William, Duke of Normandy, later known as William the Conqueror, won the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 10661, defeating and killing the Anglo-Saxon king Harold on a Sussex hillside. The Norman conquest that followed reshaped England's language, ruling class and institutions in ways still felt nearly a thousand years later.
Few single days have changed a country as completely as 14 October 1066. When it began, England was Anglo-Saxon, ruled by a king crowned that January. When it ended, its king lay dead on a Sussex hillside and a duke from across the Channel had won a kingdom. Nearly a thousand years later we still speak the language, and live under the institutions, that this one battle set in motion.
The battle from both sides
Two perspectivesWilliam of Normandy crossed the Channel to make good his claim to the English throne, and at Hastings he had to break Harold's army in a single day before English reinforcements gathered. His combined force of archers, infantry and mounted knights charged the shield wall on Senlac Hill again and again and could not break it. The turning point came from a flight, feigned or real, that drew the English down from their ridge and let the Norman cavalry cut apart the men who had left the line. Harold's death, by tradition an arrow to the eye, collapsed the defence. William's victory won him the crown and began the Norman transformation of England's language, law and ruling class.
Harold Godwinson reached Hastings exhausted, having just marched south from destroying a Norwegian invasion at Stamford Bridge. He drew up his army, the household huscarls and the fyrd, in a dense shield wall along the ridge, where for most of the day it held every Norman assault. The discipline that made the wall unbreakable also undid it: when parts of the line broke ranks to chase a retreating enemy, the Norman horse turned and destroyed them in the open. As evening came Harold was killed and the wall finally gave way. His defeat ended Anglo-Saxon rule, and it remains the last time England was conquered by a foreign army in battle.
Three kings, one crown
The trouble began when Edward the Confessor died in January 1066 without a son2. The English crown passed to Harold Godwinson, the most powerful earl in the land, but two others believed it was theirs: William, Duke of Normandy, who claimed Edward had promised it to him1, and Harald Hardrada, the fearsome king of Norway. By autumn, both were coming to take it.
Two invasions in one autumn
Hardrada struck first in the north. Harold marched his army the length of England and destroyed the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge on 25 September. Three days later, William landed on the south coast at Pevensey.2 Harold turned his exhausted men around and force-marched them south again, some 250 miles, to meet a fresh invader. He had won one kingdom-saving battle already; he now had to win another.
The shield wall on Senlac Hill
Harold took the high ground on Senlac Hill and formed the classic Anglo-Saxon defence: a shield wall, ranks of housecarls and militia locked shield to shield along the ridge. Behind that wall, on foot, they were nearly unbreakable. William's army was different, a combined force of infantry, archers and mounted knights, and for most of the day it hurled itself uphill against the wall in vain.
The feigned flight
The battle turned on discipline, and the lack of it. At one point part of William's line broke and fled, and the English on the wing chased after them, down off the ridge and into the open, where the Norman cavalry wheeled and cut them to pieces. Seeing how well it worked, the Normans did it again on purpose.3 Twice more they pretended to flee4, and twice more drew defenders off the hill to their deaths. The shield wall, still strong, grew thinner.
The arrow and the end
Late in the day it broke. Tradition, and the Bayeux Tapestry, holds that Harold was struck in the eye by an arrow5 and then cut down by Norman knights. With their king dead the English fought on around his body and then gave way. William had his victory, though it had cost him the whole of a long day and much of his army.
The Conquest
On Christmas Day 1066, William was crowned king in Westminster Abbey.1 What followed reshaped England to its roots: a new French-speaking ruling class, castles rising over every shire6, a great survey of the land recorded in the Domesday Book, and centuries of English fused with Norman French into the language spoken today. One hillside, one afternoon, and a nation remade.