It is a story that has been taught to generations of British schoolchildren about one of the most famous and pivotal events in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
The Guardian\u2019s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.\u00a0Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n In September 1066, as a Norman duke called William prepared to sail from France to claim the English throne, King Harold of England discovered the Viking leader Harald Hardrada<\/a> had landed in Yorkshire with an army of his own.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, according to historians, the English king had disbanded his naval fleet weeks before, and so he was forced to march his army almost 300 miles (about 480km) north to Stamford Bridge<\/a>, near York, confront \u2013 and defeat \u2013 the Vikings, and then somehow march the troops all the way back to the south coast. Exhausted by this almost superhuman trudge, the English forces were then defeated by William on 14 October, in what would become known as the Battle of Hastings.<\/p>\n But what if historians have got one of the most crucial assumptions about one of England\u2019s most pivotal battles completely wrong?<\/p>\n That\u2019s the claim of one British academic, who argues that the notorious \u201cforced march\u201d of the English army to Stamford Bridge \u2013 interpreted for centuries as a sign of Harold\u2019s recklessness and a key factor in his defeat \u2013 in fact never happened at all.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, he believes that as well as their clash on land at Hastings \u2013 as depicted in the Bayeux tapestry<\/a>, shortly to go on display in London for the first time in a millennium \u2013 Harold also attempted to resist William\u2019s invasion by sea, sending ships to try to trap the Norman fleet in a pincer movement that was ultimately unsuccessful.<\/p>\n The Bayeux tapestry is to go on display in London for the first time in a millennium. Photograph: Hemis\/Alamy<\/p>\n Tom Licence, a professor of medieval history and literature at the University of East Anglia, argues that a misreading of Old English records led historians to believe Harold had disbanded his navy \u2013 making a march to Yorkshire<\/a> inevitable \u2013 when in fact the king had done no such thing.<\/p>\n He points to an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle<\/a> which says that the English fleet \u2013 which had been stationed in the Channel through the summer of 1066 in case of invasion \u2013 \u201ccame home\u201d in early September. Influential Victorian historians took that to mean the warships had been sent back to their home ports around the country from where Harold had mustered them, an interpretation that has shaped assumptions ever since.<\/p>\n \u201c[They] read it to mean that as soon as the fleet had all been disbanded, Harold heard this terrible news that Hardrada, the most feared warrior in Christendom, had landed in the north. So Harold is basically without a fleet. And it follows from that that he\u2019s got to march everywhere,\u201d says Licence.<\/p>\n When Licence re-examined the sources, he found evidence, he says, that \u201ccoming home\u201d had previously been used to mean returning to their home base in London. \u201cAnd when I realised that passage had been misread, then everything else that had previously confused historians began to fall into place.\u201d<\/p>\n There are, in fact, multiple references to Harold having a fleet at this point, says Licence, \u201cwhich had really confused historians, [so] they tried to explain it away in various ways. There are also two references in very early Norman accounts to Harold sending hundreds of ships around the south coast to block William in at Hastings.\u201d<\/p>\n Harold Godwinson\u00a0(circa 1022-1066), also called King\u00a0Harold II was King of England from 6th January 1066\u00a0until his death at the\u00a0Battle of Hastings on the 14th October 1066. Photograph: incamerastock\/Alamy<\/p>\n Licence also hunted the contemporary sources for evidence for the long march north, \u201cand I couldn\u2019t find any reference to marching at all. That was a real surprise because it\u2019s such an entrenched story. I mean, it\u2019s the most famous march in English history, it\u2019s so central to the debate around Harold\u2019s defeat at Hastings. And it\u2019s not in the texts.\u201d<\/p>\n His interpretation? Harold simply sailed his armies to Yorkshire and back. \u201cOnly a mad general would have attempted what seems like an impossible march, which isn\u2019t recorded in the sources anyway.\u201d The English king, Licence believes, \u201cwas not a reactive, exhausted commander, he was a strategist using England\u2019s naval assets to wage a coordinated defence\u201d.<\/p>\n