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former European sovereign state, then dukedom of France
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The Duchy of Normandy grew out of the 911 Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between King Charles III of West Francia and the Viking leader Rollo. The duchy was named for its inhabitants, the Normans.
From 1066 until 1204, as a result of the Norman Conquest of England, the dukes of Normandy were usually also kings of England, the only exceptions being Dukes Robert Curthose (1087–1106), Geoffrey Plantagenet (1144–1150), and Henry II (1150–1152), who became king of England in 1154.
In 1202, Philip II of France declared Normandy forfeit to him and seized it by force of arms in 1204 (with the exception of the Channel Islands). It remained disputed territory until 1259, when the English sovereign ceded his claim to mainland Normandy which was absorbed into the French royal domain.
In the Kingdom of France, the duchy was occasionally set apart as an appanage to be ruled by a member of the royal family. After 1469, however, it was permanently united to the royal domain, although the title was occasionally conferred as an honorific upon junior members of the royal family. The last French duke of Normandy in this sense was Louis-Charles, duke from 1785 to 1792.
The title "Duke of Normandy" continues to be used in an informal manner in the Channel Islands (insular Normandy), to refer to the monarch of the United Kingdom. There is no definite end as to when the Duchy of Normandy (with its remnants in the Channel Islands) as a vassal of the English monarch became 'part' of the United Kingdom, with history blending the link between the two gradually. In official documents in Guernsey, the British monarch is entitled "Duke of Normandy", while in official documents in Jersey, the British monarch is ambiguously titled Sovereign. As such, although no form of the Duchy or its structure exists, there has never been a formal end to the "duke's" rule over the islands.
Medieval Latin documents referred to the inhabitants as Nortmanni, which means "men of the North". This name provides the etymological basis for the modern words "Norman" and "Normandy", with -ia (Normandia, like Neustria, Francia, etc.). After 911, this name replaced the term Neustria, which had formerly been used to describe the region that included Normandy. The other parts of Neustria became known as France (now Île-de-France), Anjou and Champagne. The rate of Scandinavian colonization can be seen in the Norman toponymy and in the changes in popular family names.
From the late eighth century, Scandinavian Viking raiders targeted the coasts of northern Gaul and started to raid along the river Seine during the 9th century with the first Viking attack up the Seine river taking place in 820.
Monastic centres such as Jumièges Abbey and Saint-Wandrille were plundered repeatedly; Rouen itself was attacked and temporarily abandoned in 841.
As early as 841, a Viking fleet appeared at the mouth of the Seine, the principal route by which they entered the kingdom. After attacking and destroying monasteries they took advantage of the power vacuum created by the disintegration of Charlemagne's empire to occupy Northern France.
Viking fleets exploited the navigability of the Seine and its tributaries, sailing upriver to raid Paris in 845 under a leader recorded as Ragnar. Annals such as the Annales Bertiniani describe the devastation of monasteries and towns and the payment of tribute by Frankish rulers to secure temporary peace.
Over time, groups of Scandinavians began to overwinter in the lower Seine valley, constructing fortified encampments and establishing trading outposts. Archaeological finds of weapon deposits, silver hoards and Scandinavian-style burials indicate semi-permanent settlement before 911, and there were even small Viking settlements on the lower Seine.
In June 911 Vikings under a chief named Rollo unsuccessfully laid siege to Chartres and in July the Franks successfully relieved Chartres. resulting in a close Viking defeat. Though weakened, the Vikings were still a formidable force, and in the aftermath Charles the Simple who was with the army decided to negotiate the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte with Rollo. Rollo was ceded lands along the lower Seine already under Danish control with Rollo agreeing to defend the territory from other Vikings and that he and his men would convert to Christianity.
The descendants of Rollo and his followers created a long-lived Viking dynasty and an aristocracy that step by step adopted the local French related language, intermarried with the area's native inhabitants and became militant Christians.
In 924, King Rudolph extended Rollo's county westward up to the river Vire, including the Bessin, where some Danes from England had settled not long before. Rollo's son and successor, William Longsword, supported Rudolph and in 933 in return was granted Avranchin and the heavily Norse Cotentin which were in practice outside effective Carolingian control and so had to be forcibly taken from the Duchy of Brittany and would quite quickly suffer a pagan revolt. These expansions brought the boundaries of Normandy roughly in line with those of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen.
Longsword came into conflict with Arnulf of Flanders, who had him assassinated in 942. This led to a crisis in Normandy, with a minor succeeding as Richard I, and also led to a temporary revival of Norse paganism. Richard I's son, Richard II, was the first to be styled duke of Normandy, the ducal title becoming established between 987 and 1006.
In 980, the dukes helped place Hugh Capet on the French throne. In 1066, Duke William defeated Harold II of England at the Battle of Hastings and was subsequently crowned King of England, through the Norman conquest of England. Anglo-Norman and French relations became complicated after the Norman Conquest. The Norman dukes retained control of their holdings in Normandy as vassals owing fealty to the King of France, but they were his equals as kings of England. Serfdom was outlawed around 1100.
From 1154 until 1214, with the creation of the Angevin Empire, the Angevin kings of England controlled half of France and all of England, dwarfing the power of the French king, yet the Angevins were still de jure French vassals.
The Duchy remained part of the Angevin Empire until 1204, when Philip II of France conquered the continental lands of the Duchy, which became part of the royal domain. The English sovereigns continued to claim them until the Treaty of Paris (1259) but in fact kept only the Channel Islands. Having little confidence in the loyalty of the Normans, Philip installed French administrators and built a powerful fortress, the Château de Rouen, as a symbol of royal power.
