Other surviving texts include the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. They displayed an extreme restlessness and recklessness, a love of fighting accompanied by almost foolhardy courage, and a craftiness and cunning that went hand in hand with outrageous treachery. Henry II and the Norman Bishops. Harris I. In 911 the Frankish king Charles III the Simple made the Treaty of St. Clair-sur-Epte with Rollo, ceding him the land around the mouth of the Seine and what is now the city of Rouen. Thus, in Puglia and Sicily their control was based on faith in their own military superiority, their strategic use of castles and harbours, and their importation of feudalism to govern the relations of the count or king with his more important subjects. At the beginning of the tenth century, the French King, Charles the Simple, had given some land in the North of France to a Viking chief named Rollo. Who Were the Normans? The Normans were not a homogeneous group springing from Scandinavian stock, but mostly hailed from a region of France known as Normandy (Romanised Gallo-Franks). The Vikings intermarried with the French and by the year 1000, they were no longer Viking pagans, but French-speaking Christians. The Normans established many schools, monasteries, cathedrals and churches in both Italy and England and after conquering England built many castles to defend their new land. In government, however, they adopted the highly advanced and largely literate techniques already developed by the Byzantine Greeks and the Muslims. It was later shortened to Normandy. The Normans’ capacity for imitation and adaptation was even more significant for the history of Europe. The duchy of Normandy was founded by Rollo (Hrolfr) the Walker, a Viking leader in the early 10th century. The art of building castles was not a Norman invention, but the Normans became masters in the use of the simple yet enormously effective motte-and-bailey castle—a mound (motte) topped by a timber palisade and tower, surrounded by a ditched and palisaded enclosure (bailey). However, they were originally Vikings from Scandinavia. There were crises in the duchy in the 940s and 960s, particularly when William Longsword died in 942 when his son Richard I was only 9 or 10. Again, although the Normans were at first novices and imitators in the practice of fighting on horseback, they soon became masters of cavalry warfare as it was then practiced in continental Europe. The English Historical Review 119(484):1202-1229. Having arrived in southern Italy in small groups just prior to 1020, perhaps in part as petitioners at the court of Pope Benedict VIII and in part as pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. By using ThoughtCo, you accept our, Emma of Normandy: Twice Queen Consort of England, Key Events in the History of the English Language, Biography of King Richard I, the Lionheart, of England, Crusader, Biography of Empress Matilda, Contender for the English Throne, The Rulers of France: From 840 Until 2017, History of Animal and Plant Domestication, De moribus et actis primorum normanniae ducum, Enemy and Ancestor: Viking Identities and Ethnic Boundaries in England and Normandy, c.950 – c.1015. The most important of these was the invasion of England in 1066 by William, duke of Normandy, who became king of England upon the success of what is now known as the Norman Conquest.