was fairly widely noted by contemporaries. In 1070 Baldwin
VI of Flanders died and the succession of his fifteen year old son, Arnulf III,
who was supported by his mother Richilde, was contested by the dead count’s
brother Robert I the Frisian, father of Robert II of Flanders who went on the
First Crusade. Robert rallied support especially in northern Flanders and
struck suddenly at Cassel where Arnulf’s army was concentrated; in its ranks
was Eustace II count of Boulogne, a major vassal in Flanders and in England and
father of three participants in the First Crusade, Eustace III of Boulogne, Godfrey
de Bouillon and Baldwin. Arnulf was supported by his overlord Philip of France,
whose aunt Adela had married Baldwin V of Flanders (1035–67), amongst whose
forces was a contingent of ten knights from Normandy led by William FitzOsborn,
a small force whose size indicates that the Conqueror, who had married Baldwin
V’s daughter Mathilda, was very much more concerned with affairs in England.
Robert seems to have advanced quickly toward Cassel, evidently seeing battle as
offering a quick decision and needing to force it before the superior strength
of his enemies could gather. We do not know for certain who held Cassel at the
start of the battle, the details of which are largely lost to us. One source
suggests that Robert lured the allies into an ambush by a feint, but beyond
this there is confusion. What interests us is the extraordinary outcome of this
battle. Arnulf III was killed and so was William FitzOsborn; Richilde was
captured by Robert’s men, and Robert the Frisian was captured by Eustace II of
Boulogne. Within a month the king of France had concentrated a much larger
force at Montreuil and was ready to resume the war, but he was forced to
recognise Robert who was freed in exchange for Richilde and was elevated to the
county through the support of Eustace II. Baldwin of Hainault, the other
surviving son of Baldwin VI, later unsuccessfully contested the county of
Flanders, but was to die on crusade with Robert’s son, Robert II, in 1098.
Robert the Frisian had had little option but to seek battle, for most of his
support was in the poorer part of Flanders and his rival had powerful allies.
The immediate outcome of his strategy was poor reward for his bravery, although
in the long run the death of Arnulf opened the way for a favourable political solution.
Over a century later the risks were just as great. In September 1198 Richard I
of England (1189–99) fell upon the army of King Philip of France (1180–1223) as
it tried to relieve Courcelles, inflicting a severe defeat during which the
bridge at Gisors broke throwing the French king into the water where he ‘had to
drink of the river’. Richard reported these events in a letter to the bishop of
Durham which has a confessional, almost apologetic note, reflecting the hazards
of resorting to battle: ‘In doing this we risked not only our own life but the
kingdom itself, against the advice of all our councillors’. Such sober
reflection from one of the greatest of all medieval generals explains why major
battle was only to be undertaken in the most favourable circumstances, as
William showed at Varaville, or for the highest stakes, as in the Hastings
campaign.
Because of its spectacular and decisive results, Hastings is
perhaps the most celebrated of all medieval battles. Certain aspects of the
Hastings campaign need to be emphasised, however, because they illuminate the
nature of war in the late eleventh century. In the first place the scale of the
undertaking, requiring the collection and construction of a fleet, was
enormous. The devoted biographer of William tells us that when his hero
announced his intention of conquering England as news came through of the death
of Edward and the usurpation of Harold, many advised him that such an
undertaking was beyond the strength of the Normans and some seem to have
refused to take part or promised, then reneged. Indeed it was a huge
undertaking. William was obliged to consult with his magnates in a series of
conferences at Lillebonne, Bonneville-sur-Touques and Caen at which they agreed
to unprecedentedly heavy contributions to the army and, also apparently, to the
provision of ships such as the sixty raised by William FitzOsborn. It seems
likely that William established the number of troops which each lord owed him
according to the extent of his lands, and then concluded agreements over and
above such figures for the special circumstances of the great expedition.
According to Wace, William FitzOsborn exhorted them to provide at least double
their obligations and this caused anxiety amongst the magnates lest the increased
contribution be seen as a precedent, leading the duke to assure them
individually that this would not be so. Indeed, in one sense the critics of the
expedition were proved correct, for William had to seek resources outside
Normandy. The presence of Flemish, French and Breton troops in the host at
Hastings, and afterwards amongst the new aristocracy of England, is too well
known to need discussion here. The importance of Eustace II of Boulogne in the
Bayeux tapestry testifies to this, and we know of the presence of soldiers from
Poitiers. The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio suggests the presence of South
Italian Normans. This indicates the range of his recruiting effort. Wace gives
some hint of the diversity of the Conqueror’s arrangements when he speaks of
soldiers coming to him in groups and singly. ‘Many wished for the duke’s lands
should he conquer England. Some requested pay and allowances and gifts. Often
it was necessary to distribute these, to those who could not afford to wait.’
