assassinated in 942 by the count of Flanders, and two years later the Normans faced a
two-pronged attack by King Louis IV and Hugues le Grand, duke of the Franks. In the
960s, the counts of Anjou, Flanders, and Blois-Chartres attacked the province with King
Lothair. But the Normans of Rouen resisted these aggressions, and during the reigns of
William Longsword’s son Richard I (r. 942–96) and grandson Richard II (r. 996–1026)
the duchy emerged as a permanent territorial entity whose institutions and traditions
fused its Scandinavian and French heritage. By the turn of the century, the six bishoprics
under Rouen’s authority were reestablished and active and important monasteries were
restored. Both Richard I and Richard II encouraged this ecclesiastical revival, inviting
respected churchmen from outside Normandy to participate in the recovery and reform of
churches in their duchy. During the reign of Richard II, the secular administration also
took shape. A network of counts and viscounts emerged, bound together by ties of
kinship and by their common allegiance to the duke.
Richard II was followed as duke by his sons Richard III (r. 1026–27) and Robert the
Magnificent (r. 1027–35). Robert’s untimely death returning from pilgrimage to
Jerusalem threw the duchy into political disorder, as rival lords and kinsmen opposed the
succession of his illegitimate seven-year-old son, William (r. 1035–87). But the young
duke survived his minority and overcame his opponents, most notably in 1047 at the
Battle of Val-ès-Dunes, in 1054 at the Battle of Mortemer, and in 1057 at the Battle of
Varaville. In 1063, Duke William became lord of Maine, pressing the claim of his son
Robert Curthose, who had been betrothed to the sister of Count Herbert of Maine. Three
years later, on October 14, 1066, William defeated Harold Godwinsson at the Battle of
Hastings and seized the crown of England.
The conquest of England enriched the Norman aristocracy, since the new king
rewarded his supporters with the lands and titles of the defeated Anglo-Saxon nobility.
Their new lands were not to be plundered as war booty but were instead to be held
conditionally, in exchange for a specified number of knights to serve the king. This
principle of contractual military tenure, the underpinning of feudalism, had existed in the
duchy before 1066, but after the Norman Conquest knight service came to be assessed
more precisely and systematically in William’s lands on both sides of the Channel. The
conquest of England thus brought wealth to Normandy, as well as more exact definitions
of vassalage and military obligations.
The 11th century was the heyday of Norman expansion to the south and to the north,
although this was the work of independent adventurers rather than a ducal program. In
southern Italy and Sicily, Norman mercenaries led by Robert Guiscard (d. 1085) carved
out a state from Byzantine and Muslim holdings. In the next century, this Norman
kingdom of Sicily became a rich and cosmopolitan realm during the reign of Robert’s
nephew Roger II the Great (d. 1154), one that fused Muslim, Byzantine, and Latin
traditions under the Norman rule. Warriors from Normandy also fought Muslims in Spain
and in the Holy Land, where the fall of Jerusalem to the First Crusade (1095–99) brought
the creation of four crusader states, including the Norman principality of Antioch, whose
first ruler was Bohemund, a son of the same Robert Guiscard. Although these conquests
in the Mediterranean had little impact on the duchy itself, the Normans in Normandy
boasted of the exploits of their fierce cousins in the south, and a few Norman churches
received presents that their members sent back from Italy.
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