Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I discovered
Speaker 1: when we talked about the Hessian I kind of like
Speaker 1: talking about battle and now I did blood Less until
Speaker 1: just now. So today we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: battle that long time listeners may remember a little bit
Speaker 1: about thanks to our episode on the Baiou Tapestry, which
Speaker 1: was hosted by Sarah and the Polina back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. The Baiou Tapestry, which is really a piece
Speaker 1: of embroidery and not a tapestry, is a visual account
Speaker 1: of the Battle of Hastings and the events that led
Speaker 1: up to it. So if you know anything at all
Speaker 1: about European history, you can probably at least boil the
Speaker 1: Battle of Hastings down to a sentence, which is that
Speaker 1: the Normans invaded England in ten sixty six and their
Speaker 1: victory ended the Anglo Saxon phase of English history. If
Speaker 1: you actually grew up in England, you probably know a
Speaker 1: whole whole lot more about it than that. Intends to
Speaker 1: be something that's covered extensively. Uh, in English schools because
Speaker 1: it is so central to the history of England. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things where sadly when you
Speaker 1: mentioned it, at least when I mentioned it to most
Speaker 1: people that I know, and I'll say, oh, Battle of Hastings,
Speaker 1: they will do what I have done previously in my
Speaker 1: life and on ten sixty six, and that's the one
Speaker 1: thing they remember. Yes, So yeah, I I had that
Speaker 1: exact conversation with the boyfriend where I said we could
Speaker 1: talk about the Battle of Hastings and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: ten sixty six husband as well, and and I said yes,
Speaker 1: and he's like, we won, right, And I said, you
Speaker 1: don't know what the who is the we? In this case,
Speaker 1: we had almost an identical conversation at our house. So so,
Speaker 1: just like with our recent episode on the Hessians, where
Speaker 1: people can boil down the Hessians to a sentence that's
Speaker 1: not really indicative of what actually happened to that one
Speaker 1: sentence description does not do the whole Battle of Hastings justice.
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna look at that in a lot
Speaker 1: more detail, including lots of stuff that's not covered in
Speaker 1: the Bio Tapestry episode. Yeah, because that's a lot to cover.
Speaker 1: In one piece of sewing. Well, but it's a very
Speaker 1: long piece of sewing. And now I think of the
Speaker 1: Futurama episode where they kind of did a spoof of it.
Speaker 1: That's funny about invading a spider planet and they were
Speaker 1: weaving the tapestry from the silk of the spiders as
Speaker 1: the battle was happening. Wow, I need to go watch that.
Speaker 1: I love my Futurama. There's no secret there. So first though,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get back to history and talk about the
Speaker 1: backstory on this little ditty, And we have to go
Speaker 1: back a little bit of a ways to get a
Speaker 1: feel for what was really going on when the Normans
Speaker 1: hopped into the picture and invade it. In the fifth century,
Speaker 1: Germanic people known as the Angles, the Saxons, and the
Speaker 1: Jutes began to immigrate to what we now know as England,
Speaker 1: and at the time this area was mostly inhabited by Celts.
