Quicksand
The spectacular Romanesque abbey on Mont-Saint-Michel island off the coast of Normandy is marking its 1,000-year birthday this year, with President Emmanuel Macron among those visiting for the celebrations. Nine hundred years ago, Henry de Normandy (a major character in my Conquest trilogy of novels) played a significant role in Mont-Saint-Michel’s history.
Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey was established in the eighth century, after the bishop of Avranches had a vision of the archangel Michael instructing him to build a church on the island. The tidal island was virtually impregnable. Scenes on the Bayeux Tapestry (below) depict Mont-Saint-Michel and Harold Godwinson rescuing two Norman knights from quicksand during a conflict with the Duke of Brittany.
Henry de Normandy was the youngest son of William the Conqueror. After his father’s death in 1087, Henry had a fraught relationship with his older brothers, Robert (Curthose or Short Stockings), who became duke of Normandy and William (Rufus), who became king of England. Henry’s father had left him a large sum of money but no land. Henry used this inheritance to buy the county of Contentin in western Normandy from Robert. The county included Mont-Saint-Michel.
In 1091, however, Rufus and Curthose signed a treaty agreeing to disinherit Henry entirely. They besieged him at Mont-Saint-Michel. Since the island had no fresh water supply, Henry was forced to negotiate a surrender and lost his county. He spent a year wandering in landless poverty. When King William II (Rufus) was killed in a hunting accident in 1100, Henry seized the English throne. In 1106 he defeated Robert in battle and took his dukedom of Normandy too. Henry kept Robert a prisoner for twenty-eight years, until Robert died at Cardiff Castle in 1134.
You can read more of Henry’s story in my novels: Daughter of the Last King, The Drowned Court, and The Anarchy.
To celebrate Mont-Saint-Michel’s anniversary, I’m giving away a signed set of the first edition of the trilogy to the first person to mail me at info@meandabooks.com and tell me which castle Henry ended up in to regroup after he lost Mont-Saint-Michel.
Photo credits:
Drone photo of Mont-Saint-Michel by Amaustan, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Bayeux Tapestry Scenes 16 and 17: William and Harold at Mont-Saint-Michel (at top centre); Harold rescuing knights from quicksand. By Soerfm – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31051585
Low tide in 2005 By Fabos~commonswiki – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=604843
