The Battle of Hastings happened in October, 1066 (!!!). Yup, almost 1000 years ago. It's the last time England was successfully invaded by anyone. What happened was the man who was king at the start of the year died in January, 1066 without any sons to follow after him. Two cousins wanted the job. One of them, Harold, was actually in England and decided to take the throne; he got the council of barons to vote him in - that's how they did succession in those days, by a vote of the lords' council - and he was crowned almost before the funeral happened. The other cousin was William, Duke of one of the richest and strongest French provinces, Normandy, who said that the previous king had willed the kingdom to him and that Harold had sworn alleigance to this arrangement. He started gathering an army of about 8,000 soldiers and a fleet of about 700 ships to travel across the English Channel. Meanwhile, one of Harold's brothers allied with some Vikings to take England for himself. So, Harold had to march his army 300 miles to fight and defeat this brother's army. Then he got word that William was coming, so they marched back south to Hastings to get ready for another battle. That's a bunch of marching and fighting for an all-infantry army in a matter of about 2 weeks.
Harold's guys got to Hastings first and took command of a hill. That put William's army at a disadvantage but they attacked anyway. They attacked up the hill, fought hard and got pushed back. When they started to retreat, some of Harold's guys got all excited and followed them down thinking they could win quickly. Aha! William sent his cavalry and they killed all who came off the hill, about 2,000 of Harold's men. BTW, Harold didn't have any cavalry, which is an interesting fact since his army was in England the whole time while William had lots of cavalry but had to bring them all across the water.
So, anyway, that part of the battle took about 1-2 hours to happen, and when it was over Harold's guys were still on top of their hill and William's guys were still making no headway. This had all started about 9:00 am so now it's about 11:00 am. They keep putzing at each other until early afternoon when William hit on an idea. Since the retreat in the morning had had such nice results for his side, why not try it again but as a pretend move to get more of Harold's men to follow off the hill and then hopefully be surrounded and done in. So, they tried it. Sure enough, it worked; more followed and all were killed. Also, Harold was killed in that attack possibly by an arrow through the eye.
The battle kept going on until late afternoon when William's guys finally surrounded Harold's guys on top of the hill, killed all the leaders and got everyone who was still alive to stop fighting. The thinking is that if Harold could have controlled his guys better and kept them all on top of the hill, he probably would not have lost. So, in essence the battle was decided in that first rout in the morning.
Once William had won and all the opposing lords were dead, he became king of England and set about establishing a strong government which lasted pretty well through the centuries until the War of the Roses just before Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in the 16th century. So, William ruled Britain for about 500 years.
Another key result of this invasion was that William and his court spoke French. So, for the next 200 years or so, French was the language of the educated folks of England. And that, my friends, is why about 40% of our modern English has roots in Latin and French.
To prove himself, William obeyed an order from the Pope and built an Abbey on the site of the battle. What we saw today was the ruins of that abbey and the large field they have protected for almost 1000 years. Just FYI, as part of our Bicentennial celebration in 1976, the US used money donated by Americans to buy the battlefield as a gift to the government of England. So, now it is a protected historical site.
Also, if you are interested, the French province of Normandy is called that because of the Vikings. They began invading the coasts of France and Great Britain in the 800s and 900s. The king of France, who didn't really have much power outside of Paris at that time, made a deal with the Vikings; they could have the coast for their own land if they would promise not to invade or attack inland. The Vikings kept to the deal and settled along the coast; i.e. Normandy for "Northmen." Brittany is a bit different. And no it is not named because Britains went and settled there. The early inhabitants of both France and Britain were the Celts. When the Romans came, they pushed the Celts farther north out of their way both on the island and the mainland. The people of Brittany are what's left of the Celtic inhabitants on the mainland.
After the battlefield we went to Rye for lunch and wandering around. Rye is one of the Cinque Ports. "Cinque" is a french word meaning 5, although they don't use the actual french pronunciation, so the Cinque Ports are a group of 5 ports - although there are actually 7 of them - that were set up by William and his successor kings to promote trade and protect the coast line. They have several special privileges. One of them is that they get to carry the canopy over the king for his inaugural. It was pointed out that they don't get to do this very often, but still..... They also are exempt from some duties and taxes, and they have the right to salvage any wrecks in their territory. Well, having that last right was an incentive to create wrecks, so they sorta got lawless and out of hand for a while. During the late medieval times and Elizabethan times, they were pretty rowdy and got into smuggling among other nefarious activities.
We ate lunch in Rye in a dining room with a view of the English Channel that is just a few bumps away from the hill we were on. They we wandered through the town looking at the medieval and more recent buildings. Also, we saw a home where Henry James lived for 18 years and wrote a fair number of his novels. He had good taste. He picked a place on the top of the hill overlooking the ocean. Quite nice.
Since we were in a bus for a long while today I got a chance to pay attention to what is on the roads. For one thing, all the cars still seem amazingly new and highly polished. Police cars and ambulances both are a sort of yellow with their sides checkerboarded with green squares. I forgot to mention the taxis in London, and out here too for that matter. Until recently they were all black; some now have colors usually advertising something and some quite creatively. They are all sedans on the order of cars that were used in the late 40s - large, squarish, big fenders. I don't know who makes them or why they've stuck with that look, but it's uniform; you see a car that looks like that, you know it's a taxi.
For another thing, these guys are amazing drivers. The highway is only two narrow - note, narrow - lanes wide with no shoulders. Sometimes we know we could reach out and take the steering wheel of the car passing us; there can't be 3 inches between our bus and the car/bus/truck going the other direction. But they've got it cool, keep going, and never hit anyone. Only once did we even slow down and that was so we could slip by an 18-wheel rig that was even tighter than the others. And no one crowds anyone or uses their horn. They just all seem to know what to do, and do it fast.
We saw tons of sheep today. Great big fat fluffy sheep. some had painted squares on their backs - blue, red, green - which indicates what shots they've just had. One group of about 20 with blue squares on their shoulders were hightailing at a run from the barn toward the far corner of the pasture. I'm betting they had just been treated and wanted nothing more to do with humans; get away from me! Baaa! I've had two discussions about why they're so fat - well, they are always eating, but ... - does it mean they're pregnant? We haven't seen but one lamb so far. Or, does it mean it's almost time to shear them so they are wearing a year's worth of wool. It's probably both, but as I said before, some are so fat you're not sure they got feet!
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