The Onetime King

1066: THE STORY OF A YEAR by Denis Butler. 328 pages. Putnam. $5.95.

The last Anglo-Saxon king lay dead in the field: pierced through eye and breast, beheaded, disemboweled, his body desecrated by one last, needless sword blow that opened his thigh to the bone. He was Harold, son of Godwin, who has suffered a similar disposition from history in the 900 years since his death under arms.

Down the centuries, Harold's name has paled beside that of his conqueror, Duke William of Normandy; his memory survives mostly in a schoolboy incantation--Hastings, 1066. What led to Hastings and what happened there have been obscured by centuries of misinterpretation and sodden emotion. Now, in this 900th anniversary year, no fewer than four books on Hastings have been published.* There will be more to come. None so far, however, plead so earnestly, and with such compelling effect, for Harold's cause.

Scythes & Axes. Denis Butler shows an acute sense of the Grecian drama and the high suspense that marked Harold's fitful reign. The story fell into the compass of a single year, from January, when Edward the Confessor died and the crown passed to Harold, until Christmas Day, when William the Bastard, Edward's cousin, took the throne. Butler tells the story in twelve chapters, one for each month in the year, and the effect is to inspire the wish that destiny, taking the field at Hastings, could have reversed its course.

Destiny sent a host of powerful enemies against Harold, not the least of which was chance. His own brother, Tostig, traitorously serving as the main architect of the king's ruin, persuaded King Harald Hardraada of Norway into mounting a sea assault against England's north. The King of England met that threat by force-marching 20,000 men--the greatest army England had ever put into the field--more than 180 miles in eight days. The battle at Stamford Bridge in Northumbria was a rout, a prodigious victory scantily acknowledged in the English chronicles. Norway's giant Harald, who stood better than 7 ft., died with all but a fraction of his men, and Harold of England controlled his realm.

But even as Harold celebrated victory in York, William the Bastard and his Normans were wading ashore in Sussex. Harold faced a 250-mile march south to the new enemy, and when he arrived at Hastings, he had fewer than 9,000 men, half of the kingdom's available soldiery--and many of these were armed with pitchforks, scythes and the stone axes that had served the Jutes six centuries earlier.

Against this, William posed an equal force of men, among them 1,000 archers and 3,000 knights, mounted on horses that were shipped across the Channel in an unprecedented and still unexplained feat of military transport. Even so, Harold's defenders almost snatched victory at Hastings, on the hill called Senlac. The English shield wall stood invincible until William's cavalry lured Harold's undisciplined infantry out to chase the knights on foot. These rash charges weakened the English line until at last it broke.

Peace & Reason. Author Butler measures the price of Hastings in terms of the man who died there and the man who survived to wear the crown. Har old, he says, had little chance to lay his hand on England's future--but that little was enough to judge him. To secure insurrectionist Northumbria be fore the Norman invasion, Harold ventured north--the first English king in years to do so--protected only by a royal bodyguard and armed only with a passion for peace and reason. On a kingdom accustomed to aggressive war he imposed the principle of defensive resistance-- "a campaign without booty, to hinder battle, and to discourage the enemy from war." William, on the other hand, came as liberator and earned the name of Conqueror, which he did not want. The realm he seized fought him until 1087, when he died in a fall from his horse. Rebellions flared throughout his reign and through the reigns of all his Norman successors, until the dynasty ended after 100 years.

* The others: The Making of a King, by Alan Lloyd, Invasion: 1066 by Rupert Furneaux, The Conquest of England by Eric Linklater.

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