THE LAST WARS OF WILLIAM RUFUS.[429]
1097-1099.
[Sidenote: Character of the last years of Rufus. 1097-1100.]
[Sidenote: Little to record at home, and much abroad.]
[Sidenote: Temper and schemes of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: His designs on France.]
The latter years of the reign of the Red King, beginning from the
departure of Anselm, are far richer in foreign than in domestic
events. Even within the isle of Britain we have, as we have already
seen, chiefly to deal with the lands which lie beyond the actual
English kingdom. Scotland has received a king at the bidding of the
over-lord in England. A deep plan has been laid for the better
subjugation of the seemingly unconquerable Welsh. A Norwegian king has
slain an earl of England in strife on the shore of a Welsh island. But
within England itself the greatest event which we have had to record
has been the immediate result of that distant strife in the succession
to an English earldom. When Robert of Bellême became the most powerful
subject in England, it was undoubtedly an event of no small importance
both at the moment and in its results. It added perceptibly to the
evils even of the reign of unlaw. Still it was not in itself an event
on the same scale as the rebellion of Odo or the rebellion of Robert
of Mowbray, or as the beginning or the ending of the dealings between
Anselm and the King. And the same character of the time goes on to the
end. There is in England itself nothing to record besides the great
architectural works of the King, a few ecclesiastical deaths and
appointments, and those natural portents and phænomena which are
characteristic of the whole time, and which come thicker upon us as we
draw nearer to the end. Beyond sea, on the other hand, this time of
less than three years is the most stirring time of the whole reign.
King of England, over-lord of Scotland, not in form Duke of the
Normans, but master of Normandy as his brother never was, the Red King
goes on to greater schemes. Rufus seems to have been always puffed up
by success, but never cast down by bad luck. His personal failure in
Wales was really a marked contrast to the success of Eadgar in
Scotland. But Rufus seems to have had the happy gift of plucking out
of all states of things whatever tended to gratify his pride, and of
forgetting all that looked the other way. He, or others in his name,
had set up a king at Dunfermline. This was enough to make him put out
of sight all thought that he had in his own person marched to Snowdon
and taken nothing by his march. He felt himself more than ever Monarch
of Britain, King of kings within his own island. We can believe that
it rankled in his soul that, outside that island, he was less than a
king. The lord of Normandy had in any case a formal over-lord in the
French King, and William Rufus was lord of Normandy only by an
anomalous and temporary title. He held the duchy only as a merchant
holds a pledge. We can well understand how such a man would chafe at
the thought that he had anywhere even a nominal superior. Such an one
as William deemed himself was dishonoured by being, even in the most
nominal way, the man of such an one as Philip. And the noblest way of
escaping from the acknowledgement of a superior was by himself taking
that superior’s place. The Monarch of Britain would be also Monarch of
Gaul, of so much at least of Gaul as in any sense admitted the
over-lordship of Paris. The lord of Winchester and Rouen would be lord
of Paris also. William wished for a war with France, and a war with
France could at any moment be had. The eternal question of the Vexin
stood always awaiting its solution.
[Sidenote: Wars with France and Maine.]
[Sidenote: Beginning of war. 1097-1098.]
[Sidenote: William crosses the sea.]
But a war with France was not the only war which William Rufus had now
to wage on the Gaulish mainland. He had to strive against a noble
city, a valiant people, ruled by a prince worthy of his city and his
people. Besides striving with France and Philip, he had to strive
against Maine, he had to strive against Helias. The war with France
was doubtless the object with which he crossed the sea; but mischief
had long been brewing in the troublesome land to the south of
Normandy, and about the time when the French war began, the standing
Cenomannian difficulty grew into open war also. William had thus two
wars to wage at once. These two wars, with France and with Maine, are
told in our narratives as if they were altogether distinct, and had no
bearing on one another. Yet the two were going on at the same time at
no great distance from one another, and some of the chief actors on
one side were flitting to and fro between the two. It is hard to say
in which region the first actual fighting took place. In both it must
have begun in the winter after Anselm had gone on one errand into
Burgundy and Eadgar on another into Scotland. It was then that King
William crossed the sea also, with the object doubtless of making war
on France. The Cenomannian war was thrown in as something incidental.
The war with Maine has in itself, as a tale, by far the greater charm
of the two. But it is needless to say that far higher interests were,
or might have been, at stake in the war with France. Of the
wide-reaching schemes of William Rufus, and of their remarkable
position among those things which might have been but which were not,
I have spoken at some length elsewhere.[430] But it is only in its
latest stage that the war showed even any likelihood of growing beyond
the scale of a border struggle. It was, in profession at least, a war
for the Vexin, and it was in the Vexin that it was mainly waged.
[Sidenote: Comparison of the two wars.]
[Sidenote: Comparative position of France and Maine.]
[Sidenote: Helias and Philip.]
[Sidenote: Advantage of the kingly dignity.]
The result of the war was widely different in the two cases. We may
sum it up by saying that Maine was subdued and that France was not.
Maine was at least held to be subdued. In the first Cenomannian war
the capital was taken; the prince was made a prisoner; so much of the
land as was really attacked was subdued. In the second war the capital
was taken and the prince was driven out. But against France no real
advantage at all seems to have been gained. To modern ideas this
difference may seem no wonderful result of the difference between the
invasion of a county and the invasion of a kingdom. But in the
eleventh century the resources of Maine could not have been very
greatly inferior to the resources of France. In one sense indeed the
resources of Maine were by far the greater of the two, inasmuch as
Helias reigned at Le Mans and Philip reigned at Paris. But in truth
the comparison between a county and a kingdom is not a fair one. The
France of those days was not a kingdom; it was simply that small part
of a great kingdom which was held to obey――which under Philip
certainly did not obey――the nominal king of the whole. The king was
simply that one among the princes of the kingdom who always claimed,
and who sometimes received, the homage of the others. We must never
underrate the vast moral advantage which the king drew from his kingly
dignity;[431] but, on the other hand, we must not be thereby led to
overrate the material strength of the king’s actual dominion.
Supposing that the resources of Maine and of France had been
positively equal, if Helias had the advantage over Philip that the one
was Helias and that the other was Philip, this advantage was far more
than counterbalanced by the fact that Philip was a king while Helias
was only a count. That he was a count of doubtful title, always
threatened by a neighbour more powerful than himself, was of course a
further incidental disadvantage; but the essential difference is
inherent in the position of the two princes and their dominions. The
king, even though the king was Philip, was a king, and men had
scruples about personally attacking one who was at once their own lord
on earth and the anointed of the Lord of Heaven. William Rufus
doubtless had no such scruples about that or about any matter; but
such scruples had been felt by his father; they were to be felt in
times to come by Henry of Le Mans and of Anjou, of Normandy and of
England.[432] Such scruples would not be felt by Normans withstanding
French aggression on their own land; we may remember how a lance
from the Côtentin had laid Philip’s father on the ground at
Val-ès-dunes.[433] They would not be felt by native Englishmen, to
whom Normandy, France, and Maine, were all alike foreign and hostile
lands. But we may suspect that there was many a knight in William’s
host who, when he went forth to invade the lands of the lord of his
lord in an utterly unprovoked quarrel, did not go forth with quite so
light a heart as that with which he went forth to win back for his
lord a land of which his lord had some shadow of ground for professing
that he had been robbed by one of his own men.
[Sidenote: Lewis son of Philip.]
Maine then was, in a sense, conquered; France was not conquered in any
sense. Le Mans was taken; Paris was hardly threatened. And this, we
may believe, was at least partly owing to the fact that Le Mans was
only the city of a count, while Paris was the city of a king. Both
lands had a champion in whom we may feel a personal interest. While we
follow the steps of an old acquaintance in Count Helias, we gladly
watch the beginnings of a new acquaintance, not indeed in King Philip
himself, but in his gallant son the Lord Lewis.[434] He has his
special biographer, and we only wish that the minute detail in which
we can read his actions in dealing with the immediate vassals of the
French duchy had been extended to the greater though shorter strife
which he had to wage against the sovereign of Normandy and England.
[Sidenote: Beginning of the war of Maine. January, 1098.]
It is not easy to tell the story of these two wars in exact
chronological order. The early part of the French war is told without
any dates, while we know when the actual fighting began in Maine. This
was in the January which followed William’s crossing to the continent,
the January of the year in which Earl Hugh was killed in Anglesey.
Whether there was any fighting on the French border earlier than that
we cannot tell. For a later stage of the French war we have dates, and
its dated stage clearly follows the end of the first Cenomannian war.
