Dan Snow's History Hit - The Normans

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 was one of the great milestones of English history but there were in fact many Norman invasions and their influence reached from Northern Europe through the Mediterranean and into the Middle East and North Africa. They were a phenomenon emerging in the tenth century but had disappeared by the middle of the thirteenth century. In the brief period though their influence was massive creating new kingdoms, re-shaping societies and leaving behind impressive architectural, linguistic and cultural influences. In this episode, Dan speaks to historian Trevor Rowley author of The Normans: The Conquest of Christendom about their origins, how and why they spread so far, what their legacy is and why their influence was so short-lived.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The Normans, people in England have had about the Normans because of the Norman Conquest 1066,

seen as one of the great milestones of English history. Transformation of England to an Anglo-Saxon kingdom into a normal one, with very different ideas about politics, culture, religion, architecture, and language. There were many Norman invasions, in fact. The Normans weren't content with just England. The Normans, of course, after England, pushed into Wales, Scotland, Ireland. But all over Christendom, the Normans made themselves felt. Southern Italy and Sicily, into the crusader states of the Holy Land and North Africa. The Normans were a phenomenon a thousand years ago.

And there were few parts of Europe or the Middle East that did not feel the impact of their presence. So I talked to Trevor Rowley about the Normans. Who were they? What's going on? Why did this warlike people erupt from Northwest France? Where did they come from? And what's it all mean? What's it all mean, folks?

What we're always asking in this podcast. I think you'll find this answer very interesting. So please check this out. Trevor Rowley coming up on Normans. In the meantime, if you want to go and watch some programs about Norman castles, then I tell you, I've got the place for you. You're not going to believe it. I've got this history channel. It's called History Hit TV. You're going to love it. You go to historyhit.tv, wherever you get your internet,

you go onto historyhit.tv, and then you subscribe, very small subscription required. And then you can watch all these documentaries, hundreds of documentaries. You've got Second World War documentaries, you've got Norman's, you've got everything. You're going to love it. So you head over there and get involved with the world's best history channel. But in the meantime, everyone, here's Trevor Rowley on the Normans. Enjoy. Trevor, thank you very much for coming to this podcast. Not at all. Well, this is very exciting for me because everyone talks about the Norman conquest in our little England away.

And we think about Hastings and 1066 and the harrying of the... But the Normans, there were lots of Norman conquests, weren't there? I mean, what is it with these guys? Well, I suppose naturally we concentrate on the Battle of Hastings and the conquest of England because this was a major event in British history, the beginning of Whig history. But of course, they this was a major event in British history, the beginning of Whig history. But of course, they did other things, many other things. They conquered southern Italy, conquered Sicily. They had short-lived enclaves in North Africa. They had a long-lived territory

kingdom in the Levant, at Antioch. And they even had little enclaves in Turkey, Anatolia, and in Spain. So they were great travellers and they were great conquerors. They conquered what they came across. Why did they do that? What is it with this group of people from Northwest Europe? No particular technological innovation. What was it? No, no, they didn't. They adopted and adapted. That was their great strength. They were great organisers and they had the ability to see strength. They were great organisers, and they had the ability to see a good thing and recognise a good thing when they saw it, and to use it for their own advantages. Let's go back a bit, shall we, and start with the Vikings going into Normandy,

and they did exactly the same thing. They start off as pagans, and they then are converted to Christianity. They then build up the strongest little territory in Northwestern Europe within 100 years or so. It's all very clever. And they do that by using what they find. They use the Carolingian basis, what they find, and they also import people. They invite people in, particularly church leaders, but also knights who they believe can fight for them. So it was a very eclectic setup. They weren't just northern Frenchmen or Vikings. They were a big mixture of people. And it gave rise to this particularly strong, well-organized ethos. One of the things that pushes them abroad is because they were such an energetic people and they were working within the system of a hierarchical system,

the feudal system, if you like, there was only going to be one man within that family who was going to inherit the estate. There wasn't that much estate in Normandy. So there was a lot of pressure on them to get out, to go down. And so this is one of the reasons why you find them all over Europe. How important is that Viking heritage? Is there some kind of remembered lineage, seafaring, buccaneering? Because obviously there's a gap. I mean, they settle and become quote-unquote French.