Overall some 14,000 men including sailors were mobilised, of whom something
like 8,000 were effectives, including 3,000 cavalry. Amongst the 5,000 foot
were a lot of archers who appear, from the Tapestry, to have been lightly
armed, and a sizable corps of what William of Poitiers calls pedites loricati,
heavily armed footsoldiers. In the battle the duke would find it convenient to
divide his force into divisions of Normans, Bretons and French. This vast
assemblage must have stripped Normandy of troops, but such exposure was
possible because two inveterate enemies had died in 1060, Henry I of France and
Geoffrey Martel of Anjou. The regency of France was in the hands of William’s
father-in-law Baldwin V of Flanders. This huge force had to be concentrated
near Dives-sur-Mer where the fleet gathered in the summer of 1066, and it had
to be supplied, for William of Poitiers tells us that William would not allow
the troops to plunder and so arose what he describes as an extraordinary
situation: despite the presence of squadrons of knights, farmers could get on
with their business and travellers come and go without fear, an interesting
comment on contemporary chivalry!
This concentration of forces at Dives of some 14,000 men and
2,000–3,000 warhorses presented a formidable problem of supply. The task of
feeding and watering them, it has been suggested, demanded 9,000 cartloads of
grain, straw, wine and firewood along with eight tons of iron for horseshoes
alone. They generated 700,000 gallons of urine and five million pounds of horseshit
during their stay and this had to be removed. In addition there must have been
many draught animals and indeed the Bayeux tapestry shows us military supplies
being moved on specialised vehicles. Warhorses were very valuable and
supporting sizable numbers of them was a grave problem. Recent research
indicates that the breeding of specialised strains of horses was a great
burden, requiring enclosed parks to isolate mares and suitable stallions in
well-found studfarms. In addition, it must be recognised that in western Europe
there were few ranges where horses could graze and that these animals were
stall-fed with grain and hay. They thus competed with men for grain while for
the provision of hay, meadows needed to be developed. This explains the
contrast between the west where the development of bigger and heavier animals
was a necessary consequence of this costly regime, and the east where the
availability of ranges in Asia Minor and the Euphrates plain, as in North
Africa, fostered the development of a lighter breed, though the progress of
this distinction was limited in the eleventh Century. Supporting such animals
was a major drain on the peasant surplus at the best of times. In conditions of
war, feeding horses presented terrible problems. In August and September of
1914 von Kluck’s First Army, which marched on the right of the German attack
under the famous ‘Schlieffen Plan’, had 84,000 horses consuming two million
pounds of fodder per day, or twenty-four pounds of grain and hay each. Although
they were advancing in a most favourable season the cavalry were tired by the
time they crossed the French frontier and in poor condition by the start of the
Battle of the Marne on 6 September. The lot of the draught animals was worse
and the guns were badly delayed. Difficult as the conditions of 1914 must have
been, they were infinitely better for the survival of animals than in the
eleventh century. William’s concentration at Dives took place at a most
favourable time of year and his subsequent deployment enjoyed good fortune. However,
the crusaders faced much more difficult conditions and the state of the horses
rapidly became a major preoccupation for the army, as we shall see. Once into
the Anatolian steppe, animals were very vulnerable, and it seems unlikely that
any western Europeans animals survived the journey.
Contemporaries were deeply impressed by the fleet which
William gathered, and which is so graphically illustrated in the Tapestry. Its
actual size was not definitely known to contemporaries. The ship list of
William the Conqueror suggests that the Norman lords should have produced some
776 ships, and Wace recollects being told that the fleet which sailed numbered
700 less four, though he had also found the figure of 3,000 written down. It is
not necessarily the case that the Norman lords produced their quotas and
figures as low as 400–500 have been suggested, but most writers believe that a
total of between 700 and 1,000 concentrated at Dives where the army was
gathering. William of Poitiers tells us that the duke ordered that ships be
constructed, but it is unlikely that a huge fleet could have been built in the
period between the death of the Confessor and the landing at Pevensey on 28
September. The evidence suggests that the duke acquired existing ships, in
particular hiring them along with mercenaries from Flanders. The greater number
of them were merchantmen suitable for the transport of horses and supplies as
well as men, though a number of longships and skiffs were undoubtedly included.
