5 ms·

How important was the Battle of Hastings?

85 points by benbreen 7mo ago

ggm 7mo ago
Counterfactuals abound in this. What if Stamford Bridge had failed? What if Harold had won?
- jfengel 7mo ago
  Likely, the long-term outcome would be the same. Harald wouldn't have been in a great position to fight of William, either. He might have simply ceded southern England without even a fight. And given William's subsequent Harrying of the North, I don't think that Harald would be able to hold on to it very long. He was intent on taking over the whole thing, and he had a much stronger force coming over the English Channel than over the North Sea. Of course we can never really tell. I could spin a million other possible outcomes. But in this case, William really did have an overwhelming force. Godwinson had a home-field advantage, and might have won if he hadn't exhausted his force just getting there. The Vikings weren't going to fare better.
  - _0ffh 7mo ago
    I was wondering a while ago what the outcome would have been if the order was reversed. Harold Godwinson might have fought off William of Normandy, but then be too exhausted to stop Harald Hardrada, all with just a few weeks of difference in timing.
- GolfPopper 7mo ago
  I find one of the more interesting counterfactuals to be "What if William gets better winds and lands in late August?"
atombender 7mo ago
https://archive.ph/a1YN4 https://archive.ph/a1YN4
jongjong 7mo ago
All I can say is that people do seem to overestimate the impact of losing a war. Just like they overestimate the need to wage war in the first place. The main outcome of a war is loss of lives and infrastructure. Political changes are minor; maybe they will start teaching the language of the invader in schools as an elective... Maybe restaurants will get new foods added to the menu. Maybe taxes will go up a little... A bit more immigration from that country... Money will go to a different set of politicians. But if you want a modern proof; look at Iraq and Afghanistan... Under US occupation for many years. They have the same people, same language, same culture, same everything as before... It's like they never lost any battles. Look at Germany after they lost WW2; they still speak German. Their cultural identity is still very strong; maybe it affected their foreign policy a little but apart from that, it's hard to tell. War is truly useless except for those selling weapons and for a couple of big companies that are trying to acquire some mineral resources or securing some trade routes. There's really no other purpose. My ancestors are from a country which (during the French revolution) had voluntarily changed 'ownership' from France to Britain and later back to France again. They still speak French. Nothing changed, at all, except for the fact that the elites conveniently avoided the Guillotine... Fast forward 300 years and you can't tell any cultural or economic difference at all from the other neighboring nations which remained under France and had experienced the Guillotine; same GDP numbers, same culture, same everything. Anglo-Saxons like to make fun of the French for surrendering easily but as a regular citizen, it actually makes logical sense. I think it just shows that the government is better aligned with the interests of the people. Strategic surrender is smart; if you know ahead of time which force is most powerful and can evaluate it objectively, you can save yourself the trouble of dying and you end up with a better outcome than you would have otherwise. It's risk management. Of course, the Swiss are even smarter for staying neutral but France is too big to take a neutral stance (and they can actually drive outcomes) so they take one stance and then back-peddle if the tide turns. And France does something else really smart which is; they embrace internal opposition; so if the tides turn, they allow the opposing elite take control without any fighting and it looks like France was always on the winning side. Almost nobody recalls this, but during WW2, France was actually on the German side; president Philippe Pétain allowed the Germans in. But then later General De Gaulle pushed back when it looked like there was a good chance to turn the war around. And now everyone thinks France was always part of the allied forces. French people hacked politics. I think now Americans are now also doing something similar. This is why the country is divided IMO and it's smart. Internal division is the cost of guaranteed victory. It works so long as the population is politically flexible and only focus on what's important to them. If people don't mind changing religion or language or some laws, then it really doesn't matter who wins the war. If the enemy doesn't have clear objectives for a war, then the loser of the war can still control the outcome.
somewhereoutth 7mo ago
The English class system is anchored in this event - the ruling/upper class was replaced in its entirety by the Norman invaders, leaving two very distinct identities.
