Who Made the Scottish People... The Normans

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I ve been making a series of short videos  asking Who Made the Scottish People,   But I ve been doing it in rainy Scotland Aujourd hui nous sommes en France et il pleut   as we take a all too brief look at possibly  THE most influential group of all the Normans   If you re interested in the people,  places and events in Scottish history   then click the subscribe button at  the bottom right of the screen.   In the meantime, let me tell you a story   Today s Scotland history tour  starts in Rouen in France,   but by the time we re finished it s  going to take me much closer to home.   If you follow The River Seine as it meanders  its way through this region , it leads you   all the way upstream to Paris. In the ninth century it brought   Vikings who raided and settled, just like  they had been doing in Scotland...,   and England and Ireland for that matter. Large numbers of them settled here around Rouen.   They left their Scandinavian lands as  land-less younger sons or political dissidents   looking to build a home for themselves first with sword, and then with ploughshare.   They had no intention of  stopping here, but the French ,   we should really call them The Franks back then  , were starting to hold these Vikings back,   first with successes at the Siege of  Paris , then more significantly for us   a siege seventy-five miles to the south of here   in Chartres these Vikings were held back by  Charles the Simple, King of West Francia   Now there are going to be people  who complain in the comments about   the use of Viking as a noun rather than a verb. I know they think they re being pedantic but   they re actually being a wee bit daft. I ve got a page for my Patreon members where I add   extra videos and if you click the link up there I ll upload a short video for those   Patreon members to explain why. In the meantime, lets deal with this Viking.   Back in 858AD, Norsemen had  raided and burned Chartres.   Now, the town's defences were rebuilt  so that it became a fortified city.   In 911, this Viking called Rollo  led another siege of the city.   According to legend the local bishop  exposed the Virgin's tunic on the ramparts   Mrs Robinson   He then led a mob of peasants in a  charge that saw off the Norsemen.   Our West Frankish King, Charles the Simple,  followed up with a cavalry charge.   Now the Norsemen had no time  to board an army onto ships,   so Rollo and his men created a defensive wall by  slaughtering the livestock from those ships.   and the Frankish horses were frightened  by the sight and smell of the dead   livestock and wouldn t go forward. Now whether you believe that or not,   The Franks called off the attack and negotiated terms with Rollo.   A bunch of Norsemen had already settled in this  area around the River Seine and River Epte.   What if Charles the Simple gives Rollo the  lands between the River Epte and the sea,   for him and his Norsemen. Rollo would then act as a   buffer to protect the Franks against more  naughty Norsemen coming from the west.   Rollo took the deal, made Rouen here his capital,  was baptised and given the Christian name Robert.   The treaty being signed at St Caire Sur Epte.  He also adopted the surname St Claire which,   modern day Scots might recognise as Sinclair This, of course, is a statue of Rollo   CR or should I say CR Bobby Sinclair   Well done Bobby Walk off   This is Place de Gaulle. It s in Bayeux.   You ve probably heard of Bayeux because of the   tapestry in the museum round the  corner and we ll get on to that   but first I wanted to introduce  you to this fine lass.   Her name is Poppa. When Rollo raided Bayeux   he took her and made her his wife. The details, level of coercion,   existence of another Christian wife and all that  kind of thing are a bit dubious and sketchy,   but it was Poppa who gave birth to Rollo s  successor CR William Longsword Count of Rouen.   But it wasn t just this union that brought  local Frankish and Norse together,   the existing Frankish and the Norse  incomers together forged a new people:   The Normans. The road wasn t smooth   rebellion by Norse settlers who thought  William was becoming far too Frankish;   later William s son Richard was abducted by  the Frankish king who distrusted the Norse,   but it was that Richard who introduced feudalism  amongst the Norsemen and each passing generation   the people here became less like Norse  and Frankish peoples thrown together   and more like Normans. They were hugely   successful in the coming centuries. Like their Norse forebears the need for   land, conquest and adventures  sent them out across Europe:   extending into the Iberian Peninsula  as the Moors were pushed back,   establishing a kingdom in Sicily,  influencing the Crusades and the   creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem They tell me that one way or another every   surviving European monarch today is descended from Rollo   Of course, Normandy itself grew with conquest and  consolidation, and five generations after Rollo   the capital of Normandy was moved here to Caen.   