[HN Gopher] How important was the Battle of Hastings?
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How important was the Battle of Hastings?
Author : benbreen
Score : 80 points
Date : 2026-03-04 07:23 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| ggm wrote:
| Counterfactuals abound in this. What if Stamford Bridge had
| failed?
|
| What if Harold had won?
| jfengel wrote:
| Likely, the long-term outcome would be the same. Harald
| wouldn't have been in a great position to fight of William,
| either. He might have simply ceded southern England without
| even a fight.
|
| And given William's subsequent Harrying of the North, I don't
| think that Harald would be able to hold on to it very long. He
| was intent on taking over the whole thing, and he had a much
| stronger force coming over the English Channel than over the
| North Sea.
|
| Of course we can never really tell. I could spin a million
| other possible outcomes. But in this case, William really did
| have an overwhelming force. Godwinson had a home-field
| advantage, and might have won if he hadn't exhausted his force
| just getting there. The Vikings weren't going to fare better.
| _0ffh wrote:
| I was wondering a while ago what the outcome would have been
| if the order was reversed. Harold Godwinson might have fought
| off William of Normandy, but then be too exhausted to stop
| Harald Hardrada, all with just a few weeks of difference in
| timing.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I find one of the more interesting counterfactuals to be "What
| if William gets better winds and lands in late August?"
| atombender wrote:
| https://archive.ph/a1YN4
| jongjong wrote:
| All I can say is that people do seem to overestimate the impact
| of losing a war. Just like they overestimate the need to wage war
| in the first place.
|
| The main outcome of a war is loss of lives and infrastructure.
| Political changes are minor; maybe they will start teaching the
| language of the invader in schools as an elective... Maybe
| restaurants will get new foods added to the menu. Maybe taxes
| will go up a little... A bit more immigration from that
| country... Money will go to a different set of politicians.
|
| But if you want a modern proof; look at Iraq and Afghanistan...
| Under US occupation for many years. They have the same people,
| same language, same culture, same everything as before... It's
| like they never lost any battles. Look at Germany after they lost
| WW2; they still speak German. Their cultural identity is still
| very strong; maybe it affected their foreign policy a little but
| apart from that, it's hard to tell.
|
| War is truly useless except for those selling weapons and for a
| couple of big companies that are trying to acquire some mineral
| resources or securing some trade routes. There's really no other
| purpose.
|
| My ancestors are from a country which (during the French
| revolution) had voluntarily changed 'ownership' from France to
| Britain and later back to France again. They still speak French.
| Nothing changed, at all, except for the fact that the elites
| conveniently avoided the Guillotine... Fast forward 300 years and
| you can't tell any cultural or economic difference at all from
| the other neighboring nations which remained under France and had
| experienced the Guillotine; same GDP numbers, same culture, same
| everything.
|
| Anglo-Saxons like to make fun of the French for surrendering
| easily but as a regular citizen, it actually makes logical sense.
| I think it just shows that the government is better aligned with
| the interests of the people.
|
| Strategic surrender is smart; if you know ahead of time which
| force is most powerful and can evaluate it objectively, you can
| save yourself the trouble of dying and you end up with a better
| outcome than you would have otherwise. It's risk management.
|
| Of course, the Swiss are even smarter for staying neutral but
| France is too big to take a neutral stance (and they can actually
| drive outcomes) so they take one stance and then back-peddle if
| the tide turns.
|
| And France does something else really smart which is; they
| embrace internal opposition; so if the tides turn, they allow the
| opposing elite take control without any fighting and it looks
| like France was always on the winning side.
|
| Almost nobody recalls this, but during WW2, France was actually
| on the German side; president Philippe Petain allowed the Germans
| in. But then later General De Gaulle pushed back when it looked
| like there was a good chance to turn the war around. And now
| everyone thinks France was always part of the allied forces.
|
| French people hacked politics. I think now Americans are now also
| doing something similar. This is why the country is divided IMO
| and it's smart. Internal division is the cost of guaranteed
| victory.