They swap their longships for horses. They become great cavalrymen. Does their Viking sort of three, four, five generations back, does that matter? Well, it does matter in the sense that William the Conqueror's great-great-great-grandfather was a Viking warlord, just like that. A pagan comes in and causes chaos.

So they're antecedents. They start off just in that way. But one of the big questions is how many Vikings were there? It's a bit like the Anglo-Saxons. How many Anglo-Saxons were there? And we just don't know, actually. But they left a big imprint in the folk memory and indeed the historical memory of the Normans. And they were proud up to a point of their Viking inheritance.

But they also wanted to get rid of it. They wanted to have a much more respectable Christian heritage. And so as soon as they can, the Vikings are marrying into Carolingian French families and getting rid of all their ways. As far as the sort of cultural, I mean, in a way, there's always a sort of a racist element to this. But if you say that, you know, because they were strong and fought hard and so on, this was inherited from the Vikings. I'm not sure this is true. What they did was that they got rid of most of their Viking cultural features very quickly. There was a slave market in Rouen right up until about 1000.

And that was a definite Viking cultural inheritance. But they got rid of that about the year 1000. They also lost the use of the Norse tongue for the most part, mainly because Norse was not a written language and they needed a written language. Obviously, they were going to play Western Europe politics and taxation and so on. So one of the later dukes, Duke Richard, sends his son to Bayer because there's still a Scandinavian speaking element there, a school there where they're still speaking it. But for the most part, they're quite happy to get rid of all that baggage. But they are proud of the fact that they were conquerors in the first instance. And that does live on in the Norman psyche. And so it's a sort of quite potent harmony of certain Scandinavian seafaring amphibious ways

of war and the Carolingian continental tradition of organisation and violence as well. Absolutely. And they picked up on the cavalry and they advanced it really because they were the people who brought in Spanish horses, for instance, was one of the introductions that the Normans did. And they improved on cavalry during the 11th century. In the meantime, they more or less forgot about their naval tradition because they weren't fighting at sea during that period. And when they have to invade England, they have to sort of scrabble around and create a fleet. Why do they take their ships? Is this the Viking element? Why do they take to their ships? I mean, my memories of William the Conqueror is he spends a huge amount of time

as Duke William fighting French neighbours. So why do they leapfrog Western Europe or the French and go much further afield? What's going on in Europe at this time? Well, in case of England, it's an inheritance problem because Edward the Confessor hasn't got a natural successor, or at least he hasn't got an immediate one. And William gets this into his mind, or we think he does, that he has been promised the throne of England. And so in order to take England, he has to revitalise the naval instincts and create a fleet to get to England. Later on, when they're in the Mediterranean, they become quite good sailors, but largely with the help of the Muslims and the Greeks,

with whom they mix. And again, the story of the Normans in England is largely of them assimilating with the English and the Scandinavians in England, and in the South, with the Greeks and with the Latins and with the Muslims, and taking on a lot of their strengths. Is there opportunity here as well? I mean, is there always opportunity in early medieval Europe? I mean, is there a window for them to expand into? Yes. I mean, I think the window in England was this conflict of who was actually going to take over from Edward the Confessor. There was a natural successor who was not a royal, that's Harold, who did take over. But there was a hiatus in some respect. And in southern Italy, there was a big hiatus

because you had all of these city-states of different sort of cultural hues arguing of each other. And the Normans could move into this and take over. That's what they did, exactly. They start as pilgrims, armed pilgrims, if you like, and then they're invited to help as mercenary soldiers. And then gradually they build up their strength. But there is definitely a hiatus in southern Europe with the waning Byzantine Empire, the Muslim Empire just beginning to be on the wane. And the northern Europe, the Lombards beginning to push down as well. Europe, the Lombards, beginning to push down as well. So it's a very, very confused but open area in which the Normans really played both sides extremely well.

Is there a fortification technology point? I mean, the French, the Normans are famous for castle building in England. When they arrive on these hostile shores, they find it easy to get a toehold partly because the technology, the science of fortification makes it harder for people to push them back into the sea. I think that's a very good point. Certainly in England, as you say, the castle is the key to how they're able to hold the country. I think if they hadn't invented and developed the castle, they wouldn't be able to stay. They'd have been kicked out. They didn't use the castle so much in Southern Europe because there were already fortifications down there which they were able to take over.

