Impressions of Normandy: Part 2

In Part 1 of “Impressions of Normandy”, Julia McLean took us on a tour of Impressionism. In Part 2, she takes us on a fascinating historical and scenic tour of this “emerald jewel set by its azure sea.”

All Normandy is divided into two parts – Haute Normandie and Basse Normandie. Haute Normandie is the richer of the two. Basse Normandie, a rustic rudimentary utopia between Honfleur and Vimoutiers, is where we chose to search for our dream home.

In the 1970s unsullied by cars, Parisians and tourists, as we migrated inland from the pretty little port of Honfleur, we realized that the interior was a really beautiful, green and pleasant land. Like many people we had heard of the D-Day landings and the Bayeux tapestry and had thought that was all there was to Normandy.

The soft rolling green velvet hills, hidden valleys, tiny thatched cottages from whose chimneys fine grey smoke ribboned up through the spring or autumn air, the quiet country lanes dappled in the sunlight, the trembling foliage of the lines of trees which arched gothically overhead, the gentle beauty — were all so unexpected. So too, was the neglected, unloved look of many buildings and small villages. We began to wonder about these Normans. Who were they? How did they come to build such beautiful places? And was it just the 1789 and 1848 revolutions or the aftermath of the Second World War that had led them to misprize this emerald jewel set by its azure sea?

The Conquering Kind

The Northmen, who came a-viking in the ninth century, settled this northern coast of France. Their destructive presence had already been well attested to in Britain in 787 when three ships from the “land of robbers” arrived off the coast of Northumbria. Their 793 raid on Lindisfarne was so brutal, Bede records, that people prayed “From the fury of the Northmen, Lord, deliver us”. Their reputation having preceded them, the Normans were duly feared and the Franks made a cunning peace in 911 at St Clair sur Epte, ceding a great swathe of north-western France to the Normans on condition that they protected the coast from other raiders and became Christian. “No prob,” said Rollon and swiftly revised his name to a more saintly Robert. Normandy was worth a Mass. Normandy is also famous as the birthplace of William the Conqueror, Robert’s descendant, whose 1066 invasion of England changed the course of English history.

In a recent lecture I attended on “The Battle of Hastings — 1066” by Pierre Bouet, professor at the University of Caen and well-published historian on Medieval Normandy, William’s reasons for invading were detailed: he was already Duke of Normandy and had been promised the crown of England as his heritage, plus William was a bastard who wanted to legitimize his position by becoming King of England, an acquisition which would make him more powerful than the King of France. William prepared carefully. He had endowed 27 abbeys in Normandy. Abbeys were centres of agriculture, provided jobs, ran schools and hospitals, ie. they were big administrative centres providing security against invaders, which meant when he needed men for his army, they came willingly.

He made useful marriage alliances which meant he had son-in-laws and brothers-in-law whose lands surrounded his own, which were thus protected in his absence. The minor nobles with whom Duke William could not form alliances were promised great wealth and lands after they conquered England. He requisitioned boats from all along the Normandy coast promising the fishermen great booty too.

When everything had settled down after the battle, 80 per cent of the English nobility (ie. landowners) had perished, so the way was open for the Normans to take over England where evidence of William’s influence is still to be seen. (The Tower of London and Bosham Church – both built with white stone from Caen).

In the Norman countryside too, there are innumerable ruined castles and restored manor houses scattered throughout the leafy sward. The chateaux of Falaise and Caen were William’s direct work, as well as the famous Abbaye des Hommes and Abbaye des Femmes in Caen, plus innumerable churches and abbeys built or used by the Normans: Rouen, Coutances, Bernay, Mont St Michel, Evreux, and Le Bec Hellouin – the monastery from where William and his successors chose their Archbishops of Canterbury.

Bouet illustrated his lecture with photos of the Bayeux tapestry, as illustrated in the video below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDaB-NNyM8o

This tapestry is, in fact, a huge piece of embroidered wall hanging measuring 50 centimetres by 69 metres. It is beautifully exhibited in a glass case in the Museum at Bayeux. The French always thought it was embroidered by Queen Mathilde and her ladies to celebrate William’s victory, but it was probably com

missioned by Odo, the half brother of William, who was Bishop of Bayeux. It was sewn in a convent or monastery in Kent in England, disappeared for years and was discovered in the ruins of Bayeux Cathedral just after the French Revolution. It is one of the treasures of Normandy. There is a very good animated version of the tapestry at this Museum and Bayeux is an interesting old town.

Because of all the to-ing and fro-ing between the Normans in England and around the channel, the trading with Baltic ports, Normandy developed into a maritime nation par excellence and trade made her very rich between 1300 and 1600.

The type of fortified castle built by William was still popular until the end of the medieval period around 1350. A building boom begins because of the trade, and wealthy merchants have around 400 Manor houses built by 1700, Manoir de Malou ( see photo), Coupesarte, St Germain de Livet, Manoir de Pretreville, several manors in Glos outside Lisieux, and others.

