550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)

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Speaker 1 At the end of France, there is a plain filled with woods and fruit trees. In this narrow place, there lived a great number of very tough, strong people, the name of whom was Normans.

Speaker 1 Such were their numbers that in time as the population grew, the fields and orchards of Normandy proved insufficient to keep them all fed.

Speaker 1 Therefore, the Normans scattered here and there throughout all the various parts of the world, making their way into numerous regions and countries.

Speaker 1 Abandoning what little they had in order to obtain very much more, these people departed their homes, but they did not follow the custom of most people who go through the world, entering into the service of others.

Speaker 1 Rather, like warriors of old, their aim was to make everybody subject to them and under their lordship.

Speaker 1 And so they took up arms and broke the bond of peace, and whether as a mass of infantrymen or on horseback, they proved themselves great in deeds.

Speaker 1 So that was the terrifying opening to the history of the Normans, written, Tom, in the mid-11th century by a monk called Amartis.

Speaker 1 And as you have pointed out in your notes, this is very reminiscent of the way that,

Speaker 1 you know, when the Greeks wrote about the intrusion on the world scene of the Romans, or the Chinese about the coming of the Mongols, they would say, oh my God, there's this extraordinary new people who are absolutely formidable, very frightening, very brutal.

Speaker 1 They kill everybody.

Speaker 1 Where they come from? Yeah, where they come from. And the Normans are greeted by writers beyond Normandy's borders with the same kind of awe and terror, aren't they?

Speaker 2 Yeah, kind of dread for reasons that Amartis spells out, because he says that the Normans are physically hardy, very tough, very strong.

Speaker 2 So Amartis writes in Latin, but the version we have is translated into French. And he specifies that the Normans have a lust for seigneurie, so lordship,

Speaker 2 and that they have a particular aptitude for chevalerie, so fighting on horseback, what will in due course come to be the attribute of a knight, chivalry.

Speaker 2 But basically, they're going around on horses, kind of nicking other people's land and property.

Speaker 2 And also, of course, he's very impressed by their wanderlusts, this sense that they're spilling out across the world and that their goal is a kind of greatness, that they're not prepared to serve other people.

Speaker 2 And Amartis is speaking from experience. So he is a monk in Monte Cassino, the great abbey in central Italy.
which we last heard of in the podcast because Wojtek.

Speaker 1 The bear, the Polish bear.

Speaker 1 Yes, the Polish bear was serving with the polish army there in the second world war but it you know it's it's a very venerable abbey reaching back to the the beginnings of christianity in italy and the fact that he is observing this from italy is a reminder to us in england we tend to think of the norman conquests as the norms are going one way he has seen a great stream of norman freebooters adventurers rogues you know mercenaries whatever heading south into Italy and beyond.

Speaker 1 And actually, for me, one of the great fascinating stories of the Normans is how they expand southwards and become a Mediterranean power.

Speaker 2 Well, because southern Italy in particular, I mean, if you're going out and you're looking for opportunities to set up your lordship, then you want a place where there are going to be rich pickings.

Speaker 2 And southern Italy is perfect for the Normans' purpose because this is a place where all kinds of different empires are rubbing up against each other. So there's Latin Christendom.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But there is also the Byzantine Empire. So the Byzantines have territory there.
And there's Muslim powers in Sicily and kind of constant ambitions to push up northwards through Italy.

Speaker 2 So this is perfect for a bunch of kind of hardy horse-riding mercenaries looking essentially to be paid and then to use that money to turn on the people who are paying them.

Speaker 2 And the first Normans who get hired in southern Italy are actually pilgrims returning from Jerusalem.

Speaker 2 And they land on the heel of Italy in 1018 from Jerusalem and they get employed by rebels against Byzantine rule, so Italian-speaking rebels.

Speaker 2 And then four years later, they've switched sides and they're in the service of the Byzantine Empire.

Speaker 2 And then within a decade, these kind of Norman mercenaries, strong men, are carving out their own fiefdoms. And Amartas, from his vantage point in Monte Cassino, about halfway up Italy.

Speaker 2 You know, he's full of admiration, actually, for their kind of prowess, for their energy, for their chutzpah, really, in just, you know, taking their opportunities but there are other monks at montecassino who are slightly more jaundiced so the abbot of montecassino is a guy called desiderius and he will actually go on to become pope and he views these norman adventurers kind of as a wolf pack that they've been driven southwards by hunger and they are hungry for blood.

Speaker 2 So he wrote, the Normans are avid for rapine and possess an insatiable appetite for seizing what belongs to others.

Speaker 1 It's not entirely wrong.

Speaker 2 Not entirely wrong. And a perspective that others as well as the Italians will come to get.

Speaker 2 And I suppose a question that the Italians might have pondered was why didn't impecunious Normans, you know, if they're looking for lordships, why aren't they doing it nearer home?

Speaker 2 Why are they coming to Italy to do it?

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, let me just pause you there.
So last time we heard about how Normandy was established. So that's under a guy called Rollo or Rolf.

Speaker 1 So we're talking about Northmen, Vikings, effectively, who have carved out and semi-been granted this territory in northern France by Charles the Simple. And that was in the early 10th century.

Speaker 1 So Rollo died probably about 930. But now we've moved on a bit in time.
So the last person that we met who was the kind of leader of the Normans was a guy called Richard II, Richard the Good.

Speaker 1 So he's the brother-in-law of two other characters that we met last time, Ethelred the Unready and Knute.

Speaker 1 And he had kept Normandy pretty settled, stable,

Speaker 1 secure.

Speaker 1 And he's, of course, the brother as well of Emma of Normandy, who's got herself mixed up in all kinds of exciting dynastic shenanigans over in England, which it would take another hour to explain.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So Richard II in Normandy, things actually have been very ordered and secure under him, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, and the measure of this is that

Speaker 2 initially he'd begun life as the Count of Rouen, but he's kind of promoted himself to become the Duke of Normandy.

