Part 4

Albert’s Lotharingian origin becomes of special interest now that we know he was a cleric, for Mr. Freeman devoted a special appendix to “Lotharingian churchmen under Edward.”[66] Unfortunately he was not acquainted with the case of Albert. Dr. Stubbs also has dwelt on the importance, for the church, of “the increased intercourse with the empire, and especially with Lorraine,” under Edward the Confessor.[67] He alludes, without committing himself to it, to Mr. Freeman’s somewhat fanciful theory on the subject.

III

Anglo-Norman Warfare

Having devoted special study to the art of war in the Norman period, including therein the subject of castles, I may have, perhaps, some claim to deal with the latest work on a topic which requires for its treatment special knowledge. When a treatise assumes a definite character, and is likely to be permanently consulted, it calls for closer criticism than a mere ephemeral production, and on this ground I would here discuss some points in Mr. Oman’s ‘History of the Art of War’ (1898).

Mr. Oman issued, so far back as 1885, ‘The Art of War in the Middle Ages,’ so that he enjoys, on this subject, the advantage of prolonged study. In 1894 he contributed to ‘Social England’[68] an article on “Norman Warfare,” to which I shall also refer. I should add that in his first (1885), as in his later work (1898), Mr. Oman received the help of Mr. F. York Powell, now Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford.

The first point I propose to consider is that of the famous English “formation” before the Norman Conquest. Mr. Oman originally wrote as follows:

The tactics of the English axemen were those of the column; arranged in a compact mass, they could beat off almost any attack, and hew their way through every obstacle (‘Art of War,’ p. 24).

This was also the view of the late Professor Freeman, who wrote of the battle of Maldon that--

The English stood, as at Senlac, in the array common to them and their enemies--a strong line, or rather wedge of infantry, forming a wall with their shields.

At the battle of Hastings (“Senlac”) itself he tells us--

The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They fought on foot in the close array of the shield wall.

They were ranged, he held, “closely together in the thick array of the shield wall.” He had well observed that “the Norman writers were specially struck with the close array of the English,” and had elsewhere spoken of “the close array of the battle-axe men,” and of “the English house-carls with their ... huge battle axes,” accustomed to fight in “the close array of the shield wall.”[69]

To this formation, it is necessary to observe, the term _testudo_ was applied. At the battle of Ashdown, Freeman wrote:

Asser calls it a _testudo_ or tortoise. This is the shield wall, the famous tactic of the English and Danes. We shall hear of it in all the great battles down to the end.

Florence adopts the same word in describing the formation of the rival hosts on that occasion:

Pagani in duas se turmas dividentes, æquali _testudine_ bellum parant (i. 83).

Ælfred ... Christianas copias contra hostiles exercitus ... dirigens ... _testudine_ ordinabiliter condensata (i. 84).

So, too, at the battle of Ethandun:

Ubi contra Paganorum exercitum universum cum densa _testudine_ atrociter belligerans (i. 96).

Again, in 1052:

Pedestris exercitus ... spissam terribilemque fecit _testudinem_.

This is an exact description of the host that faced the Normans, fourteen years later, on the hill of Battle. As William of Malmesbury describes it:

Pedites omnes cum bipennibus, conserta ante se _scutorum testudine_, impenetrabilem cuneum faciunt.[70]

“It is a pleasure,” as I wrote, “to find myself here in complete agreement with Mr. Freeman.”[71] Mr. Freeman saw in this passage “the array of the shield wall,”[72] and aptly compared Abbot Æthelred’s description of the English array at the Battle of the Standard: “Scutis scuta junguntur, lateribus latera conseruntur.”[73] With Mr. Oman also I was no less pleased to find myself in perfect agreement. I myself should speak, as he does, of the “tactics of the phalanx of axemen.”[74] It is particularly interesting to read in his latest work (p. 57), that at Zülpich (A.D. 612), according to Fredegarius:

So great was the press when the hostile masses [_phalanges_] met and strove against each other, that the bodies of the slain could not fall to the ground, but the dead stood upright wedged among the living.

