The Burial of William the Conqueror: A Comedy of Errors | Hacker News Reader

The Burial of William the Conqueror: A Comedy of Errors

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118 pointsdiodorus40 comments

This fiasco is infamous, but such situations at the death of a ruler were not unusual. The lines between "King" and "Warlord" are small. At the time, non-violent transitions of power were the exception. When such a person dies it is normal for everyone to panic. Anyone owed money, and the King owed everyone money, would grab what they could in full knowledge that the dead ruler's debts were unlikely to ever be paid. Even stripping the body was not extreme. A king's daily clothing could easily be worth many years wages for a servant. Everyone would retreat to their homes in full knowledge that armies would soon be on the roads. Valuables would be buried and livestock taken to higher pastures out of sight. Ships would put to sea. It was always a time of fear.

A king is just a nepo-warlord.

Sometimes kings were elected, though. (Typically not by the general population, but by a clique of influental people, so I guess your point stands.)

If you're calling elected kings nepo-warlords I don't think calling a king elected by the ~~petty warlords~~ warrior nobility a first warlord is a stretch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy

> According to the historian Orderic Vitalis, William moaned on his deathbed, "I treated the native inhabitants of the kingdom with unreasonable severity, cruelly oppressed high and low, unjustly disinherited many, and caused the death of thousands by starvation and war, especially in Yorkshire....In mad fury I descended on the English of the north like a raging lion, and ordered that their homes and crops with all their equipment and furnishings should be burnt at once and their great flocks and herds of sheep and cattle slaughtered everywhere. So I chastised a great multitude of men and women with the lash of starvation and, alas! was the cruel murderer of many thousands, both young and old, of this fair people."

This is an interesting contrast with leaders like Genghis Khan, who seemed to think (or at least portray to others) that his actions were not only acceptable but noble and religiously desirable.

It'd be interesting to see a study of regret and non-regret among conquerors throughout the ages. Do we have other examples of this, or does William stand out among his contemporaries and predecessors?

How reliable is this, though? Many people (especially religious ones) around him were best placed to pretend he turned very remorseful.

The oration struck me as a little self-serving -- especially since the heir was weak. You'd like the commoners to feel good about the family, and maybe this did the trick.

But, the prison releases do seem to indicate he was in a forgiving mood; I imagine release of the brother couldn't be accomplished without some formal process. "The one jailed for treason? I'd like to see that order in writing."

Would they make it up though? Depends on motives and it is likely he died with many people with different motives around him. Some would want to condemn his violence, but others would want to justify it as their holdings would depend on it.

Probably because:

> He had gifts sent to the local churches and to the poor, “so that what I amassed through evil deeds may be assigned to the holy uses of good men." Some of his wealth also went to the clergymen of Mantes, so the churches he had destroyed could be rebuilt.

I can definitely imagine some bishop or cardinal pilfering the king's treasure room while claiming the king decreed it out of remorse.

You can imagine it but its a less probable explanation.

It was common to leave things to the church and the poor so there was no need to make up the story to justify it. It is likely that a dishonest claim would be challenged by someone given that he said the same things to "everyone".

I don't know if I can summarize as what some historian said about rulers in the middle ages. But I'll take a go at it.

Question: Were rulers callous and violent or were they pious and fearful of being judged in the afterlife?

Ans: Yes.

Also I do remember a reference to an actual will by a knight who renounced his crimes and left a bunch of his wealth to charity. I think it's hard to understand how back then the system, especially for a member of the ruling class, was more like the mafia than what we experience today. As such it'd be hard for someone not to get caught up in it.

Yes, people would simply invent things, or a similar process with the same effect. The idea of history as some sort of neutral record of events is itself historically novel, and most of our sources around the Norman Conquest has a very pronounced slant one way or the other. Chroniclers generally were also using a great deal of secondhand information (at best). In the given instance, Orderic Vitalis was cloistered and more or less explicitly writing propaganda for William.

> This is an interesting contrast with leaders like Genghis Khan, who seemed to think (or at least portray to others) that his actions were not only acceptable but noble and religiously desirable.

Didn’t the Muslims or Christians (or both) think that the Mongols were the Wrath of God? I’d definitely lean into that.

There is a quote attributed to Genghis Khan:

'I am the flail of god. Had you not comitted great sins, god would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.'

Considering how total the destruction was that the Mongols visited on the conquered, it is almost believable. And likewise, them not invading Europe was considered to be divine intervention.

The Mongols believed the world was meant to be theirs, by divine right. Saying No to a Mongol when he asks you for something (eg your land or daughter) was considered a religious offense.

The idea that divine intervention places limits on rulers, like Genghis Kahn, could be supported by Genesis 20:3–7, where a king is prevented from sinning through divine intervention.

Atilla was known as the scourge of God, but opinions are still divided on whether the name or the man or tribe was Germanic, Mongol, or other. Seems likely they were a surprisingly heterogenous lot, literally mongrels. Fascinating and surprising how little we know for sure. Source: insomniac Wikipedia binges

That’s a cool aside but Attila rampaged many centuries before the Mongols.