If we go back to the causes of the two struggles, it is equally hard
to find the beginning. In both cases there was a standing quarrel,
which might have broken out into war at any time. But the French war
has a certain right to precedence, inasmuch as it was doubtless rather
to attack France than to attack Maine that William Rufus crossed the
sea. It may therefore be our best course, first to trace out the
earlier undated part of the French war down to the point where there
is a clear break in the story. We may then follow the fortunes of Le
Mans and Maine, till we reach the later dated part of the French war
which followed their first momentary conquest.
§ 1. _The Beginnings of the French War._
1097-1098.
[Sidenote: King Philip;]
[Sidenote: his adulterous marriage with Bertrada of Montfort.]
[Sidenote: He puts away his first wife.]
[Sidenote: Philip and Bertrada;]
[Sidenote: their alleged marriage by Odo. 1092.]
Of Philip King of the French, the fourth king of the house of Paris,
we have often heard already, and from what we have heard we shall
hardly expect him to take any leading part either in war or in
council. He is chiefly memorable for his adulterous marriage with
Bertrada of Montfort, the wife of Fulk Rechin of Anjou. He had got rid
of his first wife, the daughter of Count Florence of Friesland and
step-daughter of that Count Robert of Flanders who bore the Frisian
name. The mother of his son Lewis and his daughter Constance was put
away by Philip on some plea of kindred, and was shut up in the castle
of Montreuil.[435] Some years later Bertrada became her successor. Of
her and Fulk we shall hear again in our Cenomannian story; she was in
some sort given to Fulk as the price of Cenomannian bondage. But, as
Fulk had at least one wife living, the validity of the marriage might
have been fairly called in question. If the scandal of the time may be
trusted, Bertrada, wearying of Fulk, and fearing that he might deal by
her as he had dealt by others, offered herself to King Philip to
supply the place which he had made vacant.[436] She won his heart, so
far as he had any, and she seems to have been the only thing that he
really cared for. But she who had been a countess at Angers would not
be less than queen at Paris, and a ceremony of marriage was gone
through. More than one prelate was charged with the uncanonical deed.
The version which most concerns us is that which tells how, when no
prelate in France would thus profane the sacraments of the Church, the
King looked beyond the border, and found one less scrupulous in the
person of the Bishop of Bayeux. The churches of Mantes, it is said,
were Odo’s reward for his thus pandering to the misdeeds of his royal
neighbour.[437]
[Sidenote: Scandal occasioned by the marriage.]
[Sidenote: Opposition of Ivo and Hugh of Lyons.]
[Sidenote: Excommunication of Philip and Bertrada.]
Much scandal and searching of heart followed on the pretended
marriage, scandal which spread throughout all France, throughout all
Gaul, throughout all Christendom. The famous Bishop Ivo of Chartres
protested in many letters to the King and others.[438] If a council of
the prelates of France, gathered by the King’s authority at Rheims,
was inclined to deal gently with the royal sinner, there were higher
ecclesiastical powers who were more unbending. Archbishop Hugh of
Lyons, Primate of all the Gauls, no subject of Parisian dukes or
kings, but a prince of that Imperial Burgundy which knew no king but
Cæsar, gathered an assembly which spoke in another voice. The friend
of Anselm, the friend of Urban, called together the bishops of the
Gauls at Autun, and their voice denounced the offence which the
bishops of France alone had been inclined to pass over.[439] Higher
powers still spoke at Piacenza and at Clermont. Philip and Bertrada
were excommunicated often and absolved now and then. None would eat at
their table; the dogs were said to refuse the morsels which fell from
it. Wherever they went, the public exercise of Christian worship
stopped, though, by a somewhat inconsistent indulgence, they were
allowed to have a low mass said before them in a private chapel.[440]
It would seem as though, in spiritual as well as in temporal things,
subjects were to suffer from the crimes of kings, while the kings
themselves went unscathed. But when Philip and Bertrada left any town,
the bells at once struck out. Then, with allusion no doubt to the
supposed power of the bells to chase away thunder and pestilence, the
King would say to his companion, “Do you hear, my beauty, how they
drive us away?”[441] For fifteen years, allowing perhaps for
occasional times of reconciliation, the King of the French never wore
his crown or his kingly robes or appeared in royal state at any public
ceremony.[442]
[Sidenote: Sons of Philip and Bertrada.]
[Sidenote: Bertrada’s schemes against Lewis.]
[Sidenote: Philip invests Lewis with the Vexin. 1092.]
By this second marriage or adultery, which was held to be in no way
done away by the death of the lawful Queen in prison,[443] Philip had
two sons, Philip and Florus. Bertrada wished to be the mother of a
king, and in after times the lawful heir Lewis was said to have been
the object of not a few plots on the part of his step-mother, if even
step-mother she is to be called. But at this stage Philip seems to
have kept sense enough to see the merits of his son, and to place full
trust in him. By the consent of his realm, he made Lewis the immediate
ruler and defender of the exposed frontier of the royal dominions. He
granted him in fief the towns of Mantes and Pontoise, and the whole
French Vexin.[444] But Lewis was made more than this. Practically,
whether by any formal act or not, Lewis became the ruler of France, so
far as France just then had any ruler. Philip, scorned and loathed of
all men, with the curses of the Church hurled over and over again
against him, withdrew from ruling, fighting, or anything else but his
own pleasures, and threw the whole burthen of the government and
defence of his kingdom on the shoulders of his young and gallant son.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Question of the Vexin.]
[Sidenote: Grounds of offence on the part of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: William demands the French Vexin. 1097.]
We are not told at what exact moment the old question of the Vexin was
again first stirred. Philip was not likely to stir it, neither was
Robert; William Rufus might not care to stir it while he was lord only
of part of Normandy, and not of the whole. But when all Normandy
became his, the old dispute naturally came up again in his mind. He
would not have been William Rufus if he had not sought to win all that
his father had held, all that his father had claimed, and among the
rest the place where his father found his death-wound. The special
acts of authority exercised by Philip in the Vexin, the grant of the
land as his son’s fief, the grant of the churches of Mantes, the
churches which were rebuilding out of his father’s dying gifts, to his
own rebellious uncle Odo, would be likely to stir him up still more to
put forward his old claim. At last, after reflecting, we are told, on
the wars and the fate of his father in that region, he sent, in the
year of the departure of Anselm, solemnly to demand the cession of the
whole Vexin, specially naming the towns and fortresses of Pontoise,
Chaumont, and Mantes.[445] Of these Mantes and Chaumont were in the
strictest sense border fortresses; Pontoise――the bridge on the Oise,
as its name implies――lies far nearer the heart of the King’s
territory; Pontoise in an enemy’s hand would indeed be a standing
menace to Paris. The demands of the Red King almost amounted to a
demand for the surrender of the independence of the French kingdom.
[Illustration:
Map illustrating
the
FRENCH CAMPAIGN.
A.D. 1098.
Edwᵈ. Weller
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._]
[Sidenote: The demand is refused.]
[Sidenote: William crosses to Normandy. November 11-30, 1097.]
[Sidenote: Excesses of the King’s followers.]
[Sidenote: Silence of English writers as to the French war.]
It is needless to say that the demand was refused. Lewis and
his counsellors declined to give up the Vexin or any of its
fortresses.[446] King William accordingly crossed the sea to assert
his rights, and the French campaign possibly began before the end of
the year. It is wonderful, when we remember that it is chiefly from
our own writers that we get the details of William Rufus’ Norman
campaigns, how little they tell us about his French campaigns. Of the
war of Maine to which we shall presently come they tell us little
enough. Still the name of Maine does appear in their pages, while the
name of France at this stage does not. We learn indeed that in the
November of this year the King crossed into Normandy, but with what
object we are not told.[447] What we are told is eminently
characteristic of the Red King and his reign. As so often happened,
his crossing was delayed by the weather; meanwhile his immediate
followers carried out to the full that licence which the King’s
immediate followers were wont to allow themselves till Henry and
Anselm found sharp means to check them.[448] “His _hired_ in the
shires there they lay the most harm did that ever _hired_ or _here_ in
_frithland_ should do.”[449] If the army at large is meant, the
expression is a strange one. The _hired_ is the King’s household,
taking in doubtless household troops in personal attendance on the
King, like the old housecarls, but not surely the whole force,
national or mercenary. But it was the King’s household whose excesses
were specially complained of; and this casual outburst of bitterness
is a speaking comment on the general pictures of their misdoings which
we have already come across.[450] But it is only of damage done in
England by the King’s household that our Chronicler tells us anything.
Of warlike exploits on the other side of the Channel neither he nor
any other English writer tells us at this stage a single word.[451]
[Sidenote: William and Lewis.]
[Sidenote: Chief men on William’s side.]
[Sidenote: Difficulties of Lewis.]
[Sidenote: Fate of the captives on each side.]
