greet him, "suffer me to have my will. 'T is wiser to fly your hawk at a
stag-royal than a fox. Henry of France may be fair or false to us of
Normandy but 't is safer in these troublous times to have him as friend
rather than foe. You, in whose charge my father Duke Robert left me years
ago, know well how when scarce seven years old I placed my hands between
this same King Henry's and swore to be his man. I will be true to my
fealty vows hap what may, and though it cometh hard to your stout Norman
heart to give up without a blow what you are so loyal to defend, suffer
me, as your suzerain, to give up this my fortress to my overlord. Trust me
't will be best for Normandy and for your duke."
Gilbert of Crispin grumbled and chafed at the command of his young lord,
but he obeyed, and the castle which he had hoped to defend was handed over
to King Henry as hostage for Normandy's faith.
And when the crafty king, who as the boy duke had wisely said was fox
rather than stag-royal, was safely in possession he said, with all the
stately courtesy he could assume when occasion served: "Fair Cousin
William, so loyal and loving a concession as is this of thine, at a time
when blows were far easier to give, merits more from me than thanks. The
fealty of vassal to suzerain is well, but so fair a deed as this of thine
is the height of knightly valor. And where such knightly valor doth live
the knightly spurs should follow. Kneel before thy lord!"
And as the boy knelt bareheaded before him King Henry with drawn sword
gave him the _accolade_--three smart taps with the flat of the sword on
the shoulder and one with the palm of the hand on the cheek. Then said the
king: "William of Normandy, in the name of God, St. Michael, and St.
George, I dub thee knight. Be valiant, bold, and loyal. Speak the truth;
maintain the right; protect the defenceless; succor the distressed;
champion the ladies; vindicate thy knightly character, and prove thy
knightly bravery and endurance by perilous adventures and valorous deeds.
Fear God, fight for the faith, and serve thy suzerain and thy fatherland
faithfully and valiantly."
So Duke William was made a knight at the earliest age at which knighthood
was conferred. And he rode back to his castle at Rouen; and both there and
at his neighboring castle of Vaudreuil, farther down the valley of the
Seine, it was a day of pleasure and feasting for vassals and retainers
when the boy knight first donned his armor and sprang to his saddle
without aid of stirrup--"so tall, so manly in face, and so proud of
bearing," says the old record, "that it was a sight both pleasant and
terrible to see him guiding his horse's career, flashing with his sword,
gleaming with his shield, and threatening with his casque and lance."
But soon, boy though he was, he had terrible work to do. Rebellion was
abroad in his realm, and King Henry's foxy qualities were shown when,
in spite of his promises, he still farther invaded the Norman land, and
gave support to the boy's rebellious subjects. And, worse still, as if to
heap additional insult on his young life, Thurstan Goz, charged with the
defence of a portion of the Norman borders, rose in open rebellion and
garrisoned with recreant Normans and purchased Frenchmen the castle of
Falaise--not only the birthplace, but the favorite castle of the boy
duke,--insolently declaring that if the lad dared attempt its release that
he, Thurstan the rebel, had a plenty of raw hides with which to "tan the
tanner."[I]
Frequent dangers and distresses had taught the boy to curb his sometimes
fiery temper. But this special insult was past all endurance, and even his
self-control was lost in indignation.
Scarce had the courserman, who had sped with the news to the duke's castle
at Rouen, delivered his message than the boy flamed with rage, and turning
to his guardian, Ralph of Wacey, captain-general of the armies of
Normandy, he cried:
"Good cousin, this is not to be borne. I have done King Henry's will, and
been faithful to my fealty vows, but this passeth even my bent. Fling out
our standard. Summon every loyal Norman to our aid--knight and archer and
cross-bowman. Cry '_Maslon!_' and '_Dix aie!_'[J] and let us straight
against this dastard rebel at Falaise."
Quick to act whenever the need arose, the boy duke was soon leading his
army of loyal Normans against the massive castle in which he first saw the
light.
From one of those very turret windows which to-day still look down from
this old castle on the cliffs upon the lovely valley or glen of the Ante,
where Norman peasant women still wash their clothes as they did in Duke
William's day, the recreant Thurstan saw the banners of the approaching
host, and laughed grimly to think how he had outwitted the boy, and how
those steep cliffs, or _felsens_ (which give the place its name of
Falaise), could never be scaled by the armor-encased troops of his young
lord.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF FALAISE--BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM THE
CONQUEROR.]
