I was reading some entries on a website dedicated to medieval history, and there were very many educated opinions. Bernard Bachrach, a Professor from the University of Minnesota had this to say of the possibility of Anglo-Saxon cavalry at Hastings:

"I have put the total of William's force at 14,000 with 1000 left at Pevensy to hold the fort and another 1000 at Hastings to hold the fort and some lost on the way to St. Val. and some lost further up the coast so that William probably had at Hasting no more than 11,000. the 14000 figure comes from the Chronicle of St. Maxient which was written under the patronage of the Viscount of Thouars whose grandfather, also viscount of Thouars, was at Hastings.

I can see a maximum of 2,000-3,000 mounted troops with one horse each--horse transports were a big problem--see my article on that.


The 5-7,000 milites given land in DB [i.e. the Domesday Book] received lands of an average of 1.5 hides each and most likely were not mounted troops. My Haskins presidential address last years goes into the topic of military lands in historical perspective and should appear in the Haskins journal next year.
It is a serious error to translate the word miles in the Anglo-Norman narrative sources as knight if by that is meant a heavily armed mounted fighting man of the lesser aristocracy. Even in the civil war--1135-1154--the main referent for miles is soldier and not even mounted soldier. Most mounted soldiers lacked full equipment. The data is discussed in detail in Wm. Delehanty, PhD thesis Minnesota 1975.

There is no reason to believe that Harold's force had a cavalry capability.

William's horse did not break the shield wall through a charge but by a ruse de guerre, the feigned retreat. The value of cavalry was not in breaking up well emplaced infantry formations but for the type of auxilliary work that needed doing when an enemy formation on foot was broken by archery or making an undisciplined charge or undertaking some other tactic for which it was not suited.

The English, Vikings, etc did not develop cavalry because they had no use for it. Once the English government began sending troops to the mainland or Vikings settled in Gaul they developed cavalry for it they then had a use for it. The cycle of developing a larger and more heavily armed cavalry component on the mainland began during the fourth century--See Elton on the later Roman Army. The Romano-German successor states on the mainland merely followed imperial policy but in Britain this was not needed because there was no significant mounted enemy to fight and trained war horses are very expensive.

Mounted troops and especially heavily armed mounted troops were throughout the Middle Ages a very expensive luxury given their tactical value. Thus, in most battles these troops--as in the later Roman empire and in the Merovingian regna and the Carolingian empire were trained to dismount and fight on foot--see my article on Vegetius in the Early Middle Ages."

B.Bachrach U. of MN

Interesting post. I have to agree to a point, but there are some aspects that I don't agree with. What does everyone think?