Speaker 1: As the Germanic people's moved in, they pushed the Celts
Speaker 1: into what we would now call Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
Speaker 1: So the word England comes from these Germanic peoples. It
Speaker 1: actually means land of Angles. By the eighth century, Christianity
Speaker 1: had really started to spread through a lot of England,
Speaker 1: and people from Denmark had also started to move into
Speaker 1: the area as well, and so with all of these
Speaker 1: influences the language kind of evolved, and so what we
Speaker 1: now know as Old English. So at this point England
Speaker 1: was a mostly Christian nation and it mostly spoke one language,
Speaker 1: although there were several distinct dialects, and it was ruled
Speaker 1: by a king with earls who were responsible for specific
Speaker 1: regions within the kingdom. And the Vikings started invading Britain
Speaker 1: in the ninth century and over the span of roughly
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years, Vikings conquered a lot of England,
Speaker 1: but then the Anglo Saxons uh living in Wessex, led
Speaker 1: by Alfred the Great, saved them off and started pushing
Speaker 1: them back out again. In the process, they were honing
Speaker 1: their battle abilities and really making the Anglo Saxon world
Speaker 1: a power to be reckoned with on its own. After
Speaker 1: this point there was a period of relative calm which
Speaker 1: lasted about fifty years before the Vikings came back and
Speaker 1: started up a new cycle of pillaging and plundering and
Speaker 1: then retreating back to where they came from. Before coming
Speaker 1: back for more pillaging and plundering. It sounds very exciting,
Speaker 1: but it was actually quite dangerous. Well, yes, often exciting
Speaker 1: things are, uh. And this was kind of the state
Speaker 1: of things when one of Alfred the Great's direct descendants, Edward,
Speaker 1: entered the picture. And today we know of Edward as
Speaker 1: Edward the Confessor, but that was a name he was
Speaker 1: given about a hundred years after his death, when the
Speaker 1: Pope recognized him as a saint. So Edward was born
Speaker 1: in about one thousand and three, and because of all
Speaker 1: these ongoing Viking attacks, he and his family took refuge
Speaker 1: in Normandy for a number of years, and there they
Speaker 1: naturally built a lot of ties to Norman's society. They
Speaker 1: made a lot of friends there were influenced in their
Speaker 1: politics while they were living there. It took several failed attempts,
Speaker 1: but Edward finally returned to England and became king in
Speaker 1: ten forty two, and he brought a lot of Norman
Speaker 1: advisors and kind of Norman politics along with him. And
Speaker 1: Edward married a woman named Edith, although they had no children,
Speaker 1: so this left a question of who the heir was
Speaker 1: going to be. Uh. And there's no written account of
Speaker 1: exactly what transpired there, but the general historical consensus is
Speaker 1: that in March of ten fifty one he announced it
Speaker 1: a council meeting that he wanted his kinsman William of Normandy,
Speaker 1: to take the throne after his death. This did not
Speaker 1: sit at all well with a guy named Godwine, who
Speaker 1: was the Earl of Wessex and Edith's father, so Edwards
Speaker 1: father in law, he had actually been a favorite to
Speaker 1: become the king himself and was hoping to see one
Speaker 1: of his own children or grandchildren eventually on the throne.
Speaker 1: And the top of these own aspirations of power that
Speaker 1: he had, he really was a legitimately powerful person and
Speaker 1: he had a much stronger backing than Edward did among
Speaker 1: the other leaders of England, and this tension between Godwine
Speaker 1: and the king really took England to the brink of
Speaker 1: a civil war. But eventually Edward outlawed Godwine after he
Speaker 1: refused to punish the people of Dover, which fell under
Speaker 1: his earldom, for an attack on Edward's brother in law,
Speaker 1: and Godwine and his sons and most of his family
Speaker 1: fled to Flanders and Ireland, and then Edward banished his
Speaker 1: wife to a nunnery seems kind of ruthless on Edward's part,
Speaker 1: didn't want anything to do with those people anymore. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's like a brutal divorce at that point, it is.
Speaker 1: And and he also in the aftermath made kind of
Speaker 1: a critical mistake. He got rid of a tax that
Speaker 1: had been used to fund a mercenary naval fleet. The
Speaker 1: idea was that he was basically giving some everyone who
Speaker 1: was being taxed at tax break, and he probably thought
Speaker 1: that if he really need it an army or a
Speaker 1: naval force, that he could just call it up because
Speaker 1: he was the king um and in a lot of
Speaker 1: circumstances that probably would have worked. But that, unfortunately or fortunately,
Speaker 1: depending on whose side you're on, meant that when Godwine
Speaker 1: came back across the channel with his own fleet in
Speaker 1: ten fifty two, Edward did not have a force ready
Speaker 1: to fight him off. And on top of Edward not
Speaker 1: having enough manpower to resist Godwine's attack, public sentiment was
Speaker 1: pretty firmly on Godwine's side at this point. People just
Speaker 1: did not like the idea of a Norman line of succession,
Speaker 1: and they didn't even like how many Normans the king
Speaker 1: had among his advisers. So Edward was basically politically forced
Speaker 1: to pardon Godwine and his family and they once again
Speaker 1: took up their positions of power in England. So when
Speaker 1: Godwine died, his son, who was known as Harold Godwin's
Speaker 1: and continued to be a very powerful figure in England.