There were castellate buildings and structure forts which they were able to use. But once they get to the Holy Land, of course, again, you get exactly the same situation where they dig themselves in, building these massive castles, and they are very difficult to wrinkle out, and that's where they're able to hang on. Listen to Dan Snow's history hit. We're talking about the Normans, not just in England, but everywhere. More after this.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. You mentioned they prove very flexible. I'm so fascinated, as a kind of early modernist,

I'm really interested in the development of national identities and loyalties. When these people arrive as overlords in Sicily or southern Italy or parts of Anatolia, do the local people just go, well, there's a new boss in town, I'll just get on with my life? Or do they have to overcome this kind of antipathy of being essentially foreign? Again, excellent question, because I think to begin with, like all incoming invaders, as it were, they are resented and rebelled against. But very rapidly, because they are so open to taking on other people and using other cultures' strengths, they rapidly assimilate. For instance, let's take Sicily and the kings of Sicily, the Norman kings of Sicily. They have Muslim advisors, they have a Greek navy, and they dress in Byzantine robes, you see.

So they assimilate themselves in a very, very effective way. But again, you do see that kind of ability of the Vikings to arrive and assimilate there, because you don't get the Bretons doing this, don't you? You don't get the Count of Maine sending out his forces. It must just be they're well equipped for this job. I think that's true. I think maybe you could say they just had it in their blood. They understood the best way of taking over an area and maintaining control of it. But this, in a way, if you think about nation states and so on, this was a weakness because they were much more interested in their family and the inheritance of the families rather than the whole idea of the Normans. They weren't particularly interested when they were doing their conquering and taking over of maintaining a sort of Norman way of life.

They were much more interested in getting the land, getting the wealth off the land, and handing it on to their successors. So in a way, this is not a traditional colonial activity, because they're not intent on imposing Norman control, in the strict sense of the word, on the world. They're much more interested in power and wealth. Trevi, in England, what looked like this awesome takeover by William the Conqueror and his close family, close cousins and friends, a generation or two later, they're all on each other's throats. I mean, it's a complete shambles.

I mean, William's sons, I mean, my God, those boys were fighting each other the whole time. And the next generation was even worse. So is that something you see elsewhere in this kind of Norman? You do, you do, because it is families fighting it out and fighting for the trough. It's one of the reasons for the end in Sicily, as it is in England, that you get family divisions, which then are expressed in military terms,

and they're fighting each other. And you end up with the whole thing going through the roof and in both cases it ended up with non-Normans taking over because you were dealing basically with female inheritance who were marrying into other dynasties like the Angevins in England and that's how the Angevins come in and they of course create an empire which in itself is much stronger and bigger than the Anglo-Norman empire because that consists of half of France as well as a lot of Britain yeah so you're quite right it is this family thing really which I think the feeling that it's a family which is most important but that in itself leads to these great divisions rather than thinking we've

got to have a Norman on the throne. There's also, therefore, I guess, this sense that if you're a younger brother outlooking your particular world to conquer, like Henry I, William the Conqueror's fourth son, I think it was, it's hard to justify. You can't then go, hey, no, we're very strict. Everyone, we're now primogeniture. No one mess around. Because if these new empires are sort of forged by ambitious younger sons, then it's quite hard to stop ambitious younger sons doing the same a generation or two later. Well, that's true.

But he thought that his brother, Robert Curto, Duke of Normandy, was a weakling. Although he wasn't a weakling, actually. He fought in the Crusade. But he just thought he was feeble and that he could do a much better job. And obviously, he wanted the job. But you're quite right. How do you stop the next generation doing exactly the same thing, which they did? And does that mean that they have trouble

building lasting legacies? I don't think so, because I think they make a major contribution because what they represent in England is this big change of direction. Up until 1066, most of the cultural links had been actually with Scandinavia, although that's not to say they weren't with France. But after 1066, the axis of influence moves further south and east. And from then on, it's France, which is the dominant neighbour, and which has the most important impact on England and that goes on right through the middle ages and you can look at things that the Normans introduced although I say this business of assimilating other peoples and so on in England they didn't do that in the beginning they got rid of all the English prelates all the English

abbots all the English gentry They just got rid of them and replaced them with Normans. And this had a big long-term impact. Within 100 years, 150 years or so, this had changed and England was beginning to evolve as a separate place. Anglo-Norman England, if you like. But England is somewhat separate from what they do in the South and in the Levant. Yeah, I don't know anything about the South and that, but England, they seem to sort of move into a pretty impressive centralised state and just Frenchify it, Normanify it, I guess, and build their cars.

