L'histoire britannique de Norman Conquest

Norman Conquest, la conquête militaire de l'Angleterre par William, duc de Normandie, principalement effectuée par sa victoire décisive à la bataille de Hastings (14 octobre 1066) et entraînant finalement de profonds changements politiques, administratifs et sociaux dans les îles britanniques.

Royaume-Uni: le règne d'Edouard le Confesseur et la conquête normande

Il est facile de considérer les années de règne d'Edward comme un simple prélude à la catastrophe de 1066, mais il existe d'autres aspects de son règne.

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Invasion de l'Angleterre

La conquête fut l'acte final d'un drame compliqué qui avait commencé des années plus tôt, sous le règne d'Edouard le Confesseur, dernier roi de la lignée royale anglo-saxonne. Edward, qui avait presque certainement désigné William comme son successeur en 1051, a été impliqué dans un mariage sans enfant et a utilisé son manque d'héritier comme outil diplomatique, promettant le trône à différentes parties tout au long de son règne, y compris Harold Godwineson, plus tard Harold II, le puissant comte de Wessex. L'exilé Tostig, qui était le frère de Harold, et Harald III Hardraade, roi de Norvège, avaient également des dessins sur le trône et menaçaient l'invasion. Au milieu de cette foule de revendications contradictoires, Edward de son lit de mort a nommé Harold son successeur le 5 janvier 1066 et Harold a été couronné roi le lendemain. Cependant, la position de Harold a été compromise,selon la Tapisserie de Bayeux et d'autres sources normandes, car en 1064, il avait prêté serment, en présence de William, pour défendre le droit de William au trône.

From almost the beginning of his reign, Harold faced challenges to his authority. Tostig began raiding the southern and eastern coasts of England in May, eventually joining forces with Harald III. Harold was able to keep his militia on guard throughout the summer but dismissed it early in September, when he ran out of supplies and his peasant soldiers needed to return to their fields for the harvest. This left the south without defenses, exposing it to invasion by William. Before William arrived, however, Harald III and Tostig invaded in the north; Harold hastened to Yorkshire, where at Stamford Bridge (September 25) he won a smashing victory in which both Harald III and Tostig perished.

Meanwhile, on the Continent, William had secured support for his invasion from both the Norman aristocracy and the papacy. By August 1066 he had assembled a force of 4,000–7,000 knights and foot soldiers, but unfavourable winds detained his transports for eight weeks. Finally, on September 27, while Harold was occupied in the north, the winds changed, and William crossed the Channel immediately. Landing in Pevensey on September 28, he moved directly to Hastings. Harold, hurrying southward with about 7,000 men, approached Hastings on October 13. Surprised by William at dawn on October 14, Harold drew up his army on a ridge 10 miles (16 km) to the northwest.

Harold’s wall of highly trained infantry held firm in the face of William’s mounted assault; failing to breach the English lines and panicked by the rumour of William’s death, the Norman cavalry fled in disorder. But William, removing his helmet to show he was alive, rallied his troops, who turned and killed many English soldiers. As the battle continued, the English were gradually worn down; late in the afternoon, Harold was killed (by an arrow in the eye, according to the Bayeux Tapestry), and by nightfall the remaining English had scattered and fled. William then made a sweeping advance to isolate London, and at Berkhamstead the major English leaders submitted to him. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066. Sporadic indigenous revolts continued until 1071; the most serious, in Northumbria (1069–70), was suppressed by William himself, who then devastated vast tracts of the north. The subjection of the country was completed by the rapid building of a great number of castles.

Consequences of the conquest

The extent and desirability of the changes brought about by the conquest have long been disputed by historians. Certainly, in political terms, William’s victory destroyed England’s links with Scandinavia, bringing the country instead into close contact with the Continent, especially France. Inside England the most radical change was the introduction of land tenure and military service. While tenure of land in return for services had existed in England before the conquest, William revolutionized the upper ranks of English society by dividing the country among about 180 Norman tenants-in-chief and innumerable mesne (intermediate) tenants, all holding their fiefs by knight service. The result, the almost total replacement of the English aristocracy with a Norman one, was paralleled by similar changes of personnel among the upper clergy and administrative officers.

Anglo-Saxon England had developed a highly organized central and local government and an effective judicial system (see Anglo-Saxon law). All these were retained and utilized by William, whose coronation oath showed his intention of continuing in the English royal tradition. The old administrative divisions were not superseded by the new fiefs, nor did feudal justice normally usurp the customary jurisdiction of shire and hundred courts. In them and in the king’s court, the common law of England continued to be administered. Innovations included the new but restricted body of “forest law” and the introduction in criminal cases of the Norman trial by combat alongside the old Saxon ordeals. Increasing use was made of the inquest procedure—the sworn testimony of neighbours, both for administrative purposes and in judicial cases. A major change was William’s removal of ecclesiastical cases from the secular courts, which allowed the subsequent introduction into England of the then rapidly growing canon law.

William also transformed the structure and character of the church in England. He replaced all the Anglo-Saxon bishops, except Wulfstan of Dorchester, with Norman bishops. Most notably, he secured the deposition of Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury—who held his see irregularly and had probably been excommunicated by Pope Leo IX—and appointed in his place Lanfranc of Bec, a respected scholar and one of William’s close advisers. Seeking to impose a more orderly structure on the English episcopacy, the king supported Lanfranc’s claims for the primacy of Canterbury in the English church. William also presided over a number of church councils, which were held far more frequently than under his predecessors, and introduced legislation against simony (the selling of clerical offices) and clerical marriage. A supporter of monastic reform while duke of Normandy, William introduced the latest reforming trends to England by replacing Anglo-Saxon abbots with Norman ones and by importing numerous monks. Although he founded only a small number of monasteries, including Battle Abbey (in honour of his victory at Hastings), William’s other measures contributed to the quickening of monastic life in England.

Probably the most regrettable effect of the conquest was the total eclipse of the English vernacular as the language of literature, law, and administration. Superseded in official documents and other records by Latin and then increasingly in all areas by Anglo-Norman, written English hardly reappeared until the 13th century.