But Thurstan reckoned without his host. Friendship is an even better ally
than battering-rams and scaling-ladders. Duke William had played as a
little child in this very town and castle of Falaise, and not a Norman
peasant girl but loved and petted him, not a Norman peasant lad but was
proud of the daring and muscle of the brave young duke. At one of those
very washing booths in which it was said Duke Robert first saw and loved
the beautiful Herleva, the tanner's daughter, a peasant girl, pounding her
wash on the sloping board, saw across the treeless slopes the advancing
banners of the duke. The clothes were left unpounded, and speeding to the
little town, she told her news; the loyal men of Falaise flocked to meet
their duke, the gates of the town were opened to him, and from the most
accessible side the Norman host advanced to the assault of the massive
castle walls.
Spurred on to fresh energy and immediate action by the loyalty of his
townsmen and the sight of the rebel standard floating from the walls of
his own castle, the boy knight led the assault upon the outworks, and
proved in this, his first deed of arms, the truth of his biographer that
he was one who "knew when to strike and how to strike." Catapult and
balista, battering-ram and arbalast, cloth-yard shaft and javelin did
their work, a breach was made in the walls, and only the darkness put a
stop to the assault.
Then, spent with the conflict and fearful as to the result, Thurstan saw
that rebellion against this determined boy was no child's play, and with
his haughty spirit considerably humbled he sought an audience with the
duke and craved pardon and easy terms of surrender.
No boy of thirteen, even in this refined and enlightened nineteenth
century, can refrain from "crowing" over a defeated antagonist. It is
human nature and boy-nature especially. What then must it have been in
those cruel and vindictive days eight hundred years ago, when every man's
hand was ready to strike, and every victor's sword was quick to destroy.
But see how in even an ignoble age the manly boy can still be noble.
"Thurstan Goz," said the duke, "that you have warred against me I can
forgive; that you have disgraced this the dearest estate of Duke Robert,
my father, and of me his son, I can also forgive. But that you should
forfeit your vows of fealty and rebelliously conspire against this your
home-land of Normandy I can never forgive. I give you your life. Depart in
peace. But, as you hope for life, never show yourself in this our realm
again. You are banished from Normandy forever!"
The boyhood of William of Normandy seems to have been full of just such
evidences as this of his love of justice, his kind-heartedness, his moral
and physical courage--qualities which even in these days of universal
education and grander opportunities would stamp a boy as noble and manly,
and which were especially remarkable in that age of narrower views and
universal ignorance, when even this just and wise boy prince could simply
make a rude cross as his ducal signature.
So desirous was he for peace and quietness in his realm that, boy though
he was, he stood among the foremost advocates of the measure by which the
Church sought to limit crime and violence and bloodshed, by instituting
what was known as the "Truce of God," and by the terms of which all men
agreed to abstain from violent deeds (except in cases of actual warfare)
from the night of Wednesday to the following Monday morning in each week.
All of William's biographers, however they criticise his later acts, unite
in speaking of the excellences of his boyhood: of his wisdom in the choice
of counsellors, and his willingness to listen to and follow their advice;
of his personal goodness in an age of widespread viciousness; of his grace
and skill in athletic sports and warlike exercises, and his expertness
beyond all his companions in the excitements and successes of the chase.
Of this last-named pastime he was passionately fond, even from early
boyhood, and few excelled him, either in the eagerness with which he
followed the game, or the skill which he displayed in the hunt.
This thought came also to the two mail-clad watchers who, shielded from
view by a group of large trees, looked with interest upon a youthful
hunter, who, in one of the glades that broke the great stretch of forest
near to beautiful Valognes, sped his cloth-yard shaft from his mighty
longbow of English yew, and sent it whizzing full four hundred feet,
straight to the heart of a bounding buck that dashed across the glade
scarce forty yards from the ambushed watchers.
"By the mass, a wondrous hit!" exclaimed the older knight. "Why, man, he
drew that shaft from nocking-point to pile.[K] I would have sworn that
mortal man--let alone a lad like that--could not have drawn such a bow, or
sped so true a shaft."
"There is but one lad that can do it in all Normandy, and that is yonder
hunter," said the younger knight enthusiastic in spite of himself. "Hast
thou not known that none but Duke William can bend Duke William's bow--a
murrain on him too!"
"So, is it our quarry--is it the duke, say'st thou?" hurriedly asked the
older knight. "Then the saints keep me out of range of his shaft. Draw
off, he comes this way"; and grizzled Grimald de Plessis, the Saxon baron,
drew still farther behind the tree-trunks as the young duke and his only
companion, Golet, his merryman or fool, dashed across the glade to where
the stricken stag lay dead.
