Battle Of Hastings Recruiting
...troops under the command of William of Normandy faced 8,000 Anglo-Saxon soldiers led by Harold the current king of England.
Geoffrey Parker, Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (Cambridge: 1995), pp. 82-3. Harold's 8,000 men consisted of Housecarls, the local Fyrd, and local village volunteers.
David Howarth, 1066: The Year of the Conquest (New York: 1977),pp.170-1 The two armies clashed on that day and history tells us the outcome. But what forces go into creating an army of these sizes? The three main Anglo-Saxon troop types will be defined and the forces that created them will be examined below.
Three troop types would fight for the Anglo-Saxons the Housecarls, the Fyrd, and local peasantry. The Housecarls were professional soldiers under the service of the King and the Earls of the Kingdom. Harold used the Housecarls of the King and his Housecarls of his Earldom of Wessex. He also used the Housecarls of his two brothers. The Fyrd was a volunteer citizen army provided by the Thanes of the kingdom. The local peasants fought to protect their homes.
David Howarth, 1066: The Year of the Conquest (New York: 1977), pp. 80-1. There were two divisions of fyrd in the 11th century one consisting of a local peasant force and the other a select levy force.
C. Warren Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions: On the Eve of the Norman Conquest (Oxford: 1962), p. 26.
The local peasant Fyrd that fought at Hastings came from Sussex.
C. Warren Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions: On the Eve of the Norman Conquest (Oxford: 1962), p.30. All freemen of the area were obligated to provide protection for the local area. This obligation was connected with financial and agricultural obligations.
C. Warren Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions: On the Eve of the Norman Conquest...
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