If from the silence of our own writers we turn to our chief authority
on the French side, we shall find a vivid general picture of the war,
but hardly any account of particular events. We get indeed one of the
most striking of personal contrasts. Though the war which was now
waged by Rufus was in every sense a war waged against France, yet it
could hardly be called a war personally waged against the nominal
ruler of France. It was a war for the Vexin, waged against the lord of
the Vexin, and, in its first stages at least, mainly confined to the
Vexin. The struggle between William and Lewis, as it is set forth by
the biographer of the French prince, was an unequal one. William had
his old weapons at command――the wealth of England, the traitors whom
that wealth could bribe, the mercenaries whom that wealth could
hire.[452] He had his own experience in war; he had his veteran troops
and their veteran commanders. Next under the King, comparatively young
in years, but first of all in daring as in wickedness, was Robert of
Bellême. Then came the King’s brother Henry, and the well-known names
of Count William of Evreux, Earl Hugh of Chester, and the old Earl
Walter of Buckingham.[453] These were formidable foes for an untried
youth like Lewis; the aged warrior who was old on the day of Senlac
must have been a strange contrast indeed to the gallant lad on whom
the fortune of France now rested. Lewis had, we are told, neither men
nor money nor allies; he had to pick up all where and how he could.
Whenever, often by running to and fro as far as the borders of Berry
or Auvergne or Burgundy, he had got together three hundred, or perhaps
five hundred, knights, he met King William of England marching against
him with ten thousand.[454] Here was little room for pitched battles;
Lewis could not risk a meeting with such an enemy in the open field.
He had often to retire, sometimes openly to fly.[455] And the
different state of the hoards of the two princes showed itself in an
effect on their military operations which is characteristic of the
time. When warriors on the English side――we must use the language of
our French informant――fell into French hands, the price of their
ransom was speedily paid. When French warriors were made prisoners by
the forces of Rufus, there was no money to ransom them. They had to
languish in bonds with only one hope of deliverance. Those only were
set free who were willing to become the men of the King of England and
to bind themselves by oath to fight against their own natural
lord.[456]
[Sidenote: French traitors.]
[Sidenote: Guy of the Rock.]
[Sidenote: Norman possessions beyond the Epte.]
[Sidenote: Roche Guyon.]
[Sidenote: The castle bored in the rock.]
[Sidenote: Guy submits to Rufus.]
Some then at least of the native subjects of the French crown, who had
no conflicting engagements to plead, did not scruple, in the
extremities in which they found themselves, to take service on behalf
of the invader against their own lord. It is therefore the less
wonderful if another class of men, whose interests and whose duties
were more doubtful, deemed, when they had to choose between two lords,
that Rufus was the lord to be chosen. Others again were found of baser
mould, who simply took the money of the Red King, and for its sake
turned against their own people on behalf of strangers. Among these
one is specially marked, one who by his geographical position was
called on to be among the foremost champions of France against Norman
invasion. This was one of the lords who commanded the fortresses on
the Seine, a man whose possessions lay close to the Norman border, Guy
of the Rock, the Rock which has taken its name from him and which
still is known as _La Roche Guyon_.[457] The position of his chief
stronghold made his adhesion of no small importance. The stream of
Epte, flowing during a great part of its course through a deep valley,
seems designed by nature to part Normandy and France; but, as we have
seen, the frontier was ever disputed, and here and there the Norman
held small portions of territory on the left bank of the river. One of
these Norman holdings on the French side lies by the small village of
Gasny, where the boundary, surviving in that of the modern department,
is still marked at some distance up the opposite hill. A slight
further ascent brings the traveller in sight of one of the noblest
bends of the Seine, where the great river, with all its islands, runs
immediately below a long line of chalk hills, with their white spurs
jutting out in endless fantastic shapes. The windings of the Seine
have in fact left at this point little more than a narrow isthmus
between itself and its lowlier tributary. Just within the French
territory at this point, and commanding this important sweep of the
great French river, lay the domains of the lord of the Rock. The ridge
on which the traveller stands ends in a bluff to the south-east.
There, where the hills open for another tributary of the Seine, close
by the island of Lavancourt, stood Guy’s now vanished fortress of
Vetheuil. But, as we now gaze, by far the most prominent object in the
whole curved line of the hill, placed like the imperial seat in the
centre of an ancient amphitheatre, rising over the church, the more
modern castle, the town, and the airy bridge which modern art has
thrown across the river, soar the relics of the fortress which still
bears Guy’s name. A spur of the hill is crowned by a small keep, with
a round tower attached to a square mass within its compass. But in the
days of the Red King, the Guy’s Cliff of the Vexin, now the site of a
castle so preeminently visible, was specially known as the site of the
stronghold that was invisible. The lords of the rock had, like the
Kenite of old, literally made their nest in the rock itself. The chalk
is to this day habitually bored to make houses, churches,[458] any
kind of excavation that may be needed. In days before our time this
custom had been applied to a more dangerous use; the plundering chiefs
of the rock had scooped themselves out a castle in its side. More than
one of the chambers remain――comfortless to our eyes, but perhaps not
more comfortless than the chambers within many a tower of timber or
masonry――whence these troglodyte barons looked out to mark the craft
upon the Seine, and to exact, by a custom which lingered on till late
times, a toll from every passer by. Guy of the Rock now submitted to
the island king, and his submission supplied a new fetter to pen up
the king of the mainland within his havenless realm. At the very
entrance of the French territory on this side, Guy’s Rock, Vetheuil,
and all that is implied in the possession of Vetheuil and of the Rock,
passed from the obedience of the lord of Paris to the obedience of the
lord of Winchester and Rouen.
[Sidenote: Policy of Robert of Meulan.]
[Sidenote: He receives William’s troops.]
[Sidenote: Importance of the position of Meulan.]
[Sidenote: Description of Meulan.]
While Guy thus sold to the invader the very entrance-gate of the
French kingdom, the Red King found another ally in a far more famous
man who held a position of at least equal importance higher up the
Seine. At the head of the nobles who held lands of both kings stood
the acknowledged master of all subtle policy, Count Robert of Meulan.
We have been so long familiar with his name, whether as the youthful
warrior of Senlac or as the experienced counsellor of the Red King,
that we may have almost forgotten that the title by which we call him
is French, and that he was as great a lord in France as he was in
England or in Normandy. We find it hard to think of him as one of
those who had thus to choose between two lords, and that he might
conceiveably have chosen the cause of Philip――or rather of
Lewis――against William. We cannot fancy that he took long to decide.
He may have argued that William, lord both of Normandy and of England,
had two parts in him, while Philip of France had only one. He received
the troops of the Red King into his castles, and his adhesion was held
to have been of special help to his undertaking. He opened, we are
told, a clear path for the English into France.[459] The words sound
as if they belonged to the fourteenth, fifteenth, or sixteenth century
rather than to the last years of the eleventh. And they are clothed
with a strange significance when we remember that the man who now
opened a way into France for the combined host of Normandy and England
was the same man who, two-and-thirty years before, had opened a way
into the very heart of England for the combined host of Normandy and
France.[460] But in a geographical point of view the expression is
fully justified. In a war between the lord of Rouen and the lord of
Paris, no man’s friendship could be more valuable to either side than
the friendship of the Count of Meulan. A man weaker in fight and less
wary in council than the Achitophel of his day might, if he kept the
Seine barred as the lord of Meulan could bar it, have gone far to hold
the balance between the contending kings. As at Mantes, as at Rouen,
as at Paris itself, the islands so characteristic of the Seine are at
Meulan also brought into play for purposes of habitation and defence.
Meulan indeed is, what neither Paris nor Rouen is, at once a
hill-fortress and a river-fortress. At a point of the river lying
between Mantes, the seat of the Conqueror’s death-wound, and Poissy,
the spot where he went to crave help of his lord before the day of
Val-ès-dunes, a hill which the surrounding valleys gird as with a
natural fosse rises from the right bank of the river. A group of
islands is formed at this spot by the branches of the winding stream,
fit places for the landing of the forefathers of the Normans in their
pirate days. The spot was seized on for defence. A castle arose on the
side of the hill, with a town at its foot sloping swiftly down to the
river. There a bridge of some antiquity joins the right bank to a
central island, which is joined again to the left bank by another
bridge. The island, once strongly fortified, still keeps the
significant name of the Fort. The bridge which joins the island to the
left bank of the river, where lies the suburb known as _Les Mureaux_,
was, at least in later times, defended by a tower bearing the name of
_La Sangle_. A considerable extent of the outer walls of the castle
may be traced, and a specially diligent inquirer may thread his way to
a small fragment of the castle itself, and may there mark work of a
somewhat later date than the time with which we have to do. It is more
easy to trace out a large part of the defences of the Fort, and to
mark the churches, surviving and desecrated, one of which, high on the
hill side, also belongs, like so many others, to the age next
following. As in so many other places, so at Meulan, we cannot lay our
hand on anything which we can positively affirm to be the work of its
most famous lord. But we can well see that the strength of the spot, a
spot which in later times played no small part in the wars of the
League, was well understood in the days of our story, and that so
important a position was strengthened by all the art of the time. When
Count Robert received the forces of Normandy and England on the height
and in the island of Meulan, he did indeed open a way for those forces
into the heart of France. It was a way which might have been expected
to lead them straight to the city which then, as ever, might be deemed
to be more than the heart of France, to be France itself.