Columbus to Champlain

After 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, other European monarchs were determined to find an El Dorado as rich as the South American states which the Spanish and Portuguese had already appropriated. The Spice Islands were the goal plus a maritime silk road. The Normans, not to be out-done by other nations, set out, following fishing routes and Old Salt’s tales. Back to Honfleur, Dieppe and Rouen came galleons filled to their mizzens and mains with black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, cotton, silk, satin, velvet, opium, tulips, sandalwood, horses, rhubarb, precious stones, dyes and pigments. All worth their weight in gold. The bonus was cod, an awful lot of cod. Sixty percent of fish eaten in Normandy in the 1600s was cod.

Jacques Cartier was said to have got his sea legs on the boat which set out in 1503 from Honfleur on a voyage of discovery. His captain, Binot Paulmier, made a slight error of calculation but discovered Brazil instead. Newfoundland was discovered by Jean Denis in 1508 and by 1542 there were 40 cod boats leaving Rouen per year for the great cod banks off Canada. Jean Le Veneur, bishop of Lisieux backed his young relative, Jacques Cartier, for a voyage in 1534 to claim Canada for the French crown because the Pope with his usual Papal Bull had given all America to Spain and Portugal. A useless geologist, Jacques returned with Fool’s Gold (iron pyrites) and diamonds (quartz), whence the French expression “as false as Canadian diamonds”. Thus, disparaging the superlative cartographer Cartier who had mapped the St Lawrence while searching for the maritime silk route, the French did not return to Canada until Champlain went back in 1608, also setting out from Honfleur. By this time fur trapping and trading with the Indians was proving worth the investment.

Tupinambas Indians with canoes, arms and clothes had already been brought from Brazil to dance in front of king and Montaigne in Rouen and were the talk of the town in 1509. In a later voyage, an Indian called Esomeric came over with the sailors, married a local girl, had 19 children and died at age 95, in 1583. He was buried near Lisieux at Courtonne la Meurdrac. In 1610, one of Champlain’s boats brought back a Huron Indian called Savignon who was the wonder of Honfleur. Three generation of Normands over a hundred years, saw marvels, signs and wonders. The telescope, invented in 1608, brought the universe closer. People even imagined voyaging to the moon. This was an age where everything was possible. This was the age of Galileo, Pascal, Fermat, Descartes, Moliere, witchcraft and diabolic possession in Loudon and in Normandy at Louviers.

Discovering that the world was not flat or protected by a bearded grandfather in the sky, and that there were other religions and exotic races, Europeans began to call into question the power of the church and eventually the divine right of kings. This influx of new ideas came into Normandy through the ports and through the advent of the printing press, all of which made the Normans the most literate people in France, especially the Protestants, who were three times as literate as the Catholics.

By Champlain’s time there were 12,500 Protestants in Caen; by 1600, Normandy was four times more literate than rest of France. Despite the Wars of Religion between1562 and1598, Normandy prospered, perhaps because, in 1598, the Edict of Nantes declared that Protestants (free-thinkers and not hidebound by conventions) could live and work in France. Rouen had 30 printing works, innumerable textile mills, dye mills, paper mills, book binders, leather workers, painters and decorators, masons, carpenters, joiners, bakers, patissiers, all thriving in guilds. There were wonderful ivory workers in Dieppe, linen mills inland (grown from hemp seeds imported from the Baltic States), woollen mills around Lisieux, boat-builders in Honfleur and Rouen. Normandy was a hive of activity and humming with life.

Cut from Norman Cloth

Outside France, Norman cloth was well known: serge, twill, muslin, broadcloth, drugget, petersham, fustian, dimity, duck, ticking, rough hemp cloth and fine linen. Their bonnets and head dresses, ribbons, stockings, gloves and mitaines became “must-have” fashion items in the rest of Europe. Colbert did a first bit of French interventionism by setting up Royal Manufactures-lace in Alencon, Caen and Bayeux. (In Restoration England, it was to die for.) Gobelins tapistery was a state controlled enterprise too and if the French don’t know how to do something, they know a man who can and import him from Venice or Belgium or wherever necessary.

English weaving technicians were imported to Pont Audemer. Rouen produced cotton cloth from imported American cotton and imports weavers from Holland. Colbert controlled the production of dyes by using only home grown woad and rose madder. They already used Brazil wood and cochenille for red colouring. Mordants were needed to fix colours so Rouen traders went to Anvers in Belgium and the previous imports of tolfa from Rome were dropped— too costly. The forests were alive with the sound of felling, sawing, logging, bark stripping, charcoal burning, basket weaving, clog, brush and barrel making. National stud farms (Haras National) were set up to provide horses for the army and for agriculture.

Normandy was the third richest province in France. By 1694 Normandy was called “la Grasse” because was so full of good rich milk, cream and butter. It was exporting 90,000 sheep and 40,000 cows to the rest of France through Paris, along with Pont l’Eveque, Livarot and Camembert cheese and tonnes of butter. Life was good except for the taxes. Twenty five per cent of France’s taxes came from Normandy but it was only one seventh the size of France. The kings were always at war with their neighbours and taxes needed to support kngly ambitions were levied most heavily in Normandy. Triple taxes were levied in Normandy in 1630;she was over-taxed in1635 and again in 1645.

