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Subject: Battle of Hastings
ilpars    7/8/2004 8:05:00 AM
I do not know why, many people think Battle of Hastings as a French-British war. Well, it is not. At that battle Normans were fighting against Anglo-Dane's not Anglo-Saxons. More than that Anglo-Dane King at that date was a relative of Norman Duke. Danes had conquered England at early 11th century destroying the last Anglo-Saxon Kingdom. One day king died and the new King's legitimacy was weak. There was 2 powerful relatives who were legitimate enough to claim the Kingship. One was Denmark King, the other was Norman Duke. Anglo-Dane's defeated the first candidate. But Norman sdefeated them in return. So Battle of Hastings was in fact more like a dynastic battle between 2 branches of Dane dynasty. Another interesting point is in Norman Army there were Bretons as first allies then vassal. Bretons were ethnically British Celts.
 
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scholar    RE:Battle of Hastings   8/11/2004 5:02:41 PM
Any ideas as to how these people communicated with one another? Latin? The number of languages spoken on the battle field must have been astonishing: Danish, Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Breton. What else?
 
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jastayme3    RE:Battle of Hastings   8/15/2004 3:02:39 PM
RE:Battle of Hastings 8/11/2004 5:02:42 PM Any ideas as to how these people communicated with one another? Latin? The number of languages spoken on the battle field must have been astonishing: Danish, Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Breton. What else? -------------------------------------------------- The different groups would have had to be separate under there own lords. For one thing this prevented "friendly swordplay". For another they were really the lords' army and not Harold or Williams(they each had their own private armies but this did not compose the whole thing). Thus the only ones who would have had to communicate would have been the top people and the couriers. Also people who deal with foreigners generally develop a language of their own, often that of the most prestiegeous people in the area
 
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jastayme3    RE:Battle of Hastings   8/15/2004 3:10:15 PM
I do not know why, many people think Battle of Hastings as a French-British war. Well, it is not. At that battle Normans were fighting against Anglo-Dane's not Anglo-Saxons. More than that Anglo-Dane King at that date was a relative of Norman Duke. Danes had conquered England at early 11th century destroying the last Anglo-Saxon Kingdom. One day king died and the new King's legitimacy was weak. There was 2 powerful relatives who were legitimate enough to claim the Kingship. One was Denmark King, the other was Norman Duke. Anglo-Dane's defeated the first candidate. But Norman sdefeated them in return. So Battle of Hastings was in fact more like a dynastic battle between 2 branches of Dane dynasty. Another interesting point is in Norman Army there were Bretons as first allies then vassal. Bretons were ethnically British C -------------------------------------------------- No nation is the same as it was 1000 years ago. Italians aren't Romans either. Greeks aren't the same Greeks that built Athens. How a given tribe identifies itself is composed of a large number of things, of which ancestry is only one part.
 
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jastayme3    RE:Battle of Hastings   8/15/2004 3:15:02 PM
I do not know why, many people think Battle of Hastings as a French-British war. Well, it is not. At that battle Normans were fighting against Anglo-Dane's not Anglo-Saxons. More than that Anglo-Dane King at that date was a relative of Norman Duke. Danes had conquered England at early 11th century destroying the last Anglo-Saxon Kingdom. One day king died and the new King's legitimacy was weak. There was 2 powerful relatives who were legitimate enough to claim the Kingship. One was Denmark King, the other was Norman Duke. Anglo-Dane's defeated the first candidate. But Norman sdefeated them in return. So Battle of Hastings was in fact more like a dynastic battle between 2 branches of Dane dynasty. Another interesting point is in Norman Army there were Bretons as first allies then vassal. Bretons were ethnically British Celts. -------------------------------------------- The Conquerer and his people were not Norsemen and they didn't act like Norsemen. They were French who had Norse ancestors. Just like Russians are not Sweedes.
 
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brit cadet       2/23/2009 3:00:27 PM
the battle of hastings wasn't a battle between those of the danish dynasty i think you will find that harold godwinson was the son of a powerful english lord godwin earl of wessex and he succeeded edward the confessor
also if he hadn't fought it at hastings and waited unil sufficeint numbers of troops which were lagging after the forced march from stanford birdge then he would probably have won and kept the throne
 
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brit cadet       2/23/2009 3:03:28 PM
also fact it was not fought in hastings it was fought at battle but as it was thought to be confusing to call it the battle of battle so it was named the battle of hastings
 
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Pars    Anglo-Dane dynasty and Harold   9/24/2009 4:06:05 AM
Harold had a claim on Anglo-English throne not because of his Anglo-Saxon father but because of her Dane mother who was a sister of the late Denmark King.
 
