The Anglo-Saxons at War, 800–1066

Paul Hill

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781848843691
• eBook ISBN:
  9781781598948
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The historian and archeologist presents a vivid and comprehensive account of warfare in early Medieval England.

In this compelling new study, Paull Hill reveals what documentary records and the growing body of archaeological evidence can tell us about war and combat in the age of the great Anglo-Saxon kings. The violent centuries before the Norman Conquest come to life in this detailed account of how and why the Anglo-Saxons fought, how their warriors were armed and trained, how their armies were organized, and much more.

The role of combat in Anglo-Saxon society is explored, from the parts played by the king and the noblemen to the means by which the men of the fyrd were summoned to fight in times of danger. Land and naval warfare are both explored in depth. Hill also covers the politics and diplomacy of warfare, the conduct of negotiations, the taking of hostages, the use of treachery, and the controversial subject of the use of cavalry.

The weapons and armor of the Anglo-Saxons are described, including the spears, scramsaxes, axes, bows, swords, helmets, shields and mail that were employed in the close-quarter fighting of the day. Drawing on this wealth of information, Hill presents a vivid recreation of the actual experience of fighting in the campaigns against the Danes; the battles of Ashdown, Maldon and Stamford Bridge; and the sieges at Reading and Rochester.

Chapter 1

Warfare, Violence and Society

Why Go to War?

Imagine you are a thegn living on a modest estate somewhere in the south of England. It is the middle of the tenth century and there is trouble everywhere. Your lord lives within riding distance and one morning you receive a visit from his messenger. You are told to get ready for war. What is it that would compel you to go?

According to modern anthropological research there were a number of reasons for conflict and aggression in the Anglo-Saxon era. In a widely cited paper that concentrates on this subject in respect of the earlier Anglo-Saxon period (600–850), Guy Halsall has elucidated motives such as personal grievances, insults and justifiable revenge as reasons for aggression during this earlier period. All of these motives are evidenced in the Anglo-Saxons’ texts themselves. It is argued that in the pre-Viking period in England there is a heavy ritualistic taint to the aggression between kingdoms.

One of the mechanisms that drove all this stayed with the Anglo-Saxons right up to 1066. There was a compelling need in Germanic communities for young men to prove themselves as warriors. It was a vital part of their coming of age. Warfare played a central role in the making of a warrior leader and the subsequent impression he made on his followers. The accrual of riches and gifts with which he could attract a larger retinue and spread the power of his kin group was driven by his prowess on and around the battlefield. Old English literature is packed with references to warfare as a way of life in this respect. For example, there is evidence in the Maxims and in The Battle of Brunanburh poems to show the symbolic value of gift giving and ring giving, of the protection of warriors and of daring weapon play in battle. Maxims, for example, has the following passage:

A wound must be wound, a hard man avenged. A bow must have an arrow, and both together must have a man to accompany them. Treasure rewards another; a man must give gold. God may give riches to owners and take them away afterwards. A hall must stand, and grow old.

The Battle of Brunanburh in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions the role of the king as ring-giver:

Here, King Athelstan, leader of warriors,
ring-giver of men, and also his brother,
the ætheling Edmund, struck life-long glory
in strife round Brunanburh, clove the shield-wall,
hacked the war-lime, with hammers’ leavings . . .

The notions of the giving and receiving of gifts, of vengeance for the death of one’s lord and of the desire to win glory in battle are never far from the surface in Anglo-Saxon literature. It was an ideal, as we shall see, that had practical benefits if a lord was to surround himself with the right men for the job. It is argued that the lordship ties that bound a man to his lord were just as important to an Anglo-Saxon at the time of Hastings (1066) as they were before the dawn of the Viking invasions of the ninth century. It is accepted that by this time there was a sense of archaism to all this–a reference perhaps to an age long gone, but in any ideal there is always some form of reality.