The worst of all was the Salt Tax – La Gabelle. Any person over age eight had to buy seven kilos of salt a year, which was far too much for a family with several children. It was a kind of poll tax because everyone paid but the problem was that Brittany – a great producer of salt (sel de Guerande being the best known) was exempt from the tax and Normandy was very highly taxed. So, contraband was the order of the day and many a willing maiden helped in smuggling operations by hiding salt in her bosom or bustle which led to quite a bit of horny groping on the part of the customs men. Horny customs men seem to have been a constant problem in rural France. Eventually, there were major revolts against the Salt Tax in 1639. It was still causing problems in 1789.

Ship builders and merchants, seeking a rural Utopia, moved inland, far from riotous towns and imported plagues, and started building manor houses away from all the hustle and bustle. In Normandy, the first ones were built with meurtrieres (arrow slits) because until late in Louis XIV’s reign, Normandy was not pacified. The incomers employed local men to farm the land, grow a few crops, tend the cows or beef cattle. Big commercial farms did very well and people invested in them, but this didn’t bring about enclosure as in medieval England but rather encouraged construction of Ferme-Manoirs. The lesser nobles in Basse Normandie were able to obtain small administrative jobs which allowed them to build and keep their small manors. These manors eventually become weekend homes and later a large number of them become working farms. After 1789, the new owners cannot afford to upkeep the dovecotes, chapels and mills which fall into disrepair and by 1900 are already being converted to other uses.

The Effects of Wars

The various Napoleonic wars depopulated the countryside, and the First and Second World Wars reduced Normandy to a poor, backward hinterland. The Second World War destroyed some of Normandy’s finest towns (Lisieux, Pont L’Eveque,Caen, Vimoutiers, Rouen), but made the area famous for the Landing Beaches and all else was forgotten.

The coastline at this point consisted of long sandy beaches backed by dunes. The Allies – mainly Americans and British — landed their flat-bottomed crafts on these beaches at low tide. The beaches were all designated with different names. Gold, Sword and Juno were where the British landed; and Omaha and Utah where the Americans landed. Just off Gold beach at Arromanches you can see the remains of the floating harbour (Mulberry Harbour) used during the landings plus a film of the landings in sound-surround in a 260 degree cinema – well worth a visit.

One of the museums is in a German bunker and the guide tells a good story. At Pegasus Bridge, you can visit the parachute museum and have a coffee in the Café Gondree which was the first café to be liberated in France. The para museum has the pair of bagpipes played by Bill Millen as he walked across Pegasus Bridge in June 1945. The Germans were so astounded that they didn’t shoot him!

The whole area contains a huge number of cemeteries which are interesting to visit. The British ones are like English country gardens, the American ones are all like Arlington with lines of crosses, as is the Canadian one at Colleville Montgomery. The German ones have harsh granite stones and sometimes there is more than one soldier in the grave. What is really upsetting is that the dead soldiers all seem to have been between 18 and 35. A 15-year-old boy, who lied about his age, is buried in the Canadian Cemetery at Bretteville. What a waste of life!

The Memorial Museum at Caen is quite expensive but saves a bit of time if you can’t visit any of the others. At St Mere Eglise there is also a museum (remember the scene from The Longest Day where the para gets stuck on the church spire?) and further up the coast is a small museum at Quineville which shows the daily life of the French under the Occupation.

Literary Escape

The advent of the train in the 1850s had already exposed Normandy to Parisiens seeking rural hideaways and painters seeking inspiration. Writers came too. Flaubert, Maupassant Hugo, Michelet and Zola visited or lived here for a time. Flaubert stayed on the farm called Ferme de la Gefosse which is on the road to St Hymer and used as a B&B these days.

Another preoccupation of modern-day Normans is horse-racing and stud farms. Deauville has two well-known race courses and is surrounded by huge Haras or stud farms. The Rothschilds and the Aga Khan have stud farms here and the Queen comes for the yearling sales. Many local peasants lose their shirts and farms to betting. The French National Stud Farm is at Le Pin in the Orne, not far from Lisieux. There are innumerable riding schools in the area around Deauville which is smart and sophisticated. So is Cabourg further up the coast, with its huge casino.

The Normans themselves are just beginning to appreciate their region, but, apart from the Second World War which they prefer not to talk about, they are unaware of the Empire their ancestors created from 1000 AD to 1300AD, which reached from the Scottish Borders to the Holy Land and Sicily.

Not bad for Viking raiders!

 

Be sure to visit the website for Blangy — Pont L’eveque to view a video that showcases the beauty of this part of Normandy. French with English subtitles.

 

Photo Credits

Manoir de Malou © Julia Mclean. All Rights Reserved.

Bayeux tapestry, photographer unknown

Manor Farm © Julia Mclean. All Rights Reserved.

Manoir de St Marguerite des Loges © Julia Mclean. All Rights Reserved.

Mulberry Harbour – Gold Beach, photographer unknown

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