Speaker 2 And essentially, by the end of his life, everyone else, including the King of France, has basically said, yeah, okay, you know, you can rank as a Duke, or in Latin, a dux.

Speaker 2 So this is the root of duce, that, you know, the title that Mussolini takes up. It's to be essentially a kind of military strongman as much as anything else.

Speaker 2 And in the context of France, there are five dukes as well as the Duke of Normandy.

Speaker 2 So the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Aquitaine, of Gascony, and directly on Normandy's Western Frank, the Duke of Brittany.

Speaker 2 And to be a duke in 11th century France is not the equivalent of being, say, an earl in England.

Speaker 2 Because we talked in the first episode about how over the course of the 10th and into the 11th century, the kings of England have massively consolidated and centralized their power over this kind of very precociously united kingdom.

Speaker 2 But in France, the opposite process has been happening. Royal power has kind of ebbed and bled away.

Speaker 2 And by this point, so early 11th century, in France, the king exercises direct rule only over a tiny patchwork of territories centered on Paris and Orléans.

Speaker 2 So to rule as the Duke of Normandy is to enjoy

Speaker 2 an autonomy, a kind of degree of independence that is beyond the wildest dreams of, you know, the Earl of East Anglia or the Earl of Mercia.

Speaker 1 And to give people a sense, I mean, it's far more than, let's say, I don't know, being the governor of a US state or something, because you're also an international player, aren't you?

Speaker 1 You can almost run your own foreign policy. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 Well, so we talked at the end of the last episode about how Richard's son Robert, who rules as Duke for almost a decade, in 1035, he goes off on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Speaker 2 And we were expressing surprise at this because Normandy potentially would be in an unstable situation were he to die. But one of the reasons he's going is undoubtedly because he's very pious.

Speaker 2 He wants to go to Jerusalem for those reasons. But also, he wants to cut a dash.

Speaker 2 He wants to display his wealth, his power, his authority on the grandest of international stages, which if you're a Christian, is Constantinople, still the greatest city in the Christian world.

Speaker 2 And so he travels from Normandy to Constantinople and he cuts an absolutely amazing dash. You know, the Byzantines are really dazzled.
And this is despite the fact that

Speaker 2 they've had some dealings with the Normans in the south of Italy. So they trust them, but they are impressed.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 there are these reports that even his mules are shod with gold. And it's said that his campfires are fueled with the shells shells of pistachio nuts.

Speaker 2 And this is regarded even by the Byzantines as the height of the height of high living. And so they call him the magnificent.
Okay. Which from a Byzantine,

Speaker 2 paying tribute to a barbarian from the wild and frozen north is not bad. I mean, that is kind of measure of his standing.

Speaker 1 And yet Normandy itself is

Speaker 1 not remotely as rich and powerful as the... Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, because not least because Normandy is embattled, right? It's surrounded by predators and rivals.

Speaker 2 Yes, because

Speaker 2 the King of France doesn't exercise a kind of controlling authority, it means that all these various dukes and counts,

Speaker 2 if they're to rule their territory and perhaps expand them, they have to be very militarily proficient and they can't afford a single slip because, as you say, there are predators lurking everywhere.

Speaker 2 So, in the case of the Norman dukes, These predators would include most obviously, I suppose, the King of France himself, because Paris is upriver from Rouen,

Speaker 2 and that's the great centre of French royal power. And the King of France is, therefore, a kind of brooding, slightly ambivalent presence.
The Dukes have always

Speaker 2 been kind of essentially loyal to the King of France, and the King of France has shown favour to them. But the risk is that if they seem too powerful, then the king may turn against them.

Speaker 2 So that's that's an obvious risk. Okay.

Speaker 2 And then on the western flank of Normandy, we've already mentioned the Dukes of Brittany and the Bretons are seen rather like the Romans used to see the ancient Britons as just complete barbarians.

Speaker 2 So a Norman writer describes them as an uncivilized and quick-tempered people, lacking any manners, and rather as the Romans did at talking about the Britons, goes on about how they like to drink milk.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, my views on that. My sister-in-law went out with a man called Paddy, and he only drank milk.

Speaker 1 We went with them to Lisbon, and he only drank milk, and they don't, the Portuguese aren't really into drinking milk, so it it was a total washout and I've always been bitter about it since then.

Speaker 2 I mean I didn't drink milk the Normans do in the long run go and they go and besiege and take Lisbon don't they in the second crusade so this is what happens if you just if you yeah if you get involved with this milk drinking business all kinds of horrors will follow yeah so the bretons are a constant challenge but the most dangerous adversaries of of the norman dukes are the counts of anjou

Speaker 2 who lie to the south and Anjou is centered on the Loire.

Speaker 2 And these are Counts, not dukes. So you might think, well, they're slightly second division.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And there's an additional reason why it might seem slightly puzzling that the Counts of Anjou are such a menace, because there is actually a buffer zone between Normandy and Anjou, which is the county of Maine.

Speaker 2 So Le Mans, as in the motor racing. Yeah.
I mean, obviously not in the 11th century, but no. That's all lying in the future.

Speaker 1 I'm glad you've clarified that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just make sure that's clear. So this is a buffer zone, but it is clear that the Counts of Anjou are, in a way, the most Norman rival that the Normans have.

Speaker 2 You could look at the Counts of Anjou and say, yeah, they have something of the predatory quality of the Dukes of Normandy, because, like the Dukes of Normandy, they are relative upstarts, they're very ambitious, they're exceedingly brutal, and they're very cunning, very politically proficient.

Speaker 2 And the Count of Anjou, as Robert rides off on his pilgrimage, going off to Jerusalem,

Speaker 2 is gnarled, terrifying,

Speaker 1 completely brutal warlord called Fulk Nera.

Speaker 2 And his nickname is the Black.

Speaker 1 Fulk the Black. That's a great name.

Speaker 2 Fulknera the Black. And he has been in power for essentially half a century.
So he succeeded his father back in 987.