- bambax 7mo ago
  A reporter for the Financial Times once asked Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, what advice he would give to a young entrepreneur wanting to succeed. He joked: "Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror."
- yobbo 7mo ago
  Didn't an existing class hierarchy (at least in part) enable the Normans to do this? When the aristocratic army was defeated, the entire country was defenceless and they could replace the existing aristocracy.
  - somewhereoutth 7mo ago
    Indeed, and having replaced the aristocracy they let the 'lower classes' carry on much as they had before, continuing with their existing customs and (lower level) forms of governance - just with new 'top bosses' if you will. So in comparison to other places that did not have such a wholesale aristocracy replacement, this really cemented the class divide. No longer was the aristocracy 'like you but richer/more powerful', but quite different - different language, customs etc. 1066 was the last successful invasion of the British mainland, so, aside from the odd civil war, no sweeping 'cataclysm' occurred to shake things up. We didn't even have a revolution like the French, instead a gradual (over centuries!) transition to our current democratic system, with a constitutional monarchy (itself a remnant of the old ruling system).
    - miceeatnicerice 7mo ago
      That odd civil war was more than a tiny bit like revolutions elsewhere though (violent beheadings, paranoid totalitarianism, bourgeois ascendancy) - it just happened a little earlier than others. British history is all gradual and continuous, except for the big abrupt cataclysm in the middle of it.
vondur 7mo ago
It was very important. The Normans completely supplanted the ruling aristocracy of England and changed the culture of the country. The Normans were some serious bad asses and conquered Sicily and nearly conquered the Byzantine Empire. There’s a podcast on them called Norman Centuries which I also recommend.
- fiftyacorn 7mo ago
  The aristocracys were already interwed before the conquest. I mean williams wife was related by marriage to haralds wife, and this cementing of families continued. One impact you see is the saxon families ended up kore interwed to the scottish nobility, st margaret being an example
  - NuclearPM 7mo ago
    Kore?
    - stevula 7mo ago
      Probably “more”
linehedonist 7mo ago
Attention-grabbing headline, but the article itself answers the question: very important. "Hastings was one of those battles which changed the course of history, most directly for England but also, as events turned out, for Britain and for France... In terms of its consequences, Hastings must be the most important battle ever to have been fought in England... the consequences of its outcome changed the course of English history definitively."
robotresearcher 7mo ago
> "was 1066 really all that?" This article might exist just for this joke in the sub-headline. Pretty good. "1066 and all that" is a highly influential satirical history book from 1930, and "[X] and all that" a meme/idiom in UK English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That
- joosters 7mo ago
  https://archive.org/details/1066allthat00walt/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/1066allthat00walt/page/n5/mode/2... for anyone who'd like to read it. Embarassingly for me, while the book advertises that it contains '2 genuine dates', 1066 is the only one I can remember.
Jemaclus 7mo ago
Not affiliated, just a fan, but if this is a topic you're interested in, I highly recommend Michael Livingston's "1066: A Guide to the Battles and Campaigns." Ihttps://www.michaellivingston.com/non-fiction/1066-a-guide-to-the-battles-and-the-campaigns/ https://www.michaellivingston.com/non-fiction/1066-a-guide-t...
riffraff 7mo ago
The 1851 book "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World"[0] and its ilk is likely what the author refers to when talking of "decisive battles where popularised in the 19th century". It is pretty obvious that single battles hardly determine long war outcomes, but it's a pretty attractive idea that a kingdom can be lost for want of a nail and all that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_o...
- kitd 7mo ago
  Thanks for the link. I had often heard of the importance of the battle of Marathon, but couldn't remember its provenance. Here's an interesting excerpt from the Siege of Orleans though: the struggle by which the unconscious heroine of France, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, rescued her country from becoming a second Ireland under the yoke of the triumphant English. That's quite a statement from a 19thC English man.
- ProjectArcturis 7mo ago
  I don't think that's obvious at all. I think there are obviously a mix of wars where the outcome was inevitable, and where it was decided through a series of one or more battles. In WWI, for example, if Germany had won the battle of the Marne, they would have captured Paris in 1914 and likely (eventually) have won the war.
