Ripples: The Chaos Over Normandy and A Solution to the French Problem
By the end of 1068, Harold's counter invasion of Normandy was almost a complete success. He controlled the coastline from Guines to the Contentin Peninsula, and he had also taken the inland counties of Évreux, Rouen, and Mortain as well. The heart of Normandy was now in English hands, and her duchess, was going back to England as the prize wife of Northumbria's earl Morcar. Of course the death of young Robert Cor de Lion, the threat of further invasion, and the kidnapping of the Duchess of Normandy naturally provoked a French response. Of course Harold was not actually interested in controlling Normandy, rather, he just wanted to see it to burn. The Normans after all, had nearly conquered England a year and a half earlier; the counter invasion, which came to be known as the Rape of Normandy, was to make sure that the Normans would never come that close to taking England again. This is why the English used scorched earth tactics, burning everything from Boulogne to the tip of the Contentin.
So, when the French actually did respond, the English were on their way home, with Matilda of Flanders on board en route to Northumbria. There were three important consequences of the Rape of Normandy. First of all, Normandy was crippled beyond any foreseeable recovery. The duchess had been kidnapped, the heir murdered (although he went down most valiantly), and her fields, her houses, her churches, burned, and her livestock killed (at least all of it that the English couldn't fit on their boats). Second of all, the French reinforcements (mostly from Brittany, some from Anjou, Champagne, and Blois) found themselves at the heart of some very contested territory, and they did not particularly feel like leaving when the threat of the English was gone. Third, Robert the Frisian had usurped control of Flanders with his wife's armies from Holland, which sparked a war between the Holy Roman Empire and France.
Ideally, the regency of the duchy would be handed over to Baldwin VI of Flanders until Richard FitzWilliam came of age, but he was busy trying to assert his claim to his own territory, and so in no place to rule over the burnt Normandy. That left William FitzOsbern, a distant cousin of William FitzRobert the Bastard who had swindled the other children off to the Isle of Guernsey. But the long contested duchy of Normandy was now in mixed hands. Fulk IV of Anjou of course, ever the entitled dunce, believed that Normandy should go to him, since Robert Cor de Lion had done him homage in 1066 before his father departed to England to be butchered on the beach. But his claim too was contested, since the first to answer Normandy's plight were Celtic barons from Brittany, who were the only ones besides the Normans to actually fight the English. One such baron, one Treveur al Louarn had actually routed an English army at the Battle of the Sélune River. Although his victory was a small one, this Treveur an Louarn had been a powerful and faithful servant of Fulk's interests in Brittany, but he was disagreeing with his lord on what to do with Normandy. He actually wanted to give it back. Treveur was an idealist, as well as a sort of medieval nationalist, and Fulk was greedy, and the two had a fight and Treveur killed Fulk. This left Anjou with a succession crisis, since Fulk was childless at the time of his death, and his pregnant wife, Hildegarde de Beaugency was but the daughter of a sire, one Sire Lancelin II de Beaugency. There was a distant claim to Anjou in Aquitaine, another in Robert I of Burgundy, and an even closer one in Hawiz, Duchess of Brittany.
The audacity of what this lowly baron had done was a very shocking moment to every noble in France. Treveur was not a member of the primarily ethnically French nobility of Brittany, but instead, a lowly Celt who had risen in the ranks solely by the merits of his actions, which was a controversial idea at the time. His rise came during the conflicts of Fulk and Hawiz over western Brittany, and because of his victories against the duchess and her husband, which were accomplished largely through guerilla tactics once he came into a position of command (hence the name al Louarn, meaning “the fox”), he came into a spot of respect amongst his fellow barons and knights. So, while the forces of Anjou might have outnumbered him, Treveur was a superior tactician and they knew it, especially when the previously inefficient leader and former Count of Anjou, Geoffrey III le Barbu was released from prison to prevent Anjou from becoming the same kind of power vacuum that Normandy had. Although Geoffrey had no interest in anything but securing his own borders and control of his county, since he was not particularly in mourning over the death of the brother who had imprisoned him, his mother, Ermengarde of Anjou, was an aunt of the king, Philip, by her marriage to his uncle, Robert I of Burgundy, and thus had the young king's ear. She wanted revenge for her son's death, and the king's robber uncle supported her, hoping that Geoffrey might get himself killed, passing Anjou into his hands. The king, fearing the situation of a rising Celtic nobility and wanting Normandy officially subjugated under the control of the Kingdom of France, decided that pulling Anjou's armies out of Normandy was not the best course of action, and that Geoffrey would stay and fight.