For precisely the same phenomenon is described at the Battle of Hastings. William of Poitiers says of the English:

Ob nimiam densitatem eorum labi vix potuerunt interfecti.

And Bishop Guy:

Spiritibus nequeunt frustrata cadavera sterni, Nec cedunt vivis corpora militibus. Omne cadaver enim, vita licet evacuatum, Stat velut illæsum, possidet atque locum.[75]

There is nothing strange in this parallel between Zülpich and Hastings, for Mr. Oman observes that:

In their weapons and their manner of fighting, the bands of Angles, Jutes, and Saxons who overran Britain were more nearly similar to the Franks than to the German tribes who wandered south.[76]

At Poictiers “the Franks fought, as they had done two hundred years before at Casilinum, in one solid mass,”[77] for their tactics were “to advance in a deep column or wedge.”[78] We have seen that the “column” of English axemen similarly fought, according to Mr. Oman, “arranged in a compact mass.”

Where the agreement is so complete, I need not labour the point further. In my ‘Feudal England’ (pp. 354–8), I showed that Mr. Archer’s views on the subject could not stand for a moment against those of Mr. Freeman and Mr. Oman, to which they were directly opposed.

In ‘Social England’--just as Mr. Freeman had written that both the English and the Danes stood as a “wedge of infantry forming a wall with their shields”[79]--Mr. Oman writes of their “wedge or column.” It is only in his later work that he suddenly shifts his ground, and flatly contradicts his own words:

1894. 1898.

When Dane had fought Englishman, The Danes ... formed their the battle had always shield wall.... The shield been between _serried bodies_ wall (testudo, as Asser [80] of foot soldiery, meeting pedantically calls it) is _of fairly face to face _in the course not a wedged mass_,[80] wedge_ or column, with its but only a line of shielded shield wall of warriors warriors[81] (History of the standing elbow to elbow, etc. Art of War,’ p. 99). (‘Social England,’ p. 299).

The writer’s “of course” is delightful.

* * * * *

This contradiction of himself, however, is as nothing compared with that to which we are now coming.

In his first work Mr. Oman wrote under Mr. Freeman’s influence. The Normans, he held, at the Battle of Hastings, were confronted by “impregnable palisades.” Nine years later, in his second description of the battle, he substituted for these “impregnable palisades” an “impenetrable shield wall.”

1885. 1894.

The Norman knights, if unsupported His archers, if unsupported by by their light infantry, cavalry, might have been driven _might have surged for ever around off the field by a single the_ IMPREGNABLE PALISADES. charge; his cavalry, if The archers, if unsupported by unsupported by archers, _might the knights, could easily have have surged for ever around been DRIVEN OFF THE FIELD BY A the_ IMPENETRABLE SHIELD WALL GENERAL charge. United, however, of the English. But by by the skilled tactics of William, combining the two armies the two divisions of the invading (_sic_) with perfect skill, he army won the day (‘Art of War,’ won his crowning victory p. 25). (‘Social England,’p. 299).

The faithful _réchauffé_ of his former narrative only renders the more significant Mr. Oman’s change of “impregnable palisades” to “impenetrable shield wall.” For what had happened in the meanwhile to account for this change being made? In July, 1892, there had appeared in the ‘Quarterly Review’ my well-known article on “Professor Freeman,” in which I had maintained that the English defence consisted, _not_ of impregnable “palisades,” but only of an impenetrable “shield wall.” On the furious and famous controversy upon this topic which followed, it is quite unnecessary to dwell. Mr. Oman, we have seen himself adopted the view I had advanced, and not, I hasten to add, on this point alone, for with his whole description of the battle, as given in ‘Social England,’ I am in complete agreement. The “shield wall” he mentions twice.[82] Of “palisades,” intrenchments, or breastworks there is not a word.