The need to prove oneself, to find a lord to serve was a driving force behind the martial activities of young men, but the Scandinavian invasions of the ninth century made the need for men to protect their estates that much more urgent. So, what became the chief reasons for warfare in the subsequent centuries leading up to the Norman Conquest? Where exactly was the threat? The picture is obscured by the question of interpretation. One man’s boundary dispute is another man’s defence of the realm, so to speak. If we take just the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a bench mark, some broad conclusions can be drawn. Wars in the Viking period (that is, after 865) in England were fought by the Anglo-Saxons as part of a ruler’s protection or expansion of his kingdom or other patrimony. The leader had to fight such actions or risk losing the men he had attracted to his household. It was a cyclic thing that meant that warfare was virtually endemic on a number of levels, the key to it being the need for a king to attract and reward men to his calling and then for him to have to expand his wealth to accrue more gifts and riches with which to reward them. For this he needed a bigger army, and so it goes on. The story is the same for the different levels of the aristocracy. When the ealdormen and thegns of Anglo-Saxon England came to loggerheads over competing interests the result might be homicide and this was followed by a subsequent and very damaging ‘feud’ between rival families (see pp. 21–3).

The consequences of the loss of manpower through military ill preparedness were felt by Alfred the Great (871–900) in the early years of his reign. A mixture of treachery and poor strategy saw the invading Danish army all but divide and conquer Wessex in the 870s. For a brief time Alfred became an exile within his own kingdom. The way in which he fought back by re-organising his kingdom’s fighting resources and accruing wealth and loyalty through re-conquest is testimony to the success of the Anglo-Saxon warfare model. The warfare dynamic needed constant feeding from the ranks of freemen who had the right to bear arms. It is no surprise then that during the reigns of rather more peaceful kings, the system would creak a little under the weight of disaffected magnates whose rewards were not as great as they had been in times of cyclic warfare.

There was another driving force behind the reasons for going to war in the Anglo-Saxon period and this was the ‘feud’, the mechanics of which are examined more closely below (see pp. 21–3). The feud counts as a step up from the simple brawl. It has more to do with cycles of vengeance among rival groups usually connected by kinship ties. The trigger was usually a murder. Curiously, the competing factions of extended kin groups fought each other throughout the Anglo-Saxon period regardless of the Scandinavian influx. In fact, the phenomenon became a feature of northern Anglo-Danish life just as much as it was in the southern Anglo-Saxon world, leading eventually to some urgent legislation on the subject brought about by a concerned King Edmund I (939–46).

The Anglo-Saxon response to the keeping of law and order throughout these centuries is worthy of a volume in its own right, but suffice it to say that the Hundred Courts (or Wapentakes in the areas of Danish influence) were attended by men armed and prepared for action in whatever form it took. There was much concern with the economic impact of cattle rustling throughout this period and cross-border theft and large-scale raiding was a reality that often produced a military style response. Similarly, there is a militaristic tone to the London Peace Guild of the reign of King Athelstan (924–39). This law code, known as VI Athelstan, provided for the division of freemen into groups of nine with one leader, each known as tithings, their role to pursue criminals. We might imagine the men of London in their mounted posses chasing down robbers and those who housed them across the countryside. But whether this was warfare or a form of ‘policing’ is a moot point.

The economics of warfare were not lost on the protagonists of the period. Many battles during this period were fought near ports. The first Viking invaders often targeted the low-lying trading settlements on the English and French coasts where merchants plied their trade from vessels and stalls almost on the very shore line. Portable wealth was never far from the mind of any war leader in Anglo-Saxon England. The great Welsh leader Hywel Dda (b. 880, d. 950) made no secret of the fact that cattle raiding and other forms of portable wealth formed part of his foreign policy of the day. Clearly, it was in the interest of the king to protect such places from harm and from Athelstan’s time there were even royal ordinances actively to promote trade in such centres.

But if we look at it from the point of the warrior himself, from the point of view of the man who found himself woken one morning by a messenger from his lord who told him of a hungry and merciless enemy marching to the borders of his lord’s kingdom, or heading for the royal estate nearby where the king’s winter food supplies and many other riches lay, we will know just one thing. That thegn went to war that morning because he owed that service to his lord. The fact that our thegn held his estate in return for military service meant he was sometimes called upon to provide it. Indeed, his lord may have given him arms and armour when he took him into his household for this very purpose. And on this particular hypothetical morning, with a threat apparent to the wealth and prestige of his lord’s lord (the king), the thegn knew he had to respond. His lord had told him to get ready. His lord had told him who else to bring, how to provision himself and where to meet. The war had begun.

Where Were Wars Fought?