The emphasis on shipbuilding in William of Poitiers and the Tapestry probably
owes much to the excitement generated by this activity. But evidently William
was pressed to find enough ships, for the Tapestry appears to show unseasoned
wood being cut for shipbuilding. It seems unlikely that William had special
transports made for his horses, such as those used by the Byzantines, for the
Tapestry does not show anything resembling them and the written sources do not
give any indication of such exotic vessels. By early September the concentration
of forces at Dives seems to have been complete and the fleet sailed on a
westerly wind for St Valéry where it waited fifteen days until a gentle
southerly took it to England. By any standards this was a remarkable logistical
and organisational achievement. It is important to recognise that while
exceptional, it was not unique.
King Harold of England knew of the intentions and
preparations of the duke of Normandy; indeed William of Poitiers records the
reception given to an English spy. By May Harold set in train his own
preparations, hastened by the raids of his dissident brother Tosti on southern
England. His fleet was apparently slow to mobilise, but he may well have
attempted a spoiling attack on William’s forces across the Channel, while on
land his troops stood ‘everywhere along by the sea’ for the English had an
efficient military system. This Anglo-Saxon fyrd was centred on the retainers
of the king and the great thegns and perhaps some mercenaries, supplemented by
shire levies whose localities provided them with support. The peculiarity of
the Anglo-Saxon military tradition was the failure to develop any effective
cavalry. Although the élite of the army rode to battle there is every evidence
that they fought on foot. Thus, although they could move quickly across
country, they lacked battlefield mobility, the key factor in the coming war.
Then on 8 September the Anglo-Saxon fleet and army broke up, the former going
to London with losses, because, as the Chronicle tells us: ‘the provisions of
the people were gone’. It is easy to contrast this logistic disaster
unfavourably with the triumph across the Channel. However, to maintain an army
and a fleet as long as this was a major achievement, especially as considerable
forces stayed in the north to guard against the threat of attack from Tosti and
Harald Hardrada. Moreover, when Harold heard of the Norse attack on York, he
was able to gather his army and strike very quickly, which suggests that not
all had dispersed. Probably the extent of his demobilisation has been
exaggerated and the best troops remained with him. Furthermore, the English
fleet took to the sea quickly to cut off the Normans after they landed on 28
September. On 12 September the Norman fleet left its concentration area in and
around Dives and sailed east to St Valéry, just as Harold heard of the landing
of Harald Hardrada at York with a fleet of 300–500 ships reinforced by Tosti;
they defeated earls Edwin and Morcar at Fulford Bridge on 20 September with a
great slaughter on both sides and took possession of York. By 24 September
Harold, after a whirlwind march, was at Tadcaster. On 25 September he marched
his troops through York and surprised and slaughtered the Danish army at
Stamford Bridge. Hearing of the Norman landing at Pevensey of 28 September, he
turned his army south and after spending 5–11 October raising more troops in
London, marched out to confront William whose spies warned him of the coming of
the Anglo-Saxon army on 13 October. The next day the battle took place and
Harold was killed. The organisational effort made by both sides in this summer
of 1066 was remarkable and it points to the abilities of commanders. It was
paralleled elsewhere in Europe at this time. The Norman conquest of South Italy
and Sicily reached its climax in the years 1071 and 1072 when the major cities
of Bari and Palermo fell. Bari was the last major bastion of Byzantine power in
Italy and its powerful fortifications were deservedly feared. When Robert
Guiscard began the siege on 5 August 1068 he knew he was starting a major
undertaking and that blockade by sea was vital. In 1060–1 the Normans had
demonstrated their willingness to take to ships with a series of raids on
Messina which culminated in its seizure by a force which included 700–1,000 cavalry
whose mounts had to be ferried across to Sicily. This successful lodgement
opened the way for a conquest made easier by divisions amongst the three major
Muslim Emirates. Bari was a much greater operation in the course of which a
land blockade was established and complemented with a sea blockade, during
which the Norman ships were linked together to form a barrier to penetration
into the port. A Byzantine relief force did break in, however, in 1069, and a
sea and land diversion against Brindisi was heavily defeated. However, the
Normans enjoyed aid from Pisa whose fleet brought troops and crossbowmen for
land as well as sea operations. The defeat of a major Byzantine fleet in 1070
opened the way for negotiations which culminated in a negotiated surrender of
the city in April 1071. This long operation was then followed by the siege of
Palermo begun in August 1071, to which the Hauteville brothers, Robert and
Roger, brought a force of fifty-eight vessels. On land they built siege
machines and on sea a blockade was established which was not totally successful
for a North African fleet broke through to provision the city. However, in the
end hunger brought the city to a negotiated surrender on 10 January 1072.
