Empress Matilda HRE Help

There was a conflict in England called the Anarchy between de jure ruler Lady of the English Matilda and de facto ruler King Stephen.

Matilda actually got many of the Germans to like her, and this includes the bishop of Mainz (in Burgundy?). She stuck around and Empress Dowager for awhile after her first Husband Henry V Holy Roman Emperor died. Her late husband's faction decided to rely on prestige to secure the next election, while Lothair's faction gave gifts to three of the electors and won the vote 4-1-1-1 I think. A relic from the previous era, the Empress Dowager was shunted to a marginal role in Germany (she was in charge of something which I forgot and I don't even know why that was the case with no husband).

Henry I of England recalled Matilda to get married to Geoffrey Plantagenet. While plenty of women found him attractive, Matilda was unimpressed and considered him a brat. There was also the problem that he was mere Count of Anjou. They had a few fights and an early stormy marriage until the Anarchy.

A lot of the German princes didn't like that either. They actually asked Henry to bring Matilda back as they preferred her small role to none and they had found memories when Henry V was around!

When the Robert of Gloucester rose in rebellion to support Matilda's claim to the throne, some of the German princes who wanted her back offered to help Matilda. She could have gotten 3,230 troops, many of them semi-professional. All of them had shields, helmets, metal gauntlets (gloves), and either padded leather or metal armor. The German nobility offered to foot the bill (so the troops aren't dependent on looting) and said they would order no looting in Normandy, even on enemy territory.

Matilda declined the offer. She argued that in Normandy the heart of the Anglo-Norman nobility (the thing is, from William I to early King Stephen's reign Normandy was considered the heartland and more important by the nobles), she couldn't be seen using non-Anglo-Normans. Their help would be welcome in England, but she had not prepared a fleet for them.

How useful would they have been anyways? Only 3/4 of them spoke German. it was a trilingual army with only the commanders sharing a common language. And in some sense they were 15 feudal armies with spate liege lords who all happened to like Matilda rather than one army. Few of them were cavalry, most of them only used horses to ride to battle. For all of them the only ways to take a castle were "insider opens gate," "CHARGE" and "let them starve" with no siege works knowledge or interest in siege works. If Matilda accepted their help, it could be seen as a foreign invasion of Normandy.

In fact, in previous generations we've seen that even other French Dukes sending their men to help in conflicts on Norman soil was offensive (to common Normans), even when sanctioned by (some) Normans (one example was when a Norman baron asked for help to fight off his count). Stephen later tried to retake Rouen with 3,000 Flemish mercenaries and his Norman allies, and the two halves of his army ended up turning a bar fight into a multi hour battle, finishing with the Stepehnite Normans investing an enemy castle and the mercenaries routed (but already paid ahead of time).

Matilda was sometimes seen as too German. When she was in London, she acted from her pervious experiences. As reagent of Henry V while he was in Italy, she put down some rebellions and was applauded by many nobles for extracting compensation from the rebels. They also respected her sternness. In London, she offended people with her manors and revolted. This disaster later resulted in Robert of Gloucester's capture by the Royalist faction.

Geoffrey Plantagenet was an Anjou, a traditional rival of the Normans since before William the conqueror. He was advised to adopt Norman customs to appease them and... he did so after he became Duke in 1144. Back in 1135 when Henry I died, he made Matilda look even less attractive as heir, although they probably would have accepted Stephen's usurpation on the account of him being a relative of Henry I who was not a woman. He put down baronial rebellions in 1129, 1135, and 1145. In the second one, he beat the rebels in a pitched battle outnumbered 3 to one and many of the barons defected from the ringleader upon seeing him afterwards. Because his presence deterred rebellion, he was slow to help his wife and three times cancelled a Normandy campaign when there was a rumor of rebellion. Every time, he would back off, go home, meet the nobles in person, and get assurances from loyalty from his barons who for some reason could not say no to his face, even when he paid a baron a visit and was in theory at the mercy of the castle owner.

Being "too German" on top of being married to Geoffrey might have been too much.

On the other hand, in 1139 Matilda landed in England with 140 knights, and bolstered her army with levies. 3,230 well trained guys are probably better than feudal levies. In a civil conflict, victory on the battlefield can bring legitimacy.

So would accepting the princes help make Matilda more or less legitimate to the Anglo-Normans? On one hand, they are German (well, as I said actually not all of them speak German and they would be trilingual) and could appear foreign. On the other hand, high quality troops that would not loot (in Normandy they promised) could produce battlefield victories without depredations, which could bring legitimacy.
 
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Deleted member 67076

Having multiple armies from different feudal areas would make it much harder to control all these troops, given the nature of feudal organization. Might make her position weaker as the troops go towards pillaging instead of protecting.
 
Nah, these were just people that liked Matilda. The troops were offered to be paid so they wouldn't be dependent on looting and the princes swore there would be no looting in Normandy.

Nah, it was a joke about Germany raping all the English and Normans and regermanizing the previously Saxon and Nordic lands.
 
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