And yet Mr. Oman, now, is not ashamed to write:

I fear that I must plead that I was never converted. This being so, Mr. Round cannot prove that I was.[83]

What is the explanation of Mr. Oman’s statement? Simply that he has again changed his view; and having first adopted that of Mr. Freeman, and then abandoned it to adopt my own, he now, in turn, abandons both, and advances a third (or fourth) at variance with both alike! His Norman knights are still “surging”; but they “surge” against an obstacle which has once more changed its character:

The knights, if unsupported by the bowmen, might have surged for ever against the _impregnable breastworks_. The archers, unsupported by the knights, could easily have been driven off the field by a general charge. United by the skilful hand of William, they were invincible (‘History of the Art of War,’ p. 164).

What then were these “impregnable breastworks” which now make their appearance in our old familiar passage? They are described on page 154, where we read that “we must not think ... of massive palisading:[84] they were merely

wattled hurdles ... intended, perhaps, more as a cover against missiles than as a solid protection against the horsemen, for they can have been but hastily constructed things, put together in a few hours by wearied men.”

Let us place, side by side, Mr. Oman’s own words in this his latest work:

The knights, if unsupported by [The English defences] the bowmen, might have constituted no impregnable surged for ever against the fortress, but a slight impregnable breastworks (p. 164). earthwork, not wholly impassable to horsemen (p. 154).

That they were, to say the least, “not wholly impassable” is evident from the writer’s own description (p. 159) of the Norman knights’ first charge “against the long front of the breastworks, which, in many places, they must have swept down by their mere impetus.” Nay, “before the two armies met hand to hand,” as Mr. Freeman observes,[85] a single horseman--“a minstrel named Taillefer,” as Mr. Oman terms him--“burst right through the breastwork and into the English line” (p. 158).[86] Such, on Mr. Oman’s own showing, were his so-called “impregnable breastworks” (p. 164). A single horseman could ride through them!

We see then that, in this his latest work, he not only adopts yet another view, but cannot adopt it consistently even when he does.

To me there is nothing strange in all this shift and shuffle. It has distinguished each of my opponents on this subject from the first. Not only are they all at variance with one another: they are also at variance with themselves. Alone my own theory remains unchanged throughout. The English faced their foes that day in “the close array of the shield wall.” Other defences they had none.

Mr. Oman has actually advanced four theories in succession:

(1) “The impregnable palisades.”[87]

(2) “The impenetrable shield wall.”[88]

(3) “An _abattis_ of some sort.”[89]

(4) “Wattled hurdles.”[90]

The third of these made its appearance after his description in ‘Social England.’ “I still hold,” Mr. Oman wrote, “to the belief that there was an _abattis_ of some sort in front of Harold’s line.”

But how can he “still” hold to a belief which he has never expressed before or since? For neither the first, second, or fourth of the defences he gives above can by any possibility describe an _abattis_. The New English Dictionary describes an _abattis_ as

a defence constructed by placing felled trees lengthwise, one over the other, with their branches towards the enemy’s line.

The ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ gives us a similar description, speaking of this defence as constructed of “felled trees lengthwise ... the stems inwards.”[91] One is driven to suppose that Mr. Oman is quite unable to understand what an _abattis_ really is.

We have now seen that the writer has actually given in succession four entirely different descriptions of the defences of the English front, while he has not the candour to confess that he has ever changed his mind.

At this I am not in the least surprised. As I have observed in ‘Feudal England,’ p. 342:

As for the defenders of the ‘palisade,’ they cannot even agree among themselves as to what it really was. Mr. Archer produces a new explanation only to throw it over almost as soon as it is produced. One seeks to know for certain what one is expected to deal with; but, so far as it is possible to learn, nobody can tell one. There is only a succession of dissolving views, and one is left to deal with a nebulous hypothesis.

