Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. We have gotten a few notes from
Speaker 1: listeners lately who have told us they would like to
Speaker 1: hear more episodes about events rather than people, so we
Speaker 1: have gone into the archive today for the Battle of Hastings,
Speaker 1: which first came out in January. Also, our listener suggestion
Speaker 1: list has way more people than events, the at least
Speaker 1: five times as many people as events, so if events
Speaker 1: are more your bag, feel free to suggest something that
Speaker 1: you would like to hear about. We are as always
Speaker 1: at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Enjoy
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Chasey V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: I discovered when we talked about the Hessian I kind
Speaker 1: of like talking about battles. I know I did cry
Speaker 1: blood lust until just now. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about a battle that long time listeners may remember
Speaker 1: a little bit about thanks to our episode on the
Speaker 1: Baiou Tapestry, which was hosted by Sarah and Dablina back
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. The Bayou Tapestry, which is really
Speaker 1: a piece of embroidery and not a tapestry is a
Speaker 1: visual account of the Battle of Hastings and the events
Speaker 1: that led up to it. So if you know anything
Speaker 1: at all about European history, you can probably at least
Speaker 1: boil the Battle of Hastings down to a sentence, which
Speaker 1: is that the Normans invaded England in ten sixty six
Speaker 1: and their victory ended the Anglo Saxon phase of English history.
Speaker 1: If you actually grew up in England, you probably know
Speaker 1: a whole whole lot more about it than that. It
Speaker 1: tends to be something that's covered extensively, uh in English schools,
Speaker 1: because 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 on ten sixty six, and that's the one thing
Speaker 1: they remember. Yes, So yeah, I I had that exact
Speaker 1: conversation with the boyfriend where I said, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the Battle of Hastings and he said, oh, ten
Speaker 1: 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? 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 Baiou Tapestry episode. Yeah, because that's a lot to
Speaker 1: cover in one piece of sewing. Well, but it's a
Speaker 1: very long piece of sewing. And now I think of
Speaker 1: the Futurama episode where they kind of did a spoof
Speaker 1: of it that's funny about invading a spider play in it,
Speaker 1: and they were weaving the tapestry from the silk of
Speaker 1: the spiders as the battle was happening. Wow, I need
Speaker 1: to go watch that. I love my Futurama. There's no
Speaker 1: secret there. So first though, we're going to get back
Speaker 1: to history and talk about the backstory on this little ditty,
Speaker 1: and we have to go back a little bit of
Speaker 1: a ways to get a feel for what was really
Speaker 1: going on. When the Normans hopped into the picture and
Speaker 1: invaded In the fifth century, Germanic people's known as the Angles,
Speaker 1: the Saxons and the Jutes began to immigrate to what
Speaker 1: we now know as England, and at the time this
Speaker 1: area was mostly inhabited by Celts. As the Germanic people's
Speaker 1: moved in, they pushed the Celts into what we would
Speaker 1: now call Scotland, Wales and Ireland. So the word England
Speaker 1: comes from these Germanic peoples. It actually means land of Angles.
Speaker 1: By the eighth century, Christianity had really started to spread
Speaker 1: through a lot of England and people from Denmark had
Speaker 1: also started to move into the area as well, and
Speaker 1: so with all of these influences, the Land language kind
Speaker 1: of evolved, and so what we now know as Old English.
Speaker 1: So at this point England was a mostly Christian nation
Speaker 1: and it mostly spoke one language, although there were several
Speaker 1: distinct dialects, and it was ruled by a king with
Speaker 1: earls who were responsible for specific regions within the kingdom.
Speaker 1: And the Vikings started invading Britain in the ninth century
Speaker 1: and over the span of roughly a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: years Vikings conquered a lot of England, but then the
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxons UH living in Wessex, led by Alfred the Great,
Speaker 1: staved them off and started pushing them back out again.
Speaker 1: In the process, they were honing their battle abilities and
Speaker 1: really making the Anglo Saxon world a power to be
Speaker 1: reckoned with on its own. After this point there was
Speaker 1: a period of relative calm which lasted about fifty years
Speaker 1: before the Vikings came back and started up a new
Speaker 1: cycle of pillaging and plundering and then retreating back to
Speaker 1: where they came from before coming back for more pillaging
Speaker 1: and wondering. It sounds very exciting, but it was actually
Speaker 1: quite dangerous. Well, yes, often exciting things are uh, and
Speaker 1: this was kind of the state of things when one
Speaker 1: of Alfred the Great's direct descendants, Edward, entered the picture.