[Sidenote: William’s prospects.]
Count Robert was doubtless guided, then and always, by policy. Many of
his neighbours who found themselves in the like case followed his
lead. They could not serve two masters; so they made up their minds to
serve the master who was strongest either to reward or to punish, him
whose purse was the deeper and whose spirit was the fiercer.[461]
Altogether the odds seemed frightfully against the French side. Rufus
might indeed have small chances of carrying out his grand scheme of
uniting Paris――perhaps Poitiers and Bourdeaux――under the same lord as
Winchester and Rouen; but things at least looked as if the conquest of
the disputed lands was about to advance the Norman frontier most
dangerously near to the French capital. Above all, when the Seine was
barred both at Roche Guyon and at Meulan, we ask how things stood in
the border town which lay between them, the town which was one of the
special subjects of William’s demands on Philip. How fared it at
Mantes when the stream both above and below was in the hands of the
enemy? To this question we get no answer; but we see that, in any
case, the King of the French was more closely shut up than ever in the
central prison-house of his nominal realm.
[Sidenote: Failure of William’s plans.]
[Sidenote: Pontoise and Chaumont not taken.]
[Sidenote: Castle of Chaumont.]
But, small as seemed young Lewis’s means of defence, weakened as he
further was by treason among his own or his father’s vassals, the
resistance made by the French to the Norman or English invasion was
valiant, stubborn, and, we may add, successful. William Rufus was much
further from conquering France than Henry the Fifth, or even than
Edward the Third, was in after times. With all his wealth, all his
forces, he could not conquer the land; he could not even take the
fortresses to which he specially laid claim. He could not conquer the
Vexin; he could not take either Pontoise or Chaumont. While we hear
nothing of Mantes, we know that both these two last-named fortresses
successfully withstood his attacks. Of the three fortresses which were
the special objects of the war, one, that of Chaumont, became in some
sort its centre. The Chaumont with which we have to deal is
still distinguished from other places of the same name as
Chaumont-_en-Vexin_. It stands about five miles east of the Epte, at
the point where the frontier stream of Rolf is joined by the smaller
stream of the Troesne, and makes a marked turn in its course from
nearly due south to south-west. The region is a hilly one, though it
contains no heights of any remarkable elevation. The Bald Mount
itself, which――unluckily for the inquirer――is bald no longer, is a
wide-spreading hill crowned with a mound which stands out prominently
to the eye on every side. The line of the wall which it supported may
still be easily traced, and in a few places it is actually standing.
On the steep north-eastern side of the hill the small town of Chaumont
nestles at its foot, while the stately church of the later days of
French architecture soars above the town as the castle again soars
above the church. Of the part played in the war by this stronghold we
shall hear a little later.
[Sidenote: The castle of Gisors.]
[Sidenote: Its first defences. 1096.]
[Sidenote: Strengthened by Robert of Bellême.]
[Sidenote: Gisors under Henry the Second.]
[Sidenote: Present appearance of Gisors.]
The height of Chaumont commands a vast prospect on all sides; the eye
stretches far away over the friendly land to the south, towards the
hills bordering on the Seine; but the special rival of Chaumont, the
fortress at the junction of the Epte and Troesne, is shut out from
sight by a near range of hills which follow the line of the smaller
stream. Where the two rivers join, the Epte, like the greater Seine,
divides to form a group of islands at the foot of a low hill on the
right, the Norman, bank. Here stands the town and fortress of Gisors,
the chief bulwark of Normandy towards the north-eastern corner of the
Vexin. Once a dependency of the neighbouring Neauflé, whose mound and
square tower form a prominent object in the landscape, Gisors had now
become a stronghold indeed. It had been first fenced in about two
years before by Pagan of Gisors, a man of whom we shall hear in the
course of the war.[462] Somewhat later William gave orders that the
border post should be made into a fortress of the greatest possible
strength, and he committed the work to the most skilful engineer at
his command. All the craft and subtlety of the Devil of Bellême were
employed to make Gisors a stronghold which might shelter the eastern
frontier of Normandy against all enemies. As far as one can see, the
islands in the Epte and the hill which rises above them near to the
right bank of the main river were united in one common plan of
defence. The town itself, taking in the islands, was walled, either
now or at a later time, and defended with a ditch throughout those
parts of its circuit which were neither sheltered by the river nor by
the castle hill. In the great defences of this last we see the fruit
of the engineering skill of Robert of Bellême, and we better learn
what in those days was deemed a specially strong fortress. On all
sides save that where town and castle join, the hill is girded by a
deep ditch, and on the north, the side which lies away from both town
and river, the ditch is doubled, and the chief entrance on this side
is defended by an outpost between the two. The ditch fences in a vast
walled space, in the middle of which art has improved nature by piling
up a vast artificial mound crowned by a shell keep. The earthworks are
most likely older than either Robert of Bellême or Pagan of Gisors.
The outer wall and the shell keep may well be part of Robert’s design,
if they are not actually his work; but the towers which now rise so
proudly over Gisors, not only the round tower, precious in local
legend, but the vast octagon on one side of the keep which bears the
name of the martyr of Canterbury, must all be of later date than our
time. A graceful chapel within the keep, where the visitor is told
with special emphasis that Saint Thomas once said mass, has thus much
to show in favour of the legend that it is clearly a work of Henry the
Second’s days. His days were stirring days at Gisors as well as the
days of Rufus, and a hundred years of sieges had brought new
improvements into the art of fortification. All in short that strikes
the eye as the traveller draws near to Gisors, the castle towers, no
less than the strange and striking outline of one of the stateliest of
those churches which boasted no bishop or abbot at their head, belongs
to later days than those of the Red King’s campaign of Chaumont. Of
the defences of the town below little can now be traced, and that part
of the defences of the castle on which the historian looks with the
deepest interest is carefully hidden from distant view. The tower of
Saint Thomas and its lower fellow both seem to rise from the midst of
a wood――a wood artificially planted, seemingly for the express purpose
of robbing Gisors of its characteristic feature, of shutting out from
sight the mighty _motte_ and keep which Robert of Bellême made ready
at the Red King’s bidding to be the strongest bulwark of the Norman
land.
[Sidenote: Castle of Trye.]
[Sidenote: Primæval and later antiquities.]
Near as Gisors stands to Chaumont, another fortress barred the way
between them. The road between the two towns passes through
Trye――distinguished from its neighbour Trye-_la-Ville_ as
Trye-_Château_――which appears in our story along with Chaumont as one
of the French fortresses which Gisors was specially meant to keep in
check. Yet Trye must have been itself specially meant as an outpost
against Gisors. Close by Gisors is one of the points where the Norman
frontier overlaps the Epte; so that Trye, lying between two and three
miles from Gisors, is yet nearer than Gisors to the actual frontier.
Trye does not lie, like Chaumont, hidden behind the hills; it stands
boldly in the teeth of the enemy, clearly seen from the hill of
Gisors, and barring the main road between Gisors and Chaumont, a road
which led over level ground and neither over hill nor swamp. Otherwise
the site has not, like Gisors and Chaumont, any marked advantages of
ground, nor, at present at least, are any earthworks visible. In our
time, though a gate and a tower of later date than our story recall
the days of the military importance of Trye, the attractions of the
spot are chiefly of other kinds. Between Trye and Chaumont a cromlech,
known as the Three Stones, calls up the thought of days and men which
were as mysterious in the time of Rufus as they are now. More than one
fragment of mediæval architecture may be lighted on by the way, and
Trye itself stands conspicuous for the singular and beautiful
Romanesque work――again too late for our immediate time――to be found
both in its ecclesiastical and its secular buildings.
[Sidenote: Castle of Boury.]
[Sidenote: National feeling in the French Vexin.]
[Sidenote: Prisoners on both sides.]
[Sidenote: Gilbert of Laigle.]
[Sidenote: Simon of Montfort.]
