The Incredible Story of the Bayeux Tapestry

Andrew Bridgeford, author of the new book, 1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry (Fourth Estate); in the London Times (March 6, 2004):

For almost a thousand years the Bayeux Tapestry has survived wars, revolution, theft and neglect. Today, it is seen by thousands of visitors every year -a strip of connecting linen panels almost the length of a football pitch that tell in exquisite detail the story of the Norman Conquest. It is one of the most important historical documents of all time, a near-contemporary record of the last successful invasion of English soil.

But as much as the bloody epic it recounts, the adventures of the tapestry itself have the power to intrigue and captivate us. How is it that so fragile an object has not been lost to history? An inventory of Bayeux Cathedral in 1476 tells us of "a very long and narrow hanging of linen, on which are embroidered figures and inscriptions comprising a representation of the Conquest of England". Each summer this old embroidery was hung around the nave for a few days in the religious calendar.

For a long time after 1476 the tapestry remains unrecorded. Always vulnerable to fire and vermin, and to the whims of fashion, it was especially at risk in times of war. It might easily have been destroyed in the religious conflicts of the 16th century when, in 1562, Bayeux Cathedral was sacked by Huguenots. Somehow it escaped and the practice of exhibiting it around the cathedral for a few days each year continued.

It was only in the 18th century that the tapestry came to the attention of the outside world when Nicolas-Joseph Foucault made a drawing of the first section.

Nothing in his drawing indicated where the original was, or indeed what it was.

The credit for tracking down the tapestry goes to the Benedictine historian Bernard de Montfaucon, who in 1729 arranged for an accurate sketch of the panels to appear in print.

A trickle of visitors arrived from England. One early visitor was a learned antiquary called Andrew Ducarel, who visited Bayeux in 1752. He discovered the fabric rolled up in a strong wainscot press. Inch by inch it was unravelled for him in all its vivid, colourful detail. Ducarel must have been one of the first Englishmen to see the Bayeux Tapestry since the 11th century.

But dangerous times were ahead and the fragile embroidery was now to embark on some of its most perilous adventures. In 1792 the revolutionary government of France declared that everything that reflected the history or "vanity" of the monarchy was to be destroyed.

The atmosphere of destructive paranoia and iconoclasm soon reached Bayeux and a local contingent was called up to fight in the French revolutionary wars. In all the haste, someone helpfully suggested that an old stretch of vainglorious embroidery in the cathedral was eminently suitable as a covering for a military wagon. A crowd of soldiers marched into the cathedral, seized the tapestry and placed it on their wagon. It was saved only by the timely intervention of the local commissary of police, who harangued the crowd until they agreed to hand it over.

As people began to appreciate just how narrowly it had escaped destruction, attention turned to the question of the tapestry's preservation. There was concern that the contemporary method of exhibition -which involved repeatedly coiling and uncoiling the tapestry with a machine -was causing damage. It was in this context that the Society of Antiquaries of London commissioned Charles Stothard to produce a set of drawings in order to record the complete embroidery. He worked on the project for two years between 1816 and 1818.

The keynote of Stothard's involvement with the Bayeux Tapestry turns out to be one of human frailty. He succumbed to the temptation to remove a small piece of the upper border for himself, approximately 2 1/2 by 3in in size, and returned to England with his souvenir undiscovered. Five years later, before it had become known what he had done, Stothard died in an accident.

Through Stothard's heirs, the little fragment found its way to the Victoria and Albert Museum where it was exhibited as "A Piece of the Bayeux Tapestry". In 1871 the museum decided to return the stray piece to Bayeux, where it is still displayed in a glass case.

In the mid-1880s Mrs Elizabeth Wardle, the wife of a wealthy silk merchant, decided that England ought to have a record of the Bayeux Tapestry of its own. She gathered a group of Victorian ladies and together they set to embroidering a life-size replica. The copy took two years to complete; the result was in most respects a brilliant and accurate likeness.

