THE TWO HAROLDS.
=1. Tostig’s Invasion.=--Harold and the English people must have known
very well by this time the danger which threatened them from Normandy.
They did not perhaps think so much of another danger which threatened
them at the same time. Besides Duke William, another foe was arming
against them, and, as it turned out, it was this other foe who struck
the first blow. It was indeed a time of little stillness when men had
to guard against two invasions at once. Or rather it was found to be
impossible to guard against both of them. While King Harold was doing
all that man could do to make the southern coast of England safe
against the Norman, another enemy whom he did not look for came against
him in the north. This was the famous King of the Northmen, Harold
son of Sigurd, called _Hardrada_, that is _Hard-rede_, the stern in
counsel. King Harold of Norway came before Duke William of Normandy.
And yet King Harold of Norway was not the first to come. After all it
was the south of England which was first invaded, but it was by a much
smaller enemy than by either the great king or the great duke. This was
no other than the banished Earl Tostig. He seems to have been trying to
get help anywhere to put him back in his earldom, even at the cost of a
foreign conquest of England. Some say that he had been to Normandy to
stir up Duke William, some that he had been to Norway to stir up King
Harold. The accounts are not easy to put together. But it is certain
that by May he had got together some ships from somewhere or other, and
with them he came to Wight. He then plundered along the south coast;
but by this time King Harold of England was getting ready his great
fleet and army to withstand Duke William. So King Harold marched to the
coast, and Tostig sailed away. He then sailed to Lindesey and plundered
there. But the Earls Edwin and Morkere drove him away, and he found
shelter in Scotland with King Malcolm.
=2. Harold Hardrada.=--Harold of Norway was the most famous warrior
of Northern Europe. His youth had been passed in banishment; so he
took service under the Eastern Emperors, who now kept a Scandinavian
guard called the Warangians. In that force he did many exploits,
specially by helping in the war, when in 1038 the Imperial general
George Maniakês won back a large part of Sicily from the Saracens.
It is even said that he waged war with the Saracens in Africa, and
he then made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which he is said to have
not done without fighting. And there is a stone at Venice, which was
brought from Peiraieus the haven of Athens, on which is graven the name
of Harold the Tall, and it has been thought that this records some
exploits of Harold Hardrada there. And many strange tales are told of
him, of his killing dragons and lions, carrying off princesses, and the
like. In short he is one of the great heroes of Northern romance. But
there is no doubt that he came back to Scandinavia, that he got the
kingdom of Norway which had been held by his forefathers, and waged
a long war with Swegen of Denmark. Now at the time of Edward’s death
and our Harold’s election the North was at peace. The great warrior
was perhaps tired of peace; and, either of his own thought or because
he was stirred up by Tostig, he began to plan an expedition against
England. Whether Tostig had stirred him up or not, it is certain that,
when he set out, Tostig joined him, bowed to him and became his man,
and helped him in his warfare against his own brother and his own
country.
=3. Preparations of Harold of England.=--All the summer of the year
1066 King Harold of England was doing all that man could do to put
southern England in a state to withstand any attack from Normandy. If
he knew at all that King Harold of Norway was coming, it was still
his main business, as he could not be everywhere at once, to defend
that part of the kingdom which was under his own immediate rule and
which was exposed to the more dangerous enemy. The care of the North
he had to leave to its own earls, Edwin and Morkere, who were now his
brothers-in-law, and who, of all men in the island, were the most
concerned to keep Tostig out of it. King Harold then got together
the greatest fleet and army that had ever been seen in England, and
with them he kept watching the coasts. This was very hard work to
do in those days. For only a small part of his army, called his own
_housecarls_, were regular paid soldiers; the greater part were the
people of the land, whose duty it was to fight for the land when they
were called upon. Such an army was ready enough to come together and
fight a battle; but it was hard to keep them for a long time under
arms without fighting. And it was also very hard to feed them, for of
course they could not be allowed to plunder in their own land. The
wonderful thing is that King Harold was able to keep them together so
long as from May to September. All that time they were waiting for Duke
William, and Duke William never came. Early in September they could
hold out no longer; there was no more to eat, and every man wanted to
go home and reap his own field. So the great fleet and army broke up,
and the land was left without any special defence. And in the course
of the month in which they broke up, both enemies came. In that very
September both King Harold of Norway and Duke William of Normandy
landed in England. But King Harold of Norway came the first, and indeed
the war with him was over before Duke William crossed the sea.