Speaker 1: And this would turn out to be a problem when
Speaker 1: it came back around to the line of succession. So
Speaker 1: now we're going to hop into the Norman back story
Speaker 1: on it. Yes. Uh, so over in Normandy, William was Earl,
Speaker 1: his wife was Matilda of Flanders, and Flanders in England
Speaker 1: were not on terrific terms. Uh. This may have been
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why Edward promised the throne to
Speaker 1: William to help keep him in line and discourage him
Speaker 1: from lining up with Flanders against him. But thanks to
Speaker 1: this whole idea that he was being promised to become
Speaker 1: the King of England and his marriage to Matilda of Flanders,
Speaker 1: Henry the First of France saw William as a really
Speaker 1: huge threat. So William had to fend off multiple invasions
Speaker 1: from France and its allies during the ten fifties, and
Speaker 1: it was really only after William had a particularly decisive
Speaker 1: victory against them uh that France and its allies left
Speaker 1: William alone, and only after his major rival died did
Speaker 1: he really seem to get any risks. He was pretty
Speaker 1: much constantly having to fend off one attack after another.
Speaker 1: That brings us back to Harold. In about ten fifty
Speaker 1: four or ten five, Harold visited Normandy because of a storm.
Speaker 1: He actually wound up landing in Flanders and was taken
Speaker 1: prisoner at first, and William had to come and secure
Speaker 1: his release. And at some point during this little excursion,
Speaker 1: for reasons that different accounts report completely differently, Harold swore
Speaker 1: an oath to honor Williams claim to the throne once
Speaker 1: Edward died. Norman writers say that Edward had sent Harold
Speaker 1: specifically for this purpose, but English sources either don't reference
Speaker 1: it at all, or they say that Harold was in
Speaker 1: Normandy to secure the release of some of his kin
Speaker 1: from imprisonment. So there's a little bit of disagreement about
Speaker 1: whether or not there was intrigue in the mix. At
Speaker 1: this point, it's a thousand almost years ago, and both
Speaker 1: sides writing about it definitely have an into and death.
Speaker 1: But either way, the sources all pretty much agree that
Speaker 1: Harold swore to uphold William's claim to the throne, and
Speaker 1: then he went back from Normandy across the English Channel
Speaker 1: to England in about ten sixty five. So we're coming
Speaker 1: up on the happenings. Uh So, at this point the
Speaker 1: stage seems to be set for one would hope a
Speaker 1: fairly smooth succession. Edward the Confessor has promised the throne
Speaker 1: to William of Normandy, and the surviving person with the
Speaker 1: next strongest claim to the throne, Harold Godwinson, has sworn
Speaker 1: an oath to honor Edward's decree. It seems like it
Speaker 1: should be cool. It does. There there's a third person
Speaker 1: with kind of a tide of the throne. He'll talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit later, but at this point it's
Speaker 1: really between uh William and Harold. But even though it
Speaker 1: should not have been really. But what happened next is
Speaker 1: that King Edward died after an uprising in Northumbria. He
Speaker 1: had tried to raise an army to put down the rebellion,
Speaker 1: but winter was coming. People were pretty reluctant to get
Speaker 1: involved in what was really a civil war, so eventually
Speaker 1: Edward just had to give into the rebels demands and
Speaker 1: he was apparently so distraught by his failure to bring
Speaker 1: Northumbria back in the line that he got sick and
Speaker 1: never got better again. He died at the beginning of
Speaker 1: January ten sixty six, and the king was buried on
Speaker 1: January six of ten sixty six, and that day, even
Speaker 1: though he had sworn an oath to honor Williams claim
Speaker 1: to the throne, Harold stepped in and took it for himself.
