Suddenly, the English are on the back foot and fighting for their lives, not just their country.
This section is commonly referred to as ‘The Collapse’ and it reads exactly like that. The fighting goes from a holding, resisting shield wall that cannot be broken to much more compressed sounding fighting, where the scale seems to change and the language turns bloody, full of slaughter and gore.
Faced with the injury or removal of the king, behaviour that would otherwise seem unthinkable becomes not only plausible but expected. Elite troops sworn to Harold’s personal protection are no longer holding a line, they are guarding an injured king who has been removed from the battle.
So, it’s reasonable to suppose that the best and most committed of the English fighters disengage from the forward shield wall and concentrate on protecting Harold himself, adopting a bodyguard posture rather than a static one. The shield wall that had held all day is not smashed apart; it is hollowed out from within at the moment it can least afford it.
This retreat is not the massed army, it’s the elite core. Far fewer in number.
They fall back a distance and seek a defence across a narrowed section protected again on both sides.
We cannot say how many troops are involved, but this is a final desperate resistance supported in the sources.
The shield wall as we knew it now consists of only levy troops, the people from the fields, farms, towns, and hamlets of England, and they cannot hold alone without the elite troop strength and structure. The Normans break through and the fyrd fight, flee, are slaughtered, and die without mercy.
After this, the language in the sources speaks of gore, blood, stepping on bodies, and slaughter.
The Normans think that it is now a rout, and while some are attacking the remains of the shield wall, others see the elite troops falling back and chase them.
The elite troops reach the narrow place they were aiming for that straddles the main road to London. They have the forest to one side and a precipitous drop to the other side, maintaining the flank protection they have had the fortune to rely on all day.
They suddenly turn and rally against the oncoming Normans, who are all disordered and not formed up.