Horses were involved in King Harold’s defeat at Hastings – but also in the demise of his Norman conqueror

It’s one of the most famous of all medieval images. Harold II stands upon the battlefield at Hastings, desperately grasping at an arrow lodged in his eye. This incident – depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry – is credited with ending the English king’s life and extinguishing centuries of Anglo-Saxon rule. Yet look to the right of Harold and you’ll find an image that arguably goes even further in explaining his defeat: it depicts a sword-wielding warrior mounted upon a horse.

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 was an era-defining event – and its centrepiece was the battle of Hastings. That clash is graphically represented on the Bayeux Tapestry, most memorably in the image of mounted Norman knights charging the line of Anglo-Saxon warriors on foot. It’s a powerful rendition of horses making history – and for William, Duke of Normandy, those animals proved critical in securing his victory.

William began the day of the pivotal action, 14 October, by ordering reconnaissance missions, receiving intelligence from returning mounted scouts on the whereabouts of Harold’s forces. When the two armies later closed in to do battle, the Bayeux Tapestry shows us, the duke mounted his warhorse and exhorted his knights to “prepare themselves manfully and wisely” as they cantered towards the forthcoming engagement. During the nine-hour struggle, William was in the thick of the fighting – and two, or possibly three, of his horses were killed beneath him.

The crucial part of the battle came when a rumour spread among the Normans that their commander had been killed. The duke hurriedly rode among his now-fleeing troops, his helmet raised to prove that he was alive, so preventing a rout. At this key moment it was the mobility provided by his mount that allowed William to be in the right place at the right time, averting disaster (for him).

Despite the oft-repeated tale of the ‘arrow in the eye’, Harold’s death probably came after a group of mounted Norman knights broke through his bodyguard and cut him down. On this most dramatic of days, it was the horse that was William’s enabler – for intelligence-gathering, command and control, helping save his army from defeat by allowing him to visibly lead from the front.

Yet though the horse helped cement the success of the Conqueror’s military career, it also played a part in its end. In 1087, the now-overweight William was characteristically urging on his troops as they set fire to the town of Mantes in France when his horse jumped a ditch – and “his stomach projected over the forward part of the saddle”, resulting in the rupture of the king’s internal organs. He died of his injuries some weeks later, his otherwise anonymous horse an unwitting participant in the death of one of England’s greatest warrior kings.

2. The Bruce's canny cavalry gambit

Faced with a mighty English mounted army, the Scottish king used both horsemanship and cunning strategy to rout the invaders

Robert the Bruce’s famous victory at the battle of Bannockburn, fought over two bloody days on 23–24 June 1314, was a landmark in the history of the British Isles, paving the way for Scottish independence from English rule. That outcome hinged on the inability of the English to effectively use their heavy cavalry in the face of tactics masterminded by the Scottish king.

Edward II had invaded Scotland with a vast army, aiming to raise the siege of the strategically vital castle of Stirling. The core of his army comprised men at arms – professional soldiers, knights and nobles – on warhorses that were the embodiment of English military power. Heavily armoured and emblazoned with arms, these were elite steeds, expensively bred and trained in a royal stud network. The English army of around 13,000 substantially outnumbered Robert’s force of perhaps 6,000.

A prelude to the battle known to every Scottish schoolchild proved an ill omen for the English. In a scene echoing the age-old clash of military champions in single combat, on the first day of action the English knight Sir Henry de Bohun spotted Robert the Bruce in front of his troops, and aimed to strike a decisive early blow by charging at the Scottish leader on his warhorse, lance in hand. Mounted on a smaller and more nimble mount, Robert skilfully manoeuvred to dodge his opponent and, standing up in his stirrups, in the words of the epic medieval poem The Brus, “Struck him such a great blow, That neither hat or helmet could stop”, cleaving Sir Henry’s “head to the brains” and smashing his battleaxe in the process.

In preparation for the main action the following day, the Scots devised tactics to negate English cavalry strength. They chose for the battlefield a site where heavy horsemen could not operate easily – the area was marshy and intersected by a network of streams – and pockmarked the landscape with a minefield-like network of covered pits or ‘pots’ designed to trap horses. Fighting in compact formations known as schiltrons, the Bruce’s pike-armed foot soldiers were able to resist the disordered attacks of the English cavalry, which eventually disintegrated and broke.