Speaker 2 And over the course of the 50 years that he's been Count of Anjou,

Speaker 2 I mean, he again and again displays his capacity for violence and vengeance.

Speaker 2 And perhaps the most notorious episode from his life, so in the year 1000 itself, the great citadel in Anger, which is his, essentially his capital, gets seized and held against him.

Speaker 2 And what is shocking about this absolute stab in the back is that the person who has led the rebellion against him is Fulknera's own wife.

Speaker 2 And the reason that she's done this is that Fulknera has realized that she's been having an affair with someone else.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, cookholding someone like Fulk Nera is very, very foolish. So he is not happy about this.
He sweeps into Anger. He storms the citadel.
Absolute carnage. Most of Angère is laid to waste.

Speaker 2 And his wife is captured and burnt at the stake. And that is a very public statement that, you know, do not cross him.

Speaker 1 But also, what Fulk represents... and people like him represent is something bigger than just the sort of the dynastic soap opera of 10th century politics.

Speaker 2 He's not a blowhard. He's not just the kind of wild barbarian.

Speaker 1 There is a, is it fair to call it a revolution? There is a massive transition in European military life underway at this point, of which the Normans will be the great beneficiaries and the embodiment.

Speaker 1 And that transition comes about, of course, because, and here's what I think a crucial difference between France and England.

Speaker 1 France is so divided and fragmented, it's competitive, it's militarily competitive, and that breeds technological change.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. So the 11th century in France, particularly, is a period of such transformation that I think it is not an exaggeration to call it a revolution.
Europe's first great revolution.

Speaker 2 And it affects almost every aspect.

Speaker 2 So we will see

Speaker 2 it's religious, it's social, it's cultural, but it is also military. So just focusing specifically on the military revolution that is happening in France at this time.

Speaker 2 It is absolutely, as you say, a consequence of the breakdown of royal authority in France.

Speaker 2 And back in the time of Charlemagne, it's a prerogative of the king to set up fortifications, to build battlements. That's essentially his job.

Speaker 2 But by the time the Carolingian dynasty, the dynasty of Charlemagne has gone extinct in France and has been replaced by the Capetian dynasty.

Speaker 2 The Capetians are struggling to hold on to their own territory.

Speaker 2 And so their fortifications, rather than expressing their ability to control the whole of France, are an index of the fact that they're losing control.

Speaker 2 And because they've lost control, it means that in lands beyond their own heartlands, other figures, the dukes, the counts, whoever, they are starting now to build fortifications because the king is not in a position to stop them.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 if you think of France as kind of rotting wood, these fortifications are like

Speaker 2 fungi, like mushrooms sprouting up out of the wood. And these are strange, unsettling structures.
No one's ever seen anything quite like them before.

Speaker 2 And these are structures that in French will come to be called château and in English, castles.

Speaker 2 And the greatest castle builder of his generation is Faulkner.

Speaker 2 Castles are the basis of his power and his expansionism. And it reflects a very cold-eyed insight, which is that you can use castles not just for defense, but for attack.
Right.

Speaker 1 These are tools of dominance and oppression. They're tools, they're symbols of surveillance and control, but they're also, you know, they're, they're impregnable.

Speaker 1 You put them on a hill or on a rocky outcrop or whatever it might be. And there's no way that the people in the surrounding countryside can storm, or very difficult for them to storm it.

Speaker 1 You control that territory now once you put down your castle. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, essentially, you can plant it in enemy territory and you put it on on a crag or whatever a cliff and if you can't find a crag or a cliff then you can you know you can build a great mound of earth that comes to be called a mot but essentially you're seizing territory that previously had had no value at all but now it enables you to be proactive because you can you can build a very rough castle you know, out of wood.

Speaker 2 It can be incredibly rudimentary. We're not talking great towers of stone or anything like that.

Speaker 2 But because people are not used to the idea of fortifications suddenly sprouting up, it has an outsized effect on the ability of those who control these structures to then impose themselves and intimidate people who are all around them.

Speaker 2 And once you've done that, once you've used these kind of makeshift structures, these castles to grab an area of territory, and if you keep it, then of course, in time, you can, I don't know, rebuild them in stone or whatever.

Speaker 2 And this is what Fulknera has been doing. And so the result is that, you know, he's been in power for decades and decades and decades.

Speaker 2 By the 1030s, Anjou has come to be shielded all along its frontiers by kind of great Denjons built on their crags, built on their motts, and they're essentially impregnable.

Speaker 2 And it means, therefore, that Anjou itself is impregnable.

Speaker 1 But because, of course, France is such a competitive arena. Anjou's neighbours then have to follow suit, don't they?

Speaker 1 So that by this point, or certainly by the time Robert goes off on his jaunt to the Holy Land, Normandy too has lots of castles. So you have to, because it's basically basically an arms race.

Speaker 1 But I guess the question then is, is there a kind of human dimension to this?

Speaker 1 And this is a really interesting story.

Speaker 2 Of course, because it's a military revolution that is also a social revolution. So it is creating an entire new class of people.

Speaker 2 Because these castles, obviously, to be effective, they have to be held by warriors who are very well armed.

Speaker 2 probably who have armor, you know, chainmail, and they have to be mobile.

Speaker 2 Because if you're using the castle as a base, then you need to be able to sweep across the surrounding territory and intimidate anyone there, which effectively means that you need horses. And

Speaker 2 how are you going to pay for this? How are you going to pay for the horses, the armor, the swords, and whatever, the lances?

Speaker 2 The answer obviously is you're going to do it mafia style by extorting cash out of those who don't have horses and armor, which effectively means the local peasantry.

Speaker 2 And up until the 11th century in France, peasantry essentially had been scattered. But now they get kind of herded like sheep or cattle into pens.
And these pens are what come to be called villages.

Speaker 2 So the emergence of the castle also sees the emergence of the village.