Chaumont and Trye may practically be looked on as one piece of
defence. A third fortress, that of Boury,[463] lay further apart to
the south-west, hidden from Gisors, like Chaumont, by another line of
hills. All three castles seem to have remained unsubdued through the
whole war. The valour of the French resistance is dwelled on with
pleasure by our Norman or English guide. Did the monk of Saint Evroul,
the young scholar of the Severn side, remember that, after all, his
father belonged neither to the land of his birth nor to the land of
his adoption, but was in truth a Frenchman from Orleans?[464] The
French Vexin was inhabited by a valiant race, in whom, if we are not
pressing too far the words of our story, a distinct feeling of French
nationality was strong. They were ready to run all risks――it is not
said for their King, but for the defence of their country, for the
glory of their nation, for the honour of the French name.[465] Valiant
men, mercenaries it would seem――but who was to pay them?――from all
parts of Gaul, or at least of France, pressed to their help, and a
brave and successful defence was made. Prisoners on both sides
underwent the two different fates which were already spoken of. The
name on the Norman side which is best known to us is that of the
fierce Gilbert of Laigle; with him we hear of the former lord and
fortifier of Gisors.[466] Among the captives on the French side the
national historian records one who bore a far loftier name, but one
which at that moment was hardly a name of honour. Two of the long line
of Simons of the French Montfort are heard of in the course of our
story, father and son, father and brother of her who in our
authorities appears commonly as the woman from Anjou, but who on the
Strong Mount of her fathers may have been deemed a Queen of the
French. One Simon is now spoken of as a prisoner; both are found
somewhat later fighting stoutly in the cause of France. We have heard
that the Red King let none free who would not undertake to fight on
his side. Are we to infer that a forefather of our own deliverer had
learned the lesson of Harold, that an extorted oath is of no strength?
§ 2. _The First War of Maine._
1098.
[Sidenote: Dates of the French war. November, 1097――September, 1098.]
[Sidenote: War of Maine. January――August, 1098.]
[Sidenote: History of Maine. 1089-1098.]
These events on the French side, of which thus far we have but a vague
account, would seem to have happened during the first half of the year
with which we are dealing. But all that we can say for certain is that
they happened between the November of one year and the September of
the next. Of the struggle which was going on at the same time in
Maine, the dates are far more clear. It began in January and it was
deemed to be over in August. But its immediate occasion arose the year
before, and its general causes go much further back. Fully to
understand the war of William and Helias, more truly the war of Helias
and Robert of Bellême, we must trace out the events of several years.
While we have been following the fates of England, Normandy, Scotland,
and Wales, much of high interest has been going on in Maine which had
no connexion with the affairs of any part of Britain, and which had
but little influence on Norman affairs either. But now that England
and Normandy have again a common ruler, the affairs of England, or at
least the affairs of her King, have again a close connexion with the
affairs of Maine. We have now therefore to take up the tale of that
noble city and county from the days when we had to tell of Duke
Robert’s campaign before Ballon and Saint Cenery.[467]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Robert suspects the loyalty of Maine. 1089.]
[Sidenote: He asks help of Fulk of Anjou.]
[Sidenote: Fulk asks for Bertrada of Montfort.]
[Sidenote: Bertrada brought up by Heloise.]
[Sidenote: William of Evreux’s bargain about his niece.]
The submission of Maine to the Norman Duke which then took place
lasted only till the next favourable opportunity for asserting the old
independence of the city and county. No great time after he had taken
possession, Robert began to suspect the loyalty of his Cenomannian
subjects. A strange story follows, which connects itself in a way yet
stranger with the tale of the royal household of France which we have
lately been telling. Robert, it seems, was sick at the moment when he,
or some one else for him, thought it needful to take action against
impending revolt in Maine. He sent messengers and gifts to Count Fulk
of Anjou, the famous _Rechin_, praying him to come to him.[468] Fulk,
it will be remembered, claimed the over-lordship of Maine, and Robert
himself had, long before, at the peace of Blanchelande, done a formal
homage to Fulk for the county.[469] The Angevin Count was supposed to
have influence with the people of Maine, influence which might be
enough to hinder them from revolting. That influence Robert now prayed
Fulk to use. The Angevin agreed on one condition, namely that the
Norman would use his own influence in quite another quarter, for quite
another purpose. Fulk wanted a wife. As the story is told us, he is
said to have had two living wives already; but that seems not to have
been the case.[470] His first wife, the daughter of a lord of
Beaugency, died, leaving a daughter. He then married Ermengarde of
Bourbon――a description not to become royal for some ages――the mother
of his son Geoffrey Martel. Her he put away on the usual plea of
kindred, and now it was that he appeared as the wooer of that Bertrada
of whom we have already spoken of in her later character. The daughter
of Simon of Montfort was the niece of Count William of Evreux, through
her mother Agnes, Count William’s sister. Her mother would seem to
have been dead, and she was brought up in her uncle’s house, under the
schooling of Countess Heloise.[471] The Count of Anjou, no longer
young, driven to strange devices as to his shoes,[472] and burthened
with a former wife whose divorce might be called in question, felt
that he was hardly likely to win favour as a lover in the eyes either
of Bertrada herself or of her guardians. But the _Rechin_ was skilful
at a bargain. He would engage to keep Maine in the Duke’s obedience,
if the Duke would get him the damsel of Montfort to wife.[473] Robert
set off for Evreux in person, and pleaded Fulk’s cause with Count
William. The Count of Evreux was duly shocked, and set forth the
obvious objections to the marriage. But he too was open to a bargain;
he would get over his scruples if the Duke would restore to him
certain lordships to which he asserted a right, and would grant
certain others to his nephew William of Breteuil. These lands had been
the possession of his uncle Ralph of Wacey, guardian of the Great
William in his early days, who it seems was sportively known as Ralph
with the Ass’s Head.[474] Let the Duke give him and his nephew back
their own, and Bertrada should be, as far as the Count of Evreux was
concerned, Countess of Anjou.
[Sidenote: Robert consents.]
[Sidenote: His counsellors.]
[Sidenote: Fulk marries Bertrada.]
[Sidenote: Maine kept quiet for a year.]
The Duke did not venture to answer without the advice of his
counsellors. But the combined wisdom of Robert of Bellême, lately a
rebel but now again in favour,[475] of the Ætheling Eadgar, and of
that monastic William of Arques of whom we have already heard,[476]
advised the acceptance of Count William’s terms. The whole county of
Maine was of more value than the lordships which the Count of Evreux
demanded as the price of his niece.[477] The power and the will of
Fulk to do what he promised about Le Mans and Maine seems not to have
been doubted. The double bargain was struck, and it was carried out
for a season. Count William and his nephew got all that they asked,
except that one lordship passed to Gerard of Gournay. Fulk too got
what he asked, namely Bertrada, till such time as King Philip took her
away. She had time to quarrel with her stepson Geoffrey, and to become
the mother of Fulk, afterwards Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem,
and grandfather of the first Angevin King of England. And Count Fulk
was able, by whatever means, to keep the Cenomannian city and county
in a formal allegiance to the Norman Duke, till such time as the
temptations to revolt became too strong to be withstood.
[Sidenote: Movements in Maine.]
[Sidenote: Hugh son of Azo sent for. 1090.]
[Sidenote: Union of Geoffrey and Helias.]
Our story however seems to imply that the submission of Maine to
Robert was wholly on the surface, and that all this while schemes were
going on for shaking off the hated Norman yoke. The present movement
took the same form which had been taken by the movement in the
Conqueror’s day.[478] The avowed object of Cenomannian patriotism was
now, as then, the restoration of the ancient dynasty. The valour and
energy of the citizens of Le Mans are constantly spoken of; but we
hear nothing this time of the _commune_. The rule of some prince seems
to be assumed on all hands, and for a while all seem to have agreed in
seeking that prince in the same quarter in which they had sought a
prince already. Little indeed of good for Le Mans or Maine had come of
the former application to Azo and Gersendis; but their son Hugh had
now reached greater years and experience, and the men of Maine again
sent into Italy to ask for him to reign over them.[479] The
application was supported both by Geoffrey of Mayenne, of whom we have
so often heard during the last thirty years, and by Helias of La
Flèche, who might well have asserted his own claims against those of
the distant house of Este.[480]
[Sidenote: Helias of La Flèche.]
[Sidenote: His character]
[Sidenote: and descent.]
[Sidenote: His castles.]
[Sidenote: His possible claim on the county.]
[Sidenote: He accepts the succession of Hugh.]
