Great Commanders

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Ta for the kind words.

So am I judging the event and not the man? In my opinion in this case, you can't have one without the other. so if the even is great, so must be the man who mastered it. Fair comment and in light of your original caveat I can't argue against it.

While it is a long time since I read owt about it, I would however question your sentiment re His leadership after Hastings, not what happened that day, are the foundation stones upon which the whole of modern English history has been built. Or do you propose that William was lucky his entire life? (snippet, William certainly wasn’t lucky at his funeral, apparently when they tried to put him in his tomb he had become so fat that he wouldn’t fit and his body physical burst open creating “ a foul stench that filled the Abbey”); William was responsible amongst other things for what is Known as 'the Harrowing of the North', for c2 years he systematically destroyed the Northern counties with fire and blade this included York, one of the Richest cities and centre of government for the north of England. Some areas of Northumberland never recovered, others took several lifetimes to get back to some semblance of their pre conquest prosperity.

The imposition throughout his new Kingdom of the Norman style Feudal system made Surfs of once Freemen, the disruption to the English Agriculture, economy & culture of the early years of Norman rule was massive and nearly made a once rich country poor, even the much lauded Doomsday book was done to exert more taxation to finance his wars on the continent, I could go on but I’m sure you get the point.

But, and it is a massive But Paul (and maybe even go some way to refute your criteria :whis: ), the shear irony of it all, and one still not fully understood by historians even today, is that eventually over the succeeding centuries the Norman/Plantagenet conquerors became Anglicized. It is Anglo-Saxon Common law and it’s concepts of Justice and trial by Jury etc. that we eventually exported round the world (Norman law like Scottish law was based on Roman Law i.e. trial by inquisition) to put it in a nutshell “the Conquerors became the conquered”. Which begs the question, were Williams achievement still so great? :)

All the Best
Peter