almost six months, and the rest of Normandy then fell swiftly. The English occupation of
Normandy lasted for thirty years, during which time the Normans were taxed heavily to
support the English war effort. By the 1430s, however, the English position was
beginning to slip. The brief career of Jeanne d’Arc, burned in 1431 in the marketplace of
Rouen, inspired a groundswell of French patriotism, and twenty years later, by August
1450, all Normandy again belonged to the French.
A pattern of conquest and assimilation runs through the history of medieval
Normandy. The Scandinavians who created the realm in the 10th century lost much of
their Norseness in the following 150 years, conquering England in 1066 as Christians,
speaking French and observing French customs, yet they remained aware of their own
distinct origins. Under the Conqueror and his heirs, the Norman duchy and the English
kingdom were at times united, but gradually the Normans of England became more
English as the Normans of France became more French. The conquest of Normandy by
Philip II Augustus in 1204 confirmed this growing trend of separation, placing the duchy
directly under the French crown and forcing the Anglo-Norman aristocracy to choose one
side of the Channel or the other. By the Hundred Years’ War, the English king’s
declaration that Normandy was his rightful legacy was in fact the thin excuse of a foreign
power to invade—and the Normans, after four centuries, were prepared to defend their
right to be French.
Cassandra Potts
[See also: BEDFORD, JOHN OF LANCASTER, DUKE OF; CAEN; CHÂTEAU-
GAILLARD; HARCOURT; HENRY I; HENRY II; HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR; JOHN
I LACKLAND; NORMANS IN SICILY; PHILIP II AUGUSTUS; RICHARD, DUKES
OF NORMANDY; RICHARD I THE LIONHEARTED; ROUEN; WILLIAM I THE
CONQUERER; WILLIAM II RUFUS]
Bates, David. Normandy Before 1066. London: Longman, 1982.
Bois, Guy. The Crisis of Feudalism: Economy and Society in Eastern Normandy c. 1300–1550.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Boüard, Michel de, ed. Histoire de la Normandie. 2nd ed. Toulouse: Privat, 1987.
Douglas, David C. William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact upon England. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1964.
Haskins, Charles Homer. Norman Institutions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925.
Jouet, Roger. ...Et la Normandie devint française. Paris: Mazarine, 1983.
Le Patourel, John. The Norman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon, 1976.
Powicke, Maurice. The Loss of Normandy, 1189–1204. 2nd ed. Manchester: University of
Manchester Press, 1960.
Searle, Eleanor. Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988.
Strayer, Joseph Reese. The Administration of Normandy Under Saint Louis. Cambridge: Mediaeval
Academy of America, 1932.
Tabuteau, Emily Zack. Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Cen-tury Norman Law. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
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