Even since these words were published, Mr. Oman has produced his fourth explanation, and has produced it in conjunction with Mr. Archer, who had previously enriched this series of explanations by two further ones of his own. In one of them the “fenestres,” which Wace makes the principal ingredient of the palisade, are rendered by Mr. Archer “windows.”[92] In another he describes the English defence as “a structure of interwoven shields and stakes,” “shields set in the ground and supported by a palisade of stakes,” a defence into which “actual shields have been built.”[93] It is only necessary to add that Mr. Oman, who acknowledges here his “indebtedness to Mr. T. A. Archer,”[94] tacitly, but absolutely, rejects both these phantasies, together with Mr. Archer’s great theory that the English axemen were “shieldless” at the battle,[95] and “could not or did not form the shield wall.”[96] All this Mr. Oman rejects, though, of course, he is careful not to say so; just as Mr. Archer, before him, had rejected views of Mr. Freeman, while professing to defend his account of the battle against me.[97]

* * * * *

I have now shown that my opponents are still as unable as ever to agree among themselves on the subject of the alleged English defence, and that as to Mr. Oman, he contradicts himself, not only in successive works, but even in a single chapter. A little _clique_ of Oxford historians, mortified at my crushing _exposé_ of Mr. Freeman’s vaunted accuracy, have endeavoured, without scruple, and with almost unconcealed anger, to silence me at any cost. And they cannot even wait until they have agreed among themselves.

How entirely impotent they are to stay the progress of the truth is shown by the fact that a German writer, Dr. Spatz, who has independently examined the authorities and the ground, goes even farther than myself in rejecting Mr. Freeman’s narrative, and especially the palisade.[98] Sir James Ramsay also, on similarly independent investigation, has been driven to the same conclusion, which his recently published work embodies. Does Mr. Oman refer to Dr. Spatz, whose work is a well-known one? No, he coolly states that “the whole balance of learned opinion” is against me on this matter,[99] although, as we have seen, neither he nor Mr. Archer accepts Mr. Freeman’s narrative,[100] while their own recorded views hopelessly differ (see pp. 43, 49).

Again, Mr. Oman writes:

I do not see what should have induced him [Wace] to bring the wattled barrier into his narrative, unless it existed in the tale of the fight as it had been told him, etc. (p. 153).

And yet he made use of my ‘Feudal England,’ in which I set forth prominently (pp. 409–416), as I had previously done in the ‘English Historical Review’ (viii. 677 _et seq._; ix. 237), my theory that the passage in Wace “is nothing but a metrical, elaborate, and somewhat confused paraphrase of the words of William of Malmesbury,” and that he was clearly misled by the words “conserta ... testudine,” which he did not understand. Mr. Archer discussed this theory, but did not venture to reject it (Ibid.). Mr. Oman finds it safer to ignore it, and to profess that he cannot imagine where Wace got the idea from, except from oral tradition.

It is the same with the arrangement of the English host. In his latest work, Mr. Oman states, as a matter of fact, that the “house carles” formed the centre, and that

the fyrd, divided no doubt according to its shires, was ranged on either flank (p. 155).

There is no authority whatever for this view in any account of the battle, and it is wholly at variance with Mr. Oman’s own view, as stated in his earlier works.

Backed (_sic_) by the disorderly There the house carles of King masses of the fyrd, and by the Harold, backed (_sic_) by the thegns of the home counties, thegnhood of all southern the house carles of King Harold England and the disorderly stood (‘Art of War,’ p. 24). masses of the fyrd of the home counties, drew themselves out (‘Social England,’ p. 229).

In perfect agreement with these passages, I hold that “the well-armed house carles,” as Mr. Oman terms them, formed the English front, and were “backed” by the rest of the host.[101] Mr. Oman’s later view involves a tactical absurdity, as I have maintained throughout.[102] But here again Mr. Oman finds it the safest plan to ignore an argument he cannot face.

Let me, however, part from his narrative of the great struggle with an expression of honest satisfaction that, even in his latest work, he treats “the English host” as ranged “in one great solid mass” (p. 154). This is the essential point on which I have insisted throughout.[103] “No feature of the great battle is more absolutely beyond dispute”;[104] and it absolutely cuts the ground from under Mr. Archer’s feet.[105]

I may add that the denseness of the English host is similarly grasped by Sir James Ramsay, who has made an independent examination of the battle, and has set forth his interesting and original conclusions in his recently-published ‘Foundations of England.’ The ground plan of the battle in his work should be carefully compared with that which is found in Mr. Freeman’s History. For the two differ so hopelessly that the wholly conjectural character of Mr. Freeman’s views on the matter will at once be vividly shown. The bold conclusion of Sir James Ramsay that the English host held only the little plateau at the summit of the Battle hill, is at least in harmony with their dense array, and is very possibly correct.[106]

* * * * *

I now turn from battles to castles--those castles which played so prominent a part in Anglo-Norman warfare.