Speaker 1: And today we know of Edward as Edward the Confessor,
Speaker 1: but that was a name he was given about a
Speaker 1: hundred years after his death, when the Pope recognized him
Speaker 1: as a saint. So Edward was born in about one
Speaker 1: thousand and three, and because of all these ongoing Viking attacks,
Speaker 1: he and his family took refuge in Normandy for a
Speaker 1: number of years, and there they naturally built a lot
Speaker 1: of ties to Norman society, so they made a lot
Speaker 1: of friends there were influenced in their politics while they
Speaker 1: were living there. It took several failed attempts, but Edward
Speaker 1: finally returned to England and became king in ten forty two,
Speaker 1: and he brought a lot of Norman advisors and kind
Speaker 1: of Norman politics along with him, and Edward marrying a
Speaker 1: woman named Edith, although they had children, so this left
Speaker 1: a question of who the heir was going to be.
Speaker 1: And there's no written account of exactly what transpired there,
Speaker 1: but the general historical consensus is that in March of
Speaker 1: ten fifty one he announced it a council meeting that
Speaker 1: he wanted his kinsman William of Normandy, to take the
Speaker 1: throne after his death. This did not sit at all
Speaker 1: well with a guy named Godwine, who was the Earl
Speaker 1: of Wessex and Edith's father, so Edwards father in law.
Speaker 1: He had actually been a favorite to become the king
Speaker 1: himself and was hoping to see one of his own
Speaker 1: children or grandchildren eventually on the throne, and the top
Speaker 1: of these own aspirations of power that he had. He
Speaker 1: really was a legitimately powerful person, and he had a
Speaker 1: much stronger backing than Edward did among the other leaders
Speaker 1: of England, and this tension between Godwine and the king
Speaker 1: really took England to the brink of a civil war.
Speaker 1: But eventually Edward outlawed Godwine after he refused to punish
Speaker 1: the people of Dover, which fell under his earl him
Speaker 1: for an attack on Edward's brother in law, and Godwine
Speaker 1: and his sons and most of his family fled to
Speaker 1: Flanders and Ireland, and then Edward banished his wife to
Speaker 1: a nunnery. It 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 a tax break, and he probably thought
Speaker 1: that if he really needed an army or a naval force,
Speaker 1: that he could just call it up because he was
Speaker 1: the king um and in a lot of circumstances that
Speaker 1: probably would have worked. But that unfortunately or fortunately, depending
Speaker 1: on whose side you're on, meant that when Godwine came
Speaker 1: back across the channel with his own fleet in ten
Speaker 1: fifty two, Edward did not have a force ready to
Speaker 1: fight him off. And on top of Edward not having
Speaker 1: enough manpower to resist Godwine's attack, public sentiment was pretty
Speaker 1: firmly on Godwine's side at this point. People just did
Speaker 1: 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 Godwine'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 William,
Speaker 1: to help keep him in line and discourage him from
Speaker 1: lining up with Flanders against him. But thanks to this
Speaker 1: whole idea that he was being promised to become the
Speaker 1: 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 rivals died did
Speaker 1: he really seem to get any rest. He was pretty
Speaker 1: much constantly having to fend off one attack after another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that brings us back to Harold, and about ten fifty
Speaker 1: four or ten fifty five, Harold visited Normandy because of
Speaker 1: a storm. He actually wound up landing in Flanders and
Speaker 1: was taken prisoner at first, and William had to come
Speaker 1: and secure his release. And at some point during this
Speaker 1: little excursion, for reasons that different accounts report, completely differently.
Speaker 1: Harold swore an oath to honor Williams claim to the
Speaker 1: throne once Edward died. Norman writers say that Edward had
Speaker 1: sent Harold specifically for this purpose, but English sources either
Speaker 1: don't reference it at all, or they say that Harold
Speaker 1: was in Normandy to secure the release of some of
Speaker 1: his kin from imprisonment. So there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: disagreement about whether or not there was intrigue in the
Speaker 1: mix at this point. This is it's a thousand almost
Speaker 1: years ago, and both sides writing about it definitely have
Speaker 1: an agenda. But either way, the sources all pretty much
Speaker 1: agree that Harold swore to uphold William's claim to the throne,
Speaker 1: and then he went back from Normandy across the English
Speaker 1: Channel to England in about ten sixty five. So we're
Speaker 1: coming up on the happenings. Uh So, at this point
Speaker 1: the stage seems to be set for one would hope
Speaker 1: a fairly smooth succession. Edward the Confessor has promised the
Speaker 1: throne to William of Normandy, and the surviving person with
Speaker 1: the next strongest claim to the throne, Harold Godwinson, has
Speaker 1: sworn an oath to honor Edward's decree. It seems like
Speaker 1: it should be cool. It does. There there's a third
Speaker 1: person with kind of a tide to the throne. He
Speaker 1: will talk about a little bit later, but at this
Speaker 1: point it's really between uh William and Harold. But even
Speaker 1: though it should not have been really But what happened
Speaker 1: next is that King Edward died after an uprising in Northumbria.
