The Normans: From Raiders to Kings

by Lars Brownworth

  William no doubt hoped to rule a willing, peaceful people, but he would have little peace in his reign. Harold’s sons tried several times to invade from Ireland, the boy king, Edgar, fled to Scotland and stirred up trouble to the north, and freedom fighters like the legendary Hereward the Wake repeatedly tried to throw off the Norman yoke. It took five years of ruthless oppression to bring the north of England under his control, and few years passed after that without some disturbance. In 1083 his wife Matilda died, removing a moderating influence on him, and William grew increasingly tyrannical. He did make a number of significant reforms, most important of which was the Domesday Book – a vast accounting of what everything in the kingdom was worth. But William never liked the people or the countryside of his adopted country. He never bothered to learn the language, and his habit of rewarding land to followers had the effect of alienating his subjects. To the English he remained a cruel, and foreign tyrant for his entire life, best symbolized by the massive structure he built in London – the White Tower – heart of the Tower of London.

  William spent as much time as he dared at home in Normandy, and it was there that he died in 1087. He had been besieging a castle when his horse suddenly reared, throwing him against the pommel of his saddle and fatally rupturing his stomach. After pardoning his political enemies, the fifty-nine-year-old monarch died, splitting his kingdom among his three sons. Tellingly, to his oldest, Robert, he gave his favorite part, the Duchy of Normandy, to his second, William Rufus, he gave the throne of England, and to his youngest, Henry, he gave about 5,000 pounds of silver.

  His corpse, too fat to fit into the coffin and left unattended for a few days while his sons squabbled for their inheritance, burst when it was forced into the crypt, and was buried as quickly as possible with little ceremony. His stunning conquest of England – the last time a foreign invasion successfully conquered the country – tied England to the Continent and in the long run proved a great benefit to both Europe and the West. But none of that was any comfort to those who had had to go through it.

  Within twenty years of the conquest it’s been estimated that two hundred thousand French and Normans settled in England, and one in five of the native population were either killed or starved by the seizure of farm stock or land. French replaced English as the court language and nearly every major Anglo-Saxon figure disappeared. The English were forced to watch as their leaders were reduced to poverty, thrown into dungeons, mutilated or killed. Heavy taxes were imposed, huge swaths of the country were depopulated to act as royal hunting forests, and vindictive laws were passed to the disadvantage of the natives. Most hated of all were the castles that William had built all over England, visible symbols of their oppression which were constructed and paid for with English labor and wealth.

  The conquest of England also had another legacy. The ruler of Normandy had always been a vassal of the French king, and the addition of England didn’t change that. Now the English king would have to perform the ceremonial acts of homage for the lands of Normandy, something that no British sovereign was ever going to do. For the moment the French monarchy was weak, but when it eventually asserted itself it would spark a century-long war to evict the English from France.

  As for King Harold, the English began to look back on his brief reign with longing and inevitably a legend started that he had survived Hastings and lived out his life as a monk. His family, as can be expected, suffered horrendously at Norman hands. They had been among the most wealthy and prominent before the Conquest, but after it they rapidly disappeared. Harold’s sons and brothers were hunted down and either killed or imprisoned, and his wife and daughters were scattered in exile. Harold’s daughter, Gytha, fled to western Russia where she married the Grand Prince of Kiev. Their granddaughter married a Danish prince, and gave birth to a son who became the king of Denmark. One of that king’s descendants is Queen Elizabeth II of England. Fittingly enough, the royal family now has the mingled blood of both Harold and William.

  As a final post script, Great Britain erected a monument in Bayeux to the soldiers who had died storming Normandy’s beaches in World War Two. Beneath it they left a plaque which reads “We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s native land”.

  Chapter 8

  Bras de Fer

  The conquest of England profoundly changed Normandy. The old, chaotic days had been receding for nearly a generation – with the exception of William’s childhood – and the price of stability was the mass exodus of a good number of the duchy’s younger sons. The minor nobility that was used to having things its own way soon discovered that life under a strong duke meant much less freedom, opportunity and power. As personal castles were torn down and the power of local strongmen evaporated, more and more of them began to look for opportunities abroad.

