Battle of Hastings | Norman Invasion | Instruments of Death

A cold autumn day nearly a thousand years ago, two great armies stand ready to do battle. Within a few short hours thousands of men lay dead or dying. At stake was the very future of England and the Saxon way of life. This was time when kings paid lip service to diplomacy, the only sure way to get what they wanted was to meet an enemy on the battlefield and kill him. It was here at Hastings in 1066, William of Normandy brought his infantry and cavalry to take from King Harold Godwinson of England, the crown William believed was rightfully his.

It was a battle fought by two armies with basic weapons and only a rudimentary grasp of tactics. Battle back then meant killing or maiming as many of your opponents as possible. It literally was head-to-head, toe-to-toe, man-to-man, it may have been basic shear slaughter, but the outcome of this bloody contest was to change the destiny of England forever.

How to inflict the most damage on the opposing armies is a never-ending military quest, and life was often grim for those who were wounded but survived the battle itself. Battlefield medicine was rudimentary at best, and barbaric at worst, and the wounds inflicted by the weapons of the day were horrific.

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