Speaker 1: He had tried to raise an army to put down
Speaker 1: the rebellion, but winter was coming and people were pretty
Speaker 1: reluctant to get involved in what was really a civil war,
Speaker 1: so eventually Edward just had to give into the rebels demands,
Speaker 1: and he was apparently so distraught by his failure to
Speaker 1: bring Northumbria back in the line that he got sick
Speaker 1: and never got better again. He died at the beginning
Speaker 1: of January ten sixty six, and the king was buried
Speaker 1: on January six of ten sixty six, and that day,
Speaker 1: even the he had sworn an oath to honor Williams
Speaker 1: claim to the throne, Harold stepped in and took it
Speaker 1: for himself. We don't really have a lot of clear
Speaker 1: historical documentation conclusively telling us why he did this. At
Speaker 1: the time, though, succession wasn't always a straight up matter
Speaker 1: of father to son inheritance, or of the king designated
Speaker 1: designating who was going to follow him to the throne.
Speaker 1: In England, a man wasn't really considered to be king
Speaker 1: until he had the support of a majority of England's
Speaker 1: most powerful men. Like we said, England was not super
Speaker 1: keen on the idea of having a Norman king, and
Speaker 1: there are also some accounts, including the Life of King Edward,
Speaker 1: which Queen Edith later had written, that said Edward either
Speaker 1: gave the kingdom to Harold on his deathbed or that
Speaker 1: he had entrusted it to him. In the Baieux Tapestry,
Speaker 1: Harold is shown being given the crown, and almost one
Speaker 1: thousand years later we still don't entirely know what went down.
Speaker 1: So whatever the circumstances are of Harold being round, King
Speaker 1: William objected, and so apparently did Harold's brother Toasting, who
Speaker 1: then mounted two different invasions of England. The first came
Speaker 1: from Flanders and the second came with backup from the Vikings.
Speaker 1: So Harold had to spend the start of his reign
Speaker 1: fighting 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: way 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 eminent. And before we get to it,
Speaker 1: let's take a moment and talk about a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor. Now we're going to get back to the
Speaker 1: actual battle. And since we know from the top of
Speaker 1: the episode that this is what Tracy has gotten excited
Speaker 1: about talking about, very excited, go crazy. So it took
Speaker 1: a little while before William made it to England. He
Speaker 1: 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 Peven's 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: forsa Hastings, and he had to march his men all
Speaker 1: the way from Yorkshire, which was about two hundred miles away.
Speaker 1: They basically rode south as fast as they could, most
Speaker 1: 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 involves the soldiers, this looks like a really one
Speaker 1: sided battle because you had you had people who were
Speaker 1: on foot versus people who had archers and horses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about why it was not nearly
Speaker 1: that clear cut. Here's how William of Mom's Bray describes
Speaker 1: the English all on foot, armed with battle axes and
Speaker 1: covering themselves in front by the juncture of their shields.
Speaker 1: They formed an impenetrable body. The English were also armed,
Speaker 1: we should say, with slings and spears, but it seems
Speaker 1: as though they did not really have many archers, probably
Speaker 1: because of the speed at which they had to move
Speaker 1: to Hastings, so it wasn't like they could rouse all
Speaker 1: of the archery skilled gents in the area to help.
Speaker 1: Here's how William of Mom's Bray describes the Normans. Their
Speaker 1: infantry with bows and arrows formed the vanguard, while their cavalry,
Speaker 1: divided into wings, was placed in the rear. The Duke.
Speaker 1: That duke is as William with Serene countenance, declaring allowed
Speaker 1: that God would favor him as being the righteous side,
Speaker 1: called for his arms, and when through the haste of
Speaker 1: his attendance, he had put on his halber the hind
Speaker 1: part before, he corrected the mistake with a laugh, saying,
Speaker 1: the power of my dukedom shall be turned into a kingdom.
Speaker 1: Basically a story here that he accidentally put his armor
Speaker 1: on backwards and and then tried to turn that to
Speaker 1: his advantage rather than uh seeing as seeing it as
Speaker 1: a poor omen, I had a nickel for every time
Speaker 1: I put my armor on backward. William of Malmsbury also
Speaker 1: describes the English as having stayed up all night drinking
Speaker 1: and singing, while the Normans instead spent the night confessing
Speaker 1: their sins and having communion in the morning, which is
Speaker 1: in all likelihood added color commentary and not a real thing.
