History & Civilization
The department was created in the French Revolution, March 4, 1790, under the law of 22 December 1789, from a part of the former province of Normandy. At that time it was planned to call it Lower-Orne, before choosing its current name.
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The fiefdom of Normandy was created for the Viking leader Rollo, also known as Robert of Normandy. Rollo had besieged Paris but in 911 entered vassalage to the king of the West Franks Charles the Simple through the Treaty of Saint Clair-sur-Epte.
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The descendants of Rollo and his followers adopted the local Gallo-Romantic language and intermarried with the area’s previous inhabitants and became the Normans, a Norman French-speaking mixture of Scandinavians, Hiberno-Norse, Orcadians, Anglo-Danish, and indigenous Franks and Gauls.
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Rollo’s descendant William, Duke of Normandy became king of England in 1066 in the Norman Conquest culminating at the Battle of Hastings while retaining the fiefdom of Normandy for himself and his descendants.
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In 1106 Henry I of England over-through his brother Robert duke of Normandy and started to build a line of fortresses on the border with the Kingdom of France. Henry modernized the institutions and established the Exchequer as a Supreme Court presided over by the Duke-King or his personal representative.
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Henry I only had one daughter Matilda who married Geoffrey count of Anjou and when Henry I died civil war raged in England until it was agreed that Geoffrey’s son Henry II would succeed to the throne.
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Henry II saved the unity of the Duchy-Kingdom and built a huge state receiving Anjou and Touraine from his father and most of western and south-western France from his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine. Normandy was the center of an empire, which stretched from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Bayonne.
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In 1204 mainland Normandy was taken from England by France under Philip II of France while insular Normandy, the Channel Islands remained under English control. In 1259, Henry III of England recognized the legality of French possession of mainland Normandy under the Treaty of Paris. His successors, however, often fought to regain control of mainland French Normandy.