War in Britain: English Heritage

The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in the late 6th century did not bring an end to the conflict, but fuelled a new one with the Saxons intent on crushing the Celtic church. At the battle of Chester, an army of Northumbrian Anglo-Saxons massacred 1,200 Celtic monks from a monastery in Bangor. Though they carry no arms,’ said the Saxon warlord, trying to justify the atrocity, ‘those monks by crying to their God still fight against us.’ Celtic pirates from Ireland called Scotti added to the chaos, assaulting both Saxons and Britons on the west coast from Wales to Scotland. In western Scotland, these Irish raiders established settlements and eventually displaced the native Picts, giving their name to the land.

The original name of the Irish settlement in north western Scotland was Dalriada, centred on the hillfort of Dunadd, sited on a rocky outcrop surrounded by boggy land. The Scots and Picts fought each other for hundreds of years. Based on the evidence of inscribed stone monuments, especially that in the churchyard of Aberlemno, the Picts fought in a distinct manner. They favoured both square and round shields, the square shields being decorated with swirling Celtic patterns, and when faced by cavalry, they formed into a kind of phalanx in which men armed with long spears or pikes protected warriors in the front line armed with shields and swords. The use of long spears carried by soldiers in dense formations became a characteristic of Scots warfare and reoccurred in the later Middle Ages, when the formation was known as a schiltron.

The Picts defended their land with tall stone chimney-like fortifications called brochs. These had no windows, only a door, but were perfect for herding one’s livestock and family into at a moments notice when Scots raiders were sighted. The Picts were not always on the defensive and in 740, the Annals of Ulster record a major assault on Dalriada when the Pictish warlord Angus mac Fergus captured the stronghold and drowned the Scots commander, forcing others to row back to northern Ireland. Eventually, the close contact between the Picts and Scots blurred relations and periods of peace saw intermarriage between the aristocratic families of both sides. In 843 the Scots king Kenneth mac Alpin succeeded to the throne of the Picts. Elsewhere in Britain, the line between Celt and Saxon was still strong and in the 8th century Offa, Saxon king of Mercia, gave physical reality to the cultural divide by erecting a massive earth rampart that ran the length of the Welsh border from Treuddyn to Chepstow. It was not a fortified barrier like Hadrian’s Wall but served more as a boundary marker discouraging cattle raiders. Today, it is called Offa’s Dyke.

POETIC WARRIORS

English poems and Celtic myth cycles provide a remarkably intimate view of what it was like to be a warrior. Take for example The Wanderer, an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem, which opens with the image of a man sailing alone, across a winter sea.

‘As I recall the slaughter of my comrades, there is no one I can open my heart to. The man mindful of his reputation does not reveal his sadness. Ever since I buried my lord, ever since I lost my companions, I must mourn alone. Now I have left my home land, I sail the icy seas in search of a new lord. A generous giver of gold. A lord who will welcome me into his drinking-hall and divert me from grief.’

He lists the virtues a good, mature warrior should possess, but above all, he must accept the passing of time. ‘Wealth is fleeting, comrades are fleeting. Man is transient.’ It is an enormously melancholic poem and one can imagine that it was written to be recited to older warriors, seated around a table crowded with drinking cups, expressing their own feelings of sadness at the end of their youth and the onset of uncertain middle age.

The spectacle of warfare is captured vividly in the 8th century epic Beowulf, the longest surviving poem written in Old English. The hero is a Geat, an inhabitant of either Denmark or Sweden, and he battles against a monster called Grendel, but the context is one of raids and counter-raids, the very stuff of early medieval combat. The Geats arrive by boat: ‘Boar-heads glittered on glistening helmets Above their cheek-guards, gleaming with gold.’ Animal ornaments were believed to confer special powers on their wearers and the helmets described are typical of types found at Coppergate in York and at Sutton Hoo, known as a Ridge-type helmet based on Late Roman models. The Geats are welcomed by a friendly warlord, giving the poet ample opportunity to describe their equipment: ‘Bright were their byrnies, hard and hand-linked; In their shining armour the chain-mail sang … The sea-weary sailors set down their shields, Their wide, bright bucklers along the wall … Their stout spears stood in a stack together Shod with iron and shaped of ash.’ A byrny was a shirt or tunic of mail, the poet drawing attention to the hand-linked rings that made it up, and this was the principal form of armour worn at this time by professional warriors. They also carried broad, wide round shields with a protruding metal boss in the middle which could be used as an offensive weapon in the crush of hand-to-hand combat. Spears were the most common of weapons, swords being more costly and the sign of higher status.