But his companion, young Guy of Burgundy, fingered his light cross-bow
nervously. "Ten thousand curses on this coward Truce!" he exclaimed
beneath his breath as the duke, all unconscious of his danger, hurried
past the ambush. "But for that I might even now speed my shaft and wing
the tanner where he stoops above his game. Did'st ever see a fairer
chance?"
But wary De Plessis caught the lad's uplifted arm. "Have down thy hand and
bethink thee of that same Truce," he said. "'T is a wise restriction on
your wayward wits, my lord count. The duke's men are much too nigh at hand
to make such a bow-shot safe even for thee, and to-morrow's venture which
we have in hand may be made without breaking this tyrant Truce or braving
the ban of Holy Church. I would have a score of good men at my back ere I
try to wing so stout a bird as he," and De Plessis and the hot-headed Guy
withdrew from their dangerous ambush, while the duke, calling in his
lagging followers, turned over his prize to his huntsmen and rode on to
his castle.
"To-morrow's venture," of which the Saxon baron spoke, was to be the
sorriest chance that had yet happened to the brave young duke. For this
very Guy of Burgundy, cousin and comrade to William since his earliest
days, brought up in his court, and beholden to him for many favors, and
even for his knighthood, had--moved by jealousy--conspired with the
foremost barons of Western Normandy to put the young duke to death. That
very next night was the attempt to be made here in the duke's own castle
of Valognes, away up in the north-western corner of France, some fifteen
miles or so to the south of Cherbourg town--the modern naval and
shipbuilding city, off which the _Kearsarge_ and the _Alabama_ had their
famous sea-fight in the days of the American civil war--June 19, 1864.
But a well-known poet has told us that
"The best laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a-gley,"
and this even the over-confident conspirators discovered. For, before they
could reach the castle on the night appointed, Golet, the duke's faithful
fool, had fathomed their plans, and with fleetest foot dashed into the
castle and up the narrow stairway to the bedchamber of the sleeping duke.
Bang, bang, bang, came a noisy pounding on the closed door, rousing the
lad, sorely tired from his day's hunting. Again and again the _pel_, or
jester's staff, clamored against the door, and now the fully aroused duke
caught his faithful servant's words:
"Up, up, my lord duke! Open, open! Where art thou, Duke William? Wherefore
dost thou sleep? Flee, flee, or thou art a dead man! Up, up, I say! All
are armed; all are marshalled; and if they capture thee, never, never wilt
thou again see the light of day!"
So earnest a warning was not calculated to allow even the most tired of
huntsmen to sleep. William sprang from his bed, and with nothing but a
_capa_, or short, hooded cloak thrown over his half-clad body, without
even clapping on his inseparable spurs, he leaped to his horse and rode
for his life. All unattended he galloped through the night, fording now
the shallow Doure and now the ebbing Vire, stopping for one short prayer
for safety at the shrine of St. Clement, near Isigny, and speeding along
the unfrequented road between Bayeux and the sea, until just before
sunrise he galloped into the little hamlet of Rie or Rye, close to the
shore. Foam-flecked and mud-bespattered, his flagging horse dashed past
the _manoir_ or castle of the lord of the hamlet whose name was Hubert.
[Illustration: "SO, HOLLO, MY LORD DUKE," SAID HUBERT, "WHAT TAKETH THEE
ABROAD IN THIS GUISE SO EARLY?"]
The old Norman was an early riser, and was standing at his castle gate
sniffing the morning air. His ear caught the sound of hoofs, and as the
lad galloped up, the stout old baron rubbed his eyes in surprise to see
his sovereign in such sorry plight.
"So, hollo, my lord duke," he cried; "what taketh thee abroad in this
guise so early? Is aught of danger afoot?"
"Hubert," said the duke, "dare I trust thee?"
"And why not," was the reply. "Have I ever played thee false? Speak, and
speak boldly."
Then William told his story, and without a moment's hesitation the loyal
baron hurried his early guest into the castle, summoned his three sons,
gave the lad a fresh horse, and said to his boys: "Mount, and mount
quickly. Behold your lord in dire stress. Leave him not till you have
lodged him safely in Falaise."