As King Edward was led away from the field towards the security of Stirling, Scottish soldiers were able to get close enough to grab at the caparison (cloth covering) of his horse, which was wounded beneath him, forcing the king to remount in his humiliating flight.

3. Under his dead body

English rule in France was brought to a violent end when a renowned commander became trapped beneath the corpse of his own horse

In the summer of 1453, with the tide of the Hundred Years’ War having turned in France’s favour, the veteran English commander Sir John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, found himself at the head of an army attempting to relieve the beleaguered garrison at Castillon in Aquitaine. His target was the besieging French army’s fortified encampment outside the town and, encouraged by dust clouds from what he believed were retreating soldiers, he ordered his own troops to attack. Talbot was the only Englishman to remain mounted – on a white riding horse – and went into battle without armour, honouring a vow he had made to the French king while a prisoner some years earlier.

It soon transpired, though, that the French were not retreating – in fact, the dust had simply been raised by horses leaving the camp – and that Talbot’s men were facing the whole French army, dug in behind their fortifications and ready to fire more than 200 guns. Talbot, against the advice of some of his subordinates, pressed on with the assault, possibly because he believed that “his name alone would cause the enemy to flee”.

What followed was a disaster for his forces: they were cut down by swathes of cannon fire, with every shot from the French artillery taking out up to six English soldiers. After two hours of fighting, the English army was attacked in the flank by a group of Bretons – and, as Talbot sought to deal with the threat, the whole French army sallied out from their camp to complete the rout.

While attempting to steady his retreating forces, Talbot’s horse was struck by a cannonball. As the earl lay powerless beneath his steed, a French soldier dispatched him with an axe blow. Talbot’s smashed body was identified by his herald the following day, the telltale feature being a missing tooth in his lower jaw. An examination of his skeleton in the 19th century found evidence of a 7 x 1.6cm hole in his skull, confirming the violent manner of his death.

Though described by his adversaries at the time as France’s “dread and terror”, the old earl was held in such respect by the French commanders that they founded a chapel on the spot where he had been killed – a fitting tribute to a veteran campaigner of the chivalric age. His horse received no such monument, though it had played a vital part in the first battle in which artillery proved to be the decisive weapon – and which was also the clash that ultimately led to the end of English rule in France.

4. Did a lost horse doom a dynasty?

As the battle of Bosworth raged, Richard III launched a cavalry charge at Henry Tudor but ended up losing the throne – and his life

“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Richard III’s final words before his death at the battle of Bosworth, as imagined by Shakespeare, have a special place in English memory. Tudor propaganda has, famously, coloured popular views of that king’s character and reign, but we have a good understanding of the demise of England’s last Yorkist king – and it was an event in which horses played a central role, if not quite as portrayed by Shakespeare.

On 22 August 1485, Richard’s army clashed with the forces of Henry Tudor in the Leicestershire countryside in what’s often considered to have been the final battle in the Wars of the Roses. Following an infantry engagement between the vanguards of the opposing forces, Richard – spotting that his rival was protected by only a small lifeguard – mounted a heavy cavalry charge at Henry. This was not necessarily the desperate act of a doomed monarch, as has been argued; it could have been a carefully calculated attempted decapitation of the rebel leader that would end the battle there and then.

In the words of the prime Tudor source for the battle, Polydore Vergil, the king “strick his horse with the spurres” and charged, accompanied by a small body of capable and loyal knights. The gambit almost succeeded: Henry’s standard bearer was killed in the melee, but the charge was stopped and driven towards a marshy area.

Richard’s actions were all the more remarkable given that previous battles in the Wars of the Roses had seen little in the way of cavalry action; most of the clashes had been brutal slugfests in which leaders as well as soldiers fought mainly on foot. The king’s attack ultimately proved to be a brief last hurrah for the fabled heavy cavalry charge by medieval knights.

The grim reality of exactly how Richard met his end has become clearer since his remains, discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012, were subjected to scientific analysis. The concentration of multiple wounds on his head shows that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, and must have been dismounted when he suffered these blows. This accords with the account of Molinet, the only contemporary source detailing Richard’s final moments, who said that the king was killed by a Welsh halberdier after his horse became stuck in marshy ground.

In a final indignity, Richard’s dead, naked body was hung over a horse to be taken back to Leicester for burial. A wound through the buttocks, revealed by analysis of the skeleton, suggests this was when a “humiliation injury” was inflicted on the royal corpse.

