fairly clear. The troops of Harold occupied a well-defended hill eight
miles inland from Hastings on the London road, the professional guard
of housecarles in front, protected by the solid wall of their shields
and supported by the thegns and other fully armed troops, the levies
of the countryside behind or at the sides, armed with javelins, stone
clubs, and farmers’ weapons. They had few archers and no cavalry, but
the steep hill was well protected from the assaults of the Norman
horse and favored the firm defence which the English tactics dictated.
The Norman lines consisted first of archers, then of heavy-armed
foot-soldiers, and finally of the mailed horsemen, their centre grouped
about William and the standard which he had received from the Pope.
After a preliminary attack by the archers and foot, the knights came
forward, preceded by the minstrel Taillefer, “a jongleur whom a very
brave heart ennobled,” _qui mult bien chantout_, throwing his sword in
the air and catching it as he sang--
De Karlemaigne e de Rollant Of Roland and of Charlemagne,
E d’Oliver e des vassals Oliver and the vassals all
Qui morurent en Rencevals. Who fell in fight at Roncevals.
But the horses recoiled from the hill, pursued by many of the English,
and only the sight of William, his head bared of its helmet so as to
be seen by his men, rallied the knights again. The mass of the English
stood firm behind their shield-wall and their line could be broken
only by the ruse of a feigned flight, from which the Normans turned to
surround and cut to pieces their pursuers. Even then the housecarles
were unmoved, until the arrows of the high-shooting Norman bowmen
finally opened up the gaps in their ranks into which William’s horsemen
pressed against the battle-axes of the king’s guard. And then, as
darkness began to fall, Harold was mortally wounded by an arrow, the
guard was cut to pieces, and the remnant fled. “Here Harold was killed
and the English turned to flight” is the final heading in the Bayeux
Tapestry, while in the margin the spoilers strip the coats of mail from
the dead and drive off the horses of the slain knights.
* * * * *
“A single battle settled the fate of England.” There was still
grim work to be done--the humbling of Exeter, the harrying of
Northumberland, the subjection of the earls, but these were only local
episodes. There was no one but William who could effectively take
Harold’s place, and when on Christmas Day he had been crowned at
London, he could reduce opposition at his leisure. The chronicle of
these later years belongs to English rather than to Norman history.
The results of the Conquest, too, are of chief significance for the
conquered. For the Normans the immediate effect was a great opportunity
for expansion in every department of life. There was work for the
warrior in completing the subjugation of the land, for the organizer
and statesman in the new adjustments of central and local government,
for the prelate in bringing his new diocese into line with the practice
of the church on the Continent, for the monks to found new priories and
administer the new lands which their monasteries now received beyond
the Channel. The Norman townsman and the Norman merchant followed
hard upon the Norman armies, in the Norman colony in London, in the
traders of the ports, in the boroughs of the western border. In part,
of course, the change was simply the replacing of one set of persons by
another, putting a Norman archbishop in place of Stigand at Canterbury,
spreading over the map the Montgomeries and Percies, the Mowbrays and
the Mortimers and scores of other household names of English history;
but it was also a work of readjustment and reorganization which
required all the Norman gift for constructive work. A certain _élan_
passes through Norman life and reflects itself in Norman literature, as
the Normans become more conscious of the glory of their achievements
and the greatness of their new empire. England had become an appendage
to Normandy, and men did not yet see that the relation would soon be
reversed.
For England, the Norman Conquest determined permanently the orientation
of English politics and English culture. Geographically belonging,
with the Scandinavian countries, to the outlying lands of Europe, the
British Isles had been in serious danger of sharing their remoteness
from the general movements of European life and drifting into the back
waters of history. The union with Normandy turned England southward and
brought it at once into the full current of European affairs--political
entanglements, ecclesiastical connections, cultural influences. England
became a part of France and thus entered fully into the life of the
world to which France belonged. It received the speech of France, the
literature of France, and the art of France; its law became in large
measure Frankish, its institutions more completely feudal. Yet the
connection with France ran through Normandy, and the French influence
took on Norman forms. Most of all was this true in the field in which
the Norman excelled, that of government: English feudalism was Norman
feudalism, in which the barons were weak and the central power strong,
and it was the heavy hand of Norman kingship that turned the loose and
disintegrating Anglo-Saxon state into the English nation. England was
Europeanized only at the price of being Normanized.