mxmilkiib 7mo ago
excellent ~10h The Rest Is History podcast playlist covering the context and details https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEbAHi3fZpuHgn-UBsGwiSiMI3bCV4JCZ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEbAHi3fZpuHgn-UBsGwiSiMI...
onion2k 7mo ago
At the time it was important, but the real impact came later when it was absolutely pivotal in giving British school children something to learn about and write a report on for one summer of their school life. There isn't a single person who went to school in England who doesn't know about the battle, the Bayeux Tapestry, and the Doomsday book. (Hyperbole obviously, before people reply to say they went to Hastings Secondary and have never heard of William the Conqueor.)
- testdelacc1 7mo ago
  I’ve never heard of William the Conqueor.
  - davidwritesbugs 7mo ago
    If you're British then that is a majestic fail. My children are taught that in primary school.
    - luxpir 7mo ago
      Read again closely.
    - testdelacc1 7mo ago
      If you’re British then that is a majestic fail in reading English. Perhaps they taught you some other language in school?
      - davidwritesbugs 7mo ago
        Jesus. Do you perform in public too?
  - bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
    William the Conqueor was a fellow who used to make horns out of the shells of large sea snails; he used to travel across the Pacific in a catamaran, from island to island make horns and selling them. If William the Conqueor had been on the English side at the Battle of Hastings then the English would have one because their warning horns would have been top notch, everybody says so.
globalise83 7mo ago
When you think that the Norman successors still own the vast majority of England to this day, cramming the Anglo-Saxons into rabbit hutches on high density estates, very.
- Biologist123 7mo ago
  The UK has land ownership inequality comparable to South Africa and Brazil. Quite something.
  - PearlRiver 7mo ago
    The rest of Europe turned into republics or republic monarchies. The land is owned by the state.
- oldpersonintx 7mo ago
  [dead]
- laurencerowe 7mo ago
  Surely the alternative would have been that land being owned the Anglo-Danish elite installed by Cnut a few decades earlier, or perhaps a newly installed Norwegian elite had Harold lost at Stamford Bridge. Britain's ownership inequality is probably more a result of the tradition of primogeniture where aristocratic land holdings remained concentrated whereas in France they were subdivided on inheritance. I blame Britain's tiny homes on our early industrialisation creating terraced houses which have subsequently been difficult to redevelop at higher density. Other countries seem to have skipped that and instead built tenements that eventually turned into flats at a much higher floor area per land area.
- hermitcrab 7mo ago
  Based on what - that some of the aristocracy have French/Norman sounding names? A lot don't. Nearly a thousand years of interbreeding insures that the genes have been well and truly intermixed by now. I have no idea if my ancestors were orginally saxon, norman or something else. And I expect that it true of 99% of other people in the UK.
tomjuggler 7mo ago
The battle of Hastings features prominently in my house, it's one of the first history subjects we taught the kids about. Tom Hastings
jonjacky 7mo ago
Hastings affected the wider politics of Europe, not just England. For centuries before Hastings, England had been involved with Scandinavia, especially Denmark and Norway. After Hastings it was totally entangled with France, pretty much forever.
hermitcrab 7mo ago
Can't see 'History Today' without thinking about Newman and Badiel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TO-e-HdW8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TO-e-HdW8A
teleforce 7mo ago
>French customs then took root through England and English affairs began to change in various ways You can replace this statement with French language and it's still be true: French "language" then took root through England and English "language" began to change in various ways. Fun facts, about one-third of modern English language are actually made up from French words and vocabulary. I remember reading one posted announcement notice at a French university, and surprisingly understood most of the contents of the notice although it's written in French and I cannot speak French. However, if I don't read the notice but relies on French to verbally reading the notice to me, I'd not understand the contents. Apparently most of the working and professional words in English were taken from French (this made up most of the loan words from French to English). Thus the notice is easily understandable by reading it if you know English language since the notice is in professional setting (i.e university).
Uw5ssYPc 7mo ago
This link is a paywalled garbage. Cannot read it without paying.