Speaker 1: We don't really have a lot of clear historical documentation
Speaker 1: conclusively telling us why he did this. At the time, though,
Speaker 1: succession wasn't always a straight up matter of father to
Speaker 1: son inheritance or of the king designated designating he was
Speaker 1: going to follow him to the throne. In England, a
Speaker 1: man wasn't really considered to be king until he had
Speaker 1: the support of a majority of England's most powerful men.
Speaker 1: Like we said, England was not super keen on the
Speaker 1: idea of having a Norman king, and there are also
Speaker 1: some accounts, including the Life of King Edward, which Queen
Speaker 1: Edith later had written, that said Edward either gave the
Speaker 1: kingdom to Harold on his deathbed or that he had
Speaker 1: entrusted it to him in the Bayeux Tapestry, Harold is
Speaker 1: shown being given the crown, and almost one thousand years later,
Speaker 1: we still don't entirely know what went down. So whatever
Speaker 1: the circumstances are of Harold being crowned, King William objected,
Speaker 1: and so apparently did Harold's brother Toasting, who then mounted
Speaker 1: two different invasions of England. The first came from Flanders
Speaker 1: and the second came with backup from the Vikings. So
Speaker 1: Harold had to spend the start of his reign fighting
Speaker 1: off his brother in the far northern reaches of England.
Speaker 1: But thanks to the lay of the land and the
Speaker 1: position of the English Channel, any invasion from Normandy would
Speaker 1: make landfall hundreds of miles to the south, and this
Speaker 1: meant that when William invaded, Harold would have a long
Speaker 1: made to travel to fight him off. So, since we've
Speaker 1: said ten sixty six a bunch of times, we know
Speaker 1: that that invasion is imminent. And before we get to it,
Speaker 1: let's take a moment and talk about a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor. Okay, now we're going to get back to
Speaker 1: the actual battle. And since we know from the top
Speaker 1: of the episode that this is what Tracy has gotten
Speaker 1: excited about talking about very excited, so crazy. So it
Speaker 1: took a little while before William made it to England.
Speaker 1: He had to raise a bigger army than he already had,
Speaker 1: and he had to build at least some of the
Speaker 1: ships that were going to be required to take them
Speaker 1: across the channel. The weather was also against him for
Speaker 1: a while, so they had to put off setting sail.
Speaker 1: He finally landed in England on September of ten sixty six,
Speaker 1: and he was on the southeast coast at pevense E,
Speaker 1: and he took that town and marched to Hastings, which
Speaker 1: was twelve miles away, also pretty much on the coast,
Speaker 1: and at both of these locations the Normans seized a
Speaker 1: fort and then modified it to suit their own ends
Speaker 1: by adding ramparts and moats. And it would have taken
Speaker 1: days for the news to reach Harold of the Norman
Speaker 1: force at Hastings, and he had to march his men
Speaker 1: all the way from Yorkshire, which was about two hundred
Speaker 1: miles away. They basically rode south as fast as they could,
Speaker 1: most likely dismissing the soldiers who didn't have horses to ride,
Speaker 1: and mustering more as they went. So yeah, he was
Speaker 1: replacing the people who were on foot and couldn't keep
Speaker 1: up as they went. Basically, Harold met William and Hastings
Speaker 1: on October and the battle took place on the next day.
Speaker 1: And although Harold's forces had ridden horses to Hastings, they
Speaker 1: all fought on foot, which was typical and English warfare
Speaker 1: at the time. William, on the other hand, had archers
Speaker 1: and cavalry in addition to his UH boots on the
Speaker 1: ground infantry, and the English secured a defensible position on
Speaker 1: high ground and the Norman's approached them from below. So
Speaker 1: that's just sort of to set up the picture here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you know much about uh, you know, medieval warfare,
Speaker 1: or if you've ever played any kind of strategy game
Speaker 1: that involved soldiers, this looks like a really one sided
Speaker 1: battle because you had you had people who were on
Speaker 1: foot versus people who had archers and horses. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about why it was not nearly that clear cut.