From the point of view both of immediate achievement and of ultimate
results, the conquest of England was the crowning act of Norman
history. Something doubtless was due to good fortune,--to the absence
of an English fleet, to the favorable opportunity in French politics,
to the mistakes of the English. But the fundamental facts, without
which these would have meant nothing, were the strength and discipline
of Normandy and the personality of her leader. Diplomat, warrior,
leader of men, William was preëminently a statesman, and it was his
organizing genius which “turned the defeat of English arms into the
making of the English nation.” This talent for political organization
was, however, no isolated endowment of the Norman duke, but was shared
in large measure by the Norman barons, as is abundantly shown by the
history of Norman rule in Italy and Sicily. For William and for his
followers the conquest of England only gave a wider field for qualities
of state-building which had already shown themselves in Normandy.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A detailed narrative of the relations between Normandy and
England in the eleventh century is given by E. A. Freeman in his
_History of the Norman Conquest_ (Oxford, 1870–79), but large
portions of this work need to be rewritten in the light of later
studies, especially those of Round. There is a brief biography of
William the Conqueror by Freeman in the series of “Twelve English
Statesmen” (London, 1888), and a fuller one by F. M. Stenton
in the “Heroes of the Nations” (1908). For the institutions of
Normandy see my articles on “Knight Service in Normandy in the
Eleventh Century,” in _English Historical Review_, XXII, pp.
636–49; “The Norman ‘Consuetudines et Iusticie’ of William the
Conqueror,” _ibid._ XXIII, pp. 502–08; and “Normandy under William
the Conqueror,” in _American Historical Review_, XIV, pp. 453–76
(1909); also L. Valin, _Le duc de Normandie et sa cour, 912–1204_
(Paris, 1910). For church and state, see H. Böhmer, _Kirche und
Staat in England und in der Normandie_ (Leipzig, 1899). The
dealings of the Norman dukes with their continental neighbors are
narrated by A. Fliche, _Le règne de Philippe I^{er} roi de France_
(Paris, 1912); L. Halphen, _Le comté d’Anjou au XI^{e} siècle_
(Paris, 1906); R. Latouche, _Histoire du comté du Maine pendant
le X^{e} et le XI^{e} siècle_ (Paris, 1910); F. Lot, _Fidèles ou
vassaux_ (Paris, 1904), ch. 6 (on the feudal relations of the
Norman dukes and the French kings). There is a good sketch of
France in the eleventh century by Luchaire in the _Histoire de
France_ of Lavisse, II, part 2; a fuller work on this period is
expected from Maurice Prou. For the literature of the battle of
Hastings, see Gross, _Sources and Literature_, nos. 707a, 2812,
2998–3000; the most important works are those of Round, Spatz, and
Delbrück, _Geschichte der Kriegskunst_, III, pp. 147–62 (1907).
The Bayeux Tapestry is most conveniently accessible in the small
edition of F. R. Fowke (reprinted, London, 1913); see also Gross,
no. 2139, and Ph. Lauer, in _Mélanges Charles Bémont_ (Paris,
1913), pp. 43–58. Freeman discusses the results of the Conquest
in his fifth volume; see also Gaston Paris, _L’esprit normand en
Angleterre_, in _La poésie du moyen âge_, second series (Paris,
1895), pp. 45–74.
IV
THE NORMAN EMPIRE
The lecture upon Normandy and England sought to place in their Norman
perspective the events leading to the Norman Conquest and to show how
that decisive triumph of Norman strength and daring was made possible
by the development of an exceptional ducal authority in Normandy and
Maine and by the personal greatness of William the Conqueror. We
now come to follow still further this process of expansion, to the
Scotch border, to Ireland, to the Pyrenees, until the empire of the
Plantagenet kings became the chief political fact in western Europe.
