Senlac Hill (Battle), Sussex

The last successful invasion of England

On 14 October 1066, the kingdom of England was conquered for the last time in its history.

Duke William of Normandy, claiming the English throne on the basis of a contested promise made by Harold Godwinson three years earlier, landed at Pevensey on 28 September 1066 with about 7 000 men and 2 500 horses, carried across the Channel in around 700 wooden ships.

Two and a half weeks later, on the gentle ridge of Senlac Hill nine kilometres inland, William's army met an English army that had marched 410 kilometres in twelve days. King Harold's troops were exhausted — they had just won an extraordinary victory over a Norwegian invasion force at Stamford Bridge on 25 September, killing the Viking king Harald Hardrada and Harold's own rebel brother Tostig — and had then been force-marched south to meet William.

Three feigned retreats

The Norman victory was won by tactical patience.

Harold's army held the high ground in a defensive shield wall — a solid line of overlapping shields punctuated by the great two-handed Dane-axes of his elite housecarls. Norman cavalry charges up the slope failed three times during the morning. The breakthrough came when sections of the Norman line — possibly the Bretons on the left — broke and began to retreat in apparent panic. English fyrdmen on the flanks broke ranks to chase them.

It was a feint. The retreating Normans wheeled and cut the pursuing English down on the flat ground below the ridge.

William repeated this trick at least twice more. Each time the shield wall on the hilltop shortened.

By late afternoon, the wall was thin enough for a final Norman cavalry charge to break through and reach Harold's standards.

How Harold died

The most famous detail of the battle — Harold's death by an arrow to the eye — is recorded in the Bayeux Tapestry, the 70-metre embroidered chronicle commissioned by William's half-brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux within a generation of the event.

The relevant panel of the tapestry is genuinely ambiguous. It shows two adjacent figures near the inscription HAROLD REX INTERFECTUS EST ("King Harold has been killed"). One figure has an arrow lodged in his eye. A second figure beside him is being hacked down by a Norman knight on horseback. Medieval art historians have argued for two centuries about whether these are two depictions of Harold's death (killed in the eye, then mutilated) or two separate figures (unidentified English thegn, then Harold).

The contemporary chronicler William of Poitiers, writing about ten years after the battle, does not mention an arrow at all. He says Harold was killed by Norman knights, his body so badly mutilated that it could be identified only by his mistress Edith Swan-neck, who recognised marks "known only to her".

The arrow detail entered the historical record through the tapestry and has been there ever since.

Halley's Comet in the spring of the same year

Eight months before the battle, in late April 1066, Halley's Comet made its closest approach to Earth and was visible in the night sky over England and Normandy for several weeks.

Medieval observers on both sides took it as an omen — bad for Harold, good for William. The tapestry includes it as a fiery streak over a panel showing Harold receiving news of William's invasion preparations, beneath an inscription reading ISTI MIRANT STELLA ("they marvel at the star").

The comet has returned every 75 to 79 years since. The 1066 apparition was the eighteenth recorded return. It will next be visible from Earth in July 2061.