Right, and it makes me wonder whether the great Khans in their time knew more about Atilla than we do. Things like leveraging religion to spread intimidation might be part of the playbook they copied, or might just be convergent evolution, hard to say. Any modern would certainly think of it, but back in the day it seems pretty innovative

The other great example as the Emperor Ashoka who regretted the suffering caused by his wars of conquest in his lifetime.

The contrast is likely due to the different religions William and Temujin practiced.

Christianity was an awkward fit to the ethos of the Germanic nobility.

Christianity has been reframed in the context of Roman militarism from its very beginning as an official religion. It's in the myth itself, Constantine converting at the Milvian Bridge. The end result being a system of beliefs that's both socially conscious and allows for violence on behalf of the State. Pre-Christian religion in the Empire was weaker in that sense, as it was mostly concerned with ritualizing arbitrary decisions. It was a good fit for Germanic warriors trying to upgrade to Late Roman land-owners.

Yet, you see William and many other medieval rulers, panicking and repenting on their deathbeds.

No, you see accounts of that happening, and setting aside problems with veracity, you don't necessarily have a good handle on frequency.

Almost as if, morality is something ingrained in every human being in some way, maybe as some higher rules of overall fairness. And fairness is something I can see in our small kids, they didn't have to be taught that.

Or maybe medieval catholicism with their rather primitive views and morals would instill proper fear in everybody. Which was then often overcome ie by greed or envy, but never could go completely away.

> The contrast is likely due to the different religions William and Temujin practiced.

This was my initial gut reaction as well, but then I remembered the incredible violence and devastation that Christian Europeans brought upon themselves and others over the last 1500 years. How many of those kings, popes, and other leaders expressed similar regret on their deathbeds?

> This was my initial gut reaction as well, but then I remembered the incredible violence and devastation that Christian Europeans brought upon themselves and others over the last 1500 years.

Don’t generalise to all European Christians. It was the west European Catholic and Protestant Christians. Orthodox Christians were and are up to these days much more civilised society.

On the other hand he did go from being known as "William the Bastard" to being known as "William the Conqueror".

It is also illustrative of the advances in medical science. As one of the richest, most powerful men in the world, William could only wait for the inevitable horrible death which took 5 weeks to happen from the date of injury to when he died. Today, these kinds of injuries and worse are routinely treated in trauma centers all across the world.

"As one of the richest, most powerful men in the world, William could only wait for the inevitable horrible death which took 5 weeks to happen from the date of injury to when he died."

True, but it is also true that the richest, most powerful people of today still die after weeks of agony because of conditions we cannot treat. At best, we can sedate them a bit to make their passing easier.

People from the 23rd century will likely pity us just as much as we pity medieval people.

or because they start beleving that fruit will cure their highly treatible cancer.

I have heard that his bloated abdomen needed to be "pierced" to get him into the coffin, which no doubt released a horrible stench. But I like to think that someone had the honor of actually stabbing the King, that someone from the "bastard" line of thinking enjoyed doing so.

you didn't read the article, did you

I did. I've read of this incident many many times. Anyone who has studied British history has read several versions and translations, each slightly different.

Good story, retold in typical style by Horrible Histories here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=289IDfmm8fM

A bit OT, but "The Last English King" by Julian Rathbone is an excellent historical novel surrounding the Battle of Hastings, told from a Saxon PoV. It's funny that even now, nearly 1000 years later, Hastings is generally felt from an English view as a defeat, despite being the founding event of the English monarchy. As alluded to in the video above.

Alfred the Great et al. would beg to differ about Hastings being the beginning of the English monarchy rather than the beginning of the Norman monarchy.

Didn't Alfred describe himself as "King of the Anglo-Saxons" rather than "King of England" - a very minor point but it reminds me of the title "King of Scots" - the Scots being incomers to what become Scotland in a similar way that the Anglo-Saxon "English" were incomers to what became England?

Alfred was styled "King of the Anglo-Saxons"; his grandson and (indirect) successor Æthelstan was first styled "King of the English". The same kingdom was taken by William I, who also styled himself "King of the English", as would be common amongst the Normans until John.

While Alfred may have borne a different title, he held the same office as the (later) Kings of England.

Favourite part of the historiography of England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_yoke

There is an amusing part of Michael Wood's excellent In Search of England about the Norman Yoke. While at school he had written a letter to Bernard Montgomery ("Monty") and was summoned to the House of Lords to debate the matter with the great man - he only realises fairly late on that of course Montgomery is from a Norman background (descended from Roger of Montgomery) while as a Wood he was from humble Anglo-Saxon stock.

On the subject, there's an excellent Youtube channel ran by a medievalist named Dr. Allan Barton dedicated to the very specific subject of aristocratic (in particular royal and British) funeral practices.

https://www.youtube.com/@allanbarton

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