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The Anglo-Saxon Fyrd AD 400 - 878

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The Old English word "'''''fyrd '''''" is used by many modern writers to describe the Anglo-Saxon army, and indeed this is one of its meanings, although the word "'''''here '''''" is equally valid. In its oldest form the word "fyrd " had meant "a journey or expedition". However, the exact meaning of the word, like the nature of the armies it is used to describe, changed a great deal between the times the first Germanic settlers left their homelands and the time of the battle of Hastings. The Anglo-Saxon period was a violent one. Warfare dominated its history and shaped the nature of its governance. Indeed, war was the natural state in the Germanic homelands and the patchwork of tribal kingdoms that composed pre-Viking England. Chieftains engaged in a seemingly endless struggle against foreign enemies and rival kinsmen for authority, power and tribute. Even after Christianity had supplied them with an ideology of kingship that did not depend on success in battle these petty wars continued until they were ended by the Viking invasions. From 793AD AD793 until the last years of William the Conqueror's rule, England was under constant threat, and often attack, from the Northmen.
In order to understand the nature of the armies that fought in these battles, many historians in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century looked to classical authors, particularly the 1st century Roman Author Tacitus. Tacitus, in his book Germania, gives much detail of how the German tribes organised their military forces, and many historians used the fact that the tribes Tacitus was writing about were the forebears of the early Germanic invaders to explain the nature of the Anglo-Saxon fyrd. But are the tribal customs of barbarian people really a good basis for the nature of a nation removed by almost 1000 years? More recent research has shown that the nature of the fyrd changed a great deal in the 969 years between the time of Tacitus" writing and the battle of Hastings.
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