conquering exploding corpses
I’ll be honest, my plan for this one was not William the Conqueror. But I was researching him related to another story, and the MOMENT I read about his death/funeral, I changed tracks.
Funerals are generally quite sad and somber, but this one was wild and very dramatic. Before I dive into what happened, a bit of a reminder about Wills and his whole vibe so you don’t think I’m a psycho for (semi) gleefully recounting his demise.
He is best known, as you might have gathered from his name, for conquering (England). But he actually entered the world known as William the Bastard. While he really lived into this descriptor later in life, it originally referred to the fact that he was the literal bastard son of Robert the I, Duke of Normandy and his concubine (fancy!).
After his father died, William was named as heir and became Duke of Normandy. But because of his illegitimate status, his position was frequently challenged, aka people close to him kept getting violently murdered.
But William was crafty, and through his marriage and a series of strategic alliances, he not only consolidated his power in Normandy, but actually wiggled his way into a promise from King Edward of England that he would be his heir, which he later used as justification for an invasion.
When Edward died childless in 1066, his brother-in-law Harold pretended to forget that he had traveled to see William personally a few years before to confirm William as heir, and took the crown for himself. Instead of freaking out and invading immediately like I would have done because, my god the NERVE, William took a methodical approach and spent months gathering international support for an invasion, even getting the blessing of the Pope.
When he finally invaded at the Battle of Hastings, he defeated Harold (who died by an arrow to the face...) and was ultimately crowned King of England on Christmas Day. Festive!
The English were not that into having William as their King, and rebellions sprung up, especially in the North. In addition to essentially wiping out the English aristocracy through land redistribution and stripping them of their titles and positions of prominence, Norman French became the ruling language, and William built a bunch of towers and garrisons to display power. Fun fact, he built the Tower of London!
The Harrying of the North, however, is where he really cemented his reputation as both the Conqueror and the Bastard. He went with a real scorched-earth approach to the Northerners who were staging various rebellions, and absolutely devastated entire villages. Instead of just targeting the specific rebels, he wiped out whole communities, murdering relatively indiscriminately, burning food supplies, slaughtering animals, and doing everything possible to ensure that any survivors would starve over the winter. It led to such decimation that there were reports of (light?) cannibalism, and it took decades for the region to recover.
This is all to say that people were not very upset when he died. And here’s how that went down:
While campaigning against his son (this guy!!), William’s stomach was struck by his saddle, puncturing his intestines. He festered for 5 weeks, dying in agony, and his death was a real Scrooge Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come situation: all of his aides promptly abandoned his dead body, but not before pillaging anything of value, leaving him almost naked on the floor of his house. Literally no one remained to make sure he (the King!!) was buried, so a rando knight stepped up to handle it. Records make it clear that the knight was absolutely not doing it out of love or admiration, but rather out of his “natural goodness”. He escorted William’s body to the burial site, which was 70 miles away, so it was a long, multi-modal trip by boat and horse down the Seine.
Time can do funny things, especially to a decomposing body with leaky intestines... (This is a hint for those who like to guess the ending.)
When the body finally arrived and the procession began, a fire broke out in the village, delaying the funeral as mourners rushed to put out the flames. Then, during the part of the service where the priest asks the mourners to forgive William’s sins, one guy piped up and said that the burial site land was actually his:
"Therefore I lay claim to this land, and openly demand it, forbidding in God's name that the body of this robber be covered by earth that is mine or buried in my inheritance."
So then there was a negotiation pause, and the man was compensated.
What this meant is that William’s leaky body had been actively and rapidly decomposing for weeks by the time of his actual burial. His already... big boned stature had been teeming with intestinal juices since his accident weeks before, filled with gas on the long and hot journey to Caen, and then continued to cook during the various funeral debacles. But his final indignity was yet to come.
As they were lowering his body into his tomb, they realized William wouldn’t fit. They succumbed to the natural human instinct of just trying to squish him in there, and HE EXPLODED!!!!
William of Malmesbury summed it all up pretty neatly: “Here might be seen the wretchedness of early vicissitude; for that man who was formerly the glory of all Europe, and more powerful than any of his predecessors, could not find a place of everlasting rest, without contention.”