It is not often that a military encounter took place during the Anglo-Saxon period without there being a practical military consideration for the choice of location. According to Guy Halsall, between 600 and 850 it is apparent that excluding civil wars and early Viking attacks, there were twenty-eight battles fought between antagonists. There is evidence to suggest that many of these battles took place at river crossings or near to ancient monuments. The river crossing locations can be explained militarily. Fords and bridges have always had a vital strategic significance and it should be no surprise that campaigners in the Dark Ages chose to meet enemies at these nodal points on the route ways into each other’s territories. A glance at a list of early battles from the Anglo-Saxon period will serve to illustrate the importance of river crossings: there were battles at Crecganford (485); Cerdicesford (519); and Biedcanford (571) to name just a few. The assertion that early battles were fought at ancient monument sites is a little more problematic for the later period, although they do seem to play a part not so much in the location of a battle site, but in being the key points for constituent parts of armies to gather.

For the period covered by this book there seems to be a number of different dynamics at work regarding the location of battles. While fords and bridges still feature heavily, there is a noticeable shift towards the importance of centres of economic wealth. Also, the part played by fortifications in military encounters between protagonists becomes crucial, as is shown by the figures in Table 1. Battles in open country do, however, still feature highly.

The list in Table 1 is based on an analysis of battles, sieges and raids mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and a number of other sources referring to the years between 800 and 1066. It only includes those military encounters where some sort of clear conclusion as to location can be made. It is not strictly scientific as sometimes there is only have a brief mention of a fortified location but it cannot be said for certain that a recorded nearby pitched battle may have been the relieving of a siege, for example. Not included in the table are the numerous examples of regional devastation–the deliberate reduction of a landscape–carried out by settled Danes or by the Anglo-Saxon king himself. These do not amount to battles, sieges or raids as such, but were a completely different type of military strategy (see pp. 77–9). It should also be borne in mind that the references to battles in ‘Downland/Open Country’ were in reality never far from communications networks, such as roads and track ways that played a key part in the transportation of armies of the period.

Table 1. Where were battles fought (800–1066)?

Pitched Battles
Ford or Bridge	6
Downland/Open Country	16
Pre-arranged Field	1
At River Estuary	2
Coastal Royal Estate or Mint	4
Inland Royal Estate/Manor	5
Coastal Ancient Hillfort	1
At or Near to Inland Ancient Hillfort	1
At or Outside a Port	2
At Anchorage/Moorings	2
At or Outside a Defended or Fortified Place	12
Attack upon a Royal Capital/Citadel	4
Sieges
At Viking Purpose-built/Modified Fortifications	11
At Anglo-Saxon Fortifications	8
At an Island in a River	1
At a Port	3
Viking Raids
Port	13
Devastation	7

But if we are hampered by the question of interpretation, there are still some interesting conclusions to be drawn from the exercise. There should be no surprise at the fact that the Viking raiders chose ports so often, as these were places that were packed with riches, as indeed were the monasteries. But when the Danes were an actual army on active operations within the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, things were somewhat different. Apart from the ‘Downland/Open Country’ category, which we might expect to rank highly, the presence of fortified places and royal centres hints at a game of strategy in the landscape. It is also clear that the Anglo-Saxons besieged the Danes more often than the Danes besieged the Anglo-Saxons. This change in the nature of the locations of battles came about after the Danes had become settled in the Danelaw at the end of the ninth century. Both they and the Anglo-Saxons operated from strategically located fortified bases and for the first few decades of the tenth century warfare became a matter of political geography with the fortification programmes of Edward the Elder (900–24) and his Mercian sister Æthelflæd playing a vital role in combating the Danes in the midlands.

What is missing from the list in Table 1 which was there for the earlier period is the mention of ancient monuments. We know that these places were important. It is certainly the case that there were more prehistoric remains littering the Anglo-Saxon landscape than there are today, but what sort of impact may these places have had on the psyche of the Old English people and how did this translate into the considerations of an Anglo-Saxon general on campaign?