The Norman empire is the outstanding feature of the twelfth century, as
the conquest of England was of the eleventh.
* * * * *
This great imperial state is commonly known, not as the Norman, but as
the Angevin, empire, because its rulers, Henry II, Richard, and John,
were descended in the male line from the counts of Anjou. The phrase
is, however, a misnomer, since it leads one to suppose that the Angevin
counts were its creators, which is in no sense the case. The centre
of the empire was Normandy, its founders were the Norman dukes. The
marriage of the Princess Matilda to Count Geoffrey Plantagenet added
Anjou to Normandy rather than Normandy to Anjou, and it was as duke
of Normandy that their son Henry II began his political career. The
extension of his domains southward by marriage only gave Normandy the
central position in his realm, and it was the loss of Normandy under
John which led to the empire’s collapse.
Against the application of the term ‘empire’ to the dominion of Henry
II more cogent reasons may be urged. It rests, so far as I know, upon
no contemporary authority, and even if the phrase could be found by
some chance in a writer of the twelfth century, it would carry with it
no weight. Western Europe in the Middle Ages knew but one empire, the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation--from one point of view neither
holy nor Roman nor an empire, as Voltaire long afterward remarked,
yet, as revived by Charlemagne and Otto the Great, representing to
the mind of the Middle Ages the idea of universal monarchy which they
had inherited from ancient Rome. To the men of the twelfth century
the emperor was Frederick Barbarossa; he could not be Henry II. Nor
will the government of the Norman-Angevin ruler square with the modern
definition of an empire as “a state formed by the rule of one state
over other states.”[27] His various dominions, if we except Ireland,
were not dependencies of England, or Anjou, or Normandy. King in
England, duke in Normandy, count in Anjou and Maine, duke again in
Aquitaine, Henry ruled each of his dominions as its feudal lord--very
much as if the German Emperor to-day combined in himself the titles
of king of Prussia and of Bavaria, grand duke of Baden, duke of
Brunswick, prince of Waldeck, and so on throughout the members of
the German confederation. Such a government is not an empire in the
sense of the ancient Roman or the modern British empires, for it has
no dependencies. It is an empire only in the broader and looser sense
of the word, a great composite state, larger than a mere kingdom and
imperial in extent if not in organization.
That Henry’s realm was in extent imperial can easily be seen from
the map. It extended from Scotland to the frontier of Spain, as the
empire of his contemporary Frederick I extended from the Baltic and the
North Sea to central Italy. And if the kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and
Burgundy which made up Frederick’s empire covered in the aggregate more
territory, the actual authority of the ruler, whether in army, justice,
or finance, was decidedly less than in the Anglo-Norman state. Henry
had a stronger army, a larger revenue, a more centralized government.
Moreover, the Norman empire was less artificial than it seems to us at
first sight, accustomed as we are to the associations of the modern
map. There was, especially with mediæval methods of communication,
nothing anomalous in a state which straddled the English Channel:
Normandy was nearer England than was Ireland; it was quite as easy
to go from London to Rouen as from London to York. The geographical
bonds were also strong between Henry’s continental dominions, for the
roads of the twelfth century did not radiate from Paris, but followed
mainly the old Roman lines, and from Rouen there was direct and easy
connection with LeMans, Tours, Poitiers, and Bordeaux. In the matter
of race, too, we must beware of being misled by our modern ideas. The
English nation was at most only the vaguest sort of a conception, the
French nation did not exist till the fifteenth century, and personal
loyalty to the lord of many different lands was a natural expression
of the conditions of the age. It is contrary to our prejudices that a
single state should be formed out of the hard-headed Norman, the Celtic
fisherman of the Breton coast,--the ‘Pêcheur d’Islande’ of a later
day,--the Angevin, Tourangeau, Poitevin, the troubadour of Aquitaine,
and the Gascon of the far south, with his alien blood and non-Aryan
language, already a well-marked type whose swaggering gasconades
foreshadow the d’Artagnan of the _Three Musketeers_ and the ‘cadets de
Gascogne’ of _Cyrano de Bergerac_. But it was little harder to rule
these diverse lands from London or Rouen than from Paris; it was for
the time being as easy to make them part of a Norman empire as of a
French kingdom. Over the various languages and dialects ran the Latin
of law and government and the French of the court and of affairs; while
in political matters these countries were, as we shall see, quite
capable of united action.