Speaker 1: Here's how William of Mom's Prey describes the English all
Speaker 1: on foot, armed with battle axes and covering themselves in
Speaker 1: front by the juncture of their shields. They formed an
Speaker 1: impenetrable body. The English were also armed, we should say,
Speaker 1: with slings and spears, But it seems as though they
Speaker 1: did not really have many archers, probably because of the
Speaker 1: speed at which they had to move to Hastings, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they could rouse all of the archery
Speaker 1: skilled gents in the area to help. Here's how William
Speaker 1: of Mom's Brey describes the Normans their infantry with bows
Speaker 1: and arrows one of the vanguard, while their cavalry, divided
Speaker 1: into wings, was placed in the rear the duke that
Speaker 1: duke is is William with serene countenance. The clearing allowed
Speaker 1: that God would favor him as being the righteous side.
Speaker 1: Call for his arms, and when through the haste of
Speaker 1: his attendants he had put on his halbert behind part before,
Speaker 1: he corrected the mistake with a laugh, saying, the power
Speaker 1: of my dukedom shall be turned into a kingdom. Basically
Speaker 1: a story here that he accidentally put his armor on
Speaker 1: backwards and and then tried to turn that to his advantage,
Speaker 1: rather than seeing is seeing it as a poor omen
Speaker 1: and a nickel for every time I put my armor
Speaker 1: on backward knew. William of Malmsbury also describes the English
Speaker 1: as having stayed up all night drinking and singing, while
Speaker 1: the Normans instead spent the night confessing their sins and
Speaker 1: having communion in the morning, which is in all likelihood
Speaker 1: added color commentary and not a real thing. But both
Speaker 1: sides were clearly pretty worn out, the English from having
Speaker 1: traveled so far from getting to battle, and the Normans
Speaker 1: from having stood at the ready all night just in
Speaker 1: case an attack happened. So whether they were drinking or confessing,
Speaker 1: no one had gotten sleep, and they were all really tired. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This this account was written a little bit later in
Speaker 1: the eleventh century, and and there are parts of it
Speaker 1: that people pretty much agree are probably right. But then
Speaker 1: when it gets to and then the English were up
Speaker 1: all night drinking, kind of like the Hessians thing, right,
Speaker 1: they were all drunk, clearly because they lost, they must
Speaker 1: have all been inebriated. And that's really not not true. So,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, the battle began with the English
Speaker 1: behind this shield wall, and then the Normans were arranged
Speaker 1: into lines, with their crossbowmen at the front, and then
Speaker 1: their soldiers on foot, and then their knights on horses.
Speaker 1: And it would seem, of course, as though the English
Speaker 1: were at a vast disadvantage since They had neither cavalry
Speaker 1: nor very many archers, but they did have the high ground,
Speaker 1: and they had a shield wall and battle axes, which
Speaker 1: are in fact horrifying though maybe to think about very
Speaker 1: effective weapons when it comes to battling men on horseback. Yes,
Speaker 1: so if you do not hit the rider with your axe,
Speaker 1: you will hit the horse and it will go down. Yes,
Speaker 1: which makes my sad faith happened. I knew when I
Speaker 1: was typing this that Holly was going to be very
Speaker 1: sad about the predictable with the animals. So William moved
Speaker 1: his men and kind of waves. They would fire a
Speaker 1: volley of arrows and then alternate charges with the footshield,
Speaker 1: the foot soldiers and the knights. And there were a
Speaker 1: lot of casualties on both sides, but the English shield
Speaker 1: wall held for a really long time. This battle went
Speaker 1: on basically all day. The tide of the battle turned
Speaker 1: when the Normans either retreated or feigned a retreat. Some
Speaker 1: accounts say this was a deliberate strategy on William's part,
Speaker 1: and others suggested that Norman's actually lost their nerve when
Speaker 1: a rumor spread that William had been killed. So we
Speaker 1: don't know why they turned yeah, it it's pretty much.
Speaker 1: The English writers say that that the Normans all kind
Speaker 1: of freaked out when their leader apparently fell but had
Speaker 1: not really fallen, and the Normans, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: say that it was a skilled battle maneuver on William's part.