It's amazing. But elsewhere, do they have a similar ability to produce very lasting, stable legacies as they do in England? No, I would say not, because what they do is create a northern or western European form of culture in the south, which dominates and carries on. They get rid of the Muslim, they get rid of the Byzantine eventually, but what they're doing, they're introducing European, and that of, leads to Spanish and French, other French principalities moving in. And so there isn't a real Norman legacy in France, Italy.

Although I would say that the buildings that the Normans executed in Sicily, like Palermo Cathedral, Monreale Cathedral, these are some of the grandest buildings in Europe, but they're a mixture of Northern European, Byzantine, and Arab. And as you, of course, point out, we're still speaking in a version of the Norman language. Parliament and Exchequer, all these words and judiciary are all from Norman, and our royal family certainly traced their heritage back to the Norman conquest and before as well to be fair elsewhere in Europe how lasting do their conquests prove

I would say far less so although they introduce a French element into Sicily but that is pretty quickly thrown out by the Sicilian vespers. And it's a Spanish influence, which is as strong as the French. There is a sort of lasting French influence to a little extent in the Levant, more than Norman English, as it were. But I would say that they disappear from the stage much more completely in those parts of the world than they do in England and Wales and a bit in Scotland.

Why do they, is it just the rub of things? Is it just the nature of empires coming and going, the way that great affairs tend to go? They don't turn this kind of Mediterranean world into a lasting confederation, empire, whatever. Or was there a particular weakness that meant they would only burn brightly, but not for a very long time? Yeah, it's like a sort of flood, isn't it? Comes in and then goes. I think it's partly this business of being family inheritance orientated rather than Norman French character. And that is because, as you say, of the waves in those parts of the world, they are largely extinguished over the centuries. Whereas in England, they have created a pretty sound basis. You know, we're talking about names, our personal names, Williams and Richards and Roberts are all Norman. And the liturgy in church,

for instance, was a French one, but it was brought in by the Normans, changed by Lanfranc in the 11th century. Architecture, Romanesque architecture, has a very strong place in the British tradition, comes around every 200 or 300 years. And literature as well. This is heavily influenced by the Normans. But of course, by the time a lot of these things are rooted, the Normans themselves themselves as a political entity

have disappeared. Yeah, funnily enough, my son asked me on the weekend, what happened to the Normans? And my head nearly fell off trying to explain to it. It's actually one of those, because in a way, they're still here. But I guess it's the point that kind of adaptability, by the time you get to the Plantagenets, Henry V starts speaking English, I guess they forged a kind of new hybrid identity. Yeah, they did. I mean, I think by the end of the 12th century, you're talking about the Anglo-Normans. You're not talking about the Normans. And of course, I mean, the Norman dynasty comes to an end in 1154 with the death of Stephen, and you get an Angevin coming in, who's only one-eighth Norman. This weakens the whole Norman character. And I think the other thing is that

Normandy itself disappears in 1204. Normandy, which had been allied to England for most of the time after 1066, is actually swept away by the French king in 1204. And so there's never really Normandy again. Normandy, the English do go back there later on, but they're not thinking about recreating a Normandy. Although the Queen still is the Duke of Normandy. Listen, I've spent time in the Channel Islands, they'll tell you that the whole time. She's still the Duke of Normandy over there. Exactly. Well, listen, thank you so much, Trevor, for coming on this podcast and talking about the Normans and perhaps a wider European perspective as well. Tell everyone what the book's called.

It's called The Normans. Does what it says on the tin. Well, thank you very much indeed. Not at all. A very great pleasure. I feel we have the history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished.

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Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.