The sun rose on the morning after the battle to reveal a scene of sickening carnage. ‘Far and wide,’ wrote William the Conqueror’s chaplain, William of Poitiers, ‘the earth was covered with the flower of the English nobility and youth, drenched in blood.’ The most notable casualty was King Harold, who had been hacked to death by a group of Norman knights, his body mutilated almost beyond recognition.
