The Norman Conquest:  The Battle Of Hastings And The Fall Of Anglo-Saxon England, by Marc Morris

This book answers a question that is particularly worthwhile to ponder, and that is how a nation as powerful and wealthy as Anglo-Saxon England was so vulnerable to attack the way it fell so dramatically to the Norman invasion.  This book explores the way that Edward the Confessor was a vulnerable ruler who didn’t have dynastic legitimacy and was often struggling to overcome a couple of overmighty English earls, and the way that England’s elites had been damaged by decades of Danish dominance under Canute and his children to the point where they just were not able to bounce back after defeat in Hastings.  The author persuasively argues that Harold was too quick in fighting William and should have mustered up his forces more but he was goaded into action by William’s harrying, and the author also has a lot of critical things to say about William and his behavior as a ruler after winning with the problems that he had in maintaining power in England despite his victory.  Although the battle of Hastings has attracted a lot of attention, the author does a great job in setting up the context and examining the repercussions of that battle.

This book of about 350 pages is divided into 20 chapters that cover a good span of time.  The book begins with acknowledgements, maps, family trees, a note on names and illustrations, and an introduction that sets up the context of the book.  After that the author looks at the Bayeux tapestry to look at William as the man who would be king (1), the wave of Danes who took over late Anglo-Saxon England (2), and William’s own early life as a man who had to fight hard to recover the integrity of Normandy after inheriting as a child (3).  The author discusses the struggles for succession (4) as well as the building of monasteries in Normandy (5) and the rise of the Godwinesons (6).  After that the author talks about Harold’s time as a hostage of William (7) and the uproar that led to the fall of Harold’s brother Tostig in Northumbria (8).  From here the author moves to Norman logistical strength as Harold sought to protect his new kingdom (9), Harold’s need to defeat the invasion of Harold Hardrada (10), and then the invasion of William the Conqueror and his victory at Hastings (11).  The author spends the rest of the book talking about the repercussions of that victory and its spoils (12), with immediate English insurrection against Norman rule (13), the aftershocks of continuing revolts (14), the contentious nature of relationship between Normans and Anglo-Saxon natives (15), the ravening nature of Norman rulers (16), the difficulties William faced at the edges of his empire with neighboring nations (17), the purposes of the Domesday book in consolidating Norman rule (18), and matters of death and judgment (19) as well as the slow return of English to the notice of the outside world (20).

There are some aspects of the context of the Norman conquest that this book does a good job at bringing out.  For one, there is the comment on the social distance that existed between Normans and Anglo-Saxons after the conquest, and the way that William broke up the large earldoms so that there was no single noble who could present a threat to his rule.  And the author also points out the fact that William (and indeed, any medieval ruler) had to deal with a great deal of conflict both within and without his realm, as the author demonstrates William’s struggles with the rising Angevin dukes as well as French and Scottish monarchs, whose lands he tried to harry into peace, as well as the struggles within William’s own family over rule.  Perhaps most poignant of all is the way that the author looks at the struggles of the English to preserve their language and culture in the face of foreign domination and the rebirth of English after centuries of being submerged by Norman dominance.