85 points by benbreen 7mo ago

ggm 7mo ago

Counterfactuals abound in this. What if Stamford Bridge had failed? What if Harold had won?

jfengel 7mo ago
Likely, the long-term outcome would be the same. Harald wouldn't have been in a great position to fight of William, either. He might have simply ceded southern England without even a fight. And given William's subsequent Harrying of the North, I don't think that Harald would be able to hold on to it very long. He was intent on taking over the whole thing, and he had a much stronger force coming over the English Channel than over the North Sea. Of course we can never really tell. I could spin a million other possible outcomes. But in this case, William really did have an overwhelming force. Godwinson had a home-field advantage, and might have won if he hadn't exhausted his force just getting there. The Vikings weren't going to fare better.
- _0ffh 7mo ago
  I was wondering a while ago what the outcome would have been if the order was reversed. Harold Godwinson might have fought off William of Normandy, but then be too exhausted to stop Harald Hardrada, all with just a few weeks of difference in timing.
GolfPopper 7mo ago
I find one of the more interesting counterfactuals to be "What if William gets better winds and lands in late August?"

atombender 7mo ago

https://archive.ph/a1YN4 https://archive.ph/a1YN4

jongjong 7mo ago

All I can say is that people do seem to overestimate the impact of losing a war. Just like they overestimate the need to wage war in the first place. The main outcome of a war is loss of lives and infrastructure. Political changes are minor; maybe they will start teaching the language of the invader in schools as an elective... Maybe restaurants will get new foods added to the menu. Maybe taxes will go up a little... A bit more immigration from that country... Money will go to a different set of politicians. But if you want a modern proof; look at Iraq and Afghanistan... Under US occupation for many years. They have the same people, same language, same culture, same everything as before... It's like they never lost any battles. Look at Germany after they lost WW2; they still speak German. Their cultural identity is still very strong; maybe it affected their foreign policy a little but apart from that, it's hard to tell. War is truly useless except for those selling weapons and for a couple of big companies that are trying to acquire some mineral resources or securing some trade routes. There's really no other purpose. My ancestors are from a country which (during the French revolution) had voluntarily changed 'ownership' from France to Britain and later back to France again. They still speak French. Nothing changed, at all, except for the fact that the elites conveniently avoided the Guillotine... Fast forward 300 years and you can't tell any cultural or economic difference at all from the other neighboring nations which remained under France and had experienced the Guillotine; same GDP numbers, same culture, same everything. Anglo-Saxons like to make fun of the French for surrendering easily but as a regular citizen, it actually makes logical sense. I think it just shows that the government is better aligned with the interests of the people. Strategic surrender is smart; if you know ahead of time which force is most powerful and can evaluate it objectively, you can save yourself the trouble of dying and you end up with a better outcome than you would have otherwise. It's risk management. Of course, the Swiss are even smarter for staying neutral but France is too big to take a neutral stance (and they can actually drive outcomes) so they take one stance and then back-peddle if the tide turns. And France does something else really smart which is; they embrace internal opposition; so if the tides turn, they allow the opposing elite take control without any fighting and it looks like France was always on the winning side. Almost nobody recalls this, but during WW2, France was actually on the German side; president Philippe Pétain allowed the Germans in. But then later General De Gaulle pushed back when it looked like there was a good chance to turn the war around. And now everyone thinks France was always part of the allied forces. French people hacked politics. I think now Americans are now also doing something similar. This is why the country is divided IMO and it's smart. Internal division is the cost of guaranteed victory. It works so long as the population is politically flexible and only focus on what's important to them. If people don't mind changing religion or language or some laws, then it really doesn't matter who wins the war. If the enemy doesn't have clear objectives for a war, then the loser of the war can still control the outcome.

somewhereoutth 7mo ago

The English class system is anchored in this event - the ruling/upper class was replaced in its entirety by the Norman invaders, leaving two very distinct identities.