|
| It works so long as the population is politically flexible and
| only focus on what's important to them. If people don't mind
| changing religion or language or some laws, then it really
| doesn't matter who wins the war. If the enemy doesn't have clear
| objectives for a war, then the loser of the war can still control
| the outcome.
| linehedonist wrote:
| But as the article says, this battle really was tremendously
| important. The utter catastrophe led to the quick and permanent
| entrenchment of the Normans in Britain, with huge and long-
| reaching consequences reaching to the present: first and
| foremost, that the English language was profoundly altered at
| every level by influence from French.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Describing Germany's loss in WW2 as 'affecting their foreign
| policy a little' represents a profound disconnect with reality,
| which is that WW2 fundamentally reshaped the entire world,
| cemented the US as a superpower, set up the USSR for its rise,
| split Germany in two (with major political effects to this
| day), ended European empires (UK, French), and ultimately
| brought about the EU. And those are just some of WW2's effects,
| which would have all gone completely different directions if
| Germany or Japan had won.
| jongjong wrote:
| This is an elite narrative. What happened to normal people?
| In the real world? Germans still speak German. Germany is
| still very wealthy, many of the same companies are still
| around; including those which supported the Nazi war effort
| like Hugo Boss and Mercedes Benz. German chemical industry is
| extremely successful... Population of Germany exceeds that of
| France...
|
| How did Germany's defeat actually negatively affect things
| for the people in the long run?
|
| One of my ancestors (French side) had to close their business
| because they made the decision to keep paying for employee
| wages during the war while their business was forcibly put on
| hold by the French government... Winning the war didn't mean
| much to them... Mercedes people who made the German war
| machines were filling their pockets throughout the entire
| war. Didn't even negatively affect their reputation!
|
| What happened to normal people is very different.
|
| The people who won are those who looked out only for their
| own interests! It doesn't matter what side they were on.
| mathgeek wrote:
| Survivorship bias in action. We cannot see what didn't
| happen.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > This is an elite narrative. What happened to normal
| people? In the real world?
|
| What a rubbish point you're pushing. Millions and millions
| died or were exterminated. Countless fled or were
| forcefully displaced. The country was occupied and then
| split apart, the effects of the DDR can be felt to this
| day. The collective shame will outlast any generation alive
| today.
|
| Many institutions survived, yes, as they often do. But
| everything else was a nightmare that echoes to this day.
| hluska wrote:
| Germany was divided for more than forty years after the Second
| World War. That absolutely changed their foreign policy and
| those changes have continued to be felt into the present day.
| The Second World War ended traditional power structures and
| changed foreign policy for everyone. That's reality.
| anonlinc77 wrote:
| This is not true. War materially changes the lives of the
| people before and after regardless of whether or not their
| language in customs are noticeably affected in the short term.
| Would you rather be a West German in 1938 or 1960? What about
| if you were Jewish?
|
| I think the Jews in France in 1939 would have wished their
| government put up a better fight and had better generals who
| actually used the radio.
|
| Also, the statement that France was on the German side is not
| true. The Germans conquered most of France in the first part of
| the war and installed a puppet regime that was loyal to them.
| This does not mean France was on the side of Germany, it means
| the Vichy puppet regime was.
|
| You clearly know a decent amount about history, yet your
| analysis is so starkly wrong it appears you have an agenda.
| jongjong wrote:
| My agenda is; I'm not going to war for any country because
| it's pointless. I think it's governments who have an agenda.
|
| According to Claude, Petain was installed after France's
| defeat; that's true, but Vichy France was already considered
| collaborationist with Nazi Germany at the time. Many public
| figures were pro-nazi such as Coco Chanel.
|
| It's kind of insane actually that seemingly many of the big
| companies which supported the Nazis are still in business and
| actually grew and became synonymous with luxury after the
| war; Chanel, Hugo Boss, Mercedes Benz...
