bjack on 23/8/2016 at 05:17
I am interested in other opinions than what I have seen in Bayeux. Wonder of wonders I know about the Norman “invasion” before even traveling to Normandy. Some USA schools do teach things other than very recent history. Anyway... I am wondering if there are different opinions on who was the hero (terrorist) and who got his comeuppance (or was murdered)? In most accounts, Harold was a dick weed that needed a beat down. Is that the general consensus? Just wondering. I have no horse in this race. Please do not read anything into my comments above. Those are simply notes to show the other possible side of the story. I tend to go with the tapestry story, but to the victors go the spoils... Just thought this may be a topic someone might like? Old yes, but interesting at least to me. Thanks.
demagogue on 23/8/2016 at 06:01
There was a contested succession, and William's army had obvious advantages, more cavalry and archers & Harold leaving half his army north.
I don't know if there's much more to it than that.
Realpolitik, especially the medieval brand, doesn't care who was in the right, as far as who has the right to rule, anyway.
If you want to talk about the only signifiers of moral sanction & legitimacy to rule of the time, in the end the church sided with William and sanctioned his rule, but a chunk of the local nobility & population didn't accept him and there were rebellions for quite a few years--Harold might have had less of that--but anyway within a decade he'd brought them in line. So it's a mixed bag, but more on his side in the end.
bjack on 23/8/2016 at 17:33
Thanks for that opinion and knowledge demagogue. In California, we did here of the battle, but mainly in the context it brought French into our language. It was also pointed out the common Germanic type English words became vulgar. Words for the working man (aka surf types) remained the same. So a cow and steer were still those, but if you ate them you ate beef. Body parts being nasty, evil, and vulgar remained arm, hand, finger... But as for the moral side of it all, in the US in my day, it seemed a question no one cared to answer. I was just wondering if there is an opinion in Europe on the contrary. I know in France they think it was just dandy!
Nicker on 23/8/2016 at 21:46
As with all aristocracy, new and old, somewhere in the past is a bloodthirsty thug. All claims of the right to rule extend back to the criminal acts of the founding ancestors, posthumously blessed by an equally blood stained clergy.
That said, Harold was the local thug and spoke the language. William was the absentee landlord who couldn't be bothered to speak to the people in their own tongue. But we did get some elegant enhancements and nuances to English, thanks to William's tyranny.
bjack on 23/8/2016 at 23:08
Thanks for that perspective ;) I think it would be fun to go a thousand years in the future and see what people would say about today. I figure I would be killed immediately on arrival, since I would be crying some sort of virulent disease that had been cured, yet I was a carrier. Probably simple yeast or something. Maybe chicken pox...
As for Harold, he did not reign too long, did he. It seems he was king for just 9 months or so, then got stabbed in the eye. Those tapestry weavers... always trying to put spin on things!
SD on 24/8/2016 at 00:08
Quote Posted by bjack
Those tapestry weavers... always trying to put spin on things!
It's actually an embroidery rather than a tapestry. True story.
bjack on 24/8/2016 at 01:11
I did not know that SD. It does make a lot of sense, come to think of it.
My wife and I loved that town it is housed in. It is a great place for base camp to see much of Normandy. We spent Halloween 2001 there. One of the few places where Halloween is a thing other than the USA. It was so cute to see the little ones come in for candy. It was also a lesson for us that once you have a table, you are supposed to keep it for the evening. As an American, we are used to giving up the table once done with dinner. We ordered food, some drinks, and stayed about an hour. They were slightly aghast that we dared to leave at that point. We took up a table that someone else would have used and stayed the entire evening. Very different culture. I know better now and would not have done the same thing. We would have lingered longer and ordered more wine! I also feel sorry for the service people that had to deal with my TERRIBLE high school French. It is simply awful. Still, they were exceptionally polite about it. Maybe it was my apologies and the “sorry, we are from the USA.” This was only a month or so after 9/11.
demagogue on 24/8/2016 at 05:18
Well in related news I just finished a book on medieval European history--Inventing the Individual: the Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop--that made it relevant in a big way. So the story is almost every part of our modern world has its origins in the medieval period, and it's only the prejudice of the Renaissance & Enlightenment periods that tried to play down how influential it was & stole credit for all of its ideas that were already in place before they even began.
You could down the list ... secularism, democratic legitimacy, bureaucracy, "natural rights" as limits on authority, most importantly no coercion of beliefs & freedom of conscience, sovereignty, equal citizenship, voluntary associationism, empiricalism/science ... all of that was developed in the medieval period.
It was really helpful for me first in just providing a lot of landmarks to get my bearings on the period. The turn of the first millennium was one of the most important periods though, since that's when the Papal Curia had its reforms to exert jurisdiction over church matters over all of Europe in the vacuum left by the collapse of the Carolinian Empire. That set the basic model that kings later copied to establish states, bureaucracies, & the modern world order, with democratic legitimacy, equal citizens, and natural rights.
On that level, the Normal Conquest is indicative of the fragmentation under feudalism which prompted the curia to fill the vacuum, and papal interference in the invasion & its aftermath was symbolic since it was kind of at the furthest reaches of Christian Europe. There's probably a lot more to that story, but this book itself didn't go into too much detail over historical events per se, only what was important to how society developed.
nicked on 24/8/2016 at 06:42
Sorry, but... "Normal Conquest" is such a great typo. :laff:
demagogue on 24/8/2016 at 06:47
Yes, the Special Invasion came later, but thank goodness their ships didn't survive the storm.
By the way, I don't know how other USAmericans think, but I've always understood UK/English history before 1640 (if not later) as essentially our history, not that it's part of our's but we're part of its.
