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"In his anger at the English barons, William commanded that all crops and herds, chattels and foods should be burned to ashes, so that the whole of the North be stripped of all means of survival. So terrible a famine fell upon the people, that more than 100,000 young and old starved to death. My writings have often praised William, but for this act I can only condemn him." Orderic Vitalis

In the Harrying of the North, William the Conqueror's brutal conquest and subjugation of the North of England, William's men burnt whole villages from the Humber to Tees, and slaughtered the inhabitants. Foodstores and livestock were destroyed so that anyone surviving the initial massacre would soon succumb to starvation over the winter. The survivors were reduced to cannibalism,[4] with one report stating that the skulls of the dead were cracked open so that the brains could be eaten. Between 100,000 and 150,000 perished and the area took centuries to recover from the damage.

William was furious and decided to lay waste the north of England - the so-called "Harrying of the North". Norman soldiers destroyed anything that might have been of use to those who lived in the north. It is thought that as many as 100,000 people died of starvation.

The Harrying (or Harrowing) of the North was a series of campaigns waged by William the Conqueror[1] in the winter of 1069-1070 to subjugate Northern England, and is part of the Norman conquest of England. It effectively ended the quasi-independence of the region through large-scale destruction that resulted in the relative "pacification" of the local population and the replacement of local Anglo-Danish lords with Normans. The death toll is believed to be over 100,000, with substantial social, cultural, and economic damage.[2][3] Because of the scorched earth policy, much of the land was laid waste and depopulated, a fact to which Domesday Book, written almost two decades later, readily attests.[4]

ETHNIC CLEANSING OF THE ENGLISH 'THE HARRYING OF THE NORTH'   The previous article talked of the ethnic cleansing of the English known as the Harrying of the North, and how much of the northern counties of England was laid waste*. The Normans seemed to combine up to date military skill and tactics, with their own violent Scandinavian Viking heritage. They had many vengeful Bretons with them. They were the Romano-Brythons (who some mistakenly call Celts,) who had fled the English / Saxon onslaught in 458 AD to Brittany in northwestern France and sought some weird revenge. French mercenaries accompanied them. Later English retaliation on northern France was furious. In their blood lust the Normans killed 150,000 English. The Harrying of the North was a brutal act that wouldn't have been worthy of an English King, but was certainly worthy of the usurper William Duke of Normandy. His 'harrying' not only affected Northumberland and Cumberland, and Yorkshire, but also large tracts of Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire.

search results in the book for "harrying of the north"