  The eleventh century would prove to be the great period of Norman adventure, and although it was already half over by the time William the Conqueror first entered London, its greatest conquests still lay ahead. Remarkably enough they would largely be the achievement of a single family, not a noble or wealthy one, but that of a simple knight named Tancred de Hauteville. He was a second generation Norman whose grandfather had arrived with Rollo, and he settled in southern Normandy on a small plot of land. Virtually nothing is known about him other than the fact that he was remarkably fertile. In addition to an unknown number of daughters, he had five surviving sons by his first wife, and another seven by his second. This was a problem since the family was relatively poor; once they came of age there was not nearly enough of an inheritance to go around.

  Traditionally there were only two ways to resolve the issue. The boys could either divide the inheritance twelve ways making it too small to support anyone, or they could slug it out and let the victor claim the entire thing. Fortunately for the younger sons, at this point an uncle returning from pilgrimage in Italy advised them to try their luck there.

  The first Normans had arrived in the peninsula as pilgrims at the beginning of the century. On their way to Jerusalem they had paused in the little town of Monte Sant’Angelo. Perched on the slopes of a limestone massif jutting up from the rolling Italian countryside of Apulia, the town had always seemed a place of special importance. The ancient Romans set up a popular shrine to a son of the healing god, Asclepius, and legend had it that the mountain was also sacred to Chalcas, the great Greek seer of the Iliad. Thanks to a timely fifth-century appearance by the archangel Michael, the waning of paganism did nothing to dent this mystical aura and its reputation, if anything, continued to grow. By the eleventh century the cave where the angel emerged had become a major stop on the pilgrim route. Popes, kings, and saints all came calling, eager to share in the celestial mysteries, and the walls of the adjoining chapel were soon covered with the offerings of those who had been miraculously healed. Even the most powerful secular rulers felt the pull. The German emperor, Otto III, walked barefoot from Rome, while his less pious successor, Henry II, hid in the grotto overnight to see if there was any truth to the rumor that the Archangels Michael and Gabriel would appear at midnight to celebrate the mass.

  The most fateful visitors, however, arrived in 1016. An unassuming group of forty Norman knights on their way back from the Holy Land stopped at the cave to pay their respects. Just after they had entered, a small man dressed in the Greek style of flowing robes approached them and begged for help. He was a Lombard by the name of Melus who had spent his life in the cause of Lombard freedom but had been driven into exile by the Byzantines. All he needed, he claimed, was a few sturdy mercenaries to force the cowardly Byzantines back and liberate his people. To his delight, the Normans at once agreed to help. They couldn’t come to his assistance immediately of course – they had come as pilgrims and it was hardly appropriate to march off to war – but they promised to return within a year.

  It wasn’t the appeal to nobility or brotherhood that inspired the Normans. They had a low opinion of southerners in general and Lombards in particu
lar. A short time before, they had witnessed a Saracen attack on Salerno and been astounded by the cowardice of the locals. As far as they were concerned the Italians were effeminate and soft, and firmly deserved their subservient status. Melus, however, knew his audience well enough to have added the inducements of money and land to his request, and it was this that fired their imaginations. Gazing at the sun-drenched Apulian countryside stretching out before them, they must have relished the chance to gain a foothold in this beautiful land.

  The alliance with the Lombards was short lived. Even with Norman arms stiffening their forces, they were crushed by Byzantine forces in the first real clash. The battle was enough to prove the worth of Norman swords to the Byzantines, however, and they immediately hired them to quash the troublesome insurgents. Abandoning the cause of Lombard freedom as easily as they had picked it up, the Normans cheerfully set to work enforcing the imperial will.

  The oldest Hauteville son, William, reached Italy around 1035, just as the last Lombard resistance was being mopped up. Within months of his arrival, the Byzantine emperor decided to conquer Sicily and put out a great call for mercenaries. William, along with three hundred of his fellow knights enlisted immediately.