The Old English people revered the ancient landscape around them. The poem The Ruin seems to celebrate the glory of Roman Bath and Maxims II refers to ancient stone fortresses as ‘the work of giants’. Neolithic burial chambers were given names conjuring up images of the English people’s pagan past, such as Wayland’s Smithy in Berkshire. Here, at the site of a long barrow swathed in mystery, was a place where English folklore suggested passing travellers would have their mounts shoed by Wayland the Smith. It is possible that English armies were summoned to these types of places as gathering points for a campaign. Alfred the Great (871–900) did it at Egbert’s Stone in 878, bringing together a large host of men from the remaining shires that still owed him allegiance. Later, in 1006 at the height of King Æthelred II’s (979–1016) troubles with the Danes, the enemy army camped at Cwichelmslow, Ashdown (Berkshire), the site of another ancient barrow. This site was chosen by the Danes after they had raided their way through Hampshire and Berkshire on a destructive mid-winter campaign, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle telling us they ‘ignited their beacons as they travelled’. Cwicchelmes Hlæw (meaning the ‘Hill of Cwichelm’), now known as Cuckhamsley Knob, is on the ridgeway at East Hendred Down in Oxfordshire. It is a place steeped in Old English history, purporting (wrongly) to be the site of the burial place of Cwichelm himself, a Dark Age Anglo-Saxon leader, but most importantly, it became the meeting point for the shire assembly right up until the seventeenth century.

The Danes of 1006, once in position at Cwichelmslow, are said by the chronicler to have ‘there awaited the boasted threats, because it had often been said that if they sought out Cwichelm’s barrow they would never get to the sea. They then turned homewards by another route.’ The choice of site is quite explicit. The Danes knew of the boast of the English. They knew also that this meeting place was a long-established focal point for the Anglo-Saxons and that it was an obvious place to try to bring battle. So, here in 1006 was a potential battle being brought about by a foreign invader whose strategy was to accommodate an ancient English tradition in the landscape. The ‘igniting of beacons’ reference may even have been a ridiculing of the Anglo-Saxon civil-defence system which itself relied upon beacon signals. It could be argued that the Vikings were in fact instigating their own signalling system (for which there seems to have been an historical precedent according to the chronicler) by using advanced parties to mark out the line of march for the main army. A fuller discussion of the use of beacons is included below.

It can be seen that there was a variety of locations for Anglo-Saxon battles. Centres of economic importance and communications networks feature highly, as do fortifications, but if the Cwichelmslow episode of 1006 shows anything it does at least demonstrate the continuing importance of the ancient monument in the increasingly sophisticated Anglo-Saxon military landscape.

The Training of the Anglo-Saxon Warrior

Little is known about what sort of military training an Anglo-Saxon warrior had before he set foot on the battlefield. We may suppose that it was not formal in the sense of regular soldiery. There is no evidence to suggest that the armies of later Anglo-Saxon England were paraded, drilled and marshalled quite like their Byzantine or Middle Eastern counterparts, but we must also accept that because warfare was a way of life for so many men in this era, there will have been a degree of formality behind the preparation of a young man for a life of military prowess.

Although it is a difficult area to find evidence for, it seems that the military tradition among Anglo-Saxon warriors in the early centuries began with the fostering of a young warrior in another man’s household. In the poem Beowulf, the eponymous hero himself went to Hrethel’s household when he was just 7 (lines 2,435–6).

Beowulf spoke, the son of Edgetheow:
‘In youth I many war-storms survived,
in battle-times; I remember all of that;
I was seven-winters (old) when me the lord of treasure,
the lord and friend of the folk, took from my father;
held and had me King Hrethel,
gave me treasure and feast . . .

This poem, written in the tenth century or later, is recalling a practice from the dawn of the Dark Ages, a pagan rite of passage still a familiar thing to the Christian readership for which the work was intended. The character Beowulf was not the only male figure from the Anglo-Saxon world to embark on a form of training-in-service. Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert describes his subject as entering a boy’s company in his eighth year, ‘the first year of boyhood succeeding from infancy’. Here he learned to exercise, wrestle jump and run. From the Life of St Guthlac and the Life of St Wilfred we gain evidence that the next stage of a boy’s training came at around 14 years of age. Guthlac is recorded as being part of a group of youths that engaged in all sorts of sl...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Plates, Figures, Maps and Tables
• Preface
• Prologue
• Introduction–A Survey of the Evidence
• Chapter 1 - Warfare, Violence and Society
• Chapter 2 - Military Organisation
• Chapter 3 - Strategy and Tactics
• Chapter 4 - Fortifications and Earthworks
• Chapter 5 - Campaigns, Battles and Sieges
• Chapter 6 - Weapons, Armour and Accessories
• Conclusion
• Appendix - Rulers of the English, c. 871–1066
• Bibliography
• Index