|
| You'd think it would be bad for reputation; but reputation is
| the bread and butter of these companies today!
|
| What better way to illustrate just how wrong the masses are
| when it comes to war? Clearly what we were taught is wrong!
| It doesn't align with economic reality!
|
| Doesn't this corroborate my point that who wins the war
| doesn't matter?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The question was about the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Since
| the battle and the period following it are pretty well
| documented, there's no need to look for modern examples - we
| know what happened in England/Britain after William/Guillame
| won, and the results were absolutely transformative. Your
| summary of "the main outcome of a war" is completely
| disconnected from what took place in England after 1066.
| rixed wrote:
| I believe his point was that it was transformative for the
| elites (who are the one writing history) but not so much for
| society in general. A refreshing point of view; I also
| believe we tend to inflate the influence of war and politics
| and agency really in history.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If that was their point, then their point is completely
| wrong in the context of the War of Hastings.
|
| Do you and the GP really not know anything about how
| William/Guillame's victory tranformed England, for
| everyone? The very language we're writing in at this very
| moment is a direct consequence of that victory.
| rixed wrote:
| I believe we all agree about the facts, just not about
| what constitutes an "important change".
|
| Most people lives were unaffected; most people kept their
| language, their traditions etc. For contrast, compare
| with: the third Punic war, setting foot on America in
| 1493, the industrial revolutions...
|
| Some of us have just decided that's where we draw the
| line: An event that is important enough to wipe out and
| replace the whole ruling class but that does not change,
| one way or another, the way people live, is not
| "important".
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There are multiple time frames to be considered.
|
| It is true that in the immediate aftermath of Hastings,
| life for most folks continued on largely as it had
| before.
|
| But in the longer term both the administrative structure
| of the country (which very much affected individual
| folks' lives) and the language were significantly
| changed.
|
| I don't see a reason to privilege one of these over the
| other. You could make the case, for example, that WWII
| was of little consequence because Germans today live much
| the same sort of life that they'd have been living if
| there had been no WWII. That's not clearly a false claim
| about people's lives, but it doesn't really serve the
| purpose of understanding the consequences of war very
| well.
| keiferski wrote:
| The world would be completely different if Germany or Japan had
| won, or not been totally defeated, in WW2. Geopolitically,
| culturally, everything.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >Anglo-Saxons like to make fun of the French for surrendering
| easily but as a regular citizen, it actually makes logical
| sense. I think it just shows that the government is better
| aligned with the interests of the people.
|
| >Strategic surrender is smart; if you know ahead of time which
| force is most powerful and can evaluate it objectively, you can
| save yourself the trouble of dying and you end up with a better
| outcome than you would have otherwise. It's risk management.
|
| France didn't particularly surrender early. WW2 France
| surrendered because they were fucked and didn't have a choice;
| if they hadn't surrendered when they did, they would have been
| slaughtered and then their replacements would surrender just
| the same.
|
| Russia would have done the same (and in fact, Ukraine tried to
| switch sides, especially with the Holomodor in such recent
| memory), but the Nazis were _not_ pragmatic about permitting
| 'subhumans' to live.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > Look at Germany after they lost WW2; they still speak German.
| Their cultural identity is still very strong; maybe it affected
| their foreign policy a little but apart from that, it's hard to
| tell.
|
| What a comically bad take. I am looking at Germany and it is
| very easy to tell. Then go back a generation and look at what
| WWI did to Germany.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Lots of words to be weirdly wrong about things.
|
| There certainly were a lot of minor "elite" wars in Europe
| where power shifted back and forth across the aristocracy with
| no real difference to daily life. WW2 was not one of them. Nor,
| historically, was the Thirty Years War.
|
| OP may be confused by the American colonial wars since Korea.
| Korea is the last one where you can see the difference in
| outcomes for the population.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Look at Germany after they lost WW2; they still speak German.
| Their cultural identity is still very strong; maybe it affected
| their foreign policy a little but apart from that, it's hard to
| tell.
|
| Name a more dramatic overnight cultural shift in all of human
| history than nazi to post war germany.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| The English class system is anchored in this event - the
| ruling/upper class was replaced in its entirety by the Norman
| invaders, leaving two very distinct identities.
| bambax wrote:
| A reporter for the Financial Times once asked Gerald Cavendish
| Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, what advice he would give to a
| young entrepreneur wanting to succeed. He joked: "Make sure
| they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William
| the Conqueror."
| yobbo wrote:
| Didn't an existing class hierarchy (at least in part) enable
| the Normans to do this? When the aristocratic army was
| defeated, the entire country was defenceless and they could
| replace the existing aristocracy.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Indeed, and having replaced the aristocracy they let the
| 'lower classes' carry on much as they had before, continuing
| with their existing customs and (lower level) forms of
| governance - just with new 'top bosses' if you will.
|
| So in comparison to other places that did not have such a
| wholesale aristocracy replacement, this really cemented the
| class divide. No longer was the aristocracy 'like you but
| richer/more powerful', but quite different - different
| language, customs etc.
|
| 1066 was the last successful invasion of the British
| mainland, so, aside from the odd civil war, no sweeping
| 'cataclysm' occurred to shake things up. We didn't even have
| a revolution like the French, instead a gradual (over
| centuries!) transition to our current democratic system, with
| a constitutional monarchy (itself a remnant of the old ruling
| system).
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Richard the first didn't even speak English, and he was King
| more than a century after the battle.
| vondur wrote:
| It was very important. The Normans completely supplanted the
| ruling aristocracy of England and changed the culture of the
| country. The Normans were some serious bad asses and conquered
| Sicily and nearly conquered the Byzantine Empire. There's a
| podcast on them called Norman Centuries which I also recommend.
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| The aristocracys were already interwed before the conquest. I
| mean williams wife was related by marriage to haralds wife, and
| this cementing of families continued. One impact you see is the
| saxon families ended up kore interwed to the scottish nobility,
| st margaret being an example
| linehedonist wrote:
| Attention-grabbing headline, but the article itself answers the
| question: very important.
|
| "Hastings was one of those battles which changed the course of
| history, most directly for England but also, as events turned
| out, for Britain and for France... In terms of its consequences,
| Hastings must be the most important battle ever to have been
| fought in England... the consequences of its outcome changed the
| course of English history definitively."
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > "was 1066 really all that?"
|
| This article might exist just for this joke in the sub-headline.
| Pretty good.
|
| "1066 and all that" is a highly influential satirical history
| book from 1930, and "[X] and all that" a meme/idiom in UK
| English.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That
| joosters wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/1066allthat00walt/page/n5/mode/2...
| for anyone who'd like to read it.
|
| Embarassingly for me, while the book advertises that it
| contains '2 genuine dates', 1066 is the only one I can
| remember.
| Jemaclus wrote:
| Not affiliated, just a fan, but if this is a topic you're
| interested in, I highly recommend Michael Livingston's "1066: A
| Guide to the Battles and Campaigns."
|
| Ihttps://www.michaellivingston.com/non-fiction/1066-a-guide-t...
| riffraff wrote:
| The 1851 book "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World"[0] and
| its ilk is likely what the author refers to when talking of
| "decisive battles where popularised in the 19th century".
|
| It is pretty obvious that single battles hardly determine long
| war outcomes, but it's a pretty attractive idea that a kingdom
| can be lost for want of a nail and all that.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_o...
| kitd wrote:
| Thanks for the link. I had often heard of the importance of the
| battle of Marathon, but couldn't remember its provenance.
|
| Here's an interesting excerpt from the Siege of Orleans though:
|
| _the struggle by which the unconscious heroine of France, in
| the beginning of the fifteenth century, rescued her country
| from becoming a second Ireland under the yoke of the triumphant
| English._
|
| That's quite a statement from a 19thC English man.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| I don't think that's obvious at all. I think there are
| obviously a mix of wars where the outcome was inevitable, and
| where it was decided through a series of one or more battles.
|
| In WWI, for example, if Germany had won the battle of the
| Marne, they would have captured Paris in 1914 and likely
| (eventually) have won the war.
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| excellent ~10h The Rest Is History podcast playlist covering the
| context and details
|
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEbAHi3fZpuHgn-UBsGwiSiMI...
| onion2k wrote:
| At the time it was important, but the real impact came later when
| it was absolutely pivotal in giving British school children
| something to learn about and write a report on for one summer of
| their school life. There isn't a single person who went to school
| in England who doesn't know about the battle, the Bayeux
| Tapestry, and the Doomsday book.
|
| (Hyperbole obviously, before people reply to say they went to
| Hastings Secondary and have never heard of William the Conqueor.)
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| I've never heard of William the Conqueor.
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| If you're British then that is a majestic fail. My children
| are taught that in primary school.
| luxpir wrote:
| Read again closely.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| If you're British then that is a majestic fail in reading
| English. Perhaps they taught you some other language in
| school?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| William the Conqueor was a fellow who used to make horns out
| of the shells of large sea snails; he used to travel across
| the Pacific in a catamaran, from island to island make horns
| and selling them.
|
| If William the Conqueor had been on the English side at the
| Battle of Hastings then the English would have one because
| their warning horns would have been top notch, everybody says
| so.
| globalise83 wrote:
| When you think that the Norman successors still own the vast
| majority of England to this day, cramming the Anglo-Saxons into
| rabbit hutches on high density estates, very.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| The UK has land ownership inequality comparable to South Africa
| and Brazil. Quite something.
| PearlRiver wrote:
| The rest of Europe turned into republics or republic
| monarchies. The land is owned by the state.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Surely the alternative would have been that land being owned
| the Anglo-Danish elite installed by Cnut a few decades earlier,
| or perhaps a newly installed Norwegian elite had Harold lost at
| Stamford Bridge.
|
| Britain's ownership inequality is probably more a result of the
| tradition of primogeniture where aristocratic land holdings
| remained concentrated whereas in France they were subdivided on
| inheritance.
|
| I blame Britain's tiny homes on our early industrialisation
| creating terraced houses which have subsequently been difficult
| to redevelop at higher density. Other countries seem to have
| skipped that and instead built tenements that eventually turned
| into flats at a much higher floor area per land area.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Based on what - that some of the aristocracy have French/Norman
| sounding names? A lot don't.
|
| Nearly a thousand years of interbreeding insures that the genes
| have been well and truly intermixed by now. I have no idea if
| my ancestors were orginally saxon, norman or something else.
| And I expect that it true of 99% of other people in the UK.
| tomjuggler wrote:
| The battle of Hastings features prominently in my house, it's one
| of the first history subjects we taught the kids about.
|
| Tom Hastings
| jonjacky wrote:
| Hastings affected the wider politics of Europe, not just England.
| For centuries before Hastings, England had been involved with
| Scandinavia, especially Denmark and Norway. After Hastings it was
| totally entangled with France, pretty much forever.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Can't see 'History Today' without thinking about Newman and
| Badiel:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TO-e-HdW8A
| teleforce wrote:
| >French customs then took root through England and English
| affairs began to change in various ways
|
| You can replace this statement with French language and it's
| still be true:
|
| French "language" then took root through England and English
| "language" began to change in various ways.
|
| Fun facts, about one-third of modern English language are
| actually made up from French words and vocabulary.
|
| I remember reading one posted announcement notice at a French
| university, and surprisingly understood most of the contents of
| the notice although it's written in French and I cannot speak
| French.
|
| However, if I don't read the notice but relies on French to
| verbally reading the notice to me, I'd not understand the
| contents.
|
| Apparently most of the working and professional words in English
| were taken from French (this made up most of the loan words from
| French to English). Thus the notice is easily understandable by
| reading it if you know English language since the notice is in
| professional setting (i.e university).
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