  Under the brilliant Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium, the empire had turned the tide against the caliphate and was engaged in a great push to clear the eastern Mediterranean of Muslim pirates. The Macedonian line had ended with the death of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer in 1025, but although the emperors who followed him were weak, the army Basil had created was still formidable and won a string of victories in Syria and along the Anatolian and North African coast. Now the imperial forces turned their attention to Sicily hoping to clear out the main pirate nest and win a rich land of grain, cotton, sugar, and fruit groves for the empire. The timing looked especially good. Civil war had erupted in Sicily, the aristocracy was divided, and central authority was collapsing. Additionally, a large part of the population was still Christian, and could be counted on to act as a fifth column.

  To command the invasion, the emperor chose George Maniaces, the rising star of the Byzantine world. Charismatic, headstrong, and larger than life in nearly every respect, Maniaces had a reputation as imposing as his physique. Even the usually unflappable members of the imperial court seemed stunned in his presence. After reporting that the general was ten feet tall and had a roar that could frighten whole armies, the imperial historian Michael Psellus concluded by saying that “those who saw him for the first time discovered that every description was an understatement”.

  His rise was as meteoric as it was unexpected. A decade before he had been the governor of Teluch, an obscure city in Asia Minor, and if not for an unfortunate imperial humiliation, would probably have remained so indefinitely. The hapless emperor, Romanus Argyrus, in an attempt to bolster his military reputation, marched to war against the caliphate, but as he was traveling through a pass just north of Teluch some Saracen cavalry ambushed him. Thanks to some quick thinking and a change of clothes the emperor managed to escape, but his army scattered in a panic. Loaded down with loot from the imperial baggage, the Saracens rode to Teluch and gleefully informed Maniaces of the debacle, adding for good measure that the emperor was dead and his army destroyed. Since night was falling they sportingly gave him until the next morning to surrender, promising dreadful retribution if he refused.

  Maniaces gave every sign of panic, assuring the Saracens that at first light he would appear in their camp with every bit of treasure the city possessed. As a gesture of his good intentions, he sent along a large amount of food and drink for the victors to enjoy. The wine in particular had the intended effect as the Saracens were parched and in the mood to celebrate. Before long they were hopelessly drunk and Maniaces’ soldiers slipped into their camp and butchered every last man. When the bloody work was done, the governor ordered the ears and nose cut off of each corpse, gathering the grisly trophies in a sack. The next morning he set out on horseback to find his fleeing sovereign, and after reporting his triumph he dumped out the contents of the bag. The delighted emperor promoted him on the spot.

  Even brash young knights like William de Hauteville must have found the army Maniaces gathered in Sicily impressive. In addition to the usual mercenary forces of Italian adventurers and grumbling Lombards who had been pressed into service, the general had brought with him a company of fierce Bulgarians and some Varangians under the command of the already semi-legendary Norse hero Harald Hardrada.

  At first the great army carried all before it. Messina was the first town to fall, followed by Troina and Rametta. Within the next two years a dozen major fortresses in the east were taken with only Syracuse managing to hold out. There, a spirited defense by the local emir frustrated every attempt to force the city walls, and each unsuccessful effort weakened the morale of the besieging army. After one particularly dismal episode the gates opened and the emir suddenly galloped out at the head of his forces. The sortie caught the Byzantines by surprise and they fell back in a panic. The retreat threatened to turn into a rout until William, seeing the danger from another section of the walls, leapt into action. Making a sudden charge straight for the emir, he struck him with all the force he could muster. The blow nearly split the man in half and sent him crashing lifeless from his saddle. The demoralized Saracens fell back to the city, but they had little more fight left in them, and asked for terms.

  William’s sword stroke had delivered Syracuse to the Byzantines, but more importantly it had provided the foundation of the Hauteville reputation. From that day on he was known as William Bras de fer, ‘Iron-arm’, and became the undisputed leader of the Normans in the south. When he returned to the Italian peninsula it would be as the most renowned figure of his day, and he would arrive with the first stirrings of a larger Norman destiny. The days of simple mercenaries were passing. From now on the Normans would serve themselves.