Geoffrey, an ineffective leader and not one fraction of the tactician that Treveur was, met several defeats in Normandy has Treveur gathered Norman knights (and some of the remaining barons) and used the same guerilla tactics he had against Hawiz. Geoffrey himself was not killed, but his defeats in this winter war were enough to demoralize his troops (who were not loyal to him in the first place), bringing French interests in Normandy to a stalemate in the County of Maine. Of course the pressure on Philip to solve the Normandy problem was not all coming out of France. The Pope, Alexander II, was unnerved by the situation in England (he had after all, made quite the fool of himself), as he was in the process of trying to consolidate a more centralized papacy. If he wanted a strong, central papacy, then he needed more strong bulwarks that would cast their support behind him if he ever wanted to see his reforms realized. France had the potential to be that kind of bulwark, but in order to do so, France needed to organize itself, and these autonomous, unstructured northern duchies just didn't do in his eyes. Also, and more importantly perhaps, Pope Alexander II wanted the French Normans out of the picture to prove God's displeasure with how William had conducted his campaign so that eyes would not be turned in his direction for being wrong. If he could get everyone on the continent at least to quit asking why William had lost while his army carried a papal banner, then he could garner some more support for his reforms (which he would be doing without Hildebrand of Sovana). Even though Robert was a loyal young Catholic, and indeed a candidate for sainthood in his martyrdom, the pope was happy that he was dead, and wanted his family to just simply disappear.
This additional pressure from the pope, who urged local bishops to preach from their pulpits of the will of God being the punishment of the Normans and all who supported them (including those nasty Breton barons that the French were having trouble defeating), and that it was the responsibility of the French to act as the agents of God in this matter. It was a crusade without official declaration of a crusade, and the French dukes and counts along the Norman/Breton border were eating up every minute of it, with the exception of Geoffrey, who due to his weakness needed to be replaced. Poor Geoffrey, he had only inherited Anjou because his uncle had died childless, and he had already been imprisoned once by his brother, and now the King of France himself was calling for his replacement. Of course, as a good Catholic, acting in the agency of the pope, Philip knew that he could not invade Anjou, since that would be counter productive in the first place. So, he staged the killing of Geoffrey in a “Breton raid”, and imprisoned him again – this time, he would not be getting out. Philip officially replaced him with the onset of summer in 1069 with Lancelin II de Beaugency as regent, while his daughter, Hildegarde, awaited the birth of her child, which everyone was anticipating to be a son that would be raised during his grandfather's regency. On the contrary, Hildegarde gave birth to a girl, who would not be named for her father's mother, Ermengarde of Anjou, as she was in our timeline, but instead given the name of Lyobsinde. The situation was unstable, since Philip was trying to keep Anjou within the bloodline of Fulk Nerra, but the fact that Hildegarde had given birth to a girl left the rulership of Anjou in competition by her father's younger brother, Jean de la Fleche. But Philip was confident in his decision temporarily, given the fact that Lancelin II was childless, even though his brother Jean de la Fleche had an 8 year old son, Helie, the brothers were rumored to be close, and so war between the two was unlikely. In point of fact, they seemed much more likely to efficiently lead the armies of Anjou against Normandy cooperatively against the Celtic guerillas. Furthermore, Philip sent emissaries to Hawiz of Brittany and her husband Hoël, asking them to form an alliance with Anjou so as to cooperate in the war effort, promising the couple the Contentin, Avranches, Martain, and Bayeux in return. While the offer might have been tempting under other circumstances, the troops of Anjou had worked in unison with Treveur and his barons against the duchess and driven them from Nantes, Retz, Donges, Dinan, Penthievre, Porhoët, Poher, and Trégor. Despite her earlier plights to the king, he had ignored her, but now all of the sudden, he wanted her help – he could burn in hell as far as she was concerned.
Instead, Hawiz turned to England with a more expanded offer than Philip had given her: she was willing to cede all of Normandy to England in exchange for their help against France. England had no real quarrel with France though, their only quarrel had been with Normandy, and the way Harold saw it: had he wanted Normandy, he could have taken it in 1068. Harold didn't want Normandy, he just wanted to see it burn. What became of it was not his concern. Besides, he was now busy with all the things that a king does when he's not on expensive foreign adventures, like the economy and other matters pertaining to the internal structure of his country. Hawiz was on her own, and so was Philip: the two would be fighting a single enemy, but not cooperatively, in theory anyways.
