Wednesday 1st March 2023

Assessment

In 1066 there was a battle between William and Harold because they both
wanted the throne. However, William was the attacker and king Harold was
the defender. The battle ended in victory for William. The reasons for his
victory were due to the strengths, weaknesses and luck of the two contenders.
William had many strengths. These include how the Norman soldiers had time
to relax and eat well before the battle. This would’ve helped due to it ensuring
that the soldiers were well energised and would be more alert in the battle.
Not only that, but William also had a large force of knights on horses. This is an
advantage because horses are capable of killing people, while making the
riders a harder target. However, Harold had some strengths too, this would
involve how king Harold’s army would use a shield wall to protect them from
the enemy. This wall was found to be unbreakable. Also, he had a great
advantage of being on the top of the hill, making it harder to shoot arrows at
King Harold’s army. Over Harold, William had the most strengths because
William’s strengths did not eventually fail him as the shield wall eventually got
overcome. While William’s strengths were something that couldn’t be
overcome.
William did have some weakness such as in the middle of the fight, many of
William’s believed that he had died in the battle. Making much of the soldiers
feel unenthusiastic to fight. Harold had weaknesses too such as how his
soldiers were exhausted because they had to run from one battle to another.
Not only that, but most of his best soldiers had also been killed in the previous
battle. Which is the most probable reason the shield wall was broken. Over
William, Harold had the most weaknesses because if it were not for those
weaknesses, Harold could’ve won the battle.
From this summary, we can see that some main reasons that William won was
that he was wise enough to create the strategy that helped William win the
war. This strategy was how he managed to fake a retreat making the foolish
English Anglo Saxons tried to chase the retreating soldiers. Creating a gap in
the shield wall. From this we can see that this was the greatest factor in
William’s victory. Not only that, due to Harold’s weakness of exhausted
soldiers, they were unable to think logically and would’ve fought more sloppy
or weaker. That is also a highly significant factor to William’s victory.