Let us call to mind how the empire of Henry II was formed. At the
death of the Conqueror in 1087 the lands which he had brought together
and ruled with such good peace were divided between his two eldest
sons, Robert receiving Normandy and William the Red, England. Save for
William’s regency over Normandy during his brother’s absence on the
Crusade, the two countries remained separate during his reign, and were
united once more only in 1106 when William’s successor, his younger
brother Henry I, after defeating and deposing Robert at Tinchebrai,
ruled as duke of Normandy and king of England. This was the inheritance
which, after the death of Prince William in the White Ship, Henry
sought to hand down to his daughter Matilda, but which passed for the
most part to his nephew Stephen of Blois. Stephen, however, never
gained a firm hold in England and soon lost Normandy to Matilda’s
husband, Count Geoffrey of Anjou, by whom it was conquered and ruled
in the name of his son Henry, later Henry II. Crowned duke of Normandy
in 1150, Henry succeeded his father as count of Anjou in the following
year, and at Stephen’s death in 1154 became king of England. Meanwhile,
in 1152, he had contracted a marriage of the greatest political
importance with Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, whose union with the
French king Louis VII had just been annulled by the Pope; an alliance
which made him master of Poitou, Aquitaine, and Gascony and therewith
of two-thirds of France. Apart from certain adjustments in central
France, the only addition to these territories made during Henry’s
reign was the conquest of eastern Ireland in the years following 1169.
Into these Irish campaigns and their consequences for the whole later
history of the island we cannot attempt to go. Let me only point out
that the leading spirits were Norman, except so far as they were Irish
exiles, and that the names which now make their appearance in Irish
annals are Norman names--the Lacys and the Clares, the Fitzgeralds and
the de Courcys, as Irish before long as the Irish themselves.
Substantially, then, the empire of Henry II remained in extent as
he found it at his accession to the English throne at the age of
twenty-one; it was not created by him but inherited or annexed by
marriage. Accordingly it is not as a conqueror but as a ruler that
he can lay claim to greatness. But although Henry attempted little
in the way of acquiring new territory, he did much to consolidate
his possessions and to extend his European power and influence. His
daughters were married to the greatest princes of their time, Henry
the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, King Alphonso VIII of Castile,
King William II of Sicily. He made an alliance with the ruler of
Provence and planned a marriage with the house of Savoy that would have
given him control of the passes into Italy. He took his part in the
struggle of Pope and anti-Pope, of Pope and Emperor; he corresponded
with the emperor of Constantinople, refused the crown of the kingdom of
Jerusalem, and died on the eve of his departure on a crusade. No one
could lay claim to greater influence upon the international affairs of
his time.
Occupying this international position, Henry must not be viewed, as
he generally is, merely as an English king. He was born and educated
on the Continent, began to reign on the Continent, and spent a large
part of his life in his continental dominions. He ruled more territory
outside of England than in, and his continental lands had at least
as large a place as England in his policy. It is perhaps too much to
say, in modern phrase, that he ‘thought imperially,’ but he certainly
did not think nationally; and when his latest biographer speaks of
Henry’s continental campaigns as “foreign affairs,”[28] he is thinking
insularly, for Normandy, Anjou, Gascony even, were no more foreign
than England itself. Henry is not a national figure, either English or
French; he is international, if not cosmopolitan. Only from the point
of view of later times can we associate him peculiarly with English
history, when after the collapse of the Norman empire under his sons,
the permanent influence of his work continued to be felt most fully in
England.