The young French king's plans at silencing the Normans were foiled when William VIII of Aquitaine, recently divorced from his wife, demanded Hildegarde's hand in marriage. This was an unanticipated move, since Hildegarde was kind of plain, but her marriage would oust her father as regent and bring Anjou under the dominion of Aquitaine, which had recently acquired Gascony and Poitou. Fearing the growing power of the Duke of Aquitaine, Philip tried to make arrangements with the Count of Nevers to offer his daughter, the considerably more beautiful young Ermengarde, who was already betrothed to Hubert I of Beaumont, but he would hear none of it – Ermengarde would be the next Countess of Beaumont. It seemed Philip did not have as much control over his vassals as he had previously thought, and with the Normans reorganizing under the influence of Treveur al Louarn and William FitzOsbern, it seemed that the reign of the House of Capet might soon be cut short. Desperate to assert himself, Philip turned to his stepfather, Ralph III of Valois, to use his silver tongue in whatever way he could to repair the situation. Ralph went to the Kingdom of Navarre in search of a bride for the greedy Duke of Aquitaine, where he found a young Ermesinda Gartzia still single. Her brother, Antso IV of Navarre, fearing the influence she held in his court, feared that should she marry William VIII of Aquitaine, that Navarre might become yet another possession of the duchy, so he declined. There were other Spanish brides to be had however, and Urraca of Zamora was at the forefront, herself proposing marriage in the hopes of keeping her ever ambitious brother Sancho II el Fuerte, in check with the agreement of inheritance that their father had laid out. Upon arriving at her court in Zamora, Ralph saw that she was actually quite beautiful, and seeing the dynastic situation unfolding the way it was, he thought she would be a most excellent choice for William, as she would keep him distracted with adventures in Spain.
Now, upon the arrival of Ralph III of Valois personally in Toulouse to carry news of the Lady of Zamora's proposal of marriage, William was all of the sudden made more powerful (albeit completely by accident) by his rivals in the north. Of course, since he saw alliances with the kingdoms in Iberia as greatly important, and in our own timeline he married all of his daughters to Iberian kings, he happily accepted. However marrying Urraca de Zamora carried some unforeseen and certainly unintended consequences. First of all, William by no means fancied himself as entitled to anything south of the Pyrenees, and he certainly was not about to throw his time and his money into an expensive campaign to displace the already well-grounded Castilian nobility, that was firmly behind Sancho II el Fuerte. It didn't really strike him as a profitable endeavor. However, what did tickle his fancy, was cementing himself to the existing kingdoms of Castile, León, and Galicia, by marrying her, therefore putting him in possession of three allies that the other French nobles didn't have, thereby heightening the intimidation of the French king, and potentially forcing him to withdraw Lancelin II de Beaugency as count-regent of Anjou.
Of course, things in reality were not as simple as they seemed. Sancho had engaged in a border skirmish with his brother Alfonso VI the previous year at the Battle of Llantada, due probably in part to Alfonso's exacting of tribute from the Taifa of Batalyos, and also because his inheritance had wound up being considerably smaller. Sancho felt threatened when he heard the news of his sister's engagement to the Duke of Aquitaine. Aquitaine had recently inherited Gascony and Poitou, which had doubled the size of the Duchy. This intimidated him, since he and his cousin Sancho Remíriz d'Aragón had reduced the Kingdom of Navarre to a mere county in the War of the Three Sanchos, leaving little resistance between Castile and Aquitaine should William decide to be as ambitious as Sancho. William wasn't of course, but that didn't stop Sancho from convincing Alfonso to unite against their sister to stop her from going to Toulouse. William, was angry, but unless he wanted to go to war in the high Pyrenees against Navarre, there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. His marriage was going to have to wait until the situation had resolved itself. So, William decided that instead of chasing after his lovely Spanish fiancee or demanding the hand of the simple Hildegarde de Beaugency, he'd just take Anjou, without a dynastic marriage, without papal approval, without anything – he was acting in his own interests. He was actually in a position to have his way as well. He was in control of the largest duchy in France, commanded the largest army, and he was an uncle to the young Holy Roman Emperor, Heinrich IV, and had his ear should things go south. However, before bloodshed could ensue, Ralph III of Valois met with him in Anjou with orders from the king to cede the county to him on the conditions that he would A) aid in the fight against Treveur al Louarn and the Normans, and B ) agree to the betrothal of any future son of his to Hildegarde de Beaugency's daughter, Lyobsinde d'Anjou. William, who could afford the war more than the counts of France, happily accepted – Lancelin de Beaugency would return home to his seigneury with his daughter and grand-daughter. The only problem with the agreement was that Lyobsinde was already born, and William as of yet did not have a son, only a daughter, Agnes, whom he had formerly been considering giving to Alfonso VI before he had set himself on marrying Alfonso's sister. So, while he took his armies against the Normans and Bretons, he sent emissaries to Italy, in hopes that an Italian suitor would strengthen his already good relations with the Holy Roman Empire, as he was beginning to fancy himself something of an overlord in France.