There were two distinct patterns of Scandinavian settlement in the duchy. In the Danish area in the Roumois and the Caux, settlers intermingled with the indigenous Gallo-Romance-speaking population. Rollo shared out the large estates with his companions and gave agricultural land to his other followers. Danish settlers cleared their own land to farm it, and there was no segregation of populations. In the northern Cotentin the population was Norwegian and resisted Christianisation, including a pagan rebellion against Longsword's rule and Scandinavian derived place names indicate a constant use of Old Norse for four or five generations.
Within a few generations of the founding of Normandy in 911, however, the Scandinavian settlers had intermarried with the natives and adopted much of their culture. But in 911, Normandy was not a political nor monetary unit. Frankish culture remained dominant and according to some scholars, 10th century Normandy was characterized by a diverse Scandinavian population interacting with the "local Frankish matrix" that existed in the region. In the end, the Normans stressed assimilation with the local population. In the 11th century, the anonymous author of the Miracles of Saint Wulfram referred to the formation of a Norman identity as "shaping [of] all races into one single people".
According to some historians, the idea of "Norman" as a political identity was a deliberate creation of the court of Richard I in the 960s as a way to "create a powerful if rather incoherent sense of group solidarity to galvanize the duchy's disparate elites around the duke".
The first generations of Scandinavian and Anglo-Scandinavian settlers brought slaves, mainly from the British Isles, and often turned the women into frilla, a Scandinavian tradition which became known as more Danico, medieval Latin meaning "Danish marriage". The first counts of Rouen and the dukes of Normandy had concubines too. Illegitimacy was not a bar to succession and three of the first six rulers of Normandy were illegitimate sons of concubines.
The Norman polity had to contend with the Frankish and Breton systems of power that already existed in Normandy. In the early 10th century, Normandy was not a political or monetary unit. According to many academics, "the formation of a new aristocracy, monastic reform, episcopal revival, written bureaucracy, saints’ cults – with necessarily different timelines" were as important if not more than the ducal narrative espoused by Dudo. The formation of the Norman state also coincided with the creation of an origin myth for the Norman ducal family through Dudo, such as Rollo being compared to a "good pagan" like the Trojan hero Aeneas. Through this narrative, the Normans were assimilated closer to the Frankish core as they moved away from their pagan Scandinavian origins.
The Norman dukes created the most powerful, consolidated duchy in Western Europe between the years 980 and 1050. By the 1020s the dukes were able to impose vassalage on the lay nobility as they had already on holders of church lands. Until Richard II, the Norman rulers did not hesitate to call Viking mercenaries for help to get rid of their enemies around Normandy, such as the king of the Franks himself. Olaf Haraldsson crossed the Channel in such circumstances to support Richard II in the conflict against the count of Chartres and was baptized in Rouen in 1014.
The dukes maintained relations with foreign monarchs, especially the king of England: Emma, sister of Richard II married King Ethelred II of England. They appointed family members to positions as counts and viscounts, which came about around the year 1000. They held on to some territory in Scandinavia and the right to enter those lands by sea. The Norman dukes also ensured that their vassal lords did not get too powerful, lest they become a threat to the ducal authority. The Norman dukes thus had more authority over their own domains than other territorial princes in northern France. Their wealth thus enabled them to give large tracts of land to the abbeys and to ensure the loyalty of their vassals with gifts of fiefdoms. William's conquest of England opened up more land to the dukes, allowing them to continue these practices whilst preserving sufficient land holdings to serve as their powerbase.
The course of the 11th century did not have any strict organizations and was somewhat chaotic. The great lords made oaths of fidelity to the heir of the duchy, and were in return granted public and ecclesiastical authority. The justice system lacked a central governing body and written laws were uncommon.
The aristocracy was composed of a small group of Scandinavian men, while the majority of the Norman political leaders were of Frankish descent. At the start of the 11th century, the region was attacked by the Bretons from the West, the Germans from the East, and the people of Anjou from the South. All of the aristocrats' fidelity oaths to the Norman dukes were attributed to defending their important domains. As early as 1040, the term 'baron' indicated the elite knights and soldiers of the duke. On the other hand, the term 'vassal' does not appear in the documents from 1057 onwards. It was also in the middle of the 11th century that fiefdoms came to exist. Richard the First designated fiefdoms to counts from the dynasty and the cities so as to prevent them from getting too powerful.
Although within the royal demesne, Normandy retained some specificity as a separate province. Norman law continued to serve as the basis for court decisions. In 1315, faced with the constant encroachments of royal power on the liberties of Normandy, the barons and towns pressed the Norman Charter on the king. This document did not provide autonomy to the province but protected it against arbitrary royal taxes and confirmed that Parisian courts could not overrule the Exchequer of Normandy However when the monarchy became stronger it wrested most of the power back.
The Duchy of Normandy survived mainly by the intermittent installation of a duke. In practice, the King of France sometimes gave that portion of his kingdom to a close member of his family, who then did homage to the king. Philip VI made Jean, his eldest son and heir to his throne, the Duke of Normandy. In turn, Jean II appointed his heir, Charles. In 1465, Louis XI was forced by the League of the Public Weal to cede the duchy to his eighteen-year-old brother, Charles de Valois and Normandy served as a base for rebellion. Dauphin Louis Charles, the second son of Louis XVI, was again given the nominal title of 'Duke of Normandy' before the death of his elder brother in 1789.
After the absorption of the mainland portion of the Duchy into the royal domain of France, the Duchy, now confined to the Channel Islands, continued to exist under the English Crown until it was split around 1290 into the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey by Otto de Grandson, who was Lord of the Channel Islands since his appointment in 1277 by Edward I of England.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Duchy of Normandy”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.