bambax 7mo ago
A reporter for the Financial Times once asked Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, what advice he would give to a young entrepreneur wanting to succeed. He joked: "Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror."
yobbo 7mo ago
Didn't an existing class hierarchy (at least in part) enable the Normans to do this? When the aristocratic army was defeated, the entire country was defenceless and they could replace the existing aristocracy.
- somewhereoutth 7mo ago
  Indeed, and having replaced the aristocracy they let the 'lower classes' carry on much as they had before, continuing with their existing customs and (lower level) forms of governance - just with new 'top bosses' if you will. So in comparison to other places that did not have such a wholesale aristocracy replacement, this really cemented the class divide. No longer was the aristocracy 'like you but richer/more powerful', but quite different - different language, customs etc. 1066 was the last successful invasion of the British mainland, so, aside from the odd civil war, no sweeping 'cataclysm' occurred to shake things up. We didn't even have a revolution like the French, instead a gradual (over centuries!) transition to our current democratic system, with a constitutional monarchy (itself a remnant of the old ruling system).
  - miceeatnicerice 7mo ago
    That odd civil war was more than a tiny bit like revolutions elsewhere though (violent beheadings, paranoid totalitarianism, bourgeois ascendancy) - it just happened a little earlier than others. British history is all gradual and continuous, except for the big abrupt cataclysm in the middle of it.

vondur 7mo ago

It was very important. The Normans completely supplanted the ruling aristocracy of England and changed the culture of the country. The Normans were some serious bad asses and conquered Sicily and nearly conquered the Byzantine Empire. There’s a podcast on them called Norman Centuries which I also recommend.

fiftyacorn 7mo ago
The aristocracys were already interwed before the conquest. I mean williams wife was related by marriage to haralds wife, and this cementing of families continued. One impact you see is the saxon families ended up kore interwed to the scottish nobility, st margaret being an example
- NuclearPM 7mo ago
  Kore?
  - stevula 7mo ago
    Probably “more”

linehedonist 7mo ago

Attention-grabbing headline, but the article itself answers the question: very important. "Hastings was one of those battles which changed the course of history, most directly for England but also, as events turned out, for Britain and for France... In terms of its consequences, Hastings must be the most important battle ever to have been fought in England... the consequences of its outcome changed the course of English history definitively."

robotresearcher 7mo ago

> "was 1066 really all that?" This article might exist just for this joke in the sub-headline. Pretty good. "1066 and all that" is a highly influential satirical history book from 1930, and "[X] and all that" a meme/idiom in UK English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That

joosters 7mo ago
https://archive.org/details/1066allthat00walt/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/1066allthat00walt/page/n5/mode/2... for anyone who'd like to read it. Embarassingly for me, while the book advertises that it contains '2 genuine dates', 1066 is the only one I can remember.

Jemaclus 7mo ago

Not affiliated, just a fan, but if this is a topic you're interested in, I highly recommend Michael Livingston's "1066: A Guide to the Battles and Campaigns." Ihttps://www.michaellivingston.com/non-fiction/1066-a-guide-to-the-battles-and-the-campaigns/ https://www.michaellivingston.com/non-fiction/1066-a-guide-t...

riffraff 7mo ago

The 1851 book "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World"[0] and its ilk is likely what the author refers to when talking of "decisive battles where popularised in the 19th century". It is pretty obvious that single battles hardly determine long war outcomes, but it's a pretty attractive idea that a kingdom can be lost for want of a nail and all that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_o...

kitd 7mo ago
Thanks for the link. I had often heard of the importance of the battle of Marathon, but couldn't remember its provenance. Here's an interesting excerpt from the Siege of Orleans though: the struggle by which the unconscious heroine of France, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, rescued her country from becoming a second Ireland under the yoke of the triumphant English. That's quite a statement from a 19thC English man.
ProjectArcturis 7mo ago
I don't think that's obvious at all. I think there are obviously a mix of wars where the outcome was inevitable, and where it was decided through a series of one or more battles. In WWI, for example, if Germany had won the battle of the Marne, they would have captured Paris in 1914 and likely (eventually) have won the war.