Helias now becomes the hero of the Cenomannian tale. He is one of the
men of his time of whom we can get the clearest idea. We see him alike
in his recorded acts and in his elaborately drawn portrait; and by the
light of the two we can hail in him the very noblest type of the age
and class to which he belonged. We see in him a no less worthy
defender of the freedom of Maine than Harold was of the freedom of
England. He stands before us with his tall stature, his strong, thin,
and well-proportioned frame, his swarthy complexion, his thick hair
cropped close after Norman or priestly fashion.[481] Brave and skilful
in war, wise and just in his rule in peace, ready and pleasant in
speech, gentle to the good and stern to the evil, faithful to his
word, and corrupted neither by good nor evil fortune, a man withal of
prayer and fasting, the bountiful friend of the Church and the poor,
Helias stands forth within the narrow range of a single county of Gaul
as one who, on a wider field, might have won for himself a place among
the foremost of mankind.[482] With the house of the old Counts of
Maine he had a twofold connexion. The male line of Herbert Wake-dog
had come to an end; but in the female line Helias came of it in two
descents, while Hugh came in one only. Not only was his mother Paula
one of the sisters of the younger Herbert, but his father John of La
Flèche was son of a daughter of Wake-dog himself.[483] To his father’s
Angevin fief of La Flèche, among the islands of the Loir, his marriage
with Matilda, a grand-niece of Archbishop Gervase of Rheims, known to
us better as Bishop of Le Mans,[484] had added a string of castles in
the south of Maine. Two of these, Mayet and the one which is specially
called the Castle of the Loir, fill a prominent place in our
story.[485] Helias was plainly the greatest lord of eastern Maine, the
modern department of Sarthe, as Geoffrey of Mayenne was the greatest
in western Maine, the modern department which still bears the name of
his own fortress.[486] One might have thought that the position of
Helias as a great local chief might, when the elders of Maine were
called on to choose a prince, have outweighed any slight genealogical
precedence on the part of the stranger Hugh. But the great men of the
county may not have been disposed to place one of themselves over
their own heads. Anyhow Helias, like his father before him,[487]
waived his own claim to the succession. Along with the lord of Mayenne
and the great mass of the people of the city and county, he welcomed
the Ligurian prince――such is the geography of our chief guide――when he
came to take possession of the dominion to which the voice of the
Cenomannian people had called him a second time.[488]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Negotiations with Hugh.]
[Sidenote: Revolt of Maine. 1090.]
[Sidenote: Invitation to Hugh.]
We are to suppose that the negotiations with the house of Este were
going on during the year when Count Fulk contrived to keep Maine
outwardly quiet. But when the quarrel between William and Robert broke
out, when Normandy was divided and dismembered, the Angevin
over-lord’s influence gave way. The time for action was clearly come.
Le Mans and all Maine now openly rose against the Norman dominion.
Duke Robert’s garrisons were driven out;[489] the Cenomannian land was
again free. But the first act of restored freedom was to invite Hugh
of Este, descendant of the ancient counts, to come at once to take
possession, and to rule in the palace on the Roman wall which fences
in the Cenomannian hill.
[Sidenote: Opposition of Bishop Howel.]
[Sidenote: Howel imprisoned by Helias.]
[Sidenote: Interdict of Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: Liberation of Howel on Hugh’s coming.]
The chief opponent of the movement for independence was, as before,
the Bishop. The throne of Saint Julian was still filled by the Breton
Howel, the nominee of the Conqueror, and he stood firm in his loyalty
to his patron’s eldest son.[490] He withstood the revolt by every
means in his power, and scattered interdicts and anathemas against the
supporters of the newly-elected Count.[491] Hugh had not yet come, and
the opposition of the Bishop was felt to be dangerous. Helias
therefore, whose piety did not lead him to any superstitious reverence
for ecclesiastical privileges, dealt with Howel as an enemy, or at
least as one whom it was well to keep out of the way for a season. As
the Bishop was going through his diocese with a train of clergy, in
the discharge of some episcopal duty, Helias seized him, carried him
off, and put him in ward at La Flèche.[492] The great grievance seems
to have been that Howel was denied the company of his attendant
clergy, and was allowed the services only of one unlettered rustic
priest. The fear was lest the Bishop and his more learned companions
would, in their Latin talk, plot something which their keepers would
not understand.[493] This very complaint shows that the Bishop’s
imprisonment was not of a very harsh kind. But the cause of the
captive prelate was zealously taken up by his clergy. Le Mans and its
suburbs were put under a practical interdict; divine worship ceased;
the bells were silent; the doors of the churches were stopped up with
thorns.[494] Great, it is said, was the joy when the Bishop was set
free and came back to his city. We are told by a writer in the
episcopal interest that Helias set him free in a fit of penitence, in
answer to many intercessions from nobles, clergy, and neighbouring
bishops. Howel was gracious and forgiving, and let his wrongs be
forgotten on the restoration of whatever had been taken from him.[495]
All this is possible; but the more definite statement that Howel was
kept in ward till Hugh came shows that his captivity was a matter of
policy, and that he was set free as soon as it seemed that no object
could be gained by prolonging it.
[Sidenote: Hugh reaches Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: Howel flees to Robert.]
[Sidenote: Robert’s carelessness as to his loss.]
[Sidenote: He cleaves to his rights over the bishopric.]
[Sidenote: Dispute between Hugh and Howel.]
[Sidenote: Howel refuses to acknowledge Hugh as _advocatus_.]
[Sidenote: Howel and his Chapter.]
[Sidenote: Disputes about the deanery.]
[Sidenote: Howel comes to England.]
[Sidenote: Return of Howel. June 28, 1090.]
Meanwhile Hugh was on the road. At the border fortress of La Chartre
he was met by the magistrates of Le Mans――the city seems, as often in
Cenomannian history, to act for the whole county――who swore oaths to
him, counting, it is added, their former oaths to Duke Robert for
nought.[496] The Bishop, determined not to acknowledge the revolution,
fled to the court of the prince whom he did acknowledge. But he found
little help there. The idle and luxurious Robert seemed not to care,
he seemed almost to rejoice, that so noble a part of his dominions had
fallen away from him.[497] One thing only he would not give up; he
would at all hazards cleave to his rights over the Cenomannian
bishopric. Robert bade Howel to go back to Le Mans, but to do nothing
which could be taken as an admission of Hugh as temporal lord of the
bishopric.[498] Howel went home, and found the new Count, for whatever
reason, quartered in the episcopal palace. He had himself to live in
the abbey of Saint Vincent, just outside the city. A long dispute
followed between the Breton Bishop and the Italian Count, and then
came a still fiercer dispute between the Bishop and a party in his own
Chapter. One or two points are of constitutional interest, and remind
us of questions which we have just before heard of in our own land.
The Count called on Howel to acknowledge himself as his feudal
superior for the temporalities of the bishopric.[499] He refused and
left the city, on which Hugh seized the temporalities of the
bishopric. Worse even than the Count were the Bishop’s clerical
enemies, one Hilgot at their head. By a cruel subtlety they had
persuaded him to appoint as Dean a mere boy from his own land,
Geoffrey by name, of the age of twelve years only――so it is said. Now
they turned about, found fault with the appointment, and set up an
anti-dean of their own.[500] The Bishop crossed over to England for
help, and, strange to say, he found a friend in the King.[501] But
meanwhile all kinds of wrongs were done to his people, even to
branding an innocent boy in the face.[502] At last a reconciliation
between the Count and the Bishop was brought about, partly because of
the turn taken by public feeling. Saint Julian’s, in the absence of
its chief pastor, was forsaken, while crowds flocked to keep the
feasts of the Church at the Bishop’s monastic retreat. This was at the
priory of Solêmes, near Sablé, lying south-west of the city, towards
the Angevin border.[503] At last the prelate came back amidst
universal joy, and the Count made good all wrongs and losses that he
had undergone.[504]
[Sidenote: Unpopularity of Hugh.]
[Sidenote: February, 1091.]
[Sidenote: Danger of Maine.]
[Sidenote: Helias buys the county.]
But happier days were to come for the Bishop and the people of Maine.
It was not only to Howel and his clergy that the Italian Count had
made himself hateful. He had none of the qualities which were needed
in the ruler of a high-spirited people in a time of danger. Idle,
timid, weak of purpose, he had no power among the men over whom he was
set; and he had not, as seems to have been hoped for, brought with him
any store of money from the south.[505] His wife, a daughter of Robert
Wiscard, a woman of a lofty spirit, was too much for him. He put her
away, and was excommunicated by Pope Urban for so doing.[506] Despised
of all men, he was thinking of flight.[507] It was now moreover the
moment when the Norman power had again become specially dangerous to
Maine. The sons of the great William, lately at variance, were now
reconciled, and the subjugation of Maine was one of the terms of their
agreement.[508] Helias saw his opportunity. He set forth the dangers
of the land to his cousin. Hugh said that he wished to sell his county
and be off.[509] Helias argued that, in that case, he ought to sell it
to no one but himself. He set forth his right by birth; he said that
it was no easy place that he was seeking. But his just rights and a
love for the freedom of the land called him to it, and he trusted that
God would help him in his post of danger.[510] A bargain was soon
struck. For a sum of ten thousand Cenomannian shillings Hugh agreed to
abdicate in favour of his cousin. The coronet of Maine passed from the
son of Gersendis to the son of Paula. Hugh went back into Italy with
his money, and Helias was received without opposition as Count of
Maine.[511]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: First reign of Helias. 1091-1098.]
