ABSTRACT
Under the leadership of King William I, the Normans were effectively organised as a professional fighting force which consisted, for the most part, of three ranks: mounted knights, archers and heavy infantry. The cavalry was by far the most important element in Norman battle tactics, and it was the cavalry's use of its mobility added to the shock-value of the charge which unsettled and usually scattered their enemies. William FitzOsbern and Roger Turvey of Montgomery too had their ‘satellites’, men who, for the most part drawn from their dependants and tenants in Normandy, were prepared to do their bidding for a share of the spoils. The Normans became embroiled in the domestic disputes that characterised relations between competing members of the various Welsh dynastic families. The Normans had little interest in settling in the highland, scrubland and thickly wooded regions which were left to the Welsh to inhabit.