Speaker 1: But both sides were clearly pretty worn out, the English
Speaker 1: from having traveled so far from getting to battle, and
Speaker 1: the Normans from having stood at the ready all night
Speaker 1: just in case an attack happened. So whether they were
Speaker 1: drinking or confessing, no one had gotten sleep, and they
Speaker 1: were all really tired. Yeah. This This account was written
Speaker 1: a little bit later in the eleventh century, and and
Speaker 1: there are parts of it that people pretty much agree
Speaker 1: are probably right. But then when it gets to and
Speaker 1: then the English were up all night drinking, that's kind
Speaker 1: of like the Hessians thing, right, they were all drunk,
Speaker 1: clearly because they lost, they must have all been inebriated
Speaker 1: it and that's really not not true. So, as we
Speaker 1: said earlier, the battle began with the English behind this
Speaker 1: shield wall, and then the Normans were arranged into lines,
Speaker 1: with their crossbowmen at the front, and then their soldiers
Speaker 1: on foot, and then their knights on horses. And it
Speaker 1: would seem, of course, as though the English were at
Speaker 1: a vast disadvantage since they had neither cavalry nor very
Speaker 1: many archers. But they did have the high ground, and
Speaker 1: they had a shield wall and battle axes, which are
Speaker 1: in fact horrifying though maybe to think about very effective
Speaker 1: 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: sad faith happened. I knew when I was typing this
Speaker 1: that Holly was going to be very sad about the
Speaker 1: predictable with the animal stuff, so William moved his men
Speaker 1: and kind of waves. They would fire a volley of
Speaker 1: arrows and then alternate charges with the foots, the foot
Speaker 1: soldiers and the knights, And there were a lot of
Speaker 1: casualties on both sides, but the English shield wall held
Speaker 1: for a really long time. This battle went on basically
Speaker 1: all day. The tide to the battle turned when the
Speaker 1: Normans either retreated or feigned a retreat. Some accounts say
Speaker 1: this was a deliberate strategy on Williams part, and others
Speaker 1: suggested that Norman's actually lost their nerve when a rumor
Speaker 1: spread that William had been killed. So we don't know
Speaker 1: why they turned. Yeah, it it's pretty much. The English
Speaker 1: writers say that that the Normans all kind of freaked
Speaker 1: out when their leader apparently fell but had not really fallen,
Speaker 1: and the Normans, on the other hand, say that it
Speaker 1: was a skilled battle maneuver on William's part. I meant
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, either way. When the Normans started
Speaker 1: to flee, the English broke their ranks and went after them,
Speaker 1: and then the Norman's turned on them and cut them down.
Speaker 1: And it's also unclear whether the sequence of events actually
Speaker 1: happened once or twice, So maybe one time it was
Speaker 1: out of fear and one time it was on purpose,
Speaker 1: we don't know. But regardless, the shield wall started to
Speaker 1: fail and the Normans really started to gain ground. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I described this whole battle to do the boyfriend, and
Speaker 1: he was like, they failed for that more than once,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, that's a little we don't know historically.
Speaker 1: Possibly what we do know is that later in the
Speaker 1: afternoon Harold was killed. The Baiou tapestry depicts him as
Speaker 1: being shot with an arrow through the eye and an
Speaker 1: extremely memorable sequence, But that's actually a later account, Like
Speaker 1: that's not something that seems to have persisted on the day,
Speaker 1: So that might be sort of a romanticized, horrifying edition
Speaker 1: of a later historian or writer and not something that
Speaker 1: actually happened on that day. But when he felt that's
Speaker 1: definitely when English soldiers really started to scatter um and
Speaker 1: as the sun started to set, the battle was pretty
Speaker 1: much over, with the Normans hoping to clean up the stragglers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Normans went after the stragglers and they slaughtered a
Speaker 1: lot of them, but many of the Normans were also
Speaker 1: killed after the battle itself was over. After piling onto
Speaker 1: one another against a rampart that was hidden in tall grass,
Speaker 1: And so this thing ended with just scores of bodies,
Speaker 1: the big body count for this particular battle. So after
Speaker 1: the battle Harold had died, William had one. But coming
Speaker 1: to the throne wasn't quite as simple as all that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so much that William killed Harold in the
Speaker 1: battle and that William consequently got to be king. There
Speaker 1: was still actually one other heir to the throne alive
Speaker 1: at this point. That was Edgar Atheling, who was son
Speaker 1: of Edward the Exile, who was son of Edmund Ironside,
Speaker 1: who himself had been king for several months. So Edgar
Speaker 1: was only about thirteen years old, but he did have
Speaker 1: a much clearer line of successions straight to the throne
Speaker 1: than either Harold or William did, And while he was
Speaker 1: not full of supporters all over England, he did have
Speaker 1: the backing of the archbishop and the citizens of London.