But as the year of 1069 came to a close, something happened that would change the face of the war: Robert the Frisian was killed in the same battle that claimed his brother's life, Baldwin IV, which meant Flanders was going to a young, impulsive, and hormonal ruler – Arnulf III, Baldwin's 15 year old son. Arnulf, upset at the death of his father, pursued Robert's family into Holland, where he captured his step-cousin Dirk V with the help of Wilhelm I, Bishop of Utrecht, and exiled him and his mother, Gertrude of Saxony to Denmark. After securing his claim over Flanders and dividing Holland with Wilhelm I of Utrecht, he turned his attention to his cousins' plight in Normandy. Now, if anyone in Europe had balls at this particular point in history, which was the Christmas of 1069, it was little Arnulf III of Flanders.
Immediately he called the pope out in two ways. First of all, if God had condemned his uncle, William of Normandy for pillaging the English coast during his invasion, then why had God not been on the Normans' side when Harold returned the favor in 1068? Why exactly had Normandy fell, with the rape of her women (including her duchess), and the death of her heir, yet England prevailed?Furthermore, why had the pope not at the very least excommunicated Harold Godwinson for his actions, and for allowing the Duchess of Normandy, Arnulf's aunt to be swindled away as Morcar of Northumbria's war prize? Why was the pope so concerned with making Normandy disappear, when Normandy had been so horribly wronged? If Pope Alexander II was so vehemently against simony, then why was he able to be bought with French support of his reforms?
All of these questions coming out of a 15 year old boy.
Of course these questions, no matter whose mouth they were coming out of, proved very valid to the German nobility, who up until this point had been very split over the Investiture Controversy. The pope of course had a very simple explanation: England's raid on Normandy was God's wrath for William's sacrilege in carrying a papal banner to England and then shitting on everything that such a banner stood for. But Pope Alexander II at this point had seriously done himself in. His explanation was only bought by a fraction of the German nobility, while the others wanted to know just when rape and murder were acceptable in the eyes of the pope, and why then, was he issuing these banners out to the French, who were pillaging and murdering in Brittany? The pope was now talking out of both sides of his mouth, and rapidly losing vital support in Germany and Italy for his reforms. So, because the pope was obviously a politically interested dickweed, young Heinrich IV called the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) to a historic meeting in Bamberg at what would come to be called the First Council of Bamberg, to discuss what was to be done. While the discussion veered off in a number of directions, one thing was definitely for sure in the minds of most of those attending: they needed a new pope. Several supporters of Alexander II declared that they would vote against any anti-pope that the council should elect, however they were in the minority. Most agreed that Alexander didn't have the divine spark for the job, but people were much more divided as to who was to be the next pope. While Henry IV would have liked to put someone with more political interests on the papal throne, the situation was calling for something a little more sincere. Alexander had proved himself to be a massive ass hypocrite, so the question at hand was not whether or not the church gets to appoint its clergy, but whether or not the Germans were going to continue to appoint people with clear political agendas. Two important decisions came out of this meeting at Bamberg:
1. Sieghard of Beilstein, who was at the time the Patriarch of Aquileia, was appointed as Pope Rufinus by the Reichstag.
2. Because Alexander's claim to the papacy was now officially invalid, so was France's war with Normandy. In fact, because France, acting as an agent of the evil Pope Alexander II, it was evil itself, and had to be stopped.
Now from here on, there were a number of interesting developments, some of which I think need to revise. Also, I just moved to Denver from Hawai'i, and the Open Office document that this file is in is on my PC. I am yet to download into Drop Box...
But uh... thoughts?