Richard II was the son of the first truly great Duke of Normandy, Richard I, who had successfully retained his Duchy's independence against the French Crown during the Tenth Century and furthermore forged Normandy into a minor military power. By his death in 996 however the still mostly Frankish peasantry were no longer content to be dominated by the descendants of Norsemen, and they rose up in a peasants revolt.
The young Richard I’s guardian Rodulf of Ivry spared no time in brutally suppressing this rebellion, cutting the hands and feet off its leaders and blinding, burning and impaling others. Young Richard II was still a child at the time, yet this blunt show of force not only ensured that no one else would try and revolt for the rest of his reign, but also hammered home the 'Norman way' of the fist, so often implemented by him and his descendants.
Just as Richard came of age, in the year 1001, a large invasion force landed upon Normandy’s northern coastline. The newcomers raided and pillaged their way along the Cotentin Peninsula, putting the countryside to the torch and terrorising the local population. Despite the fact that the early Eleventh Century was the very epitome of the Viking Age, these warriors from beyond the sea were no Scandinavians. Rather, they were Anglo-Saxons who had come across the channel from England upon the orders of King Æthelred the Unready.
The first orders of the English king were for his men to punish the Norman leadership for allowing Viking raiders to take refuge along their coasts. The Normans were themselves descendants of Scandinavians, and despite the fact that they were now distinctly Christian, and a mixture of French and Scandinavian cultures, they were still generally seen to be complicit in Viking raids.
Æthelred’s invasion was not only intended to punish the Normans for their complicity in Viking attacks on his kingdom, but was also intended to besiege the Norman capital at Rouen and capture the young Duke, probably no more than sixteen years old at the time, to bring him back to England in chains. Had the invasion gone differently, then the future history of Normandy, and by extension the rest of Europe, might well have been very different.
Æthelred’s invasion force, containing many of the greatest Anglo-Saxon warriors of the age, had probably not been kept much of a secret during its mustering, which at least allowed the Normans some time to prepare.
Upon arriving on Normandy's remote Cotentin Peninsula, probably in early 1001, the Anglo-Saxons quickly achieved their first objective, to instil terror amongst the local population and punish them for harbouring Vikings. At first resistance was very light, but before long more and more peasants began to amass behind the local Norman lord; Néel, the Viscount of Contentin.
Before the invading army had a chance to advance to Rouen or to engage the main Norman army under the Duke, Néel was able to lead them right into an ambush. There he utilised the new devastating Norman secret weapon for the first time against English houscarls. His elite mounted warriors thundered onto the battlefield with such speed and ferocity that they annihilated the expeditionary force entirely at the Battle of Val-de-Saire.
By 1002 England and Normandy began to normalise relations by m marrying Richard's sister Emma to Æthelred. The marriage alliance partly worked, though as Danish attacks continued to ravage England with ever growing ferocity over the coming years it would be Æthelred, not the Vikings, who would seek refuge at the Norman court.
Though Richard continued to maintain contacts with Vikings; employing Danish and Norse mercenaries in his personal retinue and concluding peace treaties with the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard, the marriage gave Emma and Æthelred two sons, Edward ‘The Confessor’ and Alfred. These half-Norman English princes would eventually form the basis of the Norman claim on the throne of England in 1066.
Despite the warlike start, Richard's reign actually went on to be relatively peaceful. This peace, achieved largely through terror and force, enabled him to turn Normandy into a powerhouse of a Duchy that eventually spawned kingdoms on both sides of Europe.
Like his father before him Richard was a deeply religious man. It was this piety that led in part to a military alliance with King Robert II of France, who he lent military support to in battles against the duchy of Burgundy. Richard also forged a marriage alliance with the neighbouring province of Brittany by marrying his sister Hawise to Duke Geoffrey I, and also by marrying Geoffrey's sister. These diplomatically sound alliances with powers on virtually all of Normandy's borders ultimately provided the basis for his prosperous reign.
It was during Richard's reign that the clerk and religious figure, Dudo of Saint-Quentin, was asked to reimagine the Duke's ancestors as morally upright Christian leaders who built Normandy despite the treachery of their overlords and neighboring principalities. This was clearly a work of propaganda designed to legitimise the Norman settlement. Whilst it does contains a fair few historically unreliable legends and stories, in regards to the reigns of his father and grandfather, Richard I and William I, Dudo's work is thought to be relatively reliable.
The original Norman language, a lingering hangover of half-remembered Scandinavian roots, largely died out during Richard's reign, to be replaced by French. Though Norman culture also became increasingly Frankified, it did continue to retain its own uniquely Scandinavian traits, most notably a tendency for militarism and for the landless sons of minor lords to head abroad to carve out fortunes and foreign lands for themselves.
Richard II died 28 Aug 1026. He was initially succeeded eldest son, Richard III, within a year he died under mysterious circumstances. He was replaced by another son, Robert, the father of an illegitimate son named William. A son who he abruptly named as his successor in 1034 when he went on pilgrimage to the holy land. Robert died abruptly whilst on his return journey, and William 'the Bastard', succeeded him. In 1066, William was the Norman duke who finally engaged the English once again; this time returning the favour, by launching an invasion of his own and seizing the English throne.
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