What might have happened had Richard’s cavalry charge broken through and killed Henry Tudor? This is one of the great ‘what ifs’ of English history. In the event, that failure of horse-powered warfare proved the turning point of the battle that heralded the end of the Middle Ages – and tipped England into a new Tudor future.

5. How the mighty have fallen

When Henry VIII took a tumble during a joust, he suffered an injury that may have transformed the Tudor dynasty

Bosworth may have witnessed the last hurrah for the mounted knight charging across the battlefield, but the knightly tournament lost none of its importance. It remained the pre-eminent vehicle for displays of aristocratic masculinity well into the 16th century.

Henry VIII took particular enjoyment in jousting, and constructed a series of purpose-built tiltyards at his lavish homes. It was at his palace and equestrian centre at Greenwich on 24 January 1536 that the 44-year-old Henry suffered a famous accident while jousting with his courtier and friend Sir Henry Norris. During a tilt, Henry’s lance hit Norris’s saddle – and the force of the impact toppled the king from his own saddle, with his horse landing on top of him.

Some accounts detailing the severity of Henry’s injuries state that he was knocked unconscious for two hours. Others glossed over the episode, but there seems little doubt that the incident was serious. At the very least, the fall seems to have opened up an older leg injury that plagued the king for the rest of his life, and which also curtailed his ability to take part in hunting. Certainly, Henry never jousted again, and historians have speculated that this accident sparked a turning point in his reign and character. Over the years that followed, the once-athletic king became an increasingly unhealthy, unpredictable and despotic tyrant.

While the horse in question may not have been wholly responsible for a sea change in the personality of the king, it may unwittingly have had a hand in the royal succession.

Not long after Henry’s fall, Anne Boleyn miscarried his unborn son – a misfortune that, the queen and others believed, had been brought on by worry following the king’s accident. The exact cause of that tragic episode remains unknowable, of course – but if the pregnancy had gone to full term, and if Anne had given birth to a male heir, then the history of the Tudor dynasty could have been very different.

Oliver H Creighton is professor of archaeology at the University of Exeter. Robert Liddiard is professor of history at the University of East Anglia. They are co-editors of Medieval Warhorse: Equestrian Landscapes, Material Culture and Zooarchaeology in Britain, AD 800–1550 (Liverpool University Press, 2025)

This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

It was at that moment, in 1533, that Hans Holbein the Younger – the most celebrated court painter of the Tudor age – accepted a commission from a recently arrived visitor to the English court. A portrait would be produced, celebrating the wealth of those depicted. But in its extraordinary details, some more obscure and cryptic than others, the picture also reveals important aspects of the sitters and the tempestuous era in which it was painted. As London’s National Gallery celebrates the reopening of its Sainsbury Wing and a major redisplay of its collection, it seems like an apposite moment to take a fresh look at this masterful painting and the turbulent year that spawned it.

In the eye of the storm

Henry VIII, king since 1509, had recently defied the pope by setting aside his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne Boleyn, the woman who had captivated him for the previous seven years. This sparked a seismic shift in England’s religious, political and social life that would reverberate down the centuries.

Jean de Dinteville, ambassador of Henry VIII’s great rival, Francis I of France, instructed Holbein to capture this extraordinary moment with a portrait of himself and his fellow diplomat Georges de Selve, both of whom were caught in the eye of the gathering storm. The result would become one of the artist’s most celebrated works.

Dinteville, then aged 28, was a member of one of the most influential families in France. His first embassy to England had been in 1531, the year when Henry was granted the title of supreme head of the English church. With the king of England now on the verge of severing all ties with Rome for good, the stakes were even higher on Dinteville’s second visit in 1533. It was vital for his royal master to receive accurate information about events in England as they unfolded.

It was not a task that he accepted with any relish. He would have preferred to stay at home in his château of Polisy in the picturesque region of Champagne, close to the city of Troyes, south-east of Paris.

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Upon arriving in London, Dinteville was lodged in Bridewell Palace on the banks of the Fleet river, the usual residence for French ambassadors. The splendour of his surroundings provided cold comfort. His correspondence is full of complaints about the English weather, and he was ill for most of his stay with an affliction similar to malaria. In a letter, he assured his brother that his illness was not serious, but wryly remarked: “You know how I love this country. I truly believe that as long as I am here, I shall never be entirely healthy.”