Both as a man and as a ruler, the figure of Henry II has come down to
us distorted by the loves and hates of an age of the most violent and
bitter controversy. Brilliant though scarcely heroic to his friends,
to his enemies he was a veritable demon of tyranny and crime, whose
lurid end pointed many a moral respecting the sins of princes and
the vengeance of the Most High. Eminently a strong man, he was not
regarded as in any sense superhuman, but rather as an intensely human
figure, tempted in all points like as other men and yielding where
they yielded. Heavy, bull-necked, sensual, with a square jaw, freckled
face, reddish hair, and fiery eyes that blazed in sudden paroxysms
of anger, he must, in Bishop Stubbs’s phrase, “have looked generally
like a rough, passionate, uneasy man.”[29] The dominant impression
is one of exhaustless energy accompanied by a physical restlessness
which kept him whispering and scribbling during mass, hunting and
hawking from morning to night, and riding constantly from place to
place throughout his vast dominions with a rapidity that always took
his enemies by surprise. On one occasion he covered one hundred and
seventy miles in two days. Well-educated for a prince of his time and
able to hold his own in ready converse with the clerks of his court,
his tastes were neither speculative nor romantic, but were early
turned toward practical life. He was primarily “an able, plausible,
astute, cautious, unprincipled man of business,”[30] fond of work
and delighting in detail, with a distinct gift for organization and
a mastery of diplomacy, wise in the selection of his subordinates,
skilful in evasion, but quick and sure in action. Strong, clear-headed,
and tenacious, Henry represents the type of the man of large affairs,
and in another age might have amassed a large private fortune as a
successful business man. In the twelfth century the chief opportunity
for talent of this sort was in public life, where the king’s household
was also the government of the state, the strengthening of royal
authority was the surest means of attaining national unity and
security, and the interest of the king coincided with the interest of
the state. To the present day, with its cry for business men in public
office, this seems natural enough; but we must remember that feudalism
meant exactly the opposite of business efficiency, and that the problem
of creating an effective government in the midst of a feudal society
turned largely on the maintenance of a businesslike administration of
justice, finance, and the army. By his success in these fields Henry
went a long way toward creating a modern state, and did, as a matter of
fact, establish the most highly organized and effective government of
its time in western Europe.
Our conceptions of the nature of Henry II’s public work have been in
certain respects modified as the result of modern research. It has
become clear, in the first place, that he was an administrator rather
than a legislator, and that such of his legislation as has reached us
belongs in the category of instructions to his officers rather than
in that of general enactments. These measures lack the permanence of
statutes; they are supplemented, modified, withdrawn, in accordance
with the will of a sovereign whose restless temper showed itself in a
constant series of legal and administrative experiments. Many of his
changes seem to have been effected through oral command rather than
written instructions. In the second place, Henry’s originality has
been somewhat diminished by a more careful study of the work of his
predecessors, notably of Henry I, in whose reign it is now possible to
trace at work some of the elements that were once supposed to have been
innovations of his grandson. As a whole, however, the work of Henry
II stands the test of analysis and gives him an eminent place in the
number of mediæval statesmen.
* * * * *
Precocious in many ways as was the political organization of Henry’s
dominions, it was conditioned by the circumstances of its time, and
we must be careful to conceive it in terms of the twelfth century and
not of the fifteenth or the twentieth. The Norman sovereign had at his
disposal none of the legal or bureaucratic traditions which were still
maintained at Constantinople and were not without their influence upon
the Norman kingdom of Sicily. Nor was the time ripe for the creation
out of hand of a strong central government for his various territories,
such as became possible in the Burgundian state of the fifteenth
century and in the Austrian state which was modelled upon it. Henry was
in the midst of a feudal society and had to make the best of it. He had
to reckon with the particularistic traditions of his several dominions
as well as with the feudal opposition to strong government, and western
Europe was still a long way from the economic conditions which lie at
the basis of modern bureaucracies.