[Sidenote: His strong and just rule.]
[Sidenote: His friendship for Howel.]
[Sidenote: Peace of the land.]
[Sidenote: 1096.]
The reign of Helias over Le Mans and Maine lasted for about twenty
years, with a break of three years of warfare of which we shall
presently have to speak. First came a time of seven or eight years,
during which the Cenomannian people might indeed be objects of envy to
the people either of Normandy or of England. The new prince, by every
account of his actions, showed himself the model of a ruler of those
times. He did justice and made peace; as far as a prince of those days
could do so, he sheltered the weak from the oppressions of the
strong.[512] His personal piety was not lessened, nor was his devotion
to the Church less zealous, now that the ecclesiastical power was no
longer a political enemy. Strong in the friendship of his late gaoler,
Bishop Howel could rule his diocese in peace, and could carry on his
works of building, both in the city itself and in his neighbouring
lordship of Coulaines.[513] And these happy years were years of peace
without as well as within. The rule of Helias was undisputed; Maine
saw neither revolt within her own borders nor invasion from any power
beyond them. Whatever designs either Robert or William may have
cherished against the independence of Maine, those designs did not for
the present take the shape of any overt act. Robert seems to have done
absolutely nothing; the first signs of impending evil showed
themselves soon after William’s acquisition of Normandy; but there was
no open warfare for two years longer.
[Sidenote: Translation of Saint Julian. October 17, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Visit of Pope Urban to Le Mans. November or December, 1095.]
[Sidenote: Sickness of Howel. 1095-1097.]
In these times of exceptional quiet there is little to record beyond
ecclesiastical ceremonies. It was a bright day at Le Mans when Bishop
Howel was able to translate the body of the venerated patron of the
city to the place of honour in his new building.[514] That was the
time when Anselm, already enthroned, was waiting for consecration, and
when Malcolm had turned away from Gloucester to plan his last invasion
of Northumberland.[515] In these years too Howel must have finished
the two stately towers of Saint Julian’s minster, of which we shall
before long have a tale to tell. But Le Mans presently saw a greater
day than all, as it seemed at least in the eyes of the biographer of
her bishops. After the days of Piacenza and Clermont, Pope Urban
honoured the Cenomannian city with his presence. For three days the
sovereign Pontiff was the guest of Howel, and we are told that, though
it was a year of scarceness, yet the Bishop of Le Mans was able to
entertain the Pope and his following right bountifully.[516] Howel, it
is said, appeared among his fellow-bishops conspicuous for the gifts
of both mind and body. Men rejoiced with him on the happiness of
receiving such a guest, and deemed from his health and vigour that he
might long enjoy his honours.[517] Before long he fell sick, and his
sickness was unto death, although his end did not come till nearly two
years after the preaching at Clermont. The visit of Urban, the death
of Howel, led to important events in the history of Maine.
[Sidenote: Helias takes the cross. 1095-1096.]
[Sidenote: Estimate of his action.]
[Sidenote: Sigurd and Eystein.]
[Sidenote: Argument in favour of the Crusade.]
The preaching of the crusade, above all the presence, and doubtless
the preaching, of the crusading Pope in his own city, stirred up the
same impulse in the heart of Helias which was stirred up in the hearts
of so many other men of his day. Young and strong, devout and valiant,
he would go and fight to win back the sepulchre of his Lord from the
misbelievers and to deliver his Christian brethren in other lands from
their cruel bondage. By the counsel of the Pope, the Count of Maine
took the cross, and made ready to go on the armed pilgrimage along
with his neighbours, with Robert of Normandy and Stephen of
Chartres.[518] Our feeling perhaps is that Helias, like Saint Lewis,
had a stronger call to stay at home than to go on the crusade. A
certain part of mankind, a small part certainly, but that part among
which his immediate duty lay, was peaceful and happy under his rule as
they were not likely to be under the rule of any other. Could it be
right, we might argue, for him to leave a work which none could do but
himself, a work which he had taken on his shoulders of his own free
will, for another work, however noble, which others could do as well
as himself? Let Robert go and win honour abroad instead of dishonour
at home. Normandy was in such a case that the coming even of Rufus was
a happy change. Let Stephen of Chartres go; he left his royal-hearted
Adela behind him. Let King Philip go, if he could go; his son Lewis
would rule his realm far better than he. But let Helias stay, and keep
for his land and city that well-being which he had given and which
another might take away. An argument nearly the same as this was
actually pressed on the crusading Sigurd by his stay-at-home brother
Eystein. While Sigurd was warring far away, Eystein had done a great
deal of good to his own people in Norway.[519] But there are moments
in the world’s history, moments when all has to be sacrificed to a
great cause, when arguments like these, so sound against ordinary
warfare, sound above all against the utterly purposeless warfare of
those days, cannot be listened to. If Western Christendom was to arm
for a crusade, it was well that that crusade should be headed by the
noblest men in Western Christendom. The work would not be done, if it
were only left to lower souls. If Godfrey was to march, it was fit
that Helias should march beside him. Godfrey went; Helias did not go.
He had now a neighbour who made it vain for him to think of leaving
his own land in jeopardy, even to carry out his promise to Pope Urban
and to go on the holy war.
[Sidenote: William in Normandy. August (?), 1096.]
[Sidenote: Danger to Maine.]
[Sidenote: Importance of Norman neutrality.]
[Sidenote: Helias and Robert.]
[Sidenote: Helias and William.]
[Sidenote: He professes himself William’s vassal.]
[Sidenote: Answer of Rufus; he demands the cession of Maine.]
[Sidenote: Challenge of Helias.]
[Sidenote: Rufus lets Helias go with a defiance.]
The bargain between William and Robert had just been struck. The two
brothers were together at Rouen. Robert was about to set out for
Jerusalem; William had come to take possession of Normandy. It would
have been the height of rashness for Helias to join in the enterprise
of Robert, unless he could make his county safe during his absence
against any aggression on the part of William. According to Norman
doctrines, Maine was simply a rebellious province. Robert had done
nothing to stop the rebellion, but he had never acknowledged either
Hugh or Helias as lawful Prince of the Cenomannians. Where Robert had
done nothing, William would be likely to act with vigour. The claims
which Robert had simply not acknowledged William might be inclined to
dispute with the sword. It was therefore of the utmost moment for the
Count of Maine to secure the friendship, or at least the neutrality,
of the new ruler of Normandy. Helias doubtless knew that, if William
bound himself by his knightly promise, that promise would be
faithfully kept, and he perhaps hoped that towards one who was bound
on a holy errand, an errand during which he would be harmless and
powerless as far as Maine and Normandy were concerned, the chivalrous
king might be disposed to pledge such a promise. He therefore went to
Rouen, and sought interviews with both brothers. He first took counsel
with the Duke.[520] Robert, we know, could give counsel to
others,[521] and he had no temptation at this moment to give
unfriendly counsel to Helias. By his advice, the Count of Maine went
to the King; he addressed him reverently, and, if his words be rightly
reported, acknowledged himself his vassal. So to do was no
degradation, and the acknowledgement might turn the King’s heart
towards him. He set forth his purpose of going to the crusade; he said
that he wished to go as the King’s friend and in his peace.[522] Then
Rufus burst forth in a characteristic strain. Helias may go whither he
thinks good; but let him give up the city and county of Maine;
whatever his father held it was William’s will to hold also.[523]
Helias answers that he holds his county by lawful inheritance from his
forefathers, and that he hopes by God’s help to hand it on to his
children. But if the King has a mind to try the question in a peaceful
pleading, he is ready to maintain his right before kings, counts, and
bishops, and to abide by their judgement.[524] Rufus tells him that he
will plead against him with swords and spears and countless
arrows.[525] Then Helias spoke his solemn challenge. He had wished to
fight against the heathen in the name of the Lord, but he had found
the enemies of Christ nearer to his own doors. The county which he
held was his by the gift of God;[526] he would not lightly give it up,
nor leave his people to the wolves as sheep without a shepherd. Let
the King and all his nobles hear. He bore the cross of a pilgrim; that
cross he would not lay aside; he would bear it on his shield, on his
helmet, on the saddle and bridle of his horse. Under the protection of
that sign he would go forth to defend himself against all who might
attack him, that all might know that those who were fighting against
him were fighting against a warrior of the cross. He trusted in Him
who ruled the world and who knew the secrets of his heart, that a day
would come when he would be able to discharge his vow according to the
letter.[527] The Red King bade him go whither he would and do what he
would; he had no mind to fight against crusaders, but he would have
the city which his father had once won.[528] Let Helias get together
workmen to repair his broken walls.[529] He would presently visit the
citizens of Le Mans, and would show himself before their gates with a
hundred thousand pennoned lances.[530] He would send cars drawn by
oxen, and laden with arrows and javelins. But before the oxen could
reach Le Mans, he would be there with many legions of armed men.[531]
[Sidenote: Helias makes ready for defence.]