There were, however, limits to what these ladies could bring themselves to portray. When it came to depicting the male genitalia, which appear, on occasion, with noticeable prominence in the original, a strictly accurate rendering had to be forsaken. In their copy they decided to deprive one naked male character of his manhood entirely; another, they provided with a pair of underpants. Completed in 1886, the replica was donated nine years later to the town of Reading, where it now has pride of place in the local museum.

It was during the Second World War that the Bayeux Tapestry was to undergo some of its greatest adventures. On September 1, 1939, the tapestry was removed from its exhibition case, rolled on to the spool, sprayed with insecticide powder and locked for safe keeping in a concrete shelter below the bishop's palace at Bayeux.

There it remained for a year. In June 1940 France fell and it was not long before the tapestry came to the attention of the occupying forces. Between September 1940 and June 1941 the tapestry had to be exhibited to eager Nazi visitors who were hoping to repeat William the Conqueror's invasion of England.

Then a more sinister group began to take an interest. This was the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage), the research and teaching branch of Heinrich Himmler's SS that had been set up to provide "scientific" evidence of Aryan superiority. What commended the tapestry to the Ahnenerbe was its celebration of the fighting prowess of Nordic peoples -the Normans, descendants of the Vikings, and the Anglo- Saxons, descendants of the Angles and Saxons. The tapestry was transferred under military guard to the nearby abbey of Juaye-Mondaye in June 1941.

At length, at the suggestion of the French authorities, the Germans agreed that the tapestry should be moved for safe keeping to the Chateau de Sourches, near Le Mans. Unfortunately, however, no facilities were provided to assist the French make the journey, a good 355km (220 miles) return. The only available vehicle was a lorry that ran on charcoal. So it was that the Bayeux Tapestry began one of its most improbable journeys. The great work, together with its unrolling mechanism and 12 bags of charcoal, was loaded on board and the spluttering camionnette departed with its priceless cargo in the direction of Sourches.

After the custodians of the tapestry had stopped for lunch the vehicle refused to start. When at last the motor spluttered into life, it lasted only so far as the first incline. The vehicle and its cargo had to be pushed to the brow of the hill.

At this point, however, it proceeded to get away from the men pushing it and came to rest only when it reached level ground, the breathless guardians running behind as fast as they could. The exercise of pushing the lorry uphill had to be repeated many times.

It took ten hours to reach Sourches. There the tapestry remained practically undisturbed for another three years. It was not until the Allies landed in Normandy in 1944 that its journeys began again when orders were given for it to be taken under SS guard to the Louvre in Paris.

By August of that year the Allies were at the gates of Paris. General Dietrich von Choltitz, the German commander, was under orders from Hitler to destroy the city.

He sought, during those tense summer days, to play for time in order to find a way to surrender without wanton destruction. In these circumstances, on Monday, August 21, 1944, two SS men suddenly presented themselves at his office at the palatial Hotel Meurice.

They had orders from Himmler to seize the Bayeux Tapestry and to take it to Berlin. Von Choltitz took the two SS officers to his balcony and, gesturing towards the Louvre, told them that the tapestry was being kept in a basement there. The Louvre was by now in the hands of the Resistance. At that very moment machine-gun fire could be heard. Von Choltitz suggested that five or six of his men could provide covering fire, so as to enable the SS officers to storm the Louvre and seize the precious tapestry. The two SS men reflected for a moment before deciding that it would be better to depart empty-handed, for, as von Choltitz later remarked, the courage of their hearts did not quite live up to the brilliance of their uniforms.

Finally, in March 1945, the Bayeux Tapestry was returned to Bayeux after an absence of almost four years -the longest known period that it has been absent from the town. Few know of the tapestry's eventful past. They come to admire this precious and unique survivor of the deadly rivalry of Earl Harold of Wessex and Duke William of Normandy -a rivalry that shook their world, and still, in some ways, affects ours.