An Investigation On The Battle Of Hastings In 1066

In January 1066,Edward the Confessor died in London,and the senior minister Harold from Wessex inherited the throne,causing a battle for succession of the throne of England.The armies from the Normandy,Norway and other places began to enter England,after defeating Harald III who was the king of Norway,near York,Harold commanded the army to march south and fought with William,the duke of Normandy,and ultimately William defeated Harold and conquered England.This battle is known as the Battle of Hastings,while the conquest of England is called the Norman Conquest.As the most decisive battle of the Norman Conquest,the Battle of Hastings has been known for a long time,which was finally mainly due to the battle for the succession of the throne of England.However,this paper's research subject and focus of attention lie in the reasons why Duke William of Normandy won and King Harold failed in the battle of the Hastings.Compared with internally united Normandy,England was beset with numerous contradictions before the outbreak of the Battle of Hastings.Harold and his brother Tostig fell out and became enemies in 1065,and after being deprived of the title of earl and the territory,Tostig took refuge in Harald III,the Norwegian King,which also made Harold lose his most powerful helper.And due to feudal system and relatively low economic development level,England lagged behind Normandy in the military service system,weapons and equipment,strategic tactics and other aspects.And besides,the military commanders personal abilities and random response capabilities in the battlefield are different,so Normandy ultimately obtained the victory.During the battles occurred in England on September to October of 1066,England,Normandy and even Norway suffered major economic and personnel losses,and the results of these battles also brought great impacts to the three sides.Since then,expansion of the Nordic pirate kingdom lasting for several centuries gradually eliminated,and the death of Harald III also marked the end of the era of expansion of the Nordic pirates.Later,although the Nordic people still invaded Scotland,Ireland and other place,the flames of the war began to shrink to the local.Nordic relatively unified countries gradually formed,and every kingdom also completed the Christianization successively.For England,after Norman Conquest,William I established Western Europe's most powerful feudal monarchy in England at that time,and the greatest effect he brought to England was the acceleration of the feudal process of Anglo-Saxon England.Norman army's combat method in the Battle of Hastings was also studied by the Englanders,and infantry's fighting method of pure shield wall array in close distance was replaced by the method of joint operations of infantry,cavalry and archers.Norman's conquest of England not only brought profound changes and influences to England,but also brought great changes to Normandy itself.The wealthy and powerful England helped William strengthen his dominance in Normandy.At the same time,the strength of the emerging Norman aristocracies in England was increasingly growing,and these aristocracies often occupied a lot of real estate and wealth in both England and Normandy and also played a pivotal role in the kingdom of England,which would inevitably lead to the collision between the royal powers of England and the French,and the French King's intervention in England's regime also became one of the reasons resulting in the turmoil of England's political situation in the following several hundred years.The exchanges and collisions between Britain and France also became the subject of subsequent political life in Western Europe,which led to the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War between Britain and France.At present,the exchanges between Britain and France also affect the development and change of the pattern of world powers.