Speaker 1: I meant to do that. Yeah. Either way, when the
Speaker 1: Normans started to flee, the English broke their ranks and
Speaker 1: went after them, and then the Norman's turned on them
Speaker 1: and cut them down. And it's also unclear whether the
Speaker 1: sequence of events actually happened once or twice. So maybe
Speaker 1: one time it was out of fear and one time
Speaker 1: it was on purpose, we don't know. But regardless, the
Speaker 1: shield wall started to fail and the Norman's really started
Speaker 1: to gain ground. Yeah. I described this whole battle to
Speaker 1: do the boyfriend, and he was like, they fell for
Speaker 1: that more than once, and I said, well, that's a
Speaker 1: little We don't know historically. Possibly. What we do know
Speaker 1: is that later in the afternoon Harold was killed. The
Speaker 1: Bioux tapestry depicts them as being shot with an arrow
Speaker 1: through the eye and an extremely memorable sequence, but that's
Speaker 1: actually a later account, like that's not something that seems
Speaker 1: to have persisted on the day, so that might be
Speaker 1: sort of a romanticized, horrifying edition of a later historian
Speaker 1: or writer and not something that actually happened on that day,
Speaker 1: but when he felt that's definitely when English soldiers really
Speaker 1: started to scatter um and as the sun started to set,
Speaker 1: the battle was pretty much over, with the Normans hoping
Speaker 1: to clean up the stragglers. Yeah, the Normans went after
Speaker 1: the stragglers and they slaughtered a lot of them, but
Speaker 1: many of the Normans were also killed after the battle
Speaker 1: itself was over, after piling onto one another against a
Speaker 1: rampart that was hidden in tall grass, and so this
Speaker 1: thing ended with just scores of bodies the big body
Speaker 1: count for this particular battle. So after the battle Harold
Speaker 1: had died, William had one. But coming to the throne
Speaker 1: wasn't quite as simple as all that. It wasn't so
Speaker 1: much that William killed Harold in the battle and then
Speaker 1: William consequently got to be king. There was still actually
Speaker 1: one other heir to the throne alive at this point.
Speaker 1: That was Edgar Atheling, who was son of Edward the Exile,
Speaker 1: who was son of Edmund Ironside, who himself had been
Speaker 1: king for several months. So Edgar was only about thirteen
Speaker 1: years old, but he did have a much clearer line
Speaker 1: of successions straight to the throne than either Harold or
Speaker 1: William did, and while he was not full of supporters
Speaker 1: all over England, he did have the backing of the
Speaker 1: archbishop and the citizens of London. And there's really all
Speaker 1: kinds of disagreement about what exactly took place next, how
Speaker 1: much force William used making his way to London, and
Speaker 1: how much the death toll continued to climb. Those all
Speaker 1: still have a lot of question marks around them. We
Speaker 1: know that it was a really bloody campaign, though, and
Speaker 1: in the end Edgar's supporters did back down. William moved
Speaker 1: on to London and was crowned king on Christmas Day
Speaker 1: ten sixty six. He built Little Abbey on the site
Speaker 1: of the battle, uh approximately as as we think today.
Speaker 1: The town of Battle grew up around it, and the
Speaker 1: altar in the abbey is said to stand on the
Speaker 1: spot where Harold had stood at the center of the
Speaker 1: shield wall. The aftermath of the Norman invasion really could
Speaker 1: be its own whole other podcast topic. The next several
Speaker 1: years were very grizzly, as the English rebelled against their
Speaker 1: new Norman king and William definitely put down their rebellions.
Speaker 1: Case in point, the Harrying of the North, in which
Speaker 1: William did a whole lot of conquering and pillaging in
Speaker 1: Northumbria and as many as a one hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: starved to death, which is just a huge It was
Speaker 1: a huge death toll, mammoth. There was. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of killing and and and pillaging for many years. And
Speaker 1: even though this was definitely a bloody and oppressive conquest,
Speaker 1: there are some modern beliefs about the Norman invasion that
Speaker 1: don't quite hold up. For example, the Normans did not
Speaker 1: introduce the idea of a class system to England and
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon England, about ten per of the people were
Speaker 1: actually slaves and most of the free people were peasants.