Recreated battle group of Picts with wardogs. Dominating most of Scotland until the arrival of the Irish Scots, they fought many successful campaigns against the Angles of northern England. [Dan Shadrake/English Heritage]

Beowulf triumphs over his monstrous enemies, but eventually he too faces death and is given a warlord’s burial. His followers ‘fashioned a mound Broad and high on the brow of the cliff, Seen from afar by seafaring men. Ten days they worked on the warrior’s barrow Inclosing the ash of the funeral flame … They bore to the barrow the rings and the gems, The wealth of the hoard the heroes had plundered’ [Translation of Beowulf is by Charles W. Kennedy, first published 1940]. Over a thousand years later, just such a funeral barrow was excavated at Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge in Suffolk and inside was found the helmet, armour, weapons and gems of a 7th century Saxon warrior. This, the most famous archaeological discovery of this period, now lies in the British Museum and provides solid visual evidence for what a warlord such as Beowulf would have looked like.

Either side of Offa’s Dyke, Northern Wales was dominated by the principality of Gwynedd, with Powys lying to the northeast next to Mercia. In the south of Wales, Dyfed covered Pembroke and the west coast, while Gwent included the south-east. Cornwall remained an independent Celtic realm. In Saxon England, the two dominant powers were Mercia in the midlands and Wessex in the south. The original Germanic settlements of Sussex (south Saxons), Essex (east Saxons), and East Anglia (east Angles) lay on the east coast, while the north of England was under the control of Northumbria. The Saxons had won the better land from the Celts, commanding the great lowland areas of rich agriculture and the major trading centres and this, in the long run, would see the Saxon kings become stronger and richer, while the Celts never possessed the resources to challenge them. Both Celts and Saxons, however, were challenged by a new force which entered Britain in the 8th century AD: the Vikings.

In 793, the Laud Chronicle, one of the famous Anglo-Saxon chronicles, records strange events.

‘In this year, terrible portents appeared over Northumbria and miserably frightened the inhabitants. There were flashes of lightning and fire-breathing dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine followed these signs and a little after that raiding heathens destroyed God’s church in Lindisfarne by rapine and slaughter.’

The Vikings had arrived. According to later historians, this was the beginning of the Viking age in Britain, but what is puzzling is why the arrival of these Scandinavian raiders should be considered different from the Danish and Germanic raiders who had appeared before?

Array of recreated weapons of the Dark Ages period in Britain. From left to right: Saxon seax with bone handle; seax with copper alloy fittings; Pictish sword; two Roman spatha-style swords; broad-headed spear. [Derek Clow]

The first answer, of course, is that they were not; they were just given a different name by later historians. But from the point of view of their contemporaries, these later Scandinavian warriors were different in one important respect: they were pagans. Saxon and Celtic Britain was Christian. The Vikings came at first as raiders, seizing treasure and slaves. Their ships would land on a beach and with horses, either brought with them or stolen, they would ride into the hinterland until they had gathered more goods than they could carry. Why the Viking raids expanded into wholesale wars of conquest is still the subject of intense historical debate. The political cohesion of many kingdoms was eroded by years of Viking attacks, the Vikings enjoyed certain strategic and tactical advantages, and there were probably events within Scandinavia that helped precipitate a dramatic change in the scale of Viking incursions. The Laud Chronicle recorded in alarm,

‘And the heathen stayed in Thanet over the winter. And the same year [851] came 350 ships to the mouth of the Thames, and stormed Canterbury, and put to flight Beorhtwulf, king of Mercia, with his levies, and went then south over the Thames into Surrey.’

Aethelwulf of Wessex eventually defeated this force, but by the second half of the 9th century, Viking warlords had conquered the land around York, laid claim to half of Mercia, and held all of East Anglia.