This castle here would become the headquarters  and home of The Duke of Normandy.   This change was made by the guy who would  make the biggest impact of all the Normans   William of Normandy, who in 1066 would  become known as William the Conqueror.   From here he plotted the biggest  expansion of Norman power yet.   There s a convoluted tale about why  William felt he was justified by his God   given right to become King of England and back in Bayeux that justification,   along with his invasion is described in  intricate detail in the famous tapestry.   The story s well enough known that I don  t need to go into the details here   after all this isn t England History Tours   so let me take you to somewhere much  more part of Scotland s story Brix   This is the small town of Brix and, whilst you may  not realise it, you ve heard about it before   in the name of one of the local  knights who crossed Le Manche in   the wave of 11th century Norman emigrants, who turned Saxon England into Norman England.   He was another Robert, hence  the name Robert de Brix.   If you re Scottish , or even if you ve  spent any time at all on my channel   you know of this Robert s Great great great  great great grandson Robert the Bruce   This is where the ancestors of  our warrior king came from.   This is the current Bruce Castle in Normandy.   Looking back now we KNOW what became of  the descendants of the Norman knight,   who hailed from here. .. but when he set of from Normandy,   he could never have known that his line  would produce the most famous king of Scots.   Henry I of England was the son  of William the Conqueror.   He had married the daughter of Malcolm  Canmore of Scotland, and his right-hand man   was that wife s of England s brother David. Henry gave David lands here in Normandy and   one of his tenants, feudal knights was a local Norman from here in Brix.   His name was Robert.   Henry would give Robert de Brix lands in England,  where the Bruces would become great magnates   but David would make that  family more famous still.   You see David would go on  to be David I of Scotland.   From his time as a loyal  friend to Henry I of England   Carlisle Castle was David  s capital and power base.   In old age this was eventually where he d die, but before he did, he would bring   a revolution to Scotland. That Davidian revolution brought   changes to town and commerce structures, religious organisation and trade, it brought   feudalism, chivalry and Normans. Carlisle was his English heartland,   but David needed to secure and  exert influence over Scotland.   For that David brought Norman knights most famously on the west coast would   be the Stewarts and the Bruces. They, along with many other Norman knights,   helped him subdue the kingdom he built up, but in which he d never grown up.   These Norman knights often held lands both north  and south of the Scotland England border,   but for David initially the real border  was the Forth, or at furthest the Tay.   He seldom travelled north of these,  particularly in his early reign.   He had yet to impose Norman  ways in those Gaelic realms.   But David wasn t the first to  bring Normans to Scotland.   When David s father Malcolm Canmore  had come north with a Saxon army to   seize the throne from Macbeth years before,   there were Normans fighting on the side  of the man so maligned by Shakespeare.   Yet it was WITH Normans that Malcolm  s son David imposed the Canmore line.   Most of the Canmore Monarchs are  buried here at Dunfermline Abbey.   When Alexander III, the last of the Canmore line,   died without heirs the community of the realm  of Scotland were faced with a choice .   There emerged two men to choose  from to lead the country.   Two candidates for King of Scots. Both had Celtic Gaelic speaking mothers   but both had Anglo Norman fathers. Who would choose between them, but an   Anglo Norman Plantagenet king They called him Longshanks.   I don t need to recount what followed. We all know that the grandson of one of those   two candidates, moulded Scotland into a nation and, in the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath,   set out that nation s history and right to be. Robert the Bruce, who lies buried here,   in Dunfermline Abbey, was at least partly born of a   family that migrated from Brix in Normandy. Scotland was at least in part Norman.   If you want to know more about the peoples  who made Scotland, then there s a video   coming up on screen now. In the meantime
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Channel: Scotland History Tours
Views: 53,055
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Keywords: Bruce Fummey, Scotland history tours, Scottish history tour guides, scottish history for dummies, scottish people, Normans, The Normans, 1066, Norman Conquest, People who made Scotland, David I, Robert the Bruce
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Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)
Published: Sat Oct 22 2022
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