Speaker 2 And it's, I suppose, the kind of the classic image that people would have of the Middle Ages of, you know, a great castle and peasants and villages clustered around the castle.

Speaker 2 This is where that kind of image is originating.

Speaker 2 And to contemporaries who are living through this, it's a completely shocking, unsettling, terrifying experience because suddenly you're getting these gangs of male-clad thugs galloping through,

Speaker 2 you know, across territory where previously there hadn't been such figures to menace and intimidate. And clerks and clerics and monks, you know, they don't know what to call them.

Speaker 2 But gradually, the word that they start to use to describe these figures these these kind of heavies in there on their horses um because they're horses they come to be called chevalier so people who ride a cheval a horse and in english these figures will come to be called knichts knights

Speaker 1 so we've got the castles we've got the village we've got the knight it's all kicking off but the paradox though right is that if you have your folk nera or whoever who controls all this stuff this makes him you know much more powerful and and and and the potential, therefore, for a very strong and domineering state indeed.

Speaker 1 On the other hand, if they're not controlled, they could easily be tools for complete fragmentation.

Speaker 1 You know, you could have independent castles and independent groups of knights and all this kind of thing.

Speaker 1 So if you have a weak king or a weak count or duke or whatever, then the potential for complete anarchy is sure an armed and violent anarchy is surely greater than ever before.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. And there is an illustration of this, of course, in southern Italy, because this is exactly the process that's been happening.

Speaker 2 Because there isn't a centralized power there, because you have all these rival empires who are competing for these mercenaries, these Norman knights

Speaker 2 on their horses with their mail and their armor and their spears.

Speaker 2 There is a massive opportunity for these mercenaries then to build castles there. That's what they're doing.
That is how they seize their fiefdoms.

Speaker 2 You know, you can grab a crag or whatever, as Fulknera had been doing in Anjou and do it in southern Italy.

Speaker 2 And you've got, you know, perfect base for practicing kind of terrorism, essentially, kind of the mafia law. And all you need really is a horse and armor and arms.

Speaker 2 And the question is, of course, if that can happen in southern Italy, then why not in Normandy itself? If there is not a strong duke, then there will be no one to stop people.

Speaker 2 back in the Norman homeland from doing exactly what they're doing in southern Italy.

Speaker 1 All of which means that for Robert the Magnificent, for all his magnificence, going off on his pilgrimage is kind of risky and dare I say, irresponsible. I mean, he is the authority figure.

Speaker 1 If he leaves, why, why, you know, isn't there a danger that all the different mercenary bands, as it were, will set up their own private fiefdoms?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's at the height of irresponsibility for reasons that we touched on at the end of the last episode. But just to recap,

Speaker 2 the succession in Normandy is rocky. Robert does does have a son, this boy seven years old called William.

Speaker 2 And in fact, before he left on pilgrimage, he had officially nominated this boy as his heir and he had won the sanction for doing this of the King of France.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 2 you know, this boy, to reiterate, is seven years old. And as we discussed in the previous episode, he is also illegitimate.
I mean, that's not a killer blow, but it doesn't help. And so

Speaker 2 should anything happen to Robert on his pilgrimage, then the potential for disaster is absolutely enormous, as it would have been at any point in the dukedom's history.

Speaker 2 But particularly now you have this military revolution with the potential, as you've been saying, for kind of breakdown and anarchy.

Speaker 1 But, you know,

Speaker 2 things seem to be going well. Robert has dazzled Constantinople.

Speaker 2 And very satisfyingly, Fulknera has been on pilgrimage as well. Fulknera is a great one for going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
I think he does it five times. Oh my gosh.
Anyway, he's there.

Speaker 2 And Robert massively puts him in the shade. So that's great for Robert.
Goes to Jerusalem. Again, cuts a tremendous dash, sets off back home.
And by late June, 1035, he is approaching Constantinople.

Speaker 2 But then, before he can cross the Bosphorus,

Speaker 1 disaster. Oh, no.

Speaker 2 He falls sick. He is taken to the city of Nicaea on the south of the Straits.
And there, at the beginning of July, Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy, dies.

Speaker 2 We mentioned how Falknera is on pilgrimage

Speaker 2 and has been put in the shade by this guy who's his great rival. I mean,

Speaker 2 there are rumors and reports that perhaps it's poison.

Speaker 1 It's literally, it's literally as if you'd been on holiday with Dan Snow.

Speaker 2 And I would never poison Dan.

Speaker 1 No, he'd poison you.

Speaker 2 No, Dan would never poison you.

Speaker 1 You would put him in the shade, Tom, with your enormous download figures. Come on.

Speaker 2 And my pistachios.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 And my gold-shod mules.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 I think a wonderful way to end this

Speaker 2 half-would be for me to read from Millennium, my book on this very subject.

Speaker 1 I mean, I can't read. I'm not reading that.
You can read it. Absolutely.
You can read it.

Speaker 2 The Count of Anjou, whose Princeton was separated from Normandy only by a single makeshift buffer, the unfortunate County of Maine, had long been angling to roll back Norman power.

Speaker 2 Now, with Robert dead, such a goal appeared eminently achievable. William the new Duke was only eight years old.

Speaker 1 Normandy had effectively been decapitated. What an unbelievably thrilling cliffhanger.
Join us after the break to find out what happens to William of Normandy.

Speaker 2 This episode is brought to you by the American Revolution on PBS.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to the rest is history.

Speaker 1 And so at last we come to one of the great monsters in all history, Duke William of Normandy, the man who shamed himself and his country by winning the Battle of Hastings

Speaker 1 and carrying out the Norman conquest. So we're in July 1035 and this bloodstained figure is at this point only eight years old.
He's William the bastard.

Speaker 1 Everyone calls him William the bastard because he's not legitimate. And basically the odds are massively against it.
I mean, he probably won't live to the end of the year.

Speaker 2 You see, I'm surprised you don't admire William.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 Because I like a ruthless.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, ultimately a kindly man. I mean, I think there is something of Cromwell about William the Conqueror.