mxmilkiib 7mo ago

excellent ~10h The Rest Is History podcast playlist covering the context and details https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEbAHi3fZpuHgn-UBsGwiSiMI3bCV4JCZ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEbAHi3fZpuHgn-UBsGwiSiMI...

onion2k 7mo ago

At the time it was important, but the real impact came later when it was absolutely pivotal in giving British school children something to learn about and write a report on for one summer of their school life. There isn't a single person who went to school in England who doesn't know about the battle, the Bayeux Tapestry, and the Doomsday book. (Hyperbole obviously, before people reply to say they went to Hastings Secondary and have never heard of William the Conqueor.)

testdelacc1 7mo ago
I’ve never heard of William the Conqueor.
- davidwritesbugs 7mo ago
  If you're British then that is a majestic fail. My children are taught that in primary school.
  - luxpir 7mo ago
    Read again closely.
  - testdelacc1 7mo ago
    If you’re British then that is a majestic fail in reading English. Perhaps they taught you some other language in school?
    - davidwritesbugs 7mo ago
      Jesus. Do you perform in public too?
- bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
  William the Conqueor was a fellow who used to make horns out of the shells of large sea snails; he used to travel across the Pacific in a catamaran, from island to island make horns and selling them. If William the Conqueor had been on the English side at the Battle of Hastings then the English would have one because their warning horns would have been top notch, everybody says so.

globalise83 7mo ago

When you think that the Norman successors still own the vast majority of England to this day, cramming the Anglo-Saxons into rabbit hutches on high density estates, very.

Biologist123 7mo ago
The UK has land ownership inequality comparable to South Africa and Brazil. Quite something.
- PearlRiver 7mo ago
  The rest of Europe turned into republics or republic monarchies. The land is owned by the state.
oldpersonintx 7mo ago
[dead]
laurencerowe 7mo ago
Surely the alternative would have been that land being owned the Anglo-Danish elite installed by Cnut a few decades earlier, or perhaps a newly installed Norwegian elite had Harold lost at Stamford Bridge. Britain's ownership inequality is probably more a result of the tradition of primogeniture where aristocratic land holdings remained concentrated whereas in France they were subdivided on inheritance. I blame Britain's tiny homes on our early industrialisation creating terraced houses which have subsequently been difficult to redevelop at higher density. Other countries seem to have skipped that and instead built tenements that eventually turned into flats at a much higher floor area per land area.
hermitcrab 7mo ago
Based on what - that some of the aristocracy have French/Norman sounding names? A lot don't. Nearly a thousand years of interbreeding insures that the genes have been well and truly intermixed by now. I have no idea if my ancestors were orginally saxon, norman or something else. And I expect that it true of 99% of other people in the UK.

tomjuggler 7mo ago

The battle of Hastings features prominently in my house, it's one of the first history subjects we taught the kids about. Tom Hastings

jonjacky 7mo ago

Hastings affected the wider politics of Europe, not just England. For centuries before Hastings, England had been involved with Scandinavia, especially Denmark and Norway. After Hastings it was totally entangled with France, pretty much forever.

hermitcrab 7mo ago

Can't see 'History Today' without thinking about Newman and Badiel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TO-e-HdW8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TO-e-HdW8A

teleforce 7mo ago

>French customs then took root through England and English affairs began to change in various ways You can replace this statement with French language and it's still be true: French "language" then took root through England and English "language" began to change in various ways. Fun facts, about one-third of modern English language are actually made up from French words and vocabulary. I remember reading one posted announcement notice at a French university, and surprisingly understood most of the contents of the notice although it's written in French and I cannot speak French. However, if I don't read the notice but relies on French to verbally reading the notice to me, I'd not understand the contents. Apparently most of the working and professional words in English were taken from French (this made up most of the loan words from French to English). Thus the notice is easily understandable by reading it if you know English language since the notice is in professional setting (i.e university).

Uw5ssYPc 7mo ago

This link is a paywalled garbage. Cannot read it without paying.