He bade them God-speed and hurried them off none too soon, for scarce had
the sounds of their horses' hoofs died away before the duke's pursuers
came riding hard behind. And Hubert, apparently as good a conspirator as
any of them, sent them on a wild-goose chase over the wrong road, while
the boy duke, with his faithful escort of Hubert's sons, crossed the ford
of Folpendant and reached Falaise at last in safety--in not a very
presentable condition after his hard all-night ride for his life, but,
says the old record, "what mattered that so that he was safe?"
Such a break-neck race with death[L] could have but one result. The young
duke realized at last the fierceness and relentlessness of his rivals and
enemies, and, sorrowing most of all at the treachery of the lad who had
been his playmate and comrade in arms in mimic fight and serious quarrel,
at the chase and in the tourney, he turned reluctantly for succor to the
only man to whom he might rightly look for aid--his liege lord and
suzerain, Henry, King of France.
That crafty and unscrupulous king, whose relations with his boy vassal had
been one continual game of "fast and loose," as desire dictated or
opportunity served, gave a secret chuckle of joy as Duke William and his
slender escort of knights and men-at-arms rode into the palace yard at
Poissy, only a few miles north-west of modern Versailles. And when at last
he saw the youth an actual suppliant at his throne his thought was: "Ah
ha! Duke William and Normandy are in my power at last."
But King Henry's lips seldom spoke his thoughts.
"Cousin of Normandy," he said, "you have done well and wisely to pray my
aid against your rebel barons and this wicked boy of Burgundy. To whom
else should you turn but to the overlord to whom your great father, Duke
Robert, confided you as a sacred trust years ago?"
The lad might justly have inquired how King Henry had kept the trust his
father had confided in him. But he only said:
"'T is not for me but for my father's duchy that I plead. The very life of
Normandy is in jeopardy, my liege."
"And right valiantly will we relieve it, lad," the king exclaimed. "Send
out your rallying-call. Summon your loyal vassals. Join force and arm with
me, and the banners of France and Normandy shall wave above conquered
rebels and a victorious field."
Action quickly succeeded words. An army was speedily raised. The loyal
Normans of the eastern counties hurried to the standard of their young
lord, and at the head of a combined French and Norman force, king and
duke, in the summer of the year 1047, confronted the rebel knights under
Guy of Burgundy, Grimbald de Plessis, Neel of St. Savior, and Randolf of
Bayeux, on the open slopes of Val-es-dunes, or the valley of the
sand-hills, not far from the town of Caen, and almost within sight of the
English Channel.
Duke William led the left wing and King Henry the right. There was a
shouting of battle-cries--the _Dix aie_ of the loyal Normans and the
_Montjoye-St. Denys_ of France mingling with _St. Savior_ and _St. Armand_
from the rebel ranks. Then, as in a great tournament, horse and rider,
shield, sword, and lance closed in desperate combat. It was a battle of
the knights. King Henry went down twice beneath the thrust of Norman
lances, but was on his horse again fighting valiantly in his vassal's
cause, and Duke William, in this his first pitched battle, by a day of
mingled courage, good fortune, prowess, and personal success, laid the
basis of that wonderful career that filled his daring and victorious
future, and fitted him to bear the proud though bloody title of the
Conqueror. Hand to hand, not with lance but with sword, he vanquished in
open conflict the champion of the rebel knights, Hardrez of Bayeux, and
ere darkness fell his enemies were vanquished and in desperate flight for
life, and his power as Duke of Normandy was established finally and
forever.
Great in his victory the boy knight was greater still in his generous
treatment of the conquered rebels. Only one, Grimbald de Plessis, who had
been the prime mover in the treason, suffered imprisonment and death. All
were pardoned, and young Guy of Burgundy, like the coward he seems to have
been, slipped sullenly away rather than face his generous rival and
old-time playfellow, and in his distant court of Burgundy spent his after
years in unsuccessful plots against his always successful rival.
And here our story of the boy William ends. Conqueror at Val-es-dunes,
when yet scarcely nineteen, his course from that time on through his busy
manhood, was one of unvarying success in battle and in statecraft. The
wonderful victory at Senlac, or Hastings, which, on the 14th of October,
1066, gave him the throne of England, and made him both king and
conqueror, has placed his name in the foremost rank of the military heroes
of the world. From this point his story is known to all. It is a part of
the history of our race. It is, indeed, as Palgrave the historian says:
"Magnificent was William's destiny. Can we avoid accepting him as the
Founder of the predominating empire now existing in the civilized world?
