Housecarl
Housecarls were household troops, personal warriors and equivalent to a bodyguard to Scandinavian lords and kings. The anglicized term comes from the Old Norse term huskarl or huscarl (literally, 'house man', i.e., armed man (churl) in the service of a specific house.) They were also called hirth ('household') that referred to household troops. The term later came to cover armed soldiers of the household. They were often the only professional soldiers in the kingdom, the rest of the army being made up of militia called the fyrd, peasant levy, and occasionally mercenaries. A kingdom would have fewer than 2,000 Housecarls.
The term entered the English language when Canute the Great conquered and occupied Anglo-Saxon England.
In England there may have been as many as 3,000 royal housecarls (the Þingalið), and a special tax was levied to provide pay in coin. They were housed and fed at the king's expense. They formed a standing army of professional soldiers and also had some administrative duties in peacetime as the King's representatives. The term was often used in contrast to the non-professional fyrd.
Tactics and Training
As an army, the Housecarls were renowned for their superior training and equipment, not only because they constituted a standing army (an ad hoc fighting force of professional soldiers as opposed to militia), but also due to rigorous quality control. For example, one lord passed legislature requiring that all enlistees own a sword with a gold-inlaid hilt. This assured that enlistees were of the economic standing that would permit them to train without financial hindrance and purchase good quality equipment.
While Huscarls were expected to be proficient in a variety of weapons, including the one-handed sword and the throwing axe, they were particularly renown for their unique use of the long-bearded axe, or Skeggox, the presence of which is conspicuous throughout the Bayeux Tapestry. The bearded axe is also known as the Danish axe.
Though the Bayeux tapestry is only a static panorama of the Battle of Hastings, it tells us much about the fighting style of the Huscarls. At one point it depicts them employing a tactic called the shieldwall. In this tactic the Huscarls formed a line with their shields locked, in much the same fashion as the Greek phalanx. The Saxons' traditional fighting style was, however, very aggressive in both the theory and popular technique of the day, and this tactic appears to have been used primarily in defensive situations against a superior force, particularly one using cavalry and archers, like the Norman force at the Battle of Hastings. One of the more distinctive confirmations of the Huscarls' tactics also comes from the Bayeux tapestry. It clearly shows them holding their axes left-handed rather than right-handed, as intuition might dictate. Using a left-handed grip would mean that they would swing toward an opponent's unguarded side (the right), requiring the average right-handed defender to shift their shield-side toward the attacking huscarl, thus entering a defensive stance and diminishing their attacking speed and ability. This also meant, however, that since the huscarl himself could not use a shield together with the oversized axe, that he must remain constantly aggressive, attacking without letup in order to keep his opponent from entering aggressive stance.
The preferred technique for dealing with mounted opponents was to cleave the horse's front legs out from under it as it passed or approached. Armed with such a heavy-handed weapon however, it is unlikely that huscarls were very choosy over their targets, and they probably struck at any opportune region. One account of the Battle of Hastings described many horses as being nearly cloven in two by the Huscarls' axes.
It is not clear whether any archers were included in a body of huscarls. It is known that Harald Hardrada died at the Battle of Stamford Bridge with an arrow through his neck, but what is not ascertainable is whether the archer was an auxiliary fyrd man, or a huscarl. Later events, such as the Battle of Hastings, lean toward the former possibility: that the archer was a fyrd man, probably armed with a hunting bow. It is clear in the accounts of the Battle of Hastings that if there were archers, their presence was insignificant. In fact, the Normans narrowly avoided disaster when they came close to running out of ammunition. This means that the Saxon huscarls were not "trading vollies" with the Norman archers. The trading of arrows is a phenomenon intrinsic to pitched battles involving archers, and it does not seem to have occurred at the Battle of Hastings, leading to the conclusion that there was no significant presence of bowmen in the Huscarl army.
The Housecarls at the Battle of Hastings
The most famous army of housecarls is without a doubt the one employed by Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. The reason for Harold's defeat can be partially attributed to many things, but key were the technology and military practices of the Saxons, which were very set in tradition and in some ways failed to keep up with modern armies like that of William the Conqueror. While William's knights walked to the battle leading their horses, in order to keep their mounts fresh, the Huscarls did the opposite, riding to the battle, and later dismounting to fight on foot, as was their custom (also, Harold's forces may not have been fresh as William's, as Harold and his army force marched to Hastings immediately after having destroyed an invading Norwegian Viking army under King Harald Hardråda and Tostig Godwinson (Harold's brother) at the Battle of Stamford Bridge). William brought mounted knights and unprecedented numbers of archers. Because Harold Godwinson set his formation at the top of a hill the archers of the Norman army were largely ineffective and the charges made by the mounted knights (up hill) were largely bereft of impact against the solid shieldwall. After attacking the wall with infantry part of Williams force broke and began to run back down the hill. Harold had issued orders that no pursuit was to follow (considering the march his army had had to undertake this was the only tactic available) but the undisciplined Saxon militia could not resist and charged at the scattered Norman infantry retreating down the hill. It was here that Norman knights could engage the militia to best effect and ran them down. This tactic, was then taken up deliberately by the Norman's to great effect decimating the militia and leaving fewer and fewer Saxons in the shield wall to protect the hill. After the Norman Conquest, archers began to be considered an essential division in most European armies, and few commanders relied exclusively on melée forces.
The Battle of Hastings marked the demise of the Huscarls along with most of the Saxon empire. Survivors, along with King Harold's thegns, crossed to Continental Europe as mercenary troops. Some of these reached Byzantium and along with other Saxons joined the Varangian Guard. By the 12th century, the Varangian Guard contained so many Saxons that the entire unit was sometimes called "The English Guard".
See also
- Churl (Carl, Charles)
- Druzhina
- Yeomen of the Guard
External links
- Yeomen of the Guard
- Regia Anglorum Anglo-Saxon Huscarls