=4. The Voyage of Harold of Norway.=--Whether then he was stirred up by
Tostig or whether he set forth of his own will, King Harold of Norway
got him together a mighty fleet, and set sail for England, meaning to
win the land and reign there. But men said that he and his friends saw
strange dreams and visions on the way which forebode evil to the host.
One saw the host of England march to the shore, and before them went
a wolf, and a witch-wife rode on the wolf, and she fed the wolf with
carcases of men, and, as soon as he had eaten one, she had another
ready to give him. It is well to mark these stories, which come out of
the old tales and songs of the Northmen, as they show what manner of
men they were who now came against England for the last time. The whole
story of Harold Hardrada is told in one of the grandest of the old
Northern tales, but, when we come to examine it by our own Chronicles,
we see that only parts of it can be true. But, notwithstanding the bad
omens, the great fleet sailed on, and reached the isles of Shetland
and Orkney. These were then a Scandinavian earldom, and its earls,
Paul and Erling, joined the Norwegian fleet. It was joined too by
other Scandinavian princes from Iceland and Ireland, by King Malcolm
of Scotland, and at last, when King Harold of Norway reached the
Tyne, by the English traitor Tostig. Whether by agreement or not, he
met the Norwegian fleet with whatever following he had, he became
the man of Harold Hardrada, and agreed to go on with him against his
brother Harold of England. They sailed along the coast of Yorkshire, as
Deira was now beginning to be called; they ravaged Cleveland, and met
with no resistance till they reached Scarborough. There the Northmen
climbed the hills above the town, and threw down great burning masses
of wood to set it on fire. Then they sailed on; the men of Holderness
fought against them in vain; they entered the mouth of the Humber;
the Northumbrians fled before them, and sailed, as the small ships of
those times could, a long way up the country, up the river Wharfe to
Tadcaster. So the Norwegian fleet was able to sail up the Ouse towards
York without hindrance. They reached Riccall, a place about nine miles
from York by land, but much further by the river. There the host
disembarked; some were left to guard the ships, while the main body of
the army, with Harold Hardrada and Tostig at its head, set forth to
march upon York.
=5. The Battle of Fulford.=--It would seem that the two brother earls
who ruled on either side of the Humber had taken very little care to
defend their coasts; but they were no cowards when actual fighting
came. They were now together at York; and when the Northmen came near,
they marched out with whatever troops they had, and met Harold of
Norway at Fulford, two miles from York, on September 20th, 1066. Events
now press so fast on one another that we must remember the days of the
week, and the battle of Fulford was fought on Wednesday. Though Fulford
is much nearer to York than to Riccall, Harold of Norway got thither
before the English earls, and was able to choose his own ground. The
battle was fought on a ridge of ground with the river on one side
and a ditch and a marsh on the other. On this side was the weakest
part, the right, of the Norwegian army; here Earl Morkere charged, and
pressed on for a while. But on the left King Harold of Norway, with his
royal banner the _Landwaster_ beside him, drove all before him. The
English presently fled, and not a few, besides those who were slain
with the sword, were hurled into the river and into the ditch. The two
earls, with the remnant of their host, found shelter at York.
=6. The Surrender of York.=--York held out only four days, and made
terms with the enemy on Sunday. An assembly was held, in which Harold
Hardrada was received as king, and it was agreed that the men of
Northumberland should follow him against southern England. Hostages
for the city were given at once, and hostages for the shire were
promised. It is plain that all this was not according to the real
wishes of the Northumbrians; but one would think that Edwin and Morkere
must have been poor commanders, not to have held out a little longer.
The Norwegian army now marched to Stamfordbridge, about eight miles
north-east of York, on the river Derwent. Thither the hostages were to
be brought. It is not very clear why they went away so far from York,
and still further from their ships at Riccall. Perhaps it was because
there seems to have been a royal house near at Aldby, of which either
Tostig or Harold of Norway may have had a fancy for taking possession
at once. Anyhow the mass of the army encamped at Stamfordbridge.
There was a wooden bridge there across the Derwent, and the host was
scattered on both sides of the river.
