Normans

when an event took place which prostrated both in common slavery and degradation at the feet of a third people.

The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom.

Their valour and ferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers whom Scandinavia had set forth to ravage Western Europe.

Their sails were long the terror of both coasts of the Channel.

At length one of the feeble heirs of Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by a noble river, and contiguous to the sea, which was their favorite element.

In that province they founded a mighty state, which gradually extended its influence over the neighboring principalities of Brittany and Maine.

Without laying aside that dauntless valor which had been the terror of every land from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly acquired all, and more than all, the knowledge and refinement which they found in the country where they settled.

Their courage secured their territory against foreign invasion.

He inherited an empire that was bleeding from every side.

The Turks pressed from the east, a fierce people called the Pechenegs raided from the north, and from the west came the Normans, those restless adventurers from northern France who had already conquered England and southern Italy, and who now eyed Byzantine territory with open hunger.

Alexios was a realist.

He knew his empire could no longer raise the huge armies of farmer soldiers it once had, because the land that fed those armies was now in Turkish hands.

The leaders agreed to divide the host into two columns as they advanced, partly so that the land could feed them more easily, since no single region could provide enough food and fodder for the whole mass at once.

and partly so they could cover more ground.

Bowman and the Normans, along with Robert of Normandy and others, took the vanguard.

Godfrey, Raymond and the rest followed at some distance behind.

The two Norman conquests.

They conquered England and a different lot of Normans conquered Sicily.

Oh, yes, yes.

Okay.

Particular interest in the Normans then.

Why do you like the Normans?

Oh, because they're horrible.

They are villains.

The convents alone kept up any remnants of culture, but as the fury of the northmen was chiefly directed to them, numbers had been destroyed, and there was more ignorance and wretchedness than at any other time.

In the duchy of Aquitaine, much more of the old Roman civilization survived, both among the cities and the nobility, and the Normans, newly settled in the north, had brought with them the vigor of their race.

they had taken up such dead or dying culture as they found in france and were carrying it further so as in some degree to awaken their neighbors kings and their great vassals could generally read and write and understand the latin in which all records were made but few except the clergy studied at all There were many schools in convents, and already at Paris a university was growing up for the study of theology, grammar, law, philosophy, and music, the sciences which were held to form a course of education.

The doctors of these sciences lectured.

So it was actually the Norman conquest.

And we always find ourselves coming back to these pesky Normans, don't they? Highly influential in the sense that we work in, who use the old French word of cité.

I know I've just pronounced the word city with a French accent, but it is spelt slightly differently.

So C-I-T-E, cité, cité.

Nowadays we are pestered by a class of men who would gladly fascinate our nation to error by the charms of antiquity.

They will tell us that a certain ceremony, though no trace of it is to be found in Scripture, must be venerable because practiced in the fourth century, and they imagine that worship in buildings which were founded by Saxons and garnished by Normans must be peculiarly acceptable with God.

To be ancient, is it not a great advantage? As cleanliness is next to godliness, surely antiquity must be next to orthodoxy.

Yet, if there is no scripture to warrant it an ancient ceremony, it is only an ancient farce.

Yes, he was Norman.

So the Normans were descended from the Vikings who had intermixed with the native French.

Excellent.

Yeah, yeah.

So they were the Northmen, the Normans.

It got like bastardized to Normans.

And then they cross.

He had a claim to the throne.

Alongside rulers and battles, the book examines social order, everyday customs, ordinary people, and the gradual blending of cultures that followed the invasion.

Particularly accessible for nine-plus-year-old readers with a reading age of eight, this fun fact-packed guide gives young historians a concise route into both the dramatic takeover and the Normans' lasting influence.

Girl with a Sabretooth Tiger by Jasbinder Bilhan, illustrated by Sonia Albert.

Eleven-year-old Swallow lives in prehistoric England, where her community shares stories and songs around the fire.