CHRONICLES OF NORMANDY William the Conqueror by  CLAUDE D’ ESPLAS

‘We shall never surrender…’ (Winston Churchill)

             William was the son of Robert Duke of Normandy, 4th descendant of Rollo, and one of his mistresses named Harlotte (whence many years later, he besieged the town of Alençon, the citizens imprudently hung out hides upon the walls, shouting ‘Hides for the tanner !’. William devastated the town, mutilated or flayed alive its chief inhabitants).

             As Robert was one day riding to take the air near his capital town Falaise, he hapenned to pass by a company of rural damsels, who were dancing, when he was so smitten with the graceful carriage of one of them (the above-mentioned Harlotte) taht he prevailed with her to cohabit with him, which she did, and ten months after she was delivered of William.

             It is related by the Monkish writers that the child, soon after his birth, having found some straw under his hand, gathered up certain blades of it, and grasped them so hard that the persons present were obliged to use some violence before they could be forced from him.

             William, surnamed the Bastard (but he afterwards changed the name into that of the Conqueror, from his subduing England) was born in 1027.

             Upon Robert’s setting out for the wars in the Holy Land, he caused William to be recognized his heir and recommended him from his rebellious subjects and certain great men, who imagined thay had a claim to this Dukedom.

             Harold, the Saxon King of England having been driven by the winds on to the French coast probably in 1064, William held him to ransom and made a pact, with him whereby he himself should become King of England and Harold, Earl of the province of Wessex : a story which is told in the tapestry chronicle of Bayeux attributed to William’s wife, Queen Matilda, daughter of the Count of Flanders.

             The invasion of England was a combined operation and the assault compact force of Normans, French, Bretons, assembled during the summer of 1066 around St-Valery, at the mouth of the Somme (7000 fighting men). Mercenaires came from Flanders, Normans from South Italy and Spain : William had received the full support of Pope Alexander II.

             The winds were contrary. D. day postponed but wine was not lacking. The bones of St-Edmund were brought out from the church of St-Valery : the winds changed. The boats went to their rendez-vous with the glory assembling at the mouth of the estuary;  at night the Duke had a lamp of special brilliancy on his masthead.

             On September 28, William and his fleet came to anchor in Pevensey Bay in Sussex. The Duke fell flat on his face as he landed : ‘I have taken England with both my hands’ he commented soberly. Now they could get down to some real soldiering on that morning of october 14, 1066, as Colonel Bogey would phrase it decently.

             The Normans had a peculiar way of fighting with long bows to which the English were strangers, and consequently fought to their disadvantage. And yet their own historians relate, that the main battle of the English, consisting of bills, their ancient weapons, kept so close together in one body, that no force could break them ; till the Normans, pretending to fly, brought the former into disorder and so won the day : which though miserably lost was yet fought with the utmost bravery by the English in order to save their country from the calamity of a foreign yoke. Harold’s body was found among the dead.

             William marched swiftly towards London, obliged the inhabitants thereof to send deputies to him who accordingly came and brought him, meekly, the keys of that city. William was crowned at Westminster by Aldred, Archbishop of York, on Christmas Day, anno 1066 (Duchess Matilda was crowned on Whit Sunday 1068).

             All England did not yield to William. The  people of Romney had killed a band of Norman knights. York and Oxford still held out but he punished the inhabitants with such severity for their resistance, as terrified even the most obstinate. From coast to coast the whole region was laid desolate. In 1075 a serious revolt broke out in the Midlands East Anglia and one surviving Saxon leader, Waltheof, joined the Norman rebels, but the Saxon population supported the Conqueror against chaos : they strove who should first pay homage to William and flocked ‘like flies settling on a wound’ : ‘slavery rather than war !’.

             At first William treated the English with great lenity, and confirmed their laws and privileges. But when he found them plotting year afier year to dethrone him, he then altered his conduct ; for he punished the mutineers without mercy ; and stripping them of their possessions, bestowed them on Normans, and such of the English as had been faithful to him. He deprived, so far as he could, the English nation of their privileges, abolishing their laws, and establishing those of Normandy in their room. He seized the treasures belonging to the Monasteries, upon pretence that the Rebels had concealed their most valuable effects in them ; deprived the English of all places of trust and profit ; and likewise laid a tax upon Land, answerable to the Danegelt, which Edward had abolished ; a circumstance that recalled to their remembrance the evils they had suffered under a foreign yoke.

             He afterwards prohibited them to hunt or fell timber in his forests, without his express leave first obtained. He likewise commanded them to use the Norman tongue only, in all their law proceedings, and ordered it to be taught in all schools. In a word he governed England as a conquered country, insomuch that no Sovereign ever reigned with more despotic sway.

             William fought also against the Welsh, whom he defeated in various battles and against Malcolm. King of Scots and oliged him to do him homage for the whole Kingdom of Scotland ; he made war upon the Duke of Brittany. Last but not least he crossed the French frontier at the head of a powerful army, besieged, took and plundered Mantes and set frre to it but this action cost him his life. He advanced so hear to the flames that the violence thereof together with the heat of the season, threw him into a fever ; which together with a bruise he received near his belly, made it necessary for him to be conveyed in a litter to the priory of St-Gervase at Rouen, where hi died the 9th of September 1087. He was interred in St-Stephen’s Abbey in Caen by the Bishop of Devereux.

             England had suffered the most catastrophic and humiliating defeat in all her history, a ‘débacle’ which was never set off by the subsequent ‘turns of the tide’.The only culture was French (Gurth and Wamba in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe remind us of that historical fact). Surviving Saxon notables sent their sons to the monasteries of France for education. Then the conquerors intermarried with the free population : that marked the final submission of England. The intellectual and social communication between the two sides of the Channel began to yield to a new animation, as underlined by Julie Burchill of the Sunday Times.For the average Englishman, not to mention the last-ditcher Francophile who holidays in Provence (ô Charles !) what about the arrogance, racism and callousness of the French who can’t even make a half-decent pop record (ô Smet the Belgian !), even if they turn to geese into pâté de foie gras (out of their love for animals ?), even if,  according to Sir winston Churchill, the French collaboration with the Nazis reached such a revolting extent (ô Edward VIII, ô Miss Simpson !) , even if Jersey, Alderney and Sark (ô Olivia de Havilland !) are occupied on 3rd July 1940, and if Ambroise Sherwill is proud of his compatriots who behave well with the German soldiers, tanned, clumsy, dancing with pretty young english girls who will later be treated as ‘Kraut-bags’ and patriotically shorn by blackleg haidressers
"Der Mann, der liegt im Massengrab
die Frau in fremden Betten
der Mann, der fällt fürs Vaterland
die Frau für Zigaretten ? "

(‘The man, he lies in the mass-grave
the woman in beds not her own
the man, he falls for the fatherland,
the woman for cigarettes’)

even if there are froced labour camps for Europeans on the islands, already the Common Market with its cortege of famine, toruture and hanging : isn’t better to live on your knees than die on your feet ?

For, after all, as Shakespeare aptly puts it :
       ‘the battle is lost and won’

Claude d’Esplas (Les Merlufleaux)
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