Speaker 1 Do you? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Kind of, he's a man of austere piety and given to brutal invasions of his neighbours.

Speaker 1 I think we said recently that I, and this series, there's nothing I like more than law and order. And he's very much a law and order man.

Speaker 2 Well, as we will see, because the news comes back to Normandy that he is now the Duke and he is really staring down the barrel. So as we said,

Speaker 2 he is called by his enemies, particularly Anjou, William the bastard. And I guess you could say he's a bastard in every sense of the word.
Very good.

Speaker 2 So it is said that his mother was the daughter of a man who had prepared the dead for burial. Or another alternative story is he was a tanner, or perhaps he was both.

Speaker 2 But either way, you know, he is working with the dead, so he is seen as being a man polluted by rottenness and filth.

Speaker 2 And this is a very damaging charge because it implies that William, although of noble descent on his father's side, on his mother's side, is shot through with baseness.

Speaker 2 And the thinking is that Robert,

Speaker 2 by taking to bed the daughter of a corpse handler,

Speaker 1 has,

Speaker 2 as you would say, Dominic, bred a monster. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that this young duke, if he is allowed to grow to adulthood, he will be fated to serve as the shroud winder, not of the dead, but of entire kingdoms.

Speaker 1 I mean, the people who say that are not wrong.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe. But to be honest, the Normans themselves don't really care about William's parentage, partly because actually his grandfather wasn't an undertaker or a tanner.

Speaker 2 He was actually an official in the ducal court. So this was all kind of malevolent anti-Norman propaganda.

Speaker 2 And also it's because I think that they remain sufficiently Viking that

Speaker 2 they're not too worried about the issue of wives and concubines and things like that.

Speaker 1 They like the Rolling Stones. They don't care about petty morals.

Speaker 2 Well, it is observed by the monk Rudolf Graeber, who is a brilliant source for this whole period.

Speaker 2 It has always been their custom for as long as they've been settled in France to take as their princes the offspring of concubines. So I guess you could kind of maybe say that the Rolling Stones.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think you probably could.

Speaker 2 And people may remember that there was this kind of similar issue with Canute, wasn't there? And he had two wives, always one, a concubine, or anything. Although it is interesting that...

Speaker 2 Times are definitely changing. So views on marriage are also part of this great revolutionary process that is kind of picking up speed at this time.

Speaker 2 And the Normans are really actually kind of starting to buy into this. The fact that William's father had gone on pilgrimage is kind of evidence of that.

Speaker 2 You know, they are very, very pious Christians and

Speaker 2 increasingly anxious not to seem on the wrong sides of this kind of great moral revolution. And this combines with a sense that

Speaker 2 the best way

Speaker 2 for a noble family to pass on its patrimony is not to have a divided inheritance.

Speaker 2 So you remember when we talked about the Franks, you were expressing surprise that the Frankish kings and emperors kept dividing up their patrimony between their sons and thinking, well, why haven't they sussed out that this is a bad thing to do?

Speaker 2 This is again, is the period where they are starting to work that out. So the royal dynasty, the Capetian dynasty has worked this out.

Speaker 2 And it seems that Robert, the Duke of Normandy, who's just died, he had worked it out as well. So after he has fathered William, he doesn't take a wife.

Speaker 2 And it's probable the reason he does this is he doesn't want to have a divided inheritance. He doesn't want anyone to doubt that William is his heir.

Speaker 1 Well, no one does doubt, although William is only eight years old. So inevitably, the early years of his ininvertigomas reign are going to be very bloody and contested.

Speaker 1 I mean, whatever he does, and you know, how many eight-year-olds are prepared to take the reins of this warrior state? Sure.

Speaker 2 But I think if there'd been, you know, two other brothers,

Speaker 2 maybe from a legitimate source, then that would have been a real source of instability. But you're right, I mean, he's in a terrible position.

Speaker 2 And a contemporary chronicler notes as a sign how, forgetful of their loyalties, many Normans set about piling up mounds of earth and then constructing fortified strongholds on them for themselves.

Speaker 1 So, these are the castles being used as tools of anarchy, basically.

Speaker 2 The mots, the mounds of earth, and the bailies,

Speaker 2 the towers that are put on top of them. And essentially,

Speaker 2 rival warlords within a dukedom building castles is a terrible sign. It's a sign of state breakdown.

Speaker 2 And the fact that these warlords have their castles means that they can launch raiding parties on their rivals.

Speaker 2 So you get this craze throughout the early years of William's dukedom for abducting foes. So there's a notorious case where one is abducted from his own wedding feast, carried off, blinded, castrated.

Speaker 1 You know, that's not a good start to a wedding.

Speaker 2 So people are literally neutering the opposition and anarchy is spreading across Normandy and it's absolutely terrible time and will always be remembered as the worst time that Normandy ever endured and what about William I mean he's only eight what's he doing in all this he's presumably not going around castrating people no and he's not without support so he does have you know he has the the the backing of the powerful men in his own family the church hierarchy in normandy they stay loyal to him and he has the support of the king of france and that again it is not insignificant but it's not enough to prevent his childhood from being constantly shadowed by violence so two of his guardians are hacked down in quick succession his own tutor is murdered and there's one particularly notorious occasion where he's um he's in a a room and his steward is also in the room asleep And people barge in and they cut the throat of the steward and the blood spills out.

Speaker 2 The young duke is asleep and he he wakes up and finds. Oh my God.
You know, he thinks he's wet himself, perhaps, or something. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 It's like the horse's head and the godfather.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, so, so terrible.
But, of course, the point of that story is that they killed the steward, but they've left William alone. People are not after William himself.

Speaker 2 They're exploiting the fact that he is not in a position to rein in this anarchy, but they're not targeting him for elimination.