  This dawning consciousness of their worth came at a bad time for the Byzantines, for despite the victories, the campaign was starting to fall apart. The imperial court, as always suspicious of too successful a general, had started to slow the shipment of supplies. Pay for the mercenaries began to lapse and disputes arose over the division of the spoils. Things came to a head when the Normans sent a Lombard emissary to formally lodge a complaint with Maniaces. Characteristically, the hotheaded general saw this as a personal affront and had the man whipped and paraded through the camp. The frustrated Normans left the expedition, bitterly protesting their treatment.

  Despite the way it had ended, William’s Sicilian expedition had been a great success. He had learned a valuable lesson. Sicily was rich and disunited, and there were plenty of Christian allies to aid any invasion. That bit of information was filed away for a more opportune moment. When the time was right, the Hautevilles would make good use of it.

  In the meantime, William began to show his strength. Rekindling his old Lombard sympathies he encouraged a rebellion and invaded Apulia, the richest part of Byzantine Italy, with a mixed Lombard and Norman army. The town of Melfi opened its gates to the ‘liberators’, giving the Normans their first real foothold in Italy. Within a year William had extended his control to the surrounding territory, a string of prosperous trading and fishing towns that produced so much grain, olives, vegetables and fruit that it was known (then as now) as ‘Fat Apulia’. The local Byzantine governor was provoked into instigating a battle, and the two sides met on the site of the ancient fields of Cannae.

  For the superstitious in both armies, it was an ominous location. Twelve centuries earlier the Carthaginian general Hannibal had inflicted one of the most humiliating defeats in Roman history on this spot by completely wiping out a consular army. The citizens of Rome had been so terrified that they indulged in their last recorded acts of human sacrifice, burying two people alive in the Forum and throwing an infant into the Adriatic. The Normans, however, had also experienced a disaster here. Just two decades prior to this a Byzantine force had thrashed a combine
d Norman and Lombard army so thoroughly that only ten Norman knights had survived.

  If William had any qualms about fighting in such a fateful locale he didn’t show it, giving instead every appearance of confidence. This was mostly due to the fact that although his forces were heavily outnumbered, they no longer had to deal with the terrible Maniaces. The great general had been outmaneuvered by his enemies at court and been recalled in disgrace.

  His troubles had started when a wealthy and well-connected Anatolian neighbor named Romanus Sclerus accused him of encroaching on his land. Maniaces, who had difficulty controlling his temper in the best of times, had forgotten himself enough to administer a savage beating to the patrician. When Romanus recovered he swore revenge and took full advantage of the general’s absence to loot his house, burn his fields and, as a final insult, seduce his wife. He spent the next year undermining Maniaces’ reputation at court, successfully persuading the emperor to recall him.

  With Maniaces gone the Byzantines could field no competent general against the Normans, and William with his usual exquisite timing knew he only needed to provoke a battle. When the Byzantines sent an emissary to his camp, William gave him a terrifying welcome. The poor man launched into a prepared speech when suddenly a Norman knight crept up and struck his horse in the forehead. The stunned animal instantly crumpled to the ground throwing its rider. As one group of soldiers grabbed the diplomat another seized the horse and threw it off a cliff. They then shook the petrified man to his feet, provided him with another mount and told him to stop wasting their time with words. “Go back to your emperor”, they said, “and tell him the Normans are ready to fight.”

  Despite having only three hundred knights and twice that number of foot soldiers, the Normans were considered a serious enough threat to warrant the presence of the Varangian Guard, Byzantium’s elite fighters. Despite this, the imperial forces were unable to stand up to the Norman heavy cavalry and most of their forces were drowned trying to cross a river in a bid to escape. Two months later the Byzantines tried again, this time with regiments from Asia and a large number of the returning Sicilian forces, but were again defeated.