The Battle of Hastings (October 14, 1066) is remembered as the day England’s world flipped upside down. But the part most people miss is how close King Harold Godwinson came to holding the line. Harold had already raced north and won a brutal victory at Stamford Bridge, smashing one invasion—then immediately forced his battered army to march back south to meet another threat: Duke William of Normandy. The result was an exhausted English force facing a fresh, highly organized Norman army on Senla