The Normans
May 15th, 2008 | by indo |
Above : Picture Of Normans Knight
It is necessary to understand who and what were those Normans to whose King the deposed Diarmuid had gone for support against his fellow-countrymen.
Early in the tenth century a body of the Norsemen who were at the time devastating Ireland and other countries, had made a settlement on the banks of the River Seine. The King of Paris granted to them a large tract of country on the shores of the English Channel called Neustria—one of the old Frankish Kingdoms. There they settled down—as their kinsmen were doing in Ireland—and the territory which they occupied became known as Normandy. Ruled by their own dukes, they paid a nominal obedience to the Kings of France-—whose Kingdom, indeed, consisted mostly of a number of similar semi-independent states. The Normans adopted the Christian religion and the French language, laws, and customs. They were rapidly becoming an integral part of the French nation which was then developing.
In 1066, the then Duke of Normandy— William the Conqueror—laid claim to the throne of England, and in the single battle of Hastings conquered that country. England was parcelled out among the Norman ” barons ” or chief followers of the Conqueror, who occupied all the lands. The native English, upon whom the French-speaking Normans looked with contempt, were reduced to the lowest slavery. After the battle of Hastings, William had swept the country with merciless violence. The North of England in particular was turned a esert ” all who resisted were slain on the spot; every house was burned, every living animal destroyed.”
William had made plans by which the natural turbulence of the barons might be kept in check, and his immediate successors had—although with difficulty—maintained control over them. But for twenty years before the accession of Henry II (1135-1154) they had kept England in a state of disorder and anarchy. An English chronicle says : “It was a time when any rich man made his castle, and when they filled them with devils and evil men. They were the days when wretched men starved with hunger. In those days the earth bore no corn, for the land was all fordone by such deeds, and men said openly that Christ and His apostles had gone to sleep.” England was covered with the castles erected by the barons, which they filled with mercenary soldiers. Most of these mercenaries were from Flanders, which the French Kings were endeavouring to annex. The barons and their Norman and Flemish followers lived on the pillage of the unfortunate natives, and in their castles perpetrated hideous cruelties upon their prisoners.Below : Painting Of Norman Army Invade From Beach
Henry had crushed the barons, but only for a time. Their disloyalty and hatred of all government burst out again before his death under the leadership of his own rebellious sons.
Henry ” Plantagenet ” was a fierce, determined man of great ability and much energy, but subject to such paroxysms of passion that he was said to be possessed of a devil. He was more French than Norman, his father having been Count of Anjou. Although he had, in right of his mother, secured the throne of England, he was really a great Continental ruler. His possessions included more than one-half of modern France, stretching from the English Channel to the Pyrenees and from the Bay of Biscay almost to the Rhone. England, however, was his only possession that gave him the title of King ; his various other territories were ” fiefs ” of the King of France, and for them he paid homage to his feudal superior. Of the 35 years during which he wore the crown of England, he spent only thirteen in that country, and he never spoke a word of its language. A’lost of his reign was spent in Continental wars with his brother, with his feudal superior the King of France, and with his own sons and subjects.
When the Normans had so easily conquered the Saxons of England, they had failed to subdue the Welsh. The Cymry, who had withstood Roman and Saxon, still maintained their independence against the Norman invader. When Henry had suppressed the barons he gave a new direction to the activities and rapacity of some of the more restless amongst them by utilising them against the Welsh. He placed them with their Flemish mercenaries on the Welsh ” marches ” with liberty to hold such lands as they could tear from the Welsh. The latter, not unnaturally opposed to this disposition of their lands, maintained a determined resistance, which was, on the whole, successful. It was amongst those Norman barons on the Welsh marches that Diarmuid was to find his principal allies. Chief among these was Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke—better known as ” Strongbow “—who had recently lost to their rightful owners the lands of which his father had deprived the Welsh, and who, therefore, was now poor and needy. The famous group of families known to Irish history as the ” Geraldines ” were also situated on the Welsh marches, and their circumstances were much like those of Strongbow. They bore the names of Fitz-Gerald, Fitz-Stephen, Fitz-Henry, and De Barri, and were closely related, being all the sons or grandsons of an attractive Welsh princess named Nesta.
What is sometimes called the ” English ” invasion of Ireland was, therefore, carried out by the subjects of an Angvein King, the leaders being French-speaking Normans and half-Welsh, and many of the followers being Flemish mercenaries.
The greatest quality of the Normans was their military prowess. Like their earlier kinsmen the Norse, the Norman barons and knights looked upon fighting as their only profession. Their whole system of life and government was constituted upon the basis of military service. Naturally, they had brought the science of warfare to its greatest perfection ; their arms and armour were of the highest excellence ; they were expert in the erection of castles and fortifications. The knights, clad in complete armour, and carrying long lances, fought on horseback ; the archers, no less deadly, armed with the famous long bow or the cross bow, supported them on foot. Their discipline was perfect, and the fierce jealousies which prevailed amongst them never prevented the most effective co-operation when actually on the field of battle. This perfection of military skill had won for the Normans many a victory against tremendous odds in many parts of Europe from Normandy to Sicily, and as far as the Holy Land.
The Irish clans did not possess the military skill of the Normans and they were infinitely inferior to them in arms and equipment. Armour was little employed by them, and they seem to have looked with contempt upon its use. The art of fortifications was ignored, except in elementary forms. In fact, they looked upon war as a temporary incident. They were, accordingly, badly prepared for a contest with a permanent military organisation which was specially trained and equipped for a settled policy of conquest.
Tags: cymry, henry II, military prowess, normandy, normans, norsemen, strongbow, william the conqueror