All 3 candidate for English throne was relatives of the Dane royal line. It was a multi-national Dynastic war.
 
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zoetropo    Main language of William's Army   3/23/2013 6:41:32 AM
The common language of King William's army was Gallo (which is short for "Gallo-Roman"), the shared language of Eastern Brittany and Western, Central and Southern Normandy, as well as of Anjou and Maine. After 1066, many placenames were "gallicized", i.e. altered to sound more natural to the Gallo speaking rulers. Even though the "French" of Orleans and Paris became the standard language of France and gradually achieved majority status in the 20th century, dialects such as Gallo and North-East Norman are still spoken by some. Gallo songs sound (to my ears) like Parisian French, but the vocabulary is distinct.
 
Of William's ancestors who lived in Normandy, one (Rollo) was definitely Norse, and it's thought that another (Gunnora) was Danish, but most were indeed locals of Armorican descent, coming from Anjou, Brittany or other coastal regions with more history in common with the Celts and Romans than with the Franks or the Norse.  It's no accident that most of his army were also from those regions. Outsiders remarked that the "Norman" battle armour, weapons and tactics included many recognisably Roman elements; these were inherited from the Armoricans, whose early military leaders were Roman light cavalry officers.
 
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zoetropo    Flight or Fight?   3/23/2013 10:35:04 AM
The Norman chroniclers, who boast of the exploits of numerous Normans but name no Breton commanders at all, claim that the Breton line broke, and that the pursuit of the Bretons by Saxon infantry gave Duke William the brilliant idea to conduct two feigned retreats.  Leaving aside the fact that the Normans were already practised at cavalry feints during the preceding decades, it pretends to ignorance of the feint as a standard Breton tactic dating back centuries.
 
Also, contrary to the view that the javelin was not in use at Hastings, the Bayeux tapestry has very clear depiction of overhead javelin throws by both sides in the heat of the battle, with infantry on both sides, as well as cavalry on William's side, being brought down by that weapon.  Now, the Breton cavalry were adept at using the Roman pilum, a specially modified javelin that embeds itself in a shield then bends to make the shield too unwieldy to hold.  This they used to break up shield walls, a tactic that they employed in the Battle of Jengland against the combined Frankish and Saxon army (led by King Charles the Bald) that attempted to conquer Brittany in 851: although greatly outnumbered, the Bretons held their nerve and systematically reduced the enemy force to zero over a period of 2 days, causing Charles to flee; the outcome was that the Bretons conquered all the ancient Frankish border forts and occupied much of Anjou, Maine and what would later be western Normandy.  The same tactic at Hastings would  have slowly but steadily thinned Harold's shield wall until the cavalry could break through; as evidence, it was on the western flank, where the Breton cavalry was located, that Harold's defences first crumbled.
 
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zoetropo    Main language of William's Army   3/23/2013 11:05:21 AM
The common language of King William's army was Gallo (which is short for "Gallo-Roman"), the shared language of Eastern Brittany and Western, Central and Southern Normandy, as well as of Anjou and Maine. After 1066, many placenames were "gallicized", i.e. altered to sound more natural to the Gallo speaking rulers. Even though the "French" of Orleans and Paris became the standard language of France and gradually achieved majority status in the 20th century, dialects such as Gallo and North-East Norman are still spoken by some. Gallo songs sound (to my ears) like Parisian French, but the vocabulary is distinct.
 
Of William's ancestors who lived in Normandy, one (Rollo) was definitely Norse, and it's thought that another (Gunnora) was Danish, but most were indeed locals of Armorican descent, coming from Anjou, Brittany or other coastal regions with more history in common with the Celts and Romans than with the Franks or the Norse.  It's no accident that most of his army were also from those regions. Outsiders remarked that the "Norman" battle armour, weapons and tactics included many recognisably Roman elements; these were inherited from the Armoricans, whose early military leaders were Roman light cavalry officers.
 
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