Peter Rex for Tempus Why did the Anglo-Saxon kingdom fall so quickly? Rex sets out to show how the narsty Normans generally behaved like rotters and winkled the heroic Saxons with the aid of violence and quislings. He uses a rather odd comparison of France after 1940 with the Vichy regime in the south. Apart from adding a useful alliterative element (Nazis- Normans) it stumbles in a number of areas. Sweeping up the reasons we seem to have: Norman toughness; the character of the Atheling; the general uselessness of Edwin and Morcar; and, the slaughter of large numbers of the Saxon and Mercian fighting men at Gate Fulford and Hastings. I also would argue that the rise of the Godwinesons had destroyed the old tribal balance so that their fall left a gaping hole in the body politic. Rex is very useful in noting what we know about what happened in the 20 years to the Domesday Book. Old Duffer's Book Corner Book Reviews The First Armies Verdun 1916 Russia's Civil War Luetzen 1632 Philip V of Spain The End of Chivalry Le Roi De Guerre Warships of the Napoleonic Era Cannae The Death of Anglo-Saxon England Ancient Siege Warfare War and Society in Revolutionary Europe 1770-1870 Forgotten Victory The Remaking of the English Navy Cassino: The Hollow Victory Raising Churchill's Army The Imperial War Museum Book of the War in Italy The Irish And British Wars 1637-1654 Cavaliers: The Royalist Army At War 1642-1646 Alamein Normandy 1944 Hill 112 Breaking The Panzers Béveziers (1690) Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914-18 Caesar’s Legion Operation Bluecoat Operation Epsom Marching to the Sound of Gunfire The Franco-Prussian War Robert the Bruce’s Irish Wars When Titans Clashed The Wars of Edward III Monte Cassino Under Fire The Somme Roads to Falaise Mud, Blood And Poppycock All The Kaiser’s Men Iron Hulls Iron Hearts A Noble Crusade The Pendulum of Battle: Operation Goodwood The English Resistance The Battle of Koniggrätz Pallas Armata Back to Perfidious Albion #104 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com