Part 1
"On October 14, 1066, two determined enemies faced each other across a shallow valley: William, Duke of Normandy; and from the heights of Senlac Hill, Harold, England's warrior king. With the fate of England in the balance, these two former friends would contend that long day in one of the greatest and most decisive battles in the sanguine history of the British Isles: The Battle of Hastings.
This struggle was the culmination of years of dynastic intrigue concerning the succession to the English throne that followed the death of King Edward the Confessor. This issue was complicated by the events a generation earlier in England's history, when the Danes under their kings Svein Forkbeard and his son, Canute, wrested England from the hands of the Anglo-Saxon king, Aethelred the "Unready" (though this appellate may be a misconstruction of the Anglo-Saxon word for "Unwise").
The Danish conqueror, Canute, married Aethelred's widow Emma; a daughter of the Norman duke, Richard I ("the Fearless"). Her two sons by Aethelred, Alfred and Edward fled the Danes and took refuge in the court of their Norman kinsmen at Rouen.
Emma also had a son by Canute, Harthacanute, who briefly ruled England and Denmark following the deaths of both his father and brother. Upon his deathbed, Harthacanute named his half-brother Edward, still in Normandy, as his heir. (Edward's elder brother Alfred had been treacherously killed by the Danes some years earlier.)…"
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Part 2
"In the absence of the English naval levies (the Sea Fyrd) that had been dismissed back to their home ports with the coming of autumn, William had but to await good sailing weather and his rival's distraction in the North to pounce upon England like a leopard upon his prey. Taking advantage of the opportunity the late season and the Norwegian invasion had given him, William crossed the channel on the 28th of September, just two days after Stamford Bridge…"
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Amicalement
Armand
