Norman invasion

do you have any idea on the questions in OP, because another one would be how 6,000 boats get built—if raided, how long would those 6,000 boats have taken to rebuild?

I'm unaware of any contemporary sources or later scholarly estimates that give William a fleet that big. The biggest estimation I've seen from a scholarly source is half that, and most are in the high hundreds to just over 1,000. It would be well in excess of what he needed anyway. Most ships of the day could transport between 40-45 men and their supplies, and William's force is usually estimated at somewhere between 8 and 12,000. Even at a maximum force he needs 300 ship-trips to ferry them all across, and while he'll need some excess vessels for supplies and the like, he won't need to devote 95% of the fleet for cargo.

As for construction time, most of William's ships were of a similar design to viking longships. Those would take about 22-28,000 man hours to build, assuming materials are already present. If you have 10,000 people working on them for 8 hour days, it would take about 6 years to build 6,000 ships, or about 1 to build 1,000. This is not a great comparison, because if something did happen to his fleet, William is likely going to try to buy or rent other ships rather than building new ones from scratch.

hmm, i think the 6k number stuck in my head from schama's history of great britain, maybe he sucks. how did horses get on longships?

4182220
Old bait, no (you)s for you

>how did horses get on longships?
With difficulty, I imagine. I'm not really sure, to be honest. I mean, clearly they did, because William does have cavalry and I've never heard of any expeditions to steal horses in Britain. But then again, classical viking raiders would tend to steal horses on site rather than bring their own. That probably took up a considerable amount of transport space too, which would further bulk up how many ships you need to move the overall force.

Wow that was both cringy and yet entertaining

Thank you so much for that.

horse being unloaded from the bayeux tapestry

Just want to let you know you're getting your Harolds mixed up.
Harald Bluetooth was a different king. He was king of Denmark and Norway in the late 900's.
Harald Hardrada was the king of Norway who invaded England during the year 1066.
Harold Godwinson was the English king who you obviously know lost at Hastings.
Harold is the English version of the name,Harald is the Norse version.

With a ramp.

youtube.com/watch?v=LtGoBZ4D4_E

cool video that is an animated version of the bayeux tapestry

Because the sea is considerably larger than 6,000 ships.
Because England was far from unified at this time.

England was the most unified European state by 1066

Thank you, I knew something seemed wrong about bluetooth.

"Normandy" didn't do shit, since nation-states were a concept unheard of in the high middle ages. Norman barons did it to English barons, by being wealthy and having superior enough military technology to win a decisive battle at Hastings and then chew through the rest of the country over the course of about a decade. English administration structures and the majority of peasants (with exceptions such as the harrying of the north) remained largely continuous

>superior military technology
Anglo-Saxons had kiteshields by this time

what was the basic evolution of shield shape, were kiteshields superior or inferior to circles?

Kiteshields were generally superior as they effectively covered the full body, although some group formations require round shields

that does not add anything to the narrative

They said England was far from unified, this was certainly not the case. England had been unified since Æthelstan.
The problem is quite simply down to the loss at the battle of hastings for falling for a feigned (or not) Norman retreat

.t retard. The problems were enormously more far-reaching than that. In no particular order, you have

>Inability to draw troops from the entire "unified" country to protect individual pieces of it. The fyrd that fought at Stamford Bridge was a completely different one that fought at Hastings.
>Inability to keep troops in the field for a long time, prompting a drive to force a battle even when waiting might yield benefits
>Complete lack of cavalry, or even a decent pursuit capability
>Complete lack of meaningful numbers of missile troops.
>Poor levels of discipline among the fyrd, who were the bulk of the army; this isn't just the falling for the retreats, a bunch of them went home before the battle because they were having trouble finding an immediate deployment due to the narrowness of the position Godwinson chose.

The English tactical options at Hastings were limited to camping out on a wooded hill and hoping they could take whatever William decided to throw at them. William had complete control of the initaitive, and if he decided that he wanted to not fight that day, there's very little the English could do, short of marching down into the plain to be cut to ribbons by cavalry that could now easily flank them.

Cavalry really was king in that era.
It takes very disciplined and specialized infantry to resist armored knights. Even professional soldiers need to be trained in anti-cavalry tactics or else they will panic when charged.

Plus Harald taking an arrow to the eye didn't help.

The Norman cavalry was rendered ineffective against the organised shield wall.
The Normans would've lost had it not been for the impatience of one of the Saxon leaders who broke up part of the wall to chase the fleeing Normans

>Plus Harald taking an arrow to the eye didn't help
*Harold. Also the 'arrow to the eye' thing is probably fictitious and Harold died after it was clear the English lost

Is English a second language for you? Or a third?

stop thinking the total war series is historically accurate

No. I'm English

Oh, then I suppose I can't chalk your total incoherence up to poor language skills. I guess you're just too stupid to realize how in no way responds to anything I've said back , and how your claim originally is simply wrong.

Sorry

Sorry. Harold*
I agree Harold's death wasn't the deciding factor of the fight, but it *WAS* the deciding factor of the *WAR*.
Like I said. It didn't help that the English King died at the battle. If Harold had at least lived to fight another day, he could have mustered more troops and tried to defend his crown in other unconventional ways. His death made that impossible, and left no serious contrary claims to William's own claim on the crown. Thus it was comparatively easy for William to cement his Norman yoke upon the English neck, than it otherwise would have been, had Harold lived.

I always understood it as the battle of hastings was the decisive factor. If William won, he could establish a base in England and could quite quickly seize the capital

I don't see what is wrong with this post.
He's right that a shieldwall isn't something cavalry can charge into. Cavalry almost never made direct charges at people. They would charge at formations, and hope the defenders lost their grit and ran, so they could chase them down at will. A horse cannot be made to run right into a densely pack group of men. Only when men are dispersed can cavalry actually charge into them.

The English did break their secure shieldwall formation on the hill at Hastings, charging down the hill, which definitely gave the Norman cavalry their chance to be effective.

I think they're saying my response was irrelevant to their statement

>I always understood it as the battle of hastings was the decisive factor. If William won, he could establish a base in England and could quite quickly seize the capital
This is true, but if there was another living claimant pushing for his own right to the throne, the local English nobility would have had a cause to unite behind. With Harold's death, there was no organized resistance to William's rule.
Instead they tried to nominate Edgar the Ætheling as king, but there was no legitimacy behind his claim, and no real support was given to him to resist William. Edgar submitted to William soon after, due to his lack of any support.
After William was king several Earls would revolt over various minor matters and at different times, but they were completely uncoordinated. If Harold had lived and even gone into exile, the various discontented English nobility would have had a cause to unite under.

Did the English nobility know that William planned to overthrow them?

ITT: no one answers the OP
Veeky Forums, you did it again!

Well for one, it was more like 700 ships than 6000 so i thought it was jokes.

fuck you.

>how do 6,000 boats sail together, are they not constantly crashing into each other?
First of all, it was probably less than 1/3 that number of boats.
Secondly, they keep their distance from each other, instead of sailing right next to each other, that is easy to do when your boats are oar-powered, instead of solely relying on sail power.

>wouldn't that many boats basically bridge the channel?
no.

>and if they each take at least an hour to unload, how did they possibly get everyone off the ships in a reasonable amount of time? were 4-500 boats unloading at once?
yes. the beaches of Pevensey have a lot of room on them. you could easily land that many boats at one time.

What was that?

Is anyone going to answer OP? Why is everyone discussing everything but OPs topic?