85312 m852

Seal of William the Conqueror. On the reverse he is portrayed bearing a kitę shield and ‘lance’. He wears a long-sleeved hauberk and mail coif, and a helmet of unusual design, not illustrated in the Bayeux tapestry.

twelve counties. The Holy Roman Emperor’s recognition of Rainulf and Drogo as imperial vassals set the seal on this.

In 1057 Robert Guiscard succeeded his brother Drogo and proceeded to methodically subjugate most of Southern Italy. In 1060 he took the last Byzantine stronghold in Galabria and in the same year began his conąuest of Sicily. Bari, the last Byzantine stronghold in Italy, fell to him in 1071; in 1073 Amalii acknowledged him as overlord; in 1076 Salerno surrendered to him; in 1081 he attacked Corfu; in 1084 he sacked Romę; in 1090 he took Malta; and he finally conąuered Sicily in 1091. Guiscard now ruled the most cultured and technically advanced empire in all of Latin Christendom.

In Guiscard’s homeland, William Duke of Normandy had not been cxactly idle eithcr. He succeeded to the dukedom at the age of seven or eight, and for the next twelve years the dukedom was in a constant State ofanarchy and disorder. The revolt of the barons came to a head in 1047, when the whole of lower Normandy rosę, but with the help of his feudal overlord Henry I of France, William, at the age of twenty, crushed the revolt on the field of Val es Dunes, near Caen. The castles of the rebellious barons were razed, and never again did the nobles challenge the duke’s power.

Normandy had Flanders to the north, France to the east, Brittany to the west, and Maine and Anjou to the south. The Flemings were friendly, and this friendship was cemented by WillianTs marriage to Matilde, daughter of the Count of Flanders. Anjou, on the other hand, was bent on extending its frontiers, and for the next decade Anjou and Normandy fought each other in the intervening county of Maine. There were also campaigns against Brittany. The king of France, who saw the growth of ducal power in Normandy as a threat to French suzerainty, sided with Anjou in 1054 and invaded Normandy. William was triumphant on the field of Mortemer, and again at Varaville in 1058, but refused to follow up his advantage by a direct attack on his feudal lord. Not until 1063-4, with the capture of the chief city of Fc Mans, did William succeed in conąuering Maine. Two years later he invaded and conąuered England.

Neither WillianTs nor Guiscard’s empires ap-pear particularly large on a modern map, yet their importance in the 11 th century was enormous, for outside of Islam and Byzantium thcy were the first great States to be effectively organized sińce the fali of Romę.

Organization

Following the normal custom, the lesser chiefs of the Danes had become established as the aristoc-racy under the Duke of Normandy, but as we have secn, as carly as 1047 these nobles were brought to lieel by the duke. This enabled the duke to assume total control and in Normandy, as nowhere else so fully at this datę, feudalism was organized and controlled for public ends. Military service by feudal vassals was rendered in exchange for the tenure of certain pieces of land (or fees) and this