Never does the sun set upon the regions where the British banner is
unfurled. Nay, the Stars and Stripes of the Transatlantic Republic would
never have been hoisted, nor the Ganges flow as a British stream, but for
Norman William's gauntleted hand."
Eight hundred years of progress have removed us far from the savagery of
Duke William's day. The nations of the world are, each year, less and less
ready to fly at each other's throats like "dogs of war," whenever any
thing goes wrong or their "angry passions rise." The desires of to-day are
largely in the direction of universal peace and brotherhood. But still we
honor valor and courage and knightly and noble deeds. And though, as we
study the record of that remarkable life that so changed the history of
the world eight centuries back, we can see faults and vices, shortcomings
and crimes even, in the stirring life of William, Duke of Normandy and
King of England, still, as we look upon his spirited statue that now
stands in the market-place of Falaise, almost beneath the ruined walls of
the grim old castle in which he was born, and which he stormed and carried
when a boy of scarce fourteen, our thoughts go back to his stormy and
turbulent boyhood. And, as we do so, we see, not the Conqueror of England,
the enslaver of the Saxons, the iron-handed tyrant of the Curfew-bell and
the Doomsday-book, but the manly, courageous, true-hearted, perplexed, and
persecuted little fellow of the old Norman days, when, spite of trouble
and turmoil, he kept his heart brave, and true, and pure, and was in all
things the real boy knight--in those fresh and generous days of youth,
when, as Mr. Freeman, the brilliant historian of the Norman Conquest,
says: "He shone forth before all men as the very model of every princely
virtue."
FOOTNOTES:
[H] Tillieres, the Tuileries or tile-kiln, was old French for clay-pit or
brick-yard, and is the name also of a famous French palace.
[I] Young William's mother, Herleva of Falaise, was the daughter of
Fulbert, a prosperous tanner of the town, and the boy was taunted with
what was esteemed his low birth--as if, indeed, an honest tanner was not
the superior of a robber baron!
[J] The old Norman battle-cries.
[K] "Nocking-point to pile" in old-time archery meant the full length of
the arrow from the point where it "notched" the bow-string to the
arrowhead itself.
[L] The place at which young William in his flight from Valognes forded
the river Vire is still called "_la voie du Duc_."--the Duke's Way.
[Illustration]
V.
BALDWIN OF JERUSALEM: THE BOY CRUSADER.
(_Known as Baldwin III., the Fifth of the Latin Kings of Jerusalem._)
[A.D. 1147.]
[Illustration]
Through a flood of sunlight, cooled by mountain breezes, breaks a
straggling mass of hill and plain and deep ravine crowded with gray-walled
buildings, crumbling ruins, dismantled towers, glittering minarets and
crosses, stout walls and rounded domes. A palace here, a broken arch or
cross-crowned chapel there; narrow and untidy streets thronged with a
curious crowd drawn from every land and race--Syrian and Saxon, Norman and
Nubian, knight and squire, monk and minstrel,--such was Jerusalem, "city
of ruins," when, seven hundred years ago, the Red-Cross banner floated
from its towered walls and the Holy City stood as the capital of the
short-lived and unfortunate realm of the Crusaders--the Latin kingdom of
Jerusalem.
I take it for granted that most of my young readers know something of the
history of the Crusades--those wonderful religious wars, when Europe
overflowed into Asia and under the banner of the Cross sought by blood and
blows and daring deeds to gain possession from the Saracen conquerors--or,
as they were called, the "Infidel,"--of the tomb of Him whose mission was
"Peace on Earth; Good-Will to Men." But how many of them know any thing of
that eventful and romantic chapter in the history of Palestine, when, for
eighty-eight years, from the days of Duke Godfrey, greatest of the
Crusaders, to the time of Saladin, greatest of the Sultans, the Holy City
was governed by Christian nobles and guarded by Christian knights, drawn
from the shores of Italy, the downs of Normandy, and the forests of Anjou?
It is a chapter full of interest and yet but little known, and it is at
about the middle of this historic period, in the fall of the year 1147,
that our sketch opens.
In the palace of the Latin kings, on the slopes of Mount Moriah, a boy of
fifteen and a girl of ten were leaning against an open casement and
looking out through the clear September air toward the valley of the
Jordan and the purple hills of Moab.
"Give me thy gittern, Isa," said the boy, a ruddy-faced youth, with gray
eyes and auburn hair; "let me play the air that Rene, the troubadour,
taught me yesterday. I'll warrant thee 't will set thy feet a-flying, if I
can but master the strain," and he hummed over the gay Provencal measure: