On 25 December 1066, William the Conqueror from France was crowned in London, becoming King of England and establishing the Normandy Dynasty.
The Normandys from France brought French culture into Britain and changed old English. Britain's Grand, an overseas island, has been entangled with France for hundreds of years, and has gradually become a force stirring up the situation in Europe, fighting the Netherlands, fighting Spain, and even controlling a quarter of the world's population and land.
William ran to England to seize the throne, with a cool smell of bastard counterattack, and the timing was good.
First, when King Edward died, he was childless, and the Native Nobleman Hadrow II of England had already competed with the King of Norway for the throne.
Although William was a native of the French Duchy of Normans, he had a thin blood relationship with the English royal family, and had helped Edward and Hadro II and received their promises to take the throne, so he also joined the competition.
Second, William was the illegitimate son of the former Duke of Norman, also known as the bastard William, and his boyhood was extremely bumpy, and he had been under murder and house arrest, which made him very eager for the throne of England.
Third, William was a descendant of the Viking Rollo, who inherited the military leadership of his ancestors and commanded an army of Normans, Brittans, Flemishes and French, who had the power to compete for the throne.
Eventually, he defeated Hadro II at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066 and took control of London.
This is the famous "Norman Conquest" in British history.
William led his troops across the English Channel, and when he got out of the boat, he fell on the shore, and his men crossed the line saying that it was ominous, but William was pleased: "Look, my hands have embraced the land of England. ”
William embraced the land of England, but the land was not obedient.
He was a Normandy from France, and the English had opposition everywhere, so how could he control the land?
William thought of making his English wife Matilda king, but he still could not be trusted by the English nobility, so he still claimed the king himself.
So, how did William control England?
Let Britain become another "Duchy of Normandy".
First, as in France, the land was divided among his cronies in exchange for their allegiance.
He divided the country into more than 180 fiefs, as if renting them out to the new nobles, and the rent was the "knightly service" they provided, including paying taxes, defending the king, leading troops to support, etc., which was the system of sub-fiefs, such as when the Zhou Dynasty first divided the various princes. In Europe, the most typical is France.
England originally had a little bit of this phenomenon, but William greatly deepened this feudalization, and Britain became more like a European country.
Second, the English nobility was expelled from the center of power, leaving behind the Normandy or a small number of English nobles who had come closer.
Native English were also removed from government and religious institutions and replaced by Normandy, the English nobility was shuffled, and the ruling class became the Norman nobility.
William sent for a census and wrote the Book of the Last Judgment in Latin. It records that in the decade or so after the Norman conquest, only 5% of the land still belonged to the native nobles of England.
Third, French became the language of nobility and the official language, Latin was the language of education and religion, and English was only spoken by the lower classes.
William actually tried to learn English, but he never learned it, and the King of England once experienced the pain of learning English like everyone else.
The Normans spoke French, which led to an influx of French and Latin words into English, and Old English evolved into Middle English. It was not until 1362, when parliament was first formally convened in English, that English gradually regained its status as an official language.
Fourth, the administrative structure was changed, and the original Magi were abolished and replaced by the norman royal court. The royal court was composed of bishops, abbots, and large landowners, and met three times a year, but the king could still ask for it at any time, and later evolved into a parliament. The king himself had cronies who formed a small organization called the Small Council, which later evolved into a government.
Fifth, more taxes were levied on England. So the revolts in England also rose and fell, and William I was always suppressing the uprising.
Through this series of means, William the Conqueror controlled England and allowed Anglo-Saxon culture to combine French culture to form a new British Isle culture.
The transformed England is no longer a lonely overseas island, and it is more and more closely linked to the European continent.
First, there has been a surge in bilateral immigration between England and The European continent. The English emigrated, and in addition to Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia, there was even a group of Englishmen who fled to Byzantium and joined the mercenaries. The Normandians emigrated to England.
Second, William, who had both French and English legal unity, also influenced britain's diplomatic destiny.
On the one hand, Britain was politically dependent on France, and William, as Duke of Normandy, had the obligation to be loyal to the King, so Britain participated in the Crusades with France for not only economic reasons but also legal reasons.
On the other hand, William had the legal system of England and France, and the territory was on both sides of the Strait, and the coveting of the French throne and territory also led to the beginning of the Hundred Years' War between Britain and France, and the later Plantagenet Dynasty was also established by the Anjou family of France, which carried out greater expansion in France.
However, the Anglo-French War was not a struggle for French unity, but an economic struggle between the two countries. It was not until the end of the Hundred Years' War between England and France in 1453 that France completed national unity, while England lost all its territory in France and went overseas to expand.
At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Queen Elizabeth took England to a wider world stage and became the strongest force to dominate the world situation. Since then, Britain has become the empire that controls a quarter of the world's population and land.
But it was William who brought Britain onto the European stage, the starting point of the Empire where the sun never sets.
When a broader vision is opened, countries are often reborn.
Evaluation of the past
We cannot think of the conquerors and the conquered simply as King William and the English nationals, but as two peoples on the same land, the invading nation and the native English; we can even imagine two nations with far different armies.
—The French historian Augustine Tiyerre