=7. The March of King Harold of England.=--The men of York needed only
to wait one day longer, and they would not have had to bow to Harold of
Norway. For King Harold of England was on his march; that very Sunday
when they surrendered he was in Yorkshire; on Monday morning he was in
York itself. When the fleet and army which had guarded the south coast
had dispersed, the King rode to London, and there he heard the news
of the coming of Harold of Norway. It is said that he was sick at the
time; but he bore up as well as he could to get ready his army. And the
story ran that King Edward appeared in the night to Abbot Æthelsige of
Ramsey, and bade him go to the King and tell him to be of good cheer
and go forth and smite the enemies of England. Now this story proves
something; for those who put it together could not have looked on
Harold as a perjurer or usurper or one undutiful to King Edward, as the
Normans said he was. Harold was condemned by the Pope at Rome, and yet
Englishmen, even in after times, did not think the worse of him for
that. So a tale like this is worth telling. In any case King Harold
got ready his army, and pressed on as fast as he could. When he left
London, he could not have known of the battle of Fulford; but he would
hear the news on the way, and it would make him press on yet faster. On
Sunday, September 29th, he reached Tadcaster, and reviewed the fleet in
the Wharfe. The next morning he reached York. The whole city received
him gladly; but he passed on through the city at once to attack the
enemy. The land between York and Stamfordbridge lies so that an army
coming from York could get very near to Stamfordbridge without being
seen. So we read that King Harold of England and his host came unawares
on King Harold of Norway and his host. And then, on that same Monday,
was fought the first of the two great battles of this year, the fight
of Stamfordbridge.
=8. The Battle of Stamfordbridge.=--The Norwegian story has a grand
tale to tell of the battle, which may be read in many books. But
it cannot be true; it must have been made many years after. For it
describes the English army as made up chiefly of horsemen and archers,
which were just the forces which an English army of that time had not.
In after days, when Englishmen had taken to the Norman way of fighting,
there were English archers and horsemen, and the story must have been
written then. But in those days Englishmen fought on foot; those who
rode to the field got down from their horses when the fighting began.
The heavy-armed first hurled their javelins, and then they fought with
their great axes, or sometimes with swords. The sword was the older
weapon; the axe had come in under Cnut. The light-armed had javelins,
slings, any weapons they could get; the bow was the rarest of all.
But though we cannot believe the Norwegian story, we know something
of the battle from our own Chroniclers, and there are bits in one of
our Latin writers, Henry of Huntingdon, which are plainly translated
from an English song. And that song must have been made at the very
time, for only a few days later men had something else to think about
besides making songs about Stamfordbridge. In this way we learn that
the battle began on the right side of the Derwent, that nearest to
York. The English army came unawares on the part of the Northmen who
were on that side, who were not in order nor fully armed. They were
presently cut to pieces. But meanwhile the main body on the other side
had time to form under King Harold of Norway and Earl Tostig, and one
valiant Northman kept the bridge against the whole English host. He cut
down forty men with his axe; one of the few archers in the English army
shot an arrow at him in vain; at last a man went below the bridge and
pierced him from below through his harness. Then the English crossed,
and the real battle began, the fight of the two Harolds. The fight was
long and fearful between two armies equally brave, fighting in much
the same way, and each led on by a great captain. But in the end the
English won a complete victory. Harold of Norway and Tostig were both
killed in the battle, and the great mass of the Norwegian army was cut
off. Tostig was known by a mark on his body and was buried at York. And
King Harold of England, who had marched into York from Tadcaster on the
Monday morning, marched back again to York from Stamfordbridge on the
same Monday evening, having overthrown the first of the two enemies who
threatened him. So the hostages for all Yorkshire were never given to
Harold of Norway.
=9. The Days after the Battle.=--The Norwegian army had been cut off
at Stamfordbridge; but the Norwegian fleet was still in the Ouse at
Riccall. There were Olaf the son of Harold of Norway and the Earls of
Orkney. King Harold of England offered them peace; so they came to York
and gave hostages, and sware oaths that they would keep friendship
towards England. Some days afterwards the feast of victory was kept
at York; and while the King was at the board, a messenger came who
had ridden as fast as he could from the south to say that the second
enemy was come. Duke William of Normandy had landed in Sussex, and was
harrying the land. He had indeed landed three days after the fight of
Stamfordbridge, Thursday, September 28th, 1066. We must now go back and
see all that he had been doing since the crowning of King Harold of
England.