Speaker 1: And there's really all kinds of disagreement about what exactly
Speaker 1: took place next, how much force William used making his
Speaker 1: way to London, and how much the death toll continued
Speaker 1: to climb. Those all still have a lot of question
Speaker 1: marks around them. We know that it was a really
Speaker 1: bloody campaign though, and in the end Edgar's supporters did
Speaker 1: back down. William moved on to London and was crowned
Speaker 1: king on Christmas Day ten sixty six. He built Battle
Speaker 1: Abbey on the site of the battle uh approximately as
Speaker 1: as we think today. The town of Battle grew up
Speaker 1: around it, and the altar in the abbey is said
Speaker 1: to stand on the spot where Harold had stood at
Speaker 1: the center of the shield wall. The aftermath of the
Speaker 1: Norman invasion really could be its own whole other podcast topic.
Speaker 1: The next several years were very grizzly as the English
Speaker 1: rebelled against their new Norman king, and William definitely put
Speaker 1: down their rebellions. Case in point the Harrying of the North,
Speaker 1: in which William did a whole lot of conquering and
Speaker 1: pillaging in Northumbria and as many as a one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people starved to death, which is just a huge
Speaker 1: It was a huge death toll. Mammoth there was. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of killing and and and pillaging for
Speaker 1: many years, and even though this was definitely a bloody
Speaker 1: and oppressive conquest, there are some modern beliefs about the
Speaker 1: Norman invasion. That don't quite hold up. For example, the
Speaker 1: Normans did not introduce the idea of a class system
Speaker 1: to England and Anglo Saxon England about ten of the
Speaker 1: people were actually slaves and most of the free people
Speaker 1: were peasants. There was a very very small, very wealthy
Speaker 1: aristocracy and an even smaller ruling class that held actual power,
Speaker 1: So Anglo Saxon England like was not some kind of
Speaker 1: utopia where everyone was Yeah, it's also not true that
Speaker 1: women were better off before the Norman invasion. Uh. That
Speaker 1: comes up pretty often to this idea that that women
Speaker 1: were equal to men before the Normans, and the Normans
Speaker 1: started subjugating them. So while it's totally true that women
Speaker 1: didn't 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 of Norman speaking rulers. So
Speaker 1: by the twelfth century people were speaking what we know
Speaker 1: today is Middle English, which is the language of the
Speaker 1: Canterbury Tales. So definitely had a huge impact on the
Speaker 1: culture of England's the direction of history. It's it's sort
Speaker 1: of considered a watershed moment in English history especially. Uh
Speaker 1: but if you hear people say that, uh the Normans
Speaker 1: were universally a terrible influence on England, that doesn't quite.
Speaker 1: William was quite a grizzly and bloody ruler, yes, especially
Speaker 1: 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 around
Speaker 1: about and they used uh light our technology to map
Speaker 1: the area near what's believed to be the actual battlefield.
Speaker 1: So whether this is actually true is either up in
Speaker 1: the 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: is the center of an amiba. Yeah, it's it's not
Speaker 1: quite that simple. Yeah. English Heritage also known as the
Speaker 1: Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England disputed this whole
Speaker 1: time Team Finding, basically saying what we just said, that
Speaker 1: the battle took place over a wide swath of the area,
Speaker 1: So really, what was the point in trying to say
Speaker 1: this spot is where it happened. There are also three
Speaker 1: completely different sites that have been bandied about as the
Speaker 1: exact spot in quotation marks. And then there's also a
Speaker 1: cool thing on line that you found that I know
Speaker 1: you're yearning to talk about. Did It is a Battle
Speaker 1: of Hastings game you can play at the BBC. We
Speaker 1: will link to it in our show notes. You can
Speaker 1: play as William or you can play as Harold and
Speaker 1: you can see you what the what the results are
Speaker 1: if you make different decisions as a as a leader
Speaker 1: in the battle. At first I thought it was somehow
Speaker 1: 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. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. If you have heard an email address
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Speaker 1: the course of today's episode, since it is from the
Speaker 1: archive that might be out of date. Now, you can
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