Let us first glance at the moated mound, and then at the rectangular keep. I do not desire, on the moated mound, to commit myself to all Mr. Clark’s views; but practical archæologists, I need scarcely say, are aware that the outer works of these most interesting strongholds were normally of horseshoe or crescent form, the mound being “placed on one side of an appended area.”[107] Mr. Oman, while acknowledging in his book, and in the columns of the ‘Athenæum,’ his indebtedness to Mr. Clark’s “admirable account of the topographical details of English castles,” describes the old English burhs as “stake and foss in concentric rings enclosing water-girt mounds” (p. 111). I pointed out in the ‘Athenæum’[108] that “Mr. Clark, who did more than any one for our knowledge of these burhs, was careful to explain,” in his plans,[109] that their outer defences were not concentric, as Mr. Oman asserts.

Determined never to admit a mistake, Mr. Oman retorted:

Of course, I am quite aware that in many burhs the outer works are not purely concentric; but the concentric form is the more typical. An admirable example of such a stronghold may be seen on p. 21 of Mr. Clark’s book, where he gives the plan of Edward’s burh of Towcester built in 921.[110]

Yet, in dealing with the Norman shell keeps on these “old palisaded mounds,” Mr. Oman actually, in his own book, admits, of their “outer defences,” that

as a general rule, the keep lies _not in the middle of the space_, but at one end of it, or set in the walls ... as a general rule the keep stands at one end of the enclosed space, _not in its midst_.[111]

This is the feature of these striking works for which I myself contended, and which, on that account, Mr. Oman at once denied.

As to the Towcester burh, I will place side by side my criticism and Mr. Oman’s reply:

MR. ROUND. MR. OMAN.

A comparison of the plan on p. 21 He states that Towcester with those on pp. 24, 25 will show burh, as drawn on p. 21 of Mr. at once that the former is that of Clark’s Mediæval Military the “water-girt mound” (as Mr. Architecture, is ‘a water-girt Oman terms it) alone, and contains mound alone, with no outer no “outer works,” concentric or works, concentric or other.’... other.[112] Apparently Mr. Round cannot read the simplest military sketch; in this map there are clear indications of outer lines other than the mere water.... In short, Mr. Round is writing nonsense, and I strongly suspect that he knows it.[113]

Any archæologist comparing the plans will see at once that my statement is correct, and that the plan (compare the section) shows absolutely nothing beyond the actual ditch of the mound. I offered to submit the question to Mr. St. John Hope’s decision,[114] but Mr. Oman would submit it to no one but his friend and coadjutor, Mr. York Powell, who is not known as an authority on these works, and who is hostile to myself because I exposed Mr. Freeman![115]

Having now shown that, in his own words, Mr. Oman “cannot read the simplest military sketch,” I pass to the siege of Rochester Castle, famous for its rectangular keep, in 1264. This was an event that deserves attention in a ‘History of the Art of War,’ for John had breached the keep by mining half a century before, and the stately structure had now to stand an energetic siege at the hands of Simon de Montfort. A striking passage in Rishanger’s Chronicle tells us that, advancing from London,

comes autem de Leycestria, vir in omnibus circumspectus, machinas et alia ad expugnationem castri necessaria secum a civitate Londoniarum per aquam et per terram transvehi præcepit, quibus inclusos vehementer impugnavit, nec eos indulgere quieti permisit; exemplum relinquens Anglicis qualiter circa castrorum assultationes agendum sit qui penitus hujusmodi diebus illis fuerant ignari.[116]