The misery of Dinteville’s stay was alleviated in April 1533 by the arrival of Georges de Selve. As well as being bishop of Lavaur, de Selve served as ambassador to Emperor Charles V, the Venetian Republic and the Holy See. Being a cleric, de Selve was deeply affected by the religious divisions in Europe, and had witnessed the repression of Lutheranism (which became known as Protestantism) in German districts in recent years. It is not known how the two ambassadors – who were of similar ages – knew each other, but the affection with which Dinteville wrote of de Selve, and the fact that he commissioned a portrait of them together, suggests friendship, even intimacy.

By the time of de Selve’s arrival in England, religious tensions had worsened and the political situation was on a knife edge. In May 1533, Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was finally annulled and Anne Boleyn was confirmed as his legitimate queen by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. For all the elaborate cordiality between the kings of England and France, their alliance was now under threat – which destabilised the entire power balance in Europe.

It is not clear exactly when Dinteville commissioned Holbein to paint the double portrait, but de Selve had left England by early June so it must have been before then.

Swirling upheaval

Holbein came from a family of artists in Augsburg, southern Germany. He had first visited England in 1526 under the patronage of Thomas More, one of the most influential members of Henry VIII’s court. As well as undertaking portraits of More and his family, Holbein worked as a decorative painter at the royal court. His fame spread and, by the time he returned to England in 1532 (or possibly 1531), he was inundated with commissions. These included designs for table fountains and fireplaces, goldsmith’s work and other embellishments for the king’s palaces, as well as the portraits and miniatures of prominent courtiers for which he is best known today.

Dinteville’s commission, though, would be unlike any that Holbein had undertaken in England before then. The ambassador clearly intended the painting to be very different from the conventional portraits of prominent figures that had become the artist’s stock-in-trade at the Tudor court. Laden with clues, iconography and messages, it reflects a very particular and pivotal moment in time. England and Europe stood on the edge of a precipice, with religious turmoil, political and social upheaval swirling below. Dinteville knew that events were rapidly spiralling out of control; here, suspended in the painting, they would be captured for posterity in symbols, their complexities hidden in plain sight for future generations to discover.

It is highly unlikely that Dinteville and de Selve ever posed for the portrait in the sumptuous and complex interior featured in the finished composition. Already accustomed to working with busy courtiers who had little time to sit, Holbein preferred to construct his paintings piecemeal, making numerous preparatory drawings and sketching the sitters from life so that their presence was not required during the longer process of painting.

We don’t know how long it took Holbein to paint The Ambassadors, but he was in great demand as an artist and completed a number of other works in 1533, so it’s likely that he worked quickly. He took various shortcuts, such as the inclusion of a green curtain as a backdrop – a device that he had used in his paintings since the 1520s. The tiled floor that appears in the foreground was painted quite simply, and the tufts of the oriental carpet were created with a thick brush, possibly for speed as well as for effect.

The finished portrait, though, was breathtaking. Measuring just over 2 metres square, it is one of the largest paintings Holbein ever produced – and one of the most unusual and intriguing. The two ambassadors dominate the composition. In contrast with the head-and-shoulders portraits popular with Henry’s courtiers, the men are shown full-length, standing on either side of a piece of furniture with two shelves. Their stances, each with an arm resting on the carpet that covers the shelves, seems to invite the viewer to study the objects displayed. These include scientific, astronomical and musical instruments: items on the upper shelf relate to the heavens, those on the lower to the Earth.

In creating the double portrait, Holbein showcased an array of painting techniques that he had refined during his career to date. The sumptuousness of Dinteville’s clothes, with the sheen of his pink satin doublet and the play of light on the folds of the material, appears exquisitely lifelike. In contrast, de Selve is dressed in sombre colours, which was typical of many of Holbein’s sitters in the 1530s – notably Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, who had sat for the artist within the past year. However, the result is just as rich in depth and texture. Holbein also showed off his technique for decorative gilding to dazzling effect, picking out details such as Dinteville’s chain, hat badge and dagger sheath.

There is no record of Dinteville’s reaction to the finished painting, nor of who else might have seen it. Dinteville attended Anne Boleyn’s coronation on 1 June, and was instructed by Francis I to remain in England until the birth of her child, to whom his master had agreed to be godfather. On 7 September 1533, though, the new queen gave birth not to the hoped-for boy but to a girl – the future Elizabeth I.

“The King’s mistress was delivered of a daughter, to the great regret both of him and the lady,” reported the gleeful imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys. The celebratory jousts and fireworks were quietly cancelled, and the French king was no longer expected to stand as godfather to a mere princess.

