User:Qualcomm250/Annexation of Normandy to France

The annexation of Normandy to France is the process by which the Duchy of Normandy was conquered, and integrated to the Crown lands of France. Normandy, created in 911, had been ruled by the duke of Normandy, a vassal of the king of France. Thus started a struggle between the Capetian dynasty and the dukes, the latter merely being nominal subjects of the former. In 1066, William the Conqueror, then duke of Normandy, conquered the Kingdom of England and became more powerful than the king of France. The Angevin Empire represented from then on a danger to the stability of the Kingdom of France, that the kings of France would endeavour to neutralise.

In 1202, the king of England, John Lackland, saw his duchy of Normandy seized by the king of France, Philip Augustus, for having disobeyed his orders. Following the French military conquest of Normandy, Channel Islands excepted, the province came under the direct rule of the French monarchy, which established policies aiming to assimilate the province and its aristocrats into the larger royal demesne.

Thereafter, the Plantagenet kings of England tried several times to reclaim control of the province, to no avail. In 1259, Henry III of England and Louis IX of France signed the treaty of Paris by which the English monarchy officially renounced its claim to the province in exchange for a few fiefs in the French southwest. The French conquest was confirmed, and in 1315 the king of France terminated the process of assimilation of the Normans by granting them the Charte aux Normands, which limited the rights of the suzerain in the province until its abrogation in the French Revolution.

The duke of Normandy
Normandy emerged in 911 when the king of West Francia Charles the Simple ceded a part of Neustria to the Viking Rollo in the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. While during its formative years, Normandy may have been fully independent as the Viking leader disregarded the feudal system, it quickly became a fief, and its leader had to pay homage to the king of France as a vassal. The feudal system meant that the duke of Normandy behaved like the leader of a sovereign state. Until 1140, he never left his province to pay homage to the French king. The hueste that the vassal owes to the king was made very symbolic by the dukes of Normandy, who would only send a few dozen men during forty days, even though they were able to levy several thousands. The dukes of Normandy were rarely present in the French court, even though they theoretically were required to attend it. Nonetheless, if the link that united Normandy and France was very weak, it still existed and the Duchy of Normandy was part of the Kingdom of France.

In his territory, the duke of Normandy exerted several powers over the church, justice and taxation, like the Carolingians previously. He was the only one who could build fortresses and castles, mint coins and collect a direct tax, which was extremely rare at the time. The dukes established an efficient administration and a feudal organisation that reinforced their power instead of crumbling it as was the case in other principalities of the Kingdom of France. Locally, the Duke of Normandy was represented by viscounts who controlled the judicial system at the expense of local lords. This system made the duke of Normandy one of the most powerful lords of the early second millennium, at times more powerful than his lord, the king of France.