Speaker 2 And I suppose you could say that the process of living through these horrors, I mean, it's stealing him, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a good... But, you know, we should think about this a little bit more carefully with our own royal family.
There may be

Speaker 1 a similar Spartan education.

Speaker 2 I thought with your enthusiasm for public schools, that you might say that this could be a way to breed a hardy new elite. Exactly.
Send them off and murder people.

Speaker 1 This is what Prince Philip did with the king, Senator Gordonston. But there is actually, I said Spartan, but I mean, you said it in your notes.
There is something Spartan about a Norman's education.

Speaker 1 So so so somebody like william he is being trained from

Speaker 2 really from birth for war for cruelty for violence i mean that is these are the duties of a norman of a norman man yes and and indeed women so aristocratic girls are being raised in this environment where you know it's all sweat and iron and

Speaker 2 horses and hawking.

Speaker 1 So like a British public school for girls, actually. Pretty, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 2 Horses, cruelty so arms and horses and the exercises of hunting and hawking such are the delights of a Norman yeah and these are of course the patterns of the upper classes that will seize power in Britain yeah and to a large extent still own most of the land to this day so yes this is where it all begins and William himself again like a Spartan is raised as part of a a wolf pack.

Speaker 2 So he's surrounded by kinsmen, by high-born friends, and these are called nuri. So people who are young boys, young men who are nourished at the side of the Duke.

Speaker 2 And so they grow up thinking of themselves as William's brothers in arms. And, you know, this is this is a pack of carnivores being trained to despoil.

Speaker 2 And what are they learning? They are learning.

Speaker 2 the skills that are very, very demanding for this new way of war.

Speaker 2 So you have to learn how to handle a lance properly to sit in a saddle and use a lance i mean this is a new skill a new requirement takes a lot of training and you know it takes years to perfect but william and his nuri his comrades you know this is what they're learning and of course they're also trained in all the cutting-edge military technology of which castle building is the most obvious and it's all about attack about spoliation about conquest so i mean that reminds me a little little bit of Alexander the Great and his companions being raised with their famously long Macedonian spears and, you know, the arts of conquest and all of that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 However, there is a different dimension to this because as you point out in your notes, William is also being raised to be extremely pious, not to say almost fanatical in his attachment to the faith and his belief that he is the embodiment.

Speaker 1 of a kind of new kind of Christian faith, I guess.

Speaker 2 That, again, I think, there's a kind of slight parallel there with Cromwell.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 He's able to commit what seem to be atrocities, but do so in the absolute conviction that he is fulfilling God's will.

Speaker 2 And there is a kind of new type of militancy to this faith for reasons that we maybe come to later in this series.

Speaker 2 But William absolutely is raised in the kind of the fervor, in the spirit flame of this sense.

Speaker 2 And he sees absolutely no contradiction between his vocation as a warrior and his duty to give his subjects peace, peace because it's only as a warlord that he can stamp his authority on the Normans.

Speaker 2 If all the Normans are predators, then he has to establish himself as the top predator, as the apex predator.

Speaker 2 And even the Normans themselves can recognize that it would probably be best for the dukedom if William is able to essentially slap down anyone who would think to rival him.

Speaker 2 So there's an English chronicler writing after the Norman conquest in an abbey in

Speaker 2 who writes about the Normans, rather as you would about dogs, I think.

Speaker 2 For discipline, the Normans with justice and firmness, and they will prove themselves men of great valour, who press invincibly to the fore in arduous undertakings, and proving their strength, fight resolutely to overcome all enemies.

Speaker 2 But without such rule, they tear each other to pieces and destroy themselves, for they hanker after rebellion, cherish sedition, and are ready for any treachery. And

Speaker 2 I think William undoubtedly thinks this. Yeah.
And it steals steals him in his determination not to tolerate any rival. And the older he gets, the readier he is to kind of impose this authority on

Speaker 2 his war-torn dukedom for the benefit, obviously, of people who don't want to live in anarchy and be abducted on their wedding day and castrated. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, let's move to two people who

Speaker 1 are witnesses to all this, who see all this happening.

Speaker 1 They are not Norman-born.

Speaker 1 They are exiles at William's court. And these are people that we mentioned last week who are the heirs to the Anglo-Saxon bloodline that had ruled England for so long.

Speaker 1 The heirs of Curdic, the so-called mythical founder of this bloodline. And these are the half-brothers of Edmund Ironside.
They are called Alfred and Edward. They are the sons of Æthelred the Unready.

Speaker 1 And they have been in Normandy since 1016. so they were there for 20 years before william even succeeded hanging around at the court

Speaker 2 what's been going on with them they've been hanging out in in normandy because they don't want canute to murder them essentially um despite the fact that their mother emma is now married to canute but she's kind of washed her hands of them she doesn't care about them she essentially sees them as as losers She doesn't need to worry about them.

Speaker 2 And I think this isn't really surprising

Speaker 2 because Emma, I mean,

Speaker 2 she is a baggage. She is very hard-nosed.
She's very calculating. And

Speaker 2 essentially, she's interested in upholding her power.

Speaker 2 And she can see that there's no prospect of Edward or Alfred succeeding to a throne that has now been seized by a Danish monarchy. And therefore, the son that she is backing is her son by Canute.

Speaker 2 a guy called Half the Canute. That is the person that she needs to succeed her husband.

Speaker 2 Now, there is a complication because, of course, she has a deadly rival who is this other wife, concubine, whatever you want to call her, Alf Giffu from the Midlands, Knut's first wife, who Canute has set up in Denmark and who likewise has given Canute a son, Harold, who we'll call Harold Harefoot, even though that nickname doesn't emerge until the 12th century.

Speaker 2 Even so, Emma has kind of advantages over Alf Giffu. She is Knut's principal wife.
She's the Queen of England. She's been anointed as such.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 because of this, most of the power breakers in England, so the Earls and so on, they accept that Arthur Cnut is the legitimate heir, that he is the guy who properly should succeed Canute.

Speaker 1 Although, if I can jump in at this point, is there not a slight regional dimension to this in that Emma and Hartha Canute tend to have the support of the kind of the big landers or the big men in Wessex, but you mentioned Elf Giffu.

Speaker 1 She's from the Midlands. And the Mercians are more likely to back her and her son, Harold Harefoot.
Yes.

Speaker 2 But I still think that had Hartha Canute been on the scene when Canute dies,

Speaker 2 then probably most of the Witan, most of the Earls in England would have accepted Hartha Canute as king. The problem is, however, it doesn't turn out like that.
We're a few months on from the death.

Speaker 2 of Robert the Magnificent in Nicaea. It's the autumn of 1035.
Canute dies.

Speaker 2 And the timing is an absolute disaster for Emma because as you say, Hartha Knut is in Denmark and Harold Harefoot is in England. So he is the guy on the scene.

Speaker 2 And what makes it even worse, Emma sends kind of frantic messages to her son saying, you know, come here, come and get the throne. But he can't because he's having to deal with a revolt in Norway.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's

Speaker 2 kind of interesting because it's almost like he's running an election.

Speaker 2 He has to whine and dine all the various members of the Wittan to try and persuade them that he should succeed as king of England and that Hartha Knut should be binned.

Speaker 2 And Emma is likewise frantically campaigning for Hartha Knut to succeed. So

Speaker 2 she spreads rumors that Harold was actually a changing, that he was the son of

Speaker 2 a servant woman, therefore not remotely legitimate, not the son of Knut at all.

Speaker 2 And when this doesn't work, she barricades herself in Winchester, which is the place where the coronation would happen, to try and stop Harold from kind of sneaking in and having himself crowned there.

Speaker 2 But then Elf Gifu turns up on the scene. She sailed from Denmark.

Speaker 1 So bizarrely, she's in Denmark with her rival, with Harthaknut.

Speaker 2 It's all mixed up. But Elf Gifu is very proactive, hates Emma, wants her boy to succeed.
So she does come sailing over and she's very good at campaigning.

Speaker 2 She wines and dines all the various Earls and Jarls and people, all the members of the Witan, urging them to choose Harold as king.

Speaker 2 And because, as you said, there are people in England, particularly in Mercia, who instinctively do want to back Elf Gifu's relatives being among them.

Speaker 2 She's very well connected in Mercia. And essentially, the kind of the momentum is all with Harold.
And so he marches on Winchester, where Emma has barricaded herself.

Speaker 2 Emma realizes it's all up for her. She runs away, leaves Winchester, and Harold seizes what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes as all King Canute's best valuables.
essentially the coronation regalia.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 he's got what he needs now to be crowned.

Speaker 1 If we stop the story there, Emma and Hartha Knut are on one side and they look like they've lost.

Speaker 1 And on the other side, Elf Gifu and her son, Harold Harefoot, looks like this bloke Harefoot, even though it's not his name, he's going to be king and he's got it all going on for him.

Speaker 1 So now Emma's going to be out in the cold and she does something that I think is absolutely bonkers at this point. She drops her candidate, her son.

Speaker 1 and says, well, it wasn't really about him in the first place, actually. It's more about me.
So now she digs out the two losers from Normandy and says, what about the? It throws them into the mix.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 She's such an entertainingly horrible and ruthless character.

Speaker 2 Because, of course, it's incredibly risky for these two lads to come over to England.

Speaker 1 A, they haven't been in England for 20 years, but they haven't seen her for 20 years either. I mean, they have no relationship with her whatsoever, but she's like, right, you two now.

Speaker 1 I'm actually, I'm going to start sending you Christmas cards.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's absolutely it's absolutely mad but they do come in answer to their mother's request i guess they kind of feel well maybe there's an opening here for us to come back so the the first to arrive is the eldest edward and he lands at southampton but i mean the welcoming committee is not all it might be he has a look at it and he thinks oh god i'm out of here and he sails back to normandy yeah and then shortly after that alfred makes his own crossing and he lands immediately gets captured and him and all his followers are treated very, very brutally.

Speaker 2 So we're told that his followers are stolen into slavery, cruelly murdered, laden down with chains, blinded, mutilated, and scalped.

Speaker 2 And Alfred himself is taken to Ely in the middle of East Anglia, kind of on an island surrounded by the Fens. And there he is blinded and he dies soon afterwards of his wounds.
And Mummy...

Speaker 1 Doesn't care.

Speaker 2 But Mummy does care because now, you know, that attempt's failed. So she runs away to Flanders.
And of course, everyone is saying she's behaved terribly. I mean, this is monstrous behavior.

Speaker 2 And so she starts kind of again, spinning frantically and saying, actually, it wasn't me who sent the letters to Edward and Alfred. It was Harold Harefoot who did it.

Speaker 1 There's no truth in that. That's just a lie.

Speaker 2 No, because it was her seal on it. And she's saying, oh, he faked my seal.

Speaker 2 He hacked my account. Right.

Speaker 1 That's terrible.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And in 1038, when Emma summons Edward to go and join her in Flanders, he says, No way, I've had enough.

Speaker 1 Well, you wouldn't. I mean, that's not a mother you want to be reunited with, frankly.
But here's the thing, right? So, this has been a mad story so far.

Speaker 1 All these characters, people called Harefoot and Arthur Keats and whatnot, and just ridiculous twists.

Speaker 1 But now, there is another insane twist to this story, which, you know, if you were the Game of Thrones scriptwriter, you'd say, Come on, this is a bit much. So, Harold Harefoot basically has

Speaker 1 won. Yeah.
He's king. The years go by.

Speaker 1 He is 25 years years old. He could live for another 40 years.
You know, a lot of English listeners to this podcast may be thinking, I've actually never heard of this blank Harold Hareful.

Speaker 2 I think there's a case for saying he's kind of the most obscure king who's ever ruled England. People know nothing about him.

Speaker 1 I've never heard of him. I know nothing about him.
I don't believe this man was ever king of England. And the reason for that is the sources are so kind of fragmentary and vague.

Speaker 1 But also, unbelievable twist,

Speaker 1 he drops dead out of nowhere for no good reason.

Speaker 2 Yet another character in this story who drops dead out of from nowhere. Yeah, so he's gone.
And this is obviously brilliant news for Hartha Knut and for Emma.

Speaker 2 So three months after the death of Harold Harefoot, Hartha Knut lands in Kent. And who should be with him? But his very, very self-satisfied father, who's absolutely delighted.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 So Hartha Knut, to get to England, has had to agree quite stiff terms with the King of Norway. So he abandons his claim to Norway for good.
And there is a story,

Speaker 2 which is, I mean, if it's true, is potentially very significant for future developments, that he had agreed with the Norwegian king, a guy called Magnus, that whichever of the two die first, if they die without an heir, then the other one will inherit the kingdom.

Speaker 1 Let's just sow that seed. If later on there's another king of Norway hanging around and there's an English succession crisis, He might dig this out and say, whoa, I'm actually entitled.
Yeah, I'm in.

Speaker 1 I'm the king of England now.

Speaker 2 So how does Harthknute do? He's terrible.

Speaker 1 I think his reign sounds brilliant. It's very Liz Truss-like, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so there's this lettuce

Speaker 2 sitting in Winchester. So the first thing Hathcano does is...

Speaker 2 He shows himself a good sport by digging up the corpse of his half-brother Harold Harefoot, dragging it through a sewer and then dumping it all shit-stained in the Thames.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 2 He then imposes massive tax rises and crashes the economy.

Speaker 1 That's only a demi-truss.

Speaker 2 That's more a kind of Rachel Reeves.

Speaker 1 That's a Rachel Reeves, but then a truss effect.

Speaker 2 So the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and I'm slightly paraphrasing here, writes, all who had enthusiastically welcomed his coming to power now decided he was useless.

Speaker 1 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 And it may be because he's losing support. It may be because he's already ill by this point.
It may be because Emma is still on maneuvers

Speaker 2 that he invites his half-brother, Edward, over from Normandy to join him. And Edward this time does come.
I mean, maybe he is ill because in June 1042.

Speaker 2 So he has ruled only for a couple of years. He's drinking at a wedding feast.
In Lambeth, I read.

Speaker 1 In Lambeth. In Lambeth, yes.

Speaker 2 When suddenly, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle puts it, he fell to the earth with an awful convulsion. And those who were close by took hold of him and he spoke no word afterwards, but passed away.

Speaker 1 This is why you could never really make a drama of this. Because people would say, I've invested so much in these two characters.

Speaker 1 This feud between Harefoot and Harthaknut that I assume will dominate the rest of the series. And then no, they both drop dead for no obvious reason.

Speaker 2 But meanwhile, in Norway, King Magnus, kind of off-stage character, but as you've been saying.

Speaker 1 This is his chance.

Speaker 2 Well, this is his chance. um you know this is chance to claim the throne but the english don't want him and

Speaker 2 that means that the only plausible possible candidate is emma's other son Edward the son of Æthelred who is a descendant of Alfred the Great and ultimately Kurdic and so unbelievably

Speaker 2 the Kurdic Ingas have been restored.

Speaker 1 The line of Ethelred the Unready had the last laugh.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. So at Easter 1043, Edward is crowned king.

Speaker 2 And people may be wondering, you know, Emma must be exultant about this. She's triumphed.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not a bit of it.

Speaker 2 Edward's grudge against his mother is still going strong. So he confiscates all her treasure and banishes her from court.

Speaker 2 And unbelievably, she then starts plotting with Magnus, the king of Norway, to overthrow her own son. And it's just absolutely deranged behavior.

Speaker 1 So that doesn't work out. So she just basically then, what happens to her?

Speaker 2 She just gets she just kind of withers away in obscurity. So she dies in 1052.
She's buried in Winchester alongside Canute and half of Canute. And Edward is now king.

Speaker 2 So while all this has been going on in England, William has been coming of age. And in 1047, he's 19 years old.

Speaker 2 He faces down a great rebellion and he rides out to battle for the first time and he secures a very bloody victory.

Speaker 2 And riding back from this great victory, he rams home the implications of his triumph by dismantling a large number of illegally raised castles.

Speaker 2 And as he enters his 20s, it is clear to everyone that the anarchy in Normandy is over, that...

Speaker 2 strong rule has been re-established, that William is going to be a duke to respect and to fear.

Speaker 2 And meanwhile, William himself, you know, watching what's been going on in England, he must have been pondering the lessons of Edward's unexpected accession to the English throne.

Speaker 2 And he must have reflected, well, this teaches that, you know, usurpers can be toppled if they have God's favor at their back.

Speaker 2 That those who are favored by God can

Speaker 2 claim thrones and that a man can travel from Normandy to England and become a king.

Speaker 1 But that's all very unlikely, right? Because this guy Edward, who's finally become king, he's hail and hearty. He could have sons.

Speaker 1 And if that were to happen, you know, there would be no opening whatsoever. There'd be no vacancy.
No, there'd be no vacancy.

Speaker 2 But also, just suppose that Edward doesn't have sons and so there is a vacancy. It presupposes that there wouldn't be people in Norway.

Speaker 2 or indeed in England itself who might not have thoughts that perhaps they should become king.

Speaker 1 In England itself. I wonder who you could be thinking about there, Tom.
Well,

Speaker 1 we will find out in our next episode when we turn to one of the glittering stars of English history, the last English king, hero to all who knew him, the story of Harold Godwinson.

Speaker 1 Now, if you want to hear that episode right now, and why wouldn't you?

Speaker 1 You can if you're a member of the Restis History Club. And if you're not already a member, then just go to therestishistory.com and sign up.

Speaker 1 But we will be back next time with the next thrilling chapter in this epic saga. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.