IN the past the suggestion has been made that Duke William when invading England used technology so far unknown in Western Europe. This technology, like the transport of horses, is likely to have come from the East, in particular from Byzantium.

At last year’s Battle Conference Bernard Bachrach reinforced this opinion in his paper, ‘Some observations on the military administration of the Norman Conquest’, In his view not only the transport of great numbers of horses was learnt from the Byzantines, so was the building of special ships to transport them over the Channel. We know how important the horses were in Duke William’s army when he arrived in this country. Logistics in general, in William’s case the organisation of the military camp at Dives, were at least partially inspired by the Romans and Byzantines.

Here, stimulated by Bachrach’s paper and his other publications on military affairs and logistics, I will try to find more evidence for the ‘import’ of new technology. Bachrach referred to Normans in Constantinople but he believed that those in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily were ‘the most obvious conduit through which Byzantine designs for horse transports could have been transmitted from the south of Italy or Sicily to Normandy’. We should, however, make a restriction forr those from Sicily. They probably settled there too late to be of any use to the Norman conquest of England, This leaves us with Normans who took part in military operations against the island organised by the Greeks or with a few individuals who had settled among the Muslim population.

In an earlier paper at this conference I touched upon the Normans serving in the Byzantine empire, in the army or at the imperial court. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the two groups. Since 1982 I have collected more data on Normans going eastwards. Even more important are those who returned to Normandy and could thus transmit directly what they had learned abroad. By putting together all such text references I want to stress the Byzantine impact upon William’s dealings before, during and after the invasion, and thus corroborate Bachrach’s hypothesis.