Speaker 1: There was a very very small, very wealthy aristocracy and
Speaker 1: an even smaller ruling class that held actual power, So
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon England like was not some kind of utopia
Speaker 1: where everyone was Yeah, it's also not true that women
Speaker 1: were better off before the Norman invasion. Uh. That comes
Speaker 1: up pretty often to this idea that that women were
Speaker 1: equal to men before the Normans and the Normans started
Speaker 1: subjugating them. So while it's totally true that women didn't
Speaker 1: have many rights and privileges after the Battle of Hastings,
Speaker 1: they really didn't before either. This did, though, have one
Speaker 1: really huge impact that is recognized and I think most
Speaker 1: people know about, which is that it radically changed the
Speaker 1: English language through the influence it's of Norman speaking rulers.
Speaker 1: So by the twelfth century people were speaking what we
Speaker 1: know today as Middle English, which is the language of
Speaker 1: the Canterbury Tales. So it definitely had a huge impact
Speaker 1: on the culture of England, the direction of history, for sure.
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of considered a watershed moment in English
Speaker 1: history especially. Uh But if you hear people say that,
Speaker 1: uh the Normans were universally a terrible influence on England,
Speaker 1: that doesn't quite. William was quite a grizzly and bloody ruler, yes,
Speaker 1: especially lots of bad and unfortunate things going on already. Yes.
Speaker 1: Uh So today you can still visit the battle site
Speaker 1: in Sussex, although there's been some debate really recently about
Speaker 1: whether our modern idea of where the battlefield was is
Speaker 1: exactly the right one and uh in which is just
Speaker 1: as research was starting. On this episode, the UK television
Speaker 1: show Time Team claimed that the site of the battle
Speaker 1: was really about two meters away on what's now a roundabout,
Speaker 1: and they used uh light our technology to map the
Speaker 1: area near what's believed to be the actual battlefield. So
Speaker 1: whether this is actually true is either up in the
Speaker 1: air or roundly dismissed depending on who you talk to.
Speaker 1: There have been several other alleged quote real sites of
Speaker 1: the battle over the years, though, um, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where it was it was a pretty big
Speaker 1: space people would have been fighting in. People keep sort
Speaker 1: of trying to pinpoint an exact spot. It kind of
Speaker 1: ra what is the center of an Amiba? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's not quite that simple. Yeah. English Heritage also known
Speaker 1: as the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England disputed
Speaker 1: this whole Time Team finding, basically saying what we just
Speaker 1: said that the battle took place over a wide swath
Speaker 1: of the area, so really, what was the point in
Speaker 1: trying to say this spot is where it happened. There
Speaker 1: are also three completely different sites that have been bandied
Speaker 1: about as the exact spot in quotation marks. And then
Speaker 1: there's also a cool thing online that you found that
Speaker 1: I know you're yearning to talk about. Did It is
Speaker 1: a Battle of Hastings game and you can play at
Speaker 1: the BBC. We will link to it in our show notes.
Speaker 1: You can play as William or you can play as
Speaker 1: Harold and you can see what the what the results
Speaker 1: are if you make different decisions as a as a
Speaker 1: leader in the battle. At first I thought it was
Speaker 1: somehow rigged because I kept trying to play as as William,
Speaker 1: and this was before I had researched exactly how the
Speaker 1: battle unfolded, and I failed a whole lot of times.
