Norman Conquest

“ Thus the land was filled with castles, and warfare took mainly the form of attacking and besieging them. After the Norman Conquest we hear for a long time much more of sieges, and much less of battles in the open field, while in the Danish wars we heard much more of battles than of sieges. The Normans also brought their own way of fighting into England, and made great changes in English armies. Before the Conquest we had no horsemen and very few archers ”

“ Different kinds of Conquests.—Now this fact that Duke William claimed the English crown as his own by law, and yet had to win it in battle at the head of a foreign army, had a great deal to do with the special character of the Norman Conquest of England, and with the effect which that Conquest has had on the history of England ever since. There have been at different times conquests of very different kinds. Sometimes a whole people has gone from one land to another ”

“ We ever bear about us the signs of his presence. Our colonists have carried those signs with them into distant lands, to remind men that settlers in America and Australia came from a land which the Norman once entered as a conqueror. But that those signs of his presence hold the place which they do hold in our mixed political being, that, badges of conquest as they are, no one feels them to be badges of conquest—all this comes of the fact that, if the Norman came as a conqueror, he came as a conqueror of a special, perhaps almost of an unique kind. ”

“ If we cannot agree with this able champion in viewing the warfare he describes as a healthy process of evolution, we may at least gladly admit that some knowledge of this dark period, lighted only by the lurid torch of rapine and internecine strife, is as essential to a right understanding of the Anglo-Norman settlement as is the study of English history, for some generations before the Conquest, the necessary prelude to a comprehension of the Norman Conquest itself. ”

“ The Norman Conquest is important, not as the beginning of English history, but as its chief turning point. Its whole importance is that which belongs to a turning point. This conquest is an event which stands by itself in the history of Europe. It took place at a transitional period in the world's development. A kingdom which had hitherto been only Teutonic, was brought within the sphere of the laws, manners, and speech of the Romance nations. ”

“ This tendency to repetition caused some of his books, and particularly the Norman Conquest and William Rufus, to swell to a portentous bulk. Those treatises, which constitute a history of England from A.D. 1042 to 1100, would be more widely read if they had been, as they ought to have been, reduced to three or four volumes; and as he came to perceive this, he resolved in the last year of his life to republish the Norman Conquest in a condensed form. ”

“ You might hear the sound of many trumpets, of bugles and of horns; and then you might see men ranging themselves in line, lifting their shields, raising their lances, bending their bows, handling their arrows, ready for assault and for defence. The English stood steady to their post, the Normans still moving on; and when they drew near, the English were to be seen stirring to and fro; men going and coming; troops ranging themselves in order; some with their colour rising, others turning pale; some making ready their arms, others raising their shields ”

“ The right of the strongest. One of those great events in English history, which occur at distant intervals, and form, respectively, a sort of bound or landmark, to which all other events, preceding or following them for centuries, are referred, is what is called the Norman Conquest. The Norman Conquest was, in fact, the accession of William, duke of Normandy, to the English throne. ”

“ The arrival, however, of the impetuous Norman race, securing as it did a close connection with the Continent, quickened the intellect of the people, raised their intelligence, was of inestimable benefit to the English, and played a most important part in raising England among the nations. Moreover, it has helped to produce the race that has peopled Northern America, Australia, and the south of Africa, holds possession of India, and stands forth as the greatest civilizer in the world. The Conquest of England by the Normans was achieved without even a shadow of right or justice. ”

“ While three or four centuries sufficed to obliterate all trace of the Norman Conquest, and unite in indissoluble bonds of blood and language the two races who contended for mastery at Hastings, in Ireland, on the contrary, seven centuries have failed, not merely to efface, but even essentially to diminish the sharpness of the distinction between the conquerors and the conquered. ”

“ Their want of fidelity to the prince, or to any trust reposed in them, appears strongly in the history of their later period; and their want of humanity in all their history. Even the Norman historians, notwithstanding the low state of the arts in their own country, speak of them as barbarians, when they mention the invasion made upon them by the duke of Normandy. [****] The conquest put the people in a situation of receiving slowly, from abroad, the rudiments of science and cultivation, and of correcting their rough and licentious manners. ”

“ William’s heavy-armed foot pressed on along the whole line, the native Normans having to face King Harold’s chosen troops in the centre. The attack was vain; they were beaten back, and they could not break down the palisade. Then the horsemen themselves, the Duke at their head, pressed on up the hill-side. But all was in vain; the English kept their strong ground; the Normans had to fall back; the Bretons on the left actually turned and fled. Then the worse-armed and less disciplined English troops could not withstand the temptation to come down from the hill and chase them. ”

“ It was a feature peculiar to the Norman Conquest, that while its real injustice and disregard of moral right could hardly be surpassed in the annals of warfare, the conquerors strove to give to every act of violence and wrong the technical sanction of law and the appearance of equity. ”

“ And, if all other arguments should fail, he could offer lands and honours in England to all who would come and help him to conquer England. William in short could show himself all things to all men, from a pious missionary to a mere robber. But mark that all this care to put himself right in men’s eyes shows that we have got out of the days of mere violence. When the English entered Britain, when the Danes entered England, when the Northmen settled in what was to be Normandy, they did not think of putting forth so many good reasons for what they did as Duke William put forth now. ”

