Bayeux Tapestry and Franco-British Ties: A Natural Historical Alliance

Five British prime ministers ago – and six French ones – Emmanuel Macron first confirmed France would return the Bayeux tapestry to Britain after 1,000 years. Speaking to an audience at Sandhurst alongside Theresa May – the No 10 holder of the day – he said that regarding France and Britain, "two things nothing can change, be it a vote or a political decision: our history and our geography."

It was January 2018, 18 months after the UK voted to leave the EU, and relations between the neighbours were strained. The French political establishment had been shocked and angered by Brexit; personal connections were damaged, and cross-Channel government contacts were measurably dwindling. A piece of embroidered medieval linen, however well it represented that tangled history, could not resolve such a rupture alone.

After eight and a half years and many personnel changes, Macron fulfilled that pledge this week with the unveiling of the tapestry at the British Museum in London, in scenes of such friendship that the earlier bilateral chill could almost be forgotten.

No one claims the Bayeux tapestry alone has stitched together two nations whose connections had visibly frayed. The needlework metaphors, as every commentator this week has shown, are hard to resist. But Macron's commitment to drive through a loan he previously called "seemingly impossible" illustrates that, in diplomatic terms, the London exhibition is more than a decorative sideshow.

"It is much more than just a linen canvas embroidered with wool," Macron told an audience at the museum on Wednesday. "It represents a whole chapter of French, British and European history."

He speculated that people "decades or even centuries from now" would look back not only on the tapestry itself but on "what we did here today" – the loan itself – as a significant marker in Franco-British relations. "Two countries which, after centuries of shared history, [chose] to forge a bond as close as the threads of this thousand-year-old embroidery," he said.

The latest UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, agreed in language tailored to his political priorities. As a "tremendous demonstration of goodwill," he said, the loan "says so much about the friendship of our two nations … It shows the power of collaboration to lift people's lives."

The Bayeux tapestry was always a political artefact, even before it became a foundational text for the English nation (1066, the Battle of Hastings date, is "the nation's pincode," British Museum chair George Osborne noted drily on Wednesday).

Much remains unknown about its commission and creation, but a vast artwork showing a clash of kings and wholesale invasion is not a neutral object. "It was definitely designed with a political purpose in mind when it was first made," says historian Dr David Musgrove, co-author of The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry with Prof Michael Lewis, the exhibition's curator.

"That political purpose was essentially to legitimise the invasion of William the Conqueror," argues Musgrove, content director of HistoryExtra. The "crux scene," he says, is not Harold taking an arrow to the eye, but an earlier portion showing Harold swearing an oath to support William's claim to the English throne.

Harold later reneged when crowned king. "So he perjures himself and that gives William the reason to invade," Musgrove says. "My take is that the tapestry is entirely predicated on making that justification. So it's very modern in that sense; people trying to justify military action today is kind of the same thing."

Most historians believe it was made in Canterbury, but "just about everything around [the tapestry's creation] is a little bit uncertain," according to Prof Leonie Hicks of Canterbury Christ Church University. Historians' "best assumption" – based on the embroidery and contemporary documents – "is that it was likely commissioned by Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror's half-brother, bishop of Bayeux and earl of Kent after the conquest. Or somebody very close to Odo."

Odo and William had fallen out, so a narrative wall hanging at Odo's Norman cathedral celebrating the new English king could be seen as an attempt to regain favour. But if the tapestry flatters William, it is not crude propaganda, argues Hicks. "It's not a straightforward piece of 'Yay, aren't the Normans great, they dumped the English and took the throne.'"

Among the intriguing details, she notes, are the margins' depictions of war's human cost – stitched, most likely, by English women who may have lost husbands and sons. "We have the scene where a house is being burnt and a woman is holding a child's hand and leaving the house. [There are] very graphic depictions in the margins of decapitated soldiers, and bodies being looted. It does give that sense that war is horrific and terrible."

That context was likely lost during the tapestry's long afterlife. History records nothing until it appears in a 1476 Bayeux Cathedral treasury inventory. The tapestry was hung around the cathedral for a few days each year. During the French Revolution it was narrowly rescued from being used as a wagon cover.

Soon, its political usefulness was recognised again. Napoleon, planning an English invasion in 1803, displayed it in Paris where "it was quite a sensation," says Musgrove. "I think Napoleon probably thought it was useful to have an artefact which showed a previous cross-Channel invasion by forces from France into Britain." When invasion plans foundered, the tapestry was returned to Bayeux.

The Nazis were "obsessed" with the tapestry – "they basically saw it as part of their worldview of Aryan Teutonic supremacy," says Musgrove – and before Paris's liberation planned to move it to Germany. They were frustrated by the French resistance, alerted by codebreakers at Bletchley Park.

Eight quiet decades followed before renovation of the Bayeux museum prompted its removal from display. But if that circumstance opened the possibility of loan to Britain, there was no inevitability.

Britain first requested the artwork almost a century ago, in 1931. A 1953 request to mark Elizabeth II's coronation was initially agreed by France, then reversed over conservation concerns. A 1966 attempt commemorating 900 years since the battle foundered against French opposition. A 1980s bid came to nothing.

Macron could easily have reached the same conclusion, given opposition in France from artists and conservation experts. Why, then, such commitment to a loan which, he half-joked last year, was more complicated to negotiate than the Brexit withdrawal agreements?

To Helen Drake, professor of French and European studies at Loughborough University London, the loan fits Macron's self-image as a cultured international statesman – and the value he places on repairing Franco-British relations against global threats.

"Macron is a French president who has pulled the maximum levers that the constitution gives him to operate on the international stage, and that will probably be his legacy. So from that perspective it would make sense to him to be seen to be behind the transfer of the tapestry.

"But he has also very much made it part of his mandate to be at the forefront of ameliorating France's relations with the UK." On Ukraine, defence and security, migration and Trump, British and French shared interests have become more pressing, she says. "The external environment, to put it bluntly, has pushed the two together."