These remarkable operations in the south were paralleled as
feats of organisation by the German expeditions to Italy. Documentation on the
military organisation of the German kings is sparse, but the Indiculus
Loricatorum is a list of the reinforcements called for by Otto II (973–83)
after his defeat in 982 at Cortone. A total of 2,090 mounted men were called to
service on the basis of what appears to have been established servitia debita
which formed the recruiting base of the imperial army. On the marches of
Germany a regular levy, the census, was imposed upon the Slavs in order to
maintain the garrisons and military forces of their conquerors. In 1026 Conrad
II (1024–39) undertook the expedition to Italy which led to his imperial
coronation. It is not generally seen as a major military action but Italy was
unfriendly. After the crowning in Milan, Conrad ravaged the lands of hostile
Pavia, though he was unable to take the city. He had to put down a revolt in
Ravenna before proceeding to Rome. The imperial coronation was brilliant, but
afterwards a German and a Roman quarrelled over a hide and severe fighting
broke out involving the entire German army. The ‘Investiture Conflict’ was a
German civil war involving bloody battles in a land where the castle was emerging
as an important factor. During its course Henry IV led several major
expeditions to Italy including the siege of Rome in 1083 in which Godfrey
participated when siege machinery, including rams, was constructed. The
regularity and scale of the Italian expeditions of the German emperors made a
profound impact on the emergence of the German knightly class, the
ministeriales. In the twelfth century the codes which governed their conduct
were elaborated, particularly with regard to their duties on the ‘complicated
and onerous imperial ventures into Italy’, with both heavy fines for failure to
comply and fitting out allowances payable from their lord. In 1154 the
archbishop of Cologne required that all holding land worth five marks should
go, and they were given ten marks for equipment together with supplies, horses
and pay of one mark per month once over the Alps. In 1161 the archbishop sent
500 men at a cost of 10,000 marks.
The organisation of war was the primary concern of
government, but even at its best it remained, by our standards, simple. In
essence those who held land of the king owed service in one way or another and
this obligation co-existed with an older Germanic tradition that all free men
had a duty to serve the king in moments of emergency. We have noted the
establishment of quotas in Germany and the same process was at work in
Normandy, although it should be stressed that ‘feudalism’ was emergent in the
late eleventh century and that as yet there was only ‘a tangle of incipient
feudal customs, partly built up from below’.39 In any case, powerful rulers had
sources other than nascent feudal obligation for the raising of great armies.
It is now clear that paid troops had always played a major role, as they did,
for example, under William Rufus. The distinctions between mercenary, endowed
knight and household knight are not clear – those serving from obligation
beyond some fixed period might well be paid, and there was a strong tendency to
argue about how far obligations went. The aristocracy and the knightly class
certainly provided a large pool of skilled manpower trained in war from which
soldiers could be recruited. Moreover, it was upon the royal household, their
wealth and their leading followers, that the Norman kings relied to raise
armies. These professional groupings of household followers around the king –
paid and aspirant, or endowed and paid and hoping for better – were what the
king relied on for the core of his army and its command. In time of war such a
body could expand and serve as the command force of a great army. Through them
the sinews of war were channelled, for in the end it was money which made
victory. Although such bodies, such military households, can only be documented
from the early twelfth century, it is unlikely that they were invented – rather
they must have evolved over a period of time. In 1101 Henry I negotiated an
arrangement with Robert II of Flanders whereby the latter swore to be his man
and to provide 1,000 knights in return for a fee. William Rufus almost
certainly made the same arrangement when he met Robert in 1093. It is
interesting that the treaty specified that each knight was to be provided with
three horses. It seems likely that this kind of organisation was the secret of
Rufus’s reputation for raising and paying armies. A medieval army was a composite
of forces around a core of loyal leaders whom we can regard as generals. They
were not merely military men; they also formed an administrative corps for the
vital task of handling and paying out money. Clearly both William Rufus and
Henry I needed such a body if they were prepared to take on large Flemish
forces. Of course we cannot describe such organisation with any certainty
outside the Anglo-Norman sphere, and clearly for Suger such capacity was a
matter of wonder. What is of interest is that such capacity had already come
into being amongst the Normans on the eve of the First Crusade; they were a
major element in the army of conquest which Urban II called into being in 1095.
This organisational development indicates the degree to which war in the late
eleventh century was not a matter of instinct, of ‘kick and rush’, but of guile
and organisation, in short of generalship. This explains the rarity not of
battle but of battle on a large scale. They understood the context in which
they were making war. To attack your enemy’s economic base, isolate his
castles, starve his population, these were surer methods and more applicable to
the usually limited objectives for which men fought. However, there were
occasions when the stakes were so high that all had to be risked on the throw
of battle, and on these occasions the men who directed things sought to ensure
that their chances of victory were as great as possible in what was the most
risky of all undertakings.