In Wessex, the last Saxon realm to resist the Vikings, King Alfred led a determined defence, but even he was overwhelmed and forced to flee to the shelter of the marshes in Somerset. He organised guerrilla resistance, but it was through diplomacy as well as military skill that he eventually triumphed. He penned the Vikings into a fort at Chippenham, where they awaited a crushing blow, but instead Alfred invited the leading Vikings to his camp. There, he declared that if the Vikings accepted the Christian faith and left Wessex, he would spare their lives and let them live in the eastern part of England. The Vikings accepted the offer and their realm became known as the Danelaw. Alfred eventually united Saxon England by having his daughter marry the ruler of Mercia. For this reason, Alfred was later dubbed ‘the Great’ by British historians, the only English monarch to receive that honour. The high point of Saxon rule was reached under Alfred’s son, Edward, who by 918 had won back all the Danish settlements and united England under one king.

Recreated Viking raiding party comes inland on the marshy flats outside Wareham. They are well equipped with helmets, mail, swords and spears and are typical of warriors of the 10th century. [Regia Anglorum]

RECREATING ARTHUR’S KNIGHTS

When it comes to portraying King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table at the cinema or on television, he is usually shown wearing a shining suit of plate armour. This portrayal is true of when Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte D’Arthur as this kind of beautiful armour was typical of the 15th century. But the original Arthur, on which all the later legends and tales have been based, was a warlord living towards the end of the 5th century. What would he and his warriors really have looked like?

Dan Shadrake of Britannia, the leading re-enactment group of this early medieval period, has devoted much time and effort to gathering the evidence and then using it to recreate the authentic arms and armour of the Arthurian period. The result is a figure that looks more Roman than a medieval knight. The main influence which preceded the Britain of Arthur was that of Rome,’ states Shadrake. The later Roman Empire provides the material with which Arthurian Britain can be tentatively reconstructed.’

The main forms of body armour were mail or tunics made out of scale or lamellar armour, both of Eastern origin. A kilt of leather strips would then have hung from the waist protecting the upper thighs, just like that worn by Roman legionaries in earlier centuries. Iron helmets with a nasal and cheekguards would have been of the Sassanian or Ridge type or the more Germanic spangenhelm segmented form. Germanic influence was strong in the form of spatha-style, long double-edged swords. Shields were large and oval, made of wood reinforced with iron and probably adorned with Christian emblems such as the crucifix or the Madonna.

Norman knights charge at the recreated Battle of Hastings. Although the warriors here carry their lances underarm in later medieval fashion, many lances would have been thrown overarm during the battle, the word lance deriving from the French verb to throw. [Alan Jeffrey]

Reconstructed spangenhelm with nasal of the type worn by both Vikings and Normans. It was an enormously popular form of helmet that continued to be worn as late as the 13th century. Recreated by Russell Thomas and Chris Lydamore. [Dan Shadrake]

A flavour of the fighting between Saxon and Viking is conveyed by the 10th century poem The Battle of Maldon. Fought in 991, the battle took place in Essex in south-east England. The Vikings under the command of Svein Forkbeard, king of Denmark, had sailed with an army of some 4,000 warriors in 93 ships and entered the Blackwater Estuary near the town of Maldon. They camped on Northey Island and expected to cross the causeway to ravage the hinterland. Before them stood Byrhtnoth, the local Saxon warlord, and his hastily assembled force. In order to fight a defensive battle, Byrhtnoth ordered his leading warriors to dismount and form a shield wall in which the warriors stood close to each other so their large round shields overlapped each other. Byrhtnoth was a white-haired man of about sixty and a landlord of considerable wealth, but this did not prevent him from taking his place among younger warriors in the shield wall.

The confrontation with the Vikings began with an exchange of insults. This may well be a poetic device to raise the tension for an audience, but it may also be true of ancient warfare in which warriors would jeer and rush forward out of their line to show their lack of respect for the opposition. The Vikings declared they would be happy to leave if the Saxons gave them a tribute of gold. ‘Listen pirates,’ replied Byrhtnoth, ‘the only tribute we shall send you is one of spear-points and veteran sword-edge. We are the guardians of our people, our land and our King. It is the heathen who shall fall.’ Arrows followed the insults, but the Vikings had a problem. They could not leave the island to cross the narrow causeway while the Saxons defended it. They asked permission to cross the water and begin the battle on a more equal footing. Amazingly, and over-confidently, according to the poet, Byrhtnoth allowed the enemy to cross over onto the mainland. This decision may not have been so crazy as it seems, for, denied combat here, the Vikings could easily have sailed elsewhere, whereas at least the Saxons were ready for them now.

