Live Steel Reenactment:
the battle of Hastings event of 2006
The scream of heroes still resounds over the battleground" -- Thy Majestie
Most of the Norman army lined up.
The Norman champion Taillefer ("cut iron") challenged the English, and in a sharp duel slew their champion.
Half a dozen English warriors then ran out to avenge their comrade, overwhelmed Taillefer and killed him (picture by Telia McGuire). On Saturday, we English cheered this as an act of intelligence, to trap a formidable foe with odds on our side. But on Sunday, we Bretons "Boo!"(ed) this cowardly, unchivalrous, base behavior.
The marksmen begin the battle. Note the crossbow-men to the extreme right. Each division had a couple of these cool troops (or possibly there was only these two who show up in several pictures, and they just got around fast; I sure saw a lot of them, making me believe that there were more of them than there actually were; I admit that I never saw more than two crossbows being used at a given time), and they liked to get in really close during the melee and take sniper shots at any exposed English fighters.
Here's a crossbow-man from the Franco-Flemish right.
The infantry moves up to assault the English line.
Cavalry of the Franco-Flemish right, with their infantry behind, and the archers of the Norman center to their left.
The Franco-Flemish infantry clash with the English left. (TFBO trivia: the big, happy warrior in the red tunic is Alex Pickard -- "Arnstenn".)
The English left has fighters without helmets, including some brave (or foolhardy) tough girls! (TFBO trivia: That's Ian Judd, "Gunnar", sans helmet, wielding a Dane axe.)
The attack upon the English line continues. That's one daring crossbow-man, and some very small Franco-Flemish fighters (either under-aged boys or small-framed girls: someone told me that c. 30% of the fighters were females, but I didn't see that many myself).
James Barker's wife happened to stand directly behind where I was with the English center. And so now I have some pics of me, as I had hoped to see if my wife had been there taking them. During the initial Norman infantry attack: that's me just above the spectator with the bald head.
Taking my turn rotated to the back rank.
One thing I found somewhat disappointing was the battle cry thing. Our efforts to shout "Out! Out! Out!" in unison (pronounced "Ut! Ut! Ut!", trying to be more authentic) never quite got going; only small groups did it at a time, so the rolling effect up and down the line (that I have imagined countless times) seems to have been an impossibility: sounds good on paper though! One of the factors right around where I was standing, that inhibited the war cry efforts, was a group from Devon/Cornwall, who had their own "special" chant, that sounded like this: "F, U, cow, son", repeated three times. The rest of us, trying to shout, "Ut! Ut! Ut!", would just sort of die off as we tried to figure out what those blokes were about. It was all very droll, but disappointing as well. And completely wasted on the enemy who couldn't understand (or even hear) a word about their implied bovine ancestry.
During a lull, you can see my Dane axe stuck upright in the ground to the right of the funky archer with the furry hat (how did he get past the kit inspection with that head piece?).
You can see the papal banner at the head of the Norman cavalry, and that's duke William with his "baculum" (officer's wooden mace), to the viewer's left of the banner.
Harold's center has withstood the Norman attack.