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Siege Of Alençon
The siege of Alençon occurred in the town of Alençon, in present-day France, in the year 1047. It was fought between William the Conqueror, duke of the Duchy of Normandy, and Geoffrey II, Count of Anjou and his supporters. The battle started over the Count of Anjou claiming the semi-autonomous region of Maine, which was a contested border territory between Normandy and Anjou. Supporters of the Count of Anjou seized Alençon and another fortress at Domfront. During their occupation of the town, the rebels hung animal hides, a reference to his mother being the daughter of a tanner. In response to this, after the surrender of Alençon, William had the rebels' hands and feet The foot (: feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is an organ at the terminal part of the leg made up of ... cut off so as to defend his mother's honor. This victo ...
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Alençon
Alençon (, , ; ) is a commune in Normandy, France, and the capital of the Orne department. It is situated between Paris and Rennes (about west of Paris) and a little over north of Le Mans. Alençon belongs to the intercommunality of Alençon (around 56,000 people in 2018, of which around 26.000 lived in Alençon). History The name of Alençon is first recorded in a document dated in the seventh century. During the tenth century, Alençon was a buffer state between Normandy and the Maine regions. In 1049–1051, William Duke of Normandy, later known as William the Conqueror and king of England, laid siege to the town, which had risen in support of the Count of Anjou along with two other towns of the Bellême estates, Domfront (then in Maine) and Bellême (held directly from King Henry I of France). According to Duke William's chaplain and panegyrist, William of Poitiers, the defenders of the fortress refused to surrender and mockingly waved animal hides from the castle ...
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William The Conqueror
William the Conqueror (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), sometimes called William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England (as William I), reigning from 1066 until his death. A descendant of Rollo, he was Duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 onward. By 1060, following a long struggle, his hold on Normandy was secure. In 1066, following the death of Edward the Confessor, William invaded England, leading a Franco-Norman army to victory over the Anglo-Saxon forces of Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, and suppressed subsequent English revolts in what has become known as the Norman Conquest. The rest of his life was marked by struggles to consolidate his hold over England and his continental lands, and by difficulties with his eldest son, Robert Curthose. William was the son of the unmarried Duke Robert I of Normandy and his mistress Herleva. His Legitimacy (family law), illegitimate status and youth caused some difficulties for h ...
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Duchy Of Normandy
The Duchy of Normandy grew out of the 911 Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between Charles the Simple, King Charles III of West Francia and the Viking leader Rollo. The duchy was named for its inhabitants, the Normans. From 1066 until 1204, as a result of the Norman Conquest of England, the dukes of Normandy were usually also kings of England, the only exceptions being Dukes Robert Curthose (1087–1106), Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, Geoffrey Plantagenet (1144–1150), and Henry II of England, Henry II (1150–1152), who became king of England in 1154. In 1202, Philip II of France declared Normandy forfeit to him and Invasion of Normandy by Philip II of France, seized it by force of arms in 1204. It remained disputed territory until the Treaty of Paris (1259), Treaty of Paris of 1259, when the English sovereign ceded his claim except for the Channel Islands. With the mainland portions of the Duchy absorbed into the Royal domain of France, French Royal Domain, the now much ...
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Geoffrey II, Count Of Anjou
Geoffrey II, called Martel (1006 – 14 November 1060), son of Fulk the Black, was a French knight and Count of Anjou from 1040 to 1060 and Count of Vendôme from 1032 to 1056. He fought battles against William VII, Duke of Aquitaine, Theobald III, Count of Blois, and William, Duke of Normandy. During his twenty-year reign, Geoffrey II faced down the ambitions of the Bishop of Le Mans, Gervais de Château-du-Loir and was able to maintain his authority over the County of Maine. Martel founded the Abbey aux Dames in Saintonge and also, in collaboration with his wife Agnes, founded the Abbaye de la Trinité (Abbey of the Trinity) at Vendôme. He was described in the '' Gesta Normannorum Ducum'' as "a treacherous man in every respect, frequently inflicted assaults and intolerable pressure on his neighbors."Van Houts, p. 123. Combat "In alliance with King Henry I of France, Count Geoffrey laid siege to Tours in the winter of 1042–3. After the battle of Nouy on 21 Augus ...
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Maine (province)
Maine () is one of the traditional provinces of France. It corresponds to the former County of Maine, whose capital was also the city of Le Mans. The area, now divided into the departments of Sarthe and Mayenne, has about 857,000 inhabitants. History Antiquity The Gallic tribe Aulerci Cenomani lived in the region during the Iron Age and Roman period. The province of Maine was named after them, in the 6th century AD as ''in Cinomanico'' (''in'' ''pago Celmanico'' in 765, ''*Cemaine'', then ''Le Maine'' from the 12th century). Early Middle Ages In the 8th and 9th centuries, there existed a Duchy of Cénomannie (ducatus Cenomannicus), which several of the Carolingian kings used as an appanage. This duchy was a march that may have included several counties including Maine, and extended into Lower Normandy, all the way to the Seine. In 748, Pepin the Short, then Mayor of the Palace and thus the most powerful man in Francia after the king, gave this duchy to his half-brother ...