Dubbed Wolves of Wodan, the Norse God of War, by the poet, the Vikings wade across the ford with their lime-wood shields and weapons held high. The battle begins with the loosing of arrows and flinging of spears. Immediately, the Saxon leader Byrhtnoth comes under attack. A ‘southern spear’, meaning a spear made in France, wounds the Saxon lord but he breaks the shaft with the edge of his shield and throws his own spear which plunges into the Viking attacker’s neck. Byrhtnoth bellows with laughter and thanks God for his good luck, but is then attacked again and wounded for a second time with a thrown spear. A comrade pulls out the spear and throws it back at the Dane. Yet another Viking closes in, determined to steal the rich mail armour and sword from the wounded lord, but Byrhtnoth swings his sword at the assailant. The Dane parries the blow and slashes at the Saxon’s arm, so that he drops his gold-hilted sword and, under more blows, Byrhtnoth and his closest warriors are killed.

Seeing the death of their lord, many of the Saxons lose their nerve and one, disgracefully, even steals the horse of his dead chief to escape. The poet notes that Byrhtnoth had generously given this man many horses in the past. Many warriors remain, however, and the fighting grows fiercer. A noble hostage from a Northumberland family proves his worth by wounding the Vikings with his bow and arrows. Mail shirts ring and split under sword blows, shields shatter leaving warriors to punch their enemies with the remaining metal bosses. With their lord gone, the Saxons are doomed, but it is an heroic last stand and a veteran warrior expresses the virtues expected of a loyal fighting man:

Pictish crossbowman recreation based on the figure on the Drosten stone of the 8th or 9th centuries AD. Although associated with later periods, there is evidence that crossbows were used by the Romans. It is a simple crossbow with a rising peg trigger and wooden prod. [Lyn Smith]

Saxon archer hunting with long wooden bow. At his side he wears a long single-edged sword or seax, typical of Saxon warriors. Archery was used in battle to harass the enemy and provoke them into combat. [Regia Anglorum]

‘Heart must be braver, courage the bolder, mind the firmer, as our strength becomes lesser. Here lies our lord. A noble man, in blood and mud. Those who turn their back now will regret it forever. I am old. I will not leave here. I will lie beside my lord — the man I love most dearly.’

Having battled the Vikings valiantly and with considerable success for some two hundred years, the Saxons finally succumbed to a Danish King in 1013. His son, Canute, ruled a Scandinavian empire that included England, the Scottish islands, Greenland, Norway and Denmark.

Elsewhere in northern Europe, another dynasty of Vikings had done very well for themselves. These were the Northmen of northern France or Normans. In the 9th century, they advanced deep into France, attacked Paris, and the French monarchy eventually made a deal with them. The Northmen recognised French rule, but received land of their own in what became known as Normandy The fate of this realm and England soon became intertwined. A son of the last Saxon king of England, Edward, was brought up in the Norman court and became king of England in 1042. Edward, however, left the rule of his country largely to a powerful noble family called Godwin and principally Harold, who harboured royal ambitions. When Edward died, Harold assumed the throne. William duke of Normandy, claimed that both Edward and Harold had promised it to him. The stage was set for the most famous invasion in British history.

Crowned in January 1066, Harold was soon under attack from different directions. William assembled an invasion force in Normandy. Harold’s estranged brother Tostig raided the south coast of England before sailing to Norway. There he allied himself with the king, Harold Hardrada who planned an invasion of his own. All summer Harold kept his army and fleet on the alert. The Norwegians landed first, together with their English allies, capturing York in early September. Harold rushed northwards and caught them off guard at Stamford Bridge. Both Tostig and the king of Norway were slain in the rout. Harold’s triumph was shortlived, however; three days later, the duke of Normandy landed at Pevensey on the East Sussex coast.

MAKING MAIL

Mail, or ‘chain-mail’ as it has been wrongly called, was the main form of armour worn throughout the early medieval period in Britain. Saxons, Vikings and Normans all wore mail tunics, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but all essentially made of interlinking iron rings. The process of making mail was time-consuming and required some skill, thus making mail shirts expensive and well worth looting from dead warriors on a battlefield.

Making mail began with the construction of the rings, which was achieved by winding iron wire tightly around a metal bar. This coil was then chopped off the bar to produce open-ended links. The links were forced through a tapering hole until they overlapped. The ends of the overlap were hammered flat with a small chip of metal inserted in a hole in the overlap to form a rivet. The closed rings were then linked with open-ended links which were then similarly hammered together. Each ring was linked with four others and thus a dense flexible armour was built up in the T-shape of a shirt. Fringes of brass or even gilded rings, some with lucky or magical words inscribed on them, were added to the most expensive forms of mail shirt.

