Norman Conquest Timeline

ARMY GETS READY TO MOVE

London, 10 October 1066

King Harold today has given orders for the army to prepare to move out. This has surprised many of his men who do not feel they are ready to take on the well-organised Norman foe. The horses they have ridden to York and back again are not fresh enough for military use and many of the fyrds who are answering Harold's call to arms have not arrived yet.

However, the royal housecarls and thegns who triumphed over the Vikings at Stamford Bridge are preparing to march. The thegns recruited in London and sheriffs and abbots from Oxfordshire and Kent are also mustered. And fresh fyrds raised in southern England, along with some from Norfolk and Suffolk, have already arrived in London.

Harold's closest advisers are urging him to delay the march on Hastings until he has marshalled the full strength of the kingdom. In another 24 hours, levies from the home counties are expected to arrive, but Harold says that he will leave word for them to follow him to Hastings. In a few more days, the archers will arrive from the North. They will be vital in any battle against the Normans. But the King says the army must leave for Sussex as soon as possible. His people and their kinsmen there are suffering atrocities daily at the hands of the Normans. They must be protected. Some suspect the King has other motives. News of his excommunication risks losing him the support of the church and the army. So far this has been dismissed at Norman propaganda, but any delay might allow time for confirmation of the papal decree to arrive from Rome.

The troops have been told to prepare for a 58-mile forced march. The King believes that, at the very least, he can confine the Normans to the narrow peninsula on which Hastings stands. Even before the area was ravaged by the Normans, food supplies there were exhausted by the raids of the King's disaffected brother Tostig and the local fyrds. A plan by the King's younger brother Gyrth, to lay waste the land between Hastings and London, has been rejected. Even if the peasants in that huge area could be persuaded to burn their crops and destroy the food they were storing for winter, if William broke out of the Hastings peninsula, he would be free to forage further afield.

Article by Nigel Cawthorne