“ We shall certainly easily conquer them, for in all the world there is not so brave an army, neither such proved men and vassals, as are here assembled [6] ."
Then they began to cry out, "You will not see one coward; none here will fear to die for love of you, if need be."
And he answered them, "I thank you well. For God's sake spare not; strike hard at the beginning; stay not to take spoil; all the booty shall be in common, and there will be plenty for every one. There will be no safety in peace or flight; the English will never love or spare Normans. ”

“ But it was not till the beginning of the tenth century that the Normans settled in that part of the mainland of Gaul which from them took the name of Normandy. The English had thus been living for six hundred years in their land, when the Normans had been living only about a hundred and fifty years in theirs. The English therefore in the eleventh century were more thoroughly at home in England than the Normans were in Normandy. Among the English the adventurous spirit of new settlers had spent itself in the long wars with the Welsh which established the English dominion in Britain. ”

“ It matters nothing, Beorn; but what is but a question of an hour's waiting in a small party is one of going altogether supperless to bed when it is a large one. The Normans have been constantly fighting for the last twenty years, and you see they have learned how important it is that everything should be regular and orderly. If they manage matters with a large force as well as they do with a small one, as it is probable that they do, see what an advantage it gives to them. ”

“ The great object of the Normans was to cut their way to the standard, where King Harold still fought. Many men were killed in the attempt; the resistance of the English grew slacker; yet, when evening was coming on, they still fought on with their King at their head, and a new device of the Duke’s was needed to bring the battle to an end. ”

“ Then began a fierce melée, and many a stroke of lance and sword. The knights struck with their lances, the archers shot from their bows, and the villains attacked with their pikes; charging and driving them along the chaussée, overwhelming and bearing down numbers. The Normans kept continually increasing in numbers, till they became a great force, and the French pressed forwards, one pushing the other on. ”

“ Such an army may be valiant; every man may be a hero, and yet it may be shattered to pieces by another which gives itself up wholly to the direction of one will. That is why we Normans have so badly beaten the French. Every mail has his place in battle. He charges when he is ordered to charge, or he is held in reserve the whole day, and the battle ended without his ever striking a blow. ”

“ As they gallop, they cry their various war cries: those of France cry, MONT-JOIE! the sound whereof is pleasant to them. William cries, DEX AIE! which is the signal of Normandy; and Renouf cries loudly, SAINT SEVER, SIRE SAINT SEVOIR [13] ; and Dam as-denz goes crying out, SAINT AMANT! SIRE SAINT AMANT [14] !" Great clamour arose in their onset; all the earth quaked and trembled; knights were pricking along, some retiring, others coming up; the bold spurring forward, the cowards shrinking and trembling.
Against the King of France and the Frenchmen came up the body of the Costentinese ”

“ And, now that they were fully settled in their own land, the Normans began, quite in the spirit of their forefathers, though in another garb, to go all over the world to seek for fighting wherever fighting was to be had. Often religious zeal was mingled with love of fighting. ”

“ He shall have Normandy and Mans, and serve the king of France for the same. There are many brave men in Normandy; I know none equal to them. They are noble and valiant knights, conquering in all [Pg 274] lands whither they go. If they have a good captain [15] , a company of them is much to be dreaded; but if they have not a lord whom they fear, and who governs them severely, the service they will render will soon be but poor. The Normans are worth little without strict justice; they must be bent and bowed to their ruler's will ”

“ CHAPTER XIX. HOW THE THREE NORMAN COMPANIES MOVED ON TO ATTACK THE ENGLISH.
Meanwhile the Normans appeared, advancing over the ridge of a rising ground; and the first division of their troops moved onwards along the hill and across a valley. As they advanced king Harold saw them afar off, and calling to Gurth, said, "Brother, which way are you looking? See you the duke coining yonder? Our people will have no mischief from the force I see yonder. There are not men enough there to conquer the great force we have in this land. I have four times a hundred thousand armed men, knights and peasants." ”

“ At last the Norman infantry fell back broken and baffled, having suffered terrible loss, and now the knights and horsemen, who formed the backbone of William's army, rode up the hill. The duke himself, as well as his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeau, who fought beside him, had laid aside their Norman swords, and were armed with heavy maces, weapons as formidable as the English axe. But the valour of the horsemen, the strength of their armour, the length of their lances, and the weight of their horses, availed no more against the shield-wall of the housecarls than the infantry had done. ”

“ One great event in this wandering was the establishment of the Norwegian settlers in France, the foundation of Normandy; and the expeditions of the Normans—to Italy as well as to England—were nearly the last which were conducted in the old style. After the Norman Conquest there are new sorts of adventure, which are represented in Chaucer’s Knight and Squire—the one a Crusader, or Knight errant, the other (his son) engaged in a more modern sort of warfare, England against France, nation against nation. ”

“ Great is the clamour and hard the strife; the swords are drawn, the lances clash. Many were the vassals to be seen there fighting, serjeants and knights overthrowing one another. The king himself was struck and beat down off his horse. A Norman whom no one knew had come up among them; he thought that if the king should fall, his army would soon be dispersed; so he struck at him 'de travers,' and overthrew him, and if his hauberk had not been very good, in my opinion he would have been killed. ”

“ It is not by one battle that England is to be conquered, and even if we lose the first we may gain the second. We can stand the loss better than the Normans, for doubtless William has brought all his strength with him, and if beaten must make his way back to his ships, while Harold would in a short time find himself at the head of a larger army than that with which he may first meet them. Was the slaughter as great as they say at Stamford Bridge? ”