Making mail armour in the traditional way. Mail was the most popular armour in the early medieval period in Britain and consisted of numerous interlinked rings. It was a complex and costly process to make a mail shirt and only the wealthier warriors wore such armour. [Regia Anglorum]

Recreated late Roman officer c. AD 400. He wears lamellar armour made out of numerous little plates laced together. His helmet is of the Sassanian or Heavy Ridge type with a nasal and broad cheek-guards. [Dan Shadrake/English Heritage]

Harold marched south at impressive speed to arrive with some 6,000 men about 12 miles inland from Pevensey. A present-day war journalist with experience of marching with peasant armies in Afghanistan has recently contended that, like the mujahideen, medieval footsoldiers were used to exertions that would exhaust modern men and the English probably arrived fit for battle. In any case, many of them were mounted. Whether Harold was hoping to make another surprise attack will never be known. His arrival detected the previous afternoon, on the morning of October 14th, Harold assembled his army in a defensive formation: a shield wall on the crest of Senlac Hill.

The battlefield of Hastings is well preserved today and it needs little imagination to see how the hillside must have handicapped the Norman attack. William began the combat with a storm of arrows and then sent his armoured cavalry forward to test the shield wall, flinging their lances as spears, but the English remained unmoved. The steep slope weakened the impact of the Norman charge and by the end of the morning William was in trouble. Under the hail of arrows, stones, and spears, it was rumoured that the duke had been killed and he was forced to lift his helmet and ride before his men to prove he lived. Warfare often hinges on psychological moments when fear overwhelms confidence and this was particularly so in medieval battles when kings and commanders fought in the lines with their troops. Bretons in the service of the Duke had broken and were pursued by English sensing victory, but the counter-attack was poorly judged and William cut them down with his cavalry.

Recreation of Viking settlement. Once Viking raids on Britain proved successful, many Vikings decided to settle on land conquered in the eastern part of the country. [The Vikings (N.F.P.S.)]

William ordered his troops up the hill again and again. Finally, Harold’s shield wall faltered and Normans broke in among his warriors. Furious hand-to-hand combat ensued, axes and swords clashed, arm muscles burned and weakened. Harold was himself wounded by an arrow in his right eye, but his personal bodyguard of house-carls stoutly defended him, armed with long two-handed Viking-style battleaxes and shouting ‘Out! Out! Out’ A group of Norman knights now saw the opportunity for great honour and concentrated on breaking through to Harold. In the turmoil, Harold’s royal banner fell to the ground and four Norman knights finally pushed into the tight circle around him, hacking at the wounded Harold until his body was dismembered. The spirit of the English was broken and though many fought on, the battle came to an end as the English line disintegrated and Normans hunted the fleeing soldiers mercilessly through the night.

Recent evidence shows that Hastings was not the only battle William had to fight before he was crowned king of England. Archaeological discoveries in the City of London have revealed the bodies of English soldiers killed in a battle fought on land beneath the north side of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Such was London’s resistance to the Normans that one chronicler records that William was forced to construct siege towers and battering rams. English traitors eventually opened the gates of the city to William, but a considerable body of soldiers resisted his advance. The Normans triumphed, but it had been hard work and one can speculate that if the English had survived a siege successfully, an English warlord may well have cut off William and reversed the decision achieved at Hastings. However, on Christmas Day 1066, William was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey. A Norman dynasty now ruled Britain.

Recreated Norman crossbowmen are paid for their services by a Norman knight. Mercenaries were always an important element of medieval armies, helping to swell the numbers recruited through feudal vows of service. [Hannah Jenkins]

TESTING MEDIEVAL WARFARE

The battle of Hastings recreated on the actual battlefield in Sussex. In this scene, English warriors have charged down from the shield wall on the ridge of the hill to attack the faltering Bretons, but the Normans launch a counter-attack which severely shakes English resolve. [Peter Newark’s Military Pictures]

Viking shield wall. The supreme defensive formation of the Dark Ages, it was a shield wall such as this that Harold deployed at Hastings and resisted several attacks by the Normans. [Regia Anglorum]