Where Fate Intervened

1066: The Year of the Conquest by David Howarth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very useful little book.

I've read a few books lately set near the time of the Norman conquest, and what I never could understand was how? How could the whole country be conquered in that way, by the leader of a fairly small part of another country? What happened?

This book goes a long way toward answering that question. In places, the author confesses that some details may never be known, but offers the most likely conjectures. In other places, we understand more than I realized.

The story is kinda crazy. King Harold did almost everything right all summer, including fighting off the invasion from Norway about a week before the battle of Hastings. But a whole bunch of things suddenly go against him--the wind turns for the invasion fleet after most of the men have been sent home, assuming the window for fighting was past. Harold didn't wait for enough of his troops to join him when he faced his second enemy in the span of just a few days. There were some structural differences in the army that told against them--no mounted fighters, no archers--but his warriors were, apparently, good fighters. They had some chances when they could have pushed the small invasion force into the sea, but Harold didn't have a good way to communicate his orders.

And so on. There's a lot of little things that worked against them, including, probably, the belief that the pope was on the Norman side. So they lost a battle they should have won and didn't have anyone sufficiently powerful to draw together another army, even though it should have been possible to still greatly overwhelm the Normans. It just went wrong in so many ways.

Excellent look at the history. It's told in clear language with, for me, the right amount of complexity.

Highly recommended for those with questions like I had.

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Where Hereward Doesn't Give Up

Hereward the Wake, Volume 2 by Charles Kingsley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(this review is for both volumes.)

This is a well-researched, informative, entertaining biography of a time I know little about.

Hereward was an English knight of Danish ancestry who lived north of London (and later on the continent) before, during, and after the Norman invasion. Kingsley has it that he is the daughter of Lady Godiva, which is pretty cool, although sources I've peeked at (I am NO expert) say that is unlikely. In the book it's true, though, and I'll take the fictionalized version, thank you. It's way cooler. (Lady Godiva doesn't know what to do with her badly behaved son.)

Hereward is a bit out of control and gets outlawed for robbing a priest. He ends up in Flanders after a period of time fighting in Ireland and Scotland. Then, after he marries, England is invaded by William the Conqueror (they didn't call him that yet) and he wants to do something about it. He returns to his family lands, and from that point on this is the story of his resistance and guerrilla fighting with all the English and Danish-English and Danish-Irish he can gather to his banner.

Though many stories I've encountered touch somewhat on the Norman invasion, I realize I have very little context for the whole deal, and this book fills in a ton. Things make more sense. I'm astonished as I read it how much contact there is between France and Norway and Denmark and Ireland and Cornwall and Flanders, and farther-flung places like the Baltic and Constantinople. Half of the characters are descended from Vikings and are able to just sail away and become raiders or pirates or guards for kings, and that interaction between nations is much more extensive than I ever imagined for that time period.

Related to that thought is how complex and extensive I found the characters and their relationships across every nationality; the main characters and most important secondary characters are pretty easy to keep straight, but there's a cast of thousands after that--real people from real life--and I don't really know why I didn't realize that history at this time was so dense. Nothing simple about it at all.

I loved the multicultural aspect of it, the way the characters could have feelings for half a dozen nations and embrace a complex identity. It reminds me that the melting pot--or nutty fruitcake, or whatever America has become metaphorically--is not really new. It's a story that's been repeated all over the world, and has been driven by invasions of all sorts.

Hereward and his wife Torfrida are complex, round characters, and I liked following them. But as this is more or less a true story, it includes (sorry!) their inevitable defeat. I always thought the defeat came in 1066, but it turns out people fought back and rebelled and hid in the fens for years afterwards, and Hereward didn't die until something like 1072 when his enemies finally got him, which seems much more realistic than how I imagined it before. (I still don't understand how an invading force could defeat the whole island, but I ordered a non-fiction book to help me with that. This story--historical romance--gives me a lot more to work with, though.) I guess history always works that way when you look at it closer.

The author talks to the reader occasionally here, kinda like Hugo does in Les Mis, explaining what's going on and what the place looks like, and I'll allow it. If he leans a little toward the didactic here and there, and a bit toward the religious throughout, it's pretty balanced by some excellent violence. (Kingsley clearly has a soft spot for Viking ancestors and their heathen ways, his churchiness notwithstanding.) It's a fun read.

Recommended for those who unironically enjoy Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas, or William Harrison Ainsworth.

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