Speaker 1: And then I played it again after I had read
Speaker 1: it and went, oh, yes, I see, I see how
Speaker 1: this works. Now do you also have listener mail for
Speaker 1: us to enjoy? I really do, and hey, it's kind
Speaker 1: of related. This is from Andrew. Andrew says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm a long term listener living on the outskirts of
Speaker 1: West London and I often into your show whilst walking
Speaker 1: my dogs on the old Hounslow Heath. I hope I
Speaker 1: said that correctly. Home to high Women, Gunpowder and the
Speaker 1: Armies of James the ban. I've just enjoyed your episode
Speaker 1: on the Boston massacre a subject that I find interesting,
Speaker 1: as my wife lived in Boston for two years and
Speaker 1: I've spent some happy times there with the locals. I
Speaker 1: thought that you might like to hear how the British
Speaker 1: view on this unfortunate quote incident on King Street, as
Speaker 1: well as other events like the infamous quote Boston tea party.
Speaker 1: It always seems to me that many Bostonians now view
Speaker 1: these events through the eyes of modern Americans and fails
Speaker 1: to take into account the context. There's often bitter anger
Speaker 1: about the fact that quote we tried to text quote
Speaker 1: them on goods to fund the troops, that quote we
Speaker 1: sent to govern quote them. The mistake, of course, is
Speaker 1: to separate the people living on either side of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic into two disparate groups. At the time, all these
Speaker 1: people were British subjects living in a British colony, and
Speaker 1: as such were liable to legitimate taxation to fund the
Speaker 1: services provided by the British government. A more accurate view
Speaker 1: of this situation is to imagine that one of the
Speaker 1: current American states decided that it wanted independence from the
Speaker 1: Union and no longer wish to pay any taxes to Washington,
Speaker 1: but still expected to have all the assistance, financial, military, administrative,
Speaker 1: etcetera that are afforded to the members of the United
Speaker 1: States of America. When the members of the public of
Speaker 1: Boston in seventeen seventy are viewed as a group of
Speaker 1: rebellious subjects led by people with a questionable connection to
Speaker 1: the smuggling trade to attack the appointed representatives of the
Speaker 1: law over the fact that they didn't want to pay
Speaker 1: government taxes, you come closer to seeing the way that
Speaker 1: these incidents are viewed from the old country. I hope
Speaker 1: that you find our views on this interesting and not
Speaker 1: too archaic. Keep up the good work, and I look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing more of your brilliant podcasts. Regards Andrew,
Speaker 1: thank you so much and so cool. I love this,
Speaker 1: so I love this, uh this email for a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons. One, it is pretty awesome to here from
Speaker 1: the other side of the pon on this particular subject. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a perspective. We never ever are taught as American
Speaker 1: children in school, not at all. Our our education on
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War is really really about us fighting off
Speaker 1: the big bad them, like and I imagined, really, uh,
Speaker 1: most places when they're you know, most countries raising their
Speaker 1: children that's kind of how their stories go. It's about
Speaker 1: a little more of a patriotic to wherever they are slant. So,
Speaker 1: so yes, number one, it's awesome to hear that the
Speaker 1: perspective of somebody who who did not grow up here.
Speaker 1: And the other reason that it's awesome is that when
Speaker 1: researching that episode, I didn't try really hard to present
Speaker 1: both sides of how it went down, which I think,
Speaker 1: uh I did as well as I could considering that,
Speaker 1: you know, my entire education has been steeped in the
Speaker 1: idea that there was a wee aligned against us during
Speaker 1: the American Revolution. Um, so I still think I did
Speaker 1: an okay, they're reasonably okay job portraying that, but hearing
Speaker 1: the first person in perspective of somebody else is definitely awesome.
Speaker 1: So thank you, thank you, thank you Andrew for writing
Speaker 1: this wonderful letter. I especially like the reference to highwaymen.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you can.
Speaker 1: We're at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also
Speaker 1: on Facebook at facebook dot com slash History class Stuff,
Speaker 1: and on Twitter at miss in History. Our tumbler is
Speaker 1: missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and we are
Speaker 1: also aren't pinterest. If you are interested in learning about
Speaker 1: something else that started roughly around the same period that
Speaker 1: we talked about today, you can come to our website
Speaker 1: with the word crusades in the search bar, and you
Speaker 1: will read how the Crusades Work. You learn all that
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more at our website, which is
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because at hostof works dot com.
Speaker 1: M M