Dinteville left England two months later, returning to his home at Polisy. Though he almost certainly took The Ambassadors with him, the first recorded reference to it at the château is dated more than 50 years later – by which time Dinteville was long dead. The painting was later taken to England during the tumult of the French Revolution. It was acquired by the 2nd Earl of Radnor for the gallery of his Wiltshire home, Longford Castle, and then sold by the 5th Earl to London’s National Gallery in 1890.

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Mystery men

After some restoration work, The Ambassadors went on public display. The intense interest in the painting sparked debate about the identity of the sitters, which was not known at the time. It was widely assumed that they were English, given that Holbein produced numerous portraits of Henry VIII and his courtiers. Various names were put forward, including Anne Boleyn’s former companion and admirer, the poet Thomas Wyatt. It was thanks to detective work by the historian Mary Hervey, whose account of the painting was published in 1900, that both men were correctly identified. After sifting through numerous documents in French archives, she found a fragment of a 1653 inventory that correctly named the sitters.

The Ambassadors is now one of the most famous paintings in the National Gallery, and millions of visitors admire it each year. Although it’s not known who among Holbein’s contemporaries saw the finished work, it is tempting to speculate that it inspired Henry VIII to commission one of the most famous paintings of the Tudor era.

In 1536–37, Holbein painted a huge mural for the palace of Whitehall. It featured the king with his parents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and his third wife, Jane Seymour, to whom he was betrothed a day after the execution of Anne Boleyn for adultery and treason in May 1536.

The original was lost in the fire that destroyed Whitehall in 1698, but Holbein’s sketch for it still survives in the National Portrait Gallery. Just like the sitters in The Ambassadors, Henry was painted full-length, and his broad frame and strident pose are reminiscent of Jean de Dinteville’s. This portrait became the most famous depiction of the Tudor king – and an enduring image of royal power. 

The Ambassadors deciphered

The shepherd's sundial

The shepherd’s dial, a type of cylindrical sundial, appears to indicate a date of either 11 April or 15 August. On the former day in 1533, the court was told that Anne Boleyn would be accorded royal honours. However, the readings shown on this and other instruments in the painting can’t be relied upon, being dependent on sunlight but painted indoors. It’s possible Holbein intended the divergent times and dates to convey the message that Europe was out of joint – a world in transition.

The terrestrial globe

The terrestrial globe focuses on France – with Dinteville’s château, Polisy (spelt Policy, perhaps a pun on his diplomatic mission), in prime position. Centuries later, this would provide one of the most important clues to the identity of the sitter. Paris is shown as well (spelt with a ‘B’, which might be how Holbein pronounced it), along with Lyon, where the French court was also based. Europe is shown upside down – a reference, perhaps, to the religious turmoil sparked by the Reformation.

The broken lute

Another clue that this is no ordinary composition, the broken lute (on the table, centre-right) string symbolises discord. One flute is missing from the nearby case, inferring a lack of harmony; the music of flutes was also commonly associated with war. Left of the lute sits a German arithmetic book, propped open with a set square at a page about division – it begins with the word Dividirt (‘let division be made’).

The Lutheran hymnbook

It was dangerous to possess a Lutheran hymnbook like this (pictured open, on the right-hand side of the centre table) in England or France at the time, so it was probably there to convey a message about religious division. The hymns shown are not in the right place according to the original book on which this is based, suggesting disorder. Both were traditional Catholic anthems, but were published in German at the Lutheran town of Wittenberg in 1524. This may indicate Georges de Selve’s desire to bring together the warring sides of the church.

The skull

Viewed from below and left, this large anamorphic element snaps into view as a human skull. Dinteville’s personal motto was: ‘Remember thou shalt die.’ (His hat badge also features a skull.) Peeking out from the top left-hand corner of the painting, partially concealed by the green curtain, is a silver crucifix. This symbol of salvation and eternal life offered hope to Christians everywhere, Catholics and Protestants alike.

The exquisite pavement

The two ambassadors stand on an exquisite pavement inlaid with coloured stones set in an elaborate geometric design. It’s reminiscent of the Cosmati Pavement before the high altar in Westminster Abbey, named after the 13th-century Italian family of marble workers who completed it for Henry III in 1268. Dinteville would certainly have seen this pavement – because it was in that precise location that Anne Boleyn was crowned on 1 June 1533.

This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine