Just after New Year's Day in 1066, King Edward the Confessor of England died on his sickbed.
The monarch, known for his piety, left a political legacy during his 22-year reign: he spent about a tenth of england's income on the construction of Westminster Abbey. The crown used by Edward during the coronation ceremony was enshrined as the "Crown of St. Edward" and became a major symbol of the power of the British royal family.
Edward also held the first "Divine Touch" ceremony in England, performing touch treatments for people suffering from fistulas to demonstrate the King's unique "supernatural powers". Of course, from the perspective of modern medicine, fistula itself has a certain self-healing rate, even if it is not treated, the symptoms are likely to disappear on their own after a period of time.
But 1,000 years ago, the people generally regarded it as a "miracle of kings", a manifestation of the sanctity of royal power. For the next 700 years, successive kings used the "divine touch" to convey the concept of "divine authority of kings" to the people.
However, Edward, who bore the title of "saint", was very troubled by the question of heirs: he himself had no heirs, and in the middle and late period of his reign, the actual power was controlled by the great nobles Godwin family, and Edward's relationship with the Godwin family had always been at odds.
Edward had planned to make his cousin Edward the Exile, the son of the brave Eamond, the next king, but the young man returned to England from Hungary and died mysteriously only a week later, and many speculated that Harold of the Godwin family was behind it.
Undecided as a successor, Edward the Confessor died, and it is said that on his deathbed he told his close attendants that an age of sin was coming, and that evil would sweep across the land. These two sentences undoubtedly became the best footnote for the following year: around the Throne of England, Harold of the Godwin family, William, Duke of Normandy, king Harald III of Norway or allied with each other, or conquest, set off a bloody power struggle.
Ed West, a veteran British writer and journalist, "1066: England Before and After the Norman Conquest" selects the special year of "1066" to interpret the large and small events that occurred in England, Franconism, Denmark and Norway before and after William I's realization of the Norman Conquest, and the entanglement of enmity between anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans, vividly showing the panorama of the "Norman Conquest" that changed the direction of English history.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 The Game of Thrones Behind the Crown: From Norway to Normandy</h1>
For the English, 1066 was an eventful year. Shortly after edward the Confessor's death, Harold, a powerful minister, ascended to the throne of the king at the election of the Council of the Magi, an important political institution of the Anglo-Saxon era. But looking around, his throne was not at all stable, and there were many people who coveted the crown on his head.
Harald III, norway's "mad king," was encouraged by Harold's brother, the exiled Tostig, to attack England. Before lobbying Harald III, Tostig had been wandering around Northern Europe for a long time, trying to sell to King Swane II of Denmark a "grand plan" to invade England. In order to impress Swane II, Tostig did not hesitate to move out of the history of England, Cnut the Great, making him believe that he also had the noble blood of the English royal family, but the cautious Swan II chose to refuse after careful consideration.
Unlike Swane II, Harald III was a ruthless and somewhat insane man who accepted Tostig's views in spite of the realities of the internal situation in England.
Unprepared and unorganized, Harald III and Tostig sailed with their fleet toward England. The result ended in a tragic defeat for the Norwegians, with Tostig killed by a flying arrow in the eye, Harald being knocked down by an English soldier, and it is said that he also wrote a dying poem: We march in line, with no armor, and facing each other, it is a dark blade. The helmet reflected the light, but it was not ours, and our armor was still lying quietly in the ship.
The tragic experience of the Norwegian king did not "dissuade" those who were eyeing the throne of England, and Konan of Brittany claimed to have the right to inherit the throne, but it was not long before Conan, who had not yet put it into action, was poisoned and died. In the early Middle Ages, there were not a few princes and nobles who died due to "strange" reasons such as food poisoning and disputes, and as for the real reasons behind them, they could only rely on speculation, but most likely they were profit factors.
After the "supporting roles" of the King of Norway, Tostig and Konan gradually withdrew, another protagonist in the battle for the Throne of England: William, Duke of Normandy, made a magnificent appearance. The mother, who came from a humble background and was once derided as an "illegitimate child," would be the final winner of the power game in 1066.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 William the Conqueror: "Famous" legion of adventurers</h1>
Due to the early death of his father Robert, William, Duke of Normandy, grew up in an environment of constant conspiracy and struggle, developing a cold-blooded, cruel, scheming, and somewhat "deranged" temperament, and had unlimited ambition and greed for power. Faced with the coveted title of King of England, William was very impressed. However, he was not as reckless as Harald III, and he made very thorough preparations before leading a large army to invade England to compete for the throne.
Although the european countries in the Middle Ages were constantly fighting, they would also pay attention to "being famous", and William first sacrificed the first "big move": he declared that he was the best candidate for the king of England.
First, Edward the Confessor had promised to let him inherit the throne. Second, the current king Harold also swore an oath of support for William's becoming king of England. The cause of the incident is said to be in 1064, when Harold was out on a tour, after the fleet was blown into the territory of the Duke of Ponteo by the sea breeze, the other side made a request for a huge ransom, and later at the mediation of William, the Duke of Pontio released Harold and his party. As a token of gratitude, Harold vowed to submit to William in the future.
The credibility of these two claims is still debated. Looking first at Edward the Confessor, at first glance, it seems inconceivable that a king of England would give authority to an "outsider", but in the light of Edward's own experience, it is not entirely impossible.
In the "General History of Britain" edited by Professor Qian Chengdan, it is mentioned that Edward himself had a strong "pro-Norman tendency".
His mother, Emma, was a Norman, and as a teenager to escape the war, Edward lived for many years in a monastery in Normandy. Long-term Norman life experience not only affected Edward's language and living habits, but also frequently placed Normans in important positions in personnel arrangements.
Looking at King Harold, political conflicts of interest aside, he and William once got along very well, sometimes going out hunting together and actively advising each other.
However, in the face of the great temptation to become the monarch of a country, it is reasonable for friends to turn their backs. In order to make his remarks more convincing, William said to the outside world that Harold had the remains of St. Edmund under the table when he swore, which made Harold's "oath" add to the sanctity of religion.
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In addition to clarifying his priority for succession to the throne, William also won the support of the Holy See. In the middle of the 11th century, there was a constant turmoil within the Holy See, and there was a situation in which three popes stood side by side, and when Nicholas II and Benedict X competed for the papal throne, William sent troops to help the former and won the favor of the pope. He also promised the Holy See that once he became King of England, he would obey the pope's rule. Because of the many interests involved, the balance of the Holy See tilted to william's side, and William's expedition to England was not only to regain the throne he "deserved" but also to "save" the problematic Church of England.
With these two resounding names, William "packaged" an invasion into a crusade of justice and faith. With the support of the Pope, many believers joined William's ranks, and merchants from Flemish, Germanic, Italian, Danish, Frankish and other places also smelled the taste of profit and became a member of William's entourage. At the end of September 1066, this large "army of adventurers" set out from Normandy with 700-1,000 warships, crossed the English Channel, and set foot on The land of England.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >03 After the Norman Conquest: The Last Judgment and the Hundred Years' War</h1>
In October 1066, William's army and Harold's English army engaged in a fierce battle at Hastings.
According to historical records, the soldiers on both sides behaved very differently the night before the war: the English soldiers were drunk one by one, while the Normans ate communion and prayed sincerely all night. On the battlefield, although England had noble guards armed with two-handed axes, the Norman cavalry and archers were obviously more effective.
The Battle of Hastings ended with the victory of William's army, harold was hacked to death by the pursuing knights, and in the widely circulated version of the story, his eyes were shot by the Normans.
William's conquest of Normanism, his election as King of England, and his coronation as William I at Westminster Abbey were of great significance in English history: on the one hand, the Anglo-Saxon era officially ended and the Norman dynasty began. On the other hand, a series of reforms by King William produced great changes from social class to political system.
In the dark years of England before William's accession, people's social roles mainly included nobility (i.e., "Sain"), freedmen (also known as "Korol"), and slaves. After 1066, William I redistributed the benefits, and the lands and wealth of thousands of Anglo-Saxon nobles were confiscated and became the private property of the Normans.
The "Sain", a class that had once been infinitely beautiful, was wiped out, and the foreign Britons, Parisians, etc. were transformed into the new ruling class of England: the lords. The toilers in the estates of the rich lords were the freedmen who had lost their land, and now they had a new identity: serfs, vassals of the lord class, and feudalism was gradually established in England.
In order to ascertain the assets of all classes and ensure the allegiance of the vassals, in 1086, William I conducted a very detailed survey of land and taxes, and the meticulousness of its categories and the perfection of the data frightened the respondents, so it was also named the "Book of the Last Judgment".
In terms of the political system, the "Council of the Wise Men", led by the nobility, played an important role in the Anglo-Saxon era, having a say on major issues, including the choice of succession to the throne. During William's reign, it was replaced by the Imperial Council, although there was still a certain degree of autonomy and independence, but compared with the Council of the Wise Men, the nobles attending the meeting were more likely to attend as vassals, and the Imperial Council evolved to some extent into the "Court of Lords where the King appeared as a lord", and the royal power was further expanded. The change from the Council of the Wise Men to the Great Council of the Imperial Court laid the institutional foundation for the final formation of the British parliamentary system.
As an alien "invader", during the reign of William I in England, the Normans and Anglo-Saxons were constantly in conflict, such as fixing Danish gold into direct taxes and expelling peasants from the "woodlands" exclusive to the royal family, which caused resentment among the people. In order to maintain the stability of their rule, the Normans also issued a special "English law": as long as it is a corpse found by the government, unless there is conclusive evidence, it is regarded as a Norman who was killed by the English. Such a simple and crude determination of guilt is enough to see the depth of the estrangement and contradiction between the two ethnic groups at that time.
The English writer Dickens once commented on William the Conqueror: what he obtained through violence could only be sustained by violence, and to this end he turned England into a great grave.
The influence of the Norman Conquest on England was not limited to this, and a large number of French words entered the English language, and traces of it can still be seen today. The relationship between England and the Franks became more delicate, and in the centuries that followed, the island nation of England occupied towns such as Calais in the Franks, and the British king claimed the right to inherit the French throne, and the seeds of the Hundred Years' War were quietly brewing during this period.
Churchill said in his History of the English Peoples:
"The most remarkable feat of the Normandy was the conquest of England, the reconnection of the history of England with the history of Europe, and the prevention of England from sliding into a narrow orbit similar to the Scandinavian Imperial system. Since then, the history of England and the peoples south of the English Channel have moved forward together. ”
In fact, in the thousand years after the Norman conquest, no foreign nation was able to occupy LinkedIn gran, and william the "conqueror" who dominated all this had mixed evaluations in history. Some people think that he opened a new chapter in the history of England, and his historical merits deserve to be praised by future generations, but many people point out that William's aggressive actions dragged tens of thousands of people into the quagmire of war, and countless young and old lost their lives, which is undoubtedly a huge disaster.
As for William himself, it is said that at the last moments of his life, he said to his eldest son, Rufus: "I cannot hand over the throne of England to you, because it was obtained through improper means." The truth of this "dying confession" may be doubtful, but as soon as William took a breath, the servants began to scramble for property, leaving only William's body "lying almost naked on the ground, ignored."
After William's death, England was still shrouded in a cloud of power struggles. His three sons, and grandchildren, once again fought and killed each other for the glittering crown of England. In 1154, with Stephen's death, the Norman dynasty's less than a hundred years of rule came to an end.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles writes of William's death: "This once mighty king, sitting on a vast land, is now only seven feet of loess. Among them, there are Both Anglo-Saxons who are "victims" and the joy that is difficult to hide when they hear the death of the "enemy", and it is also easy to think of the sentence in "Dream of the Red Chamber": Even if there is an iron threshold of a thousand years, there must be a steamed bun.
Power, war, throne... In the end, it will become the past, and human life is even more fleeting, after experiencing so many intrigues and conquests, in the end it is only seven feet of loess to cover the wind.
Resources:
1. Ed West, 1066
2. Churchill, A History of the English Nation
3. Qian Chengdan, General History of Britain
4. Dickens, A Brief History of Dickens England
Note: The accompanying image comes from the network.