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Counts And Dukes Of Anjou
The Count of Anjou was the ruler of the County of Anjou, first granted by King Charles the Bald, Charles the Bald of West Francia in the 9th century to Robert the Strong. Ingelger and his son, Fulk the Red, were viscounts until Fulk assumed the title of count. Ingelger's male line ended with Geoffrey II, Count of Anjou, Geoffrey II. Subsequent counts of Anjou were descended from Geoffrey's sister Ermengarde of Anjou, Duchess of Burgundy, Ermengarde and Count Geoffrey II of Gâtinais. Their agnatic descendants, who included the Angevin kings of England, continued to hold the title and territory until King Philip II Augustus seized the region and annexed it to the French royal domain, French crown lands. In 1360, the county was raised to a dukedom becoming known as Duke of Anjou, subsequently leading the Duchy of Anjou. The title was held by Philip V of Spain before his accession to the throne in 1700. Since then, some Spanish Legitimist claimants to the French throne also claim t ...
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Domfront, Orne
Domfront () is a former commune in the Orne department in north-western France. It is classed as a Petites Cités de Caractère. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Domfront-en-Poiraie. Geography Domfront is situated on a bluff overlooking the river Varenne and is said to have been established in the 6th century round the oratory of the hermit St. Front, and played an important part in the wars against the English and the French Wars of Religion. Beginning from the strategically sited castle of Domfront, the dispossessed count Henry, youngest son of William the Conqueror, rallied support among local lords and eventually ruled the Anglo-Norman dominions as Henry I of England. In 1574 it was occupied by the Protestant leader Gabriel, comte de Montgomery, who after a stubborn siege was forced to yield it to Jacques Goyon, Count of Matignon. It has been subjected to floods when the river Varenne burst its banks, causing widespread havoc and damage to m ...
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Animal Hides
A hide or skin is an animal skin treated for human use. The word "hide" is related to the German word , which means skin. The industry defines hides as "skins" of large animals ''e.g''. cow, buffalo; while skins refer to "skins" of smaller animals: goat, sheep, deer, pig, fish, alligator, snake, etc. Common commercial hides include leather from cattle and other livestock animals, buckskin, alligator skin and snake skin. All are used for shoes, clothes, leather bags, belts, or other fashion accessories. Leather is also used in cars, upholstery, interior decorating, horse tack and harnesses. Skins are sometimes still gathered from hunting and processed at a domestic or artisanal level but most leather making is now industrialized and large-scale. Various tannins are used for this purpose. Hides are also used as processed chews for dogs or other pets. The term "skin" is sometimes expanded to include furs, which are harvested from various species, including cats, mustelids, and b ...
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Herleva
Herleva () was an 11th-century Norman people, Norman woman known for having been the mother of William the Conqueror, born to an extramarital relationship with Robert I, Duke of Normandy, and also of William's prominent half-brothers Odo of Bayeux and Robert, Count of Mortain, born to Herleva's marriage to Herluin de Conteville. Life Herleva's background and the circumstances of William's birth are shrouded in mystery. The written evidence dates from a generation or two later, and is not entirely consistent, but of all the Norman chroniclers only the Tours chronicler and William of Malmesbury, the latter thought to have simply copied the Tours source, assert that William's parents were subsequently joined in marriage.Edward Augustus Freeman,''The History of the Norman Conquest of England: II 2nd Ed. The reign of Eadward the Confessor''. Note U: The Birth of William 1, p. 615. According to Edward Augustus Freeman, the Tours chronicler's version cannot be true, because if Herleva ...
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Tanning (leather)
Tanning, or hide tanning, is the process of treating Skinning, skins and Hide (skin), hides of animals to produce leather. A tannery is the place where the skins are processed. Historically, vegetable based tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound derived from the bark of certain trees, in the production of leather. An alternative method, developed in the 1800s, is chrome tanning, where chromium salts are used instead of natural tannins. History Tanning hide into leather involves a process which permanently alters the protein structure of skin, making it more durable and less susceptible to decomposition and coloring. The place where hides are processed is known as a ''tannery''. The English word for tanning is from the medieval Latin verb , from the noun (oak bark). This term may be derived from a Celtic word related to the Proto-Indo-European *' meaning 'fir tree'. (The same root is the source for Old High German meaning 'fir', related to modern German ''Tannenb ...
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Hands
A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "hand" and fingerprints extremely similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having "hands" instead of paws on their front limbs. The raccoon is usually described as having "hands" though opposable thumbs are lacking. Some evolutionary anatomists use the term ''hand'' to refer to the appendage of digits on the forelimb more generally—for example, in the context of whether the three digits of the bird hand involved the same homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand. The human hand usually has five digits: four fingers plus one thumb; however, these are often referred to collectively as five fingers, whereby the thumb is included as one of the fingers. It has 27 bones, not including the sesamoid bone, the number of ...
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Feet
The foot (: feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is an organ at the terminal part of the leg made up of one or more segments or bones, generally including claws and/or nails. Etymology The word "foot", in the sense of meaning the "terminal part of the leg of a vertebrate animal" comes from Old English ''fot'', from Proto-Germanic *''fot'' (source also of Old Frisian ''fot'', Old Saxon ''fot'', Old Norse ''fotr'', Danish ''fod'', Swedish ''fot'', Dutch ''voet'', Old High German ''fuoz'', German ''Fuß'', Gothic ''fotus'', all meaning "foot"), from PIE root *''ped-'' "foot". The plural form ''feet'' is an instance of i-mutation. Structure The human foot is a strong and complex mechanical structure containing 26 bones, 33 joints (20 of which are actively articulated), and more than a hundred muscles, tendons, and ligaments.Podiatry Channel ...
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