[Sidenote: William delays his attack. 1096-1097.]
Such was the threatening message which Helias was bidden to receive as
the most certain truth and to go back and tell his accomplices――that
is, we may understand, his faithful subjects. He went back to his
capital, and began to put his dominions into a state fit to withstand
an attack. But as yet no attack came; for a year or more neither king
nor legions nor oxen were seen before the gates of Le Mans. William
was busy with many matters, with the dispute with Anselm, with
the Welsh war, with the affairs of Scotland. We are told,
characteristically enough, that in the midst of all these affairs he
forgot Maine altogether. Helias meanwhile remained in actual
possession of the county, not attacked or disturbed by Rufus, but in
no way acknowledged by him, with the King’s threats hanging over him,
and knowing that an attack might come at any moment. At last this
armed neutrality came to an end. An event happened which called the
King’s mind back to Cenomannian affairs in a manner specially
characteristic of Cenomannian history.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Affairs of the bishopric.]
[Sidenote: Death of Howel July 29, 1097.]
[Sidenote: Helias nominates Geoffrey.]
[Sidenote: The canons choose Hildebert.]
[Sidenote: Helias accepts the election.]
[Sidenote: Geoffrey Archbishop of Rouen. 1111.]
[Sidenote: Hildebert Bishop of Le Mans. 1097-1126.]
[Sidenote: Archbishop of Tours. 1126-1134.]
Again, as so often in our story, the bishopric of Le Mans becomes the
centre of the drama and the subject of dispute among the princes of
the world. In the middle of the summer, shortly before the council of
Winchester, Bishop Howel died, seemingly of the same sickness which
had come upon him soon after the visit of Pope Urban. Helias, like
Hugh, deemed himself, as the reigning Count, to be the temporal lord
of the bishopric, and he at once nominated to the vacant see. His
choice was the Dean of Saint Julian’s, that same Geoffrey who had been
placed by Howel in the deanery in his childhood, and who, if the dates
be right, must still have been wonderfully young for a bishop.[532]
But the canons of Saint Julian’s stood upon their right of free
election, and chose a man of greater name, their Chancellor and
Archdeacon, the famous Hildebert.[533] They placed him at once,
seemingly against his own will, on the episcopal throne.[534] At first
Helias was wroth, and was minded to set aside this direct slight to
his authority. But the rights of the Chapter were set before him, and,
unlike our own Confessor under less provocation, he yielded, and
accepted the election.[535] The Dean, deeming himself sure of the
bishopric, had made ready a great feast; but his dainties were spread
and eaten to no purpose.[536] His time of promotion was only deferred.
Fourteen years later, Geoffrey succeeded William the Good Soul in the
archbishopric of Rouen. So his now more successful competitor was not
fated always to remain in the second rank of prelacy. One of the great
scholars of his day, renowned for his writings both in prose and
verse, a diligent writer of letters and thereby one of the authorities
for our history, a builder, a reformer, an enemy of heresy who could
yet deal gently with the heretic,[537] a model in short, we are told,
of every episcopal virtue, Hildebert ruled the church of Le Mans for
more than twenty-nine years, and then for the last nine years of his
long life was removed to the metropolitan throne of Tours.[538]
[Sidenote: Claims of the Norman Dukes over the bishopric.]
[Sidenote: Anger of Rufus at the election of Hildebert.]
All the elements of the Cenomannian state, prince, clergy, and people,
had joined in the elevation of Hildebert. But there was one to whom
any free election or nomination by any of the local powers was in its
own nature distasteful. It was perhaps because their claim was very
doubtful that the princes of the Norman house clave with such special
obstinacy to their rights over the temporalities of the see of Le
Mans. The bishopric was the one thing in Maine which even the careless
Robert cared about.[539] And to William Rufus, who so deeply cherished
his father’s memory, it would seem a crowning indignity that a bishop
appointed by his father, a special and loyal friend of his father,
should be succeeded by any one, whether the choice of count, chapter,
or _commune_, in whose election he himself had no share. When the King
heard of the election of Hildebert, he was very wroth. He forbade his
consecration, seemingly under threats of open war.[540] Hildebert was
consecrated none the less, and the war which Rufus had hitherto
planned in his heart, broke out in action.[541]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: William in Normandy. November, 1097.]
[Sidenote: His designs on Maine.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême attacks Maine.]
[Sidenote: Helias strengthens the castle of Dangeul.]
[Sidenote: Its position.]
When William crossed the sea in the November following the election of
Hildebert, we may believe that the wrong which he held to have been
done to him in the matter of that election was in his mind as a
secondary cause of action, along with his demand of the Vexin from the
King of the French. He came for war with France; he was ready for war
with Maine also. But we do not hear of any actual military operations
till the next year had begun. And, when warfare began, it was at first
warfare carried on, just as often happened in Wales and even in
Scotland, by the King’s licence indeed, but not by the King himself.
The immediate danger lay on the side of the county which was
threatened by the constant enemy of Maine and of Helias, Robert of
Bellême. From him came the first acts of warfare. It was against him
that Helias now found it needful to strengthen his castle of
Dangeul.[542] This point lies to the north-east of Ballon, at only a
few miles’ distance. The castle stands on a height nearly equal to
that of Ballon, though Dangeul does not take the same marked form of a
promontory, but rather stands on the edge of a wide expanse of high
ground sinking by stages down to the plain below. The fortress has
wholly vanished; but its site may be traced within the grounds of the
modern _château_ which has taken its place, and which represents, in a
figure, the stronghold of Helias. The view which the spot commands
shows how well the site was chosen. The eye ranges as far as the
height of Sillé-le-Guillaume on one side, as far as the Norman
Chaumont on the other. Dangeul stood right in the way of an advance of
the arch-enemy, whether from his own home at Bellême or from any of
his Norman or Cenomannian fortresses.
[Sidenote: Geographical character of the war; waged chiefly with Robert
of Bellême.]
The war of Maine is largely a war between Helias and Robert of
Bellême. This gives the war its special geographical character. The
immediate possessions of Helias lay in the south-eastern part of the
county; the fortresses of the enemy threatened him from the
north-east. The capital lay between them. The result is that the seat
of war is confined to the eastern part of Maine, the modern department
of Sarthe, and that Le Mans itself is its special centre. Of western
Maine, the modern department of Mayenne, we hear nothing. There is no
news from the old battle-field of Domfront, Ambrières, and Mayenne
itself, though of the lord of Mayenne we still continue to hear.
There is nothing this time to tell of Sainte-Susanne or of
Sillé-le-Guillaume.[543] The war takes up such an area as is natural
when the strife is waged mainly for the city of Le Mans, when it is
waged between the lord of La Flèche and the lord of Bellême. The enemy
advances from Alençon and Mamers; he is checked by the fortification
of Dangeul.
[Illustration:
Map illustrating
the
CAMPAIGN OF MAINE
A.D. 1098.
_Edwᵈ. Weller_
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._]
[Sidenote: Effects of the occupation of Dangeul.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême invites the King. January, 1098.]
[Sidenote: William and Robert against Helias.]
[Sidenote: _Guerrilla_ warfare of Helias.]
[Sidenote: William leaves Maine.]
The occupation of this last strong post by Helias was not without
effect. He did not indeed win back any of the castles which were held
by Robert of Bellême; but the garrison of Dangeul kept the invader in
check, and hindered him from carrying his accustomed ravages through
the whole country. This move of Helias seems even to have convinced
Robert that the conquest of Maine was an undertaking too great for his
own unassisted power. In January he went to the King, and stirred him
up to a direct attack on Helias. With a lover of warfare like Robert
winter went for nothing; it would be just the time to take the enemy
by surprise, while they were not expecting any attack. The King, we
are told, was unwilling. It is hard to understand why this should be,
unless he was too busily occupied with the war in the Vexin. He was
ashamed however――the chivalrous feeling again comes in――to shrink from
any warlike enterprise which was proposed to him.[544] The King and
the Count of Bellême set forth; but they found the Count of Maine
fully their match. He knew how war was to be carried on in his own
land against an enemy stronger than himself. He planted detachments at
every convenient post; he lined the hedges and defences of every kind
with men; he guarded the passages of the streams, and the difficult
approaches of the woods. Against this kind of skirmishing warfare the
mighty Rufus and all his knights were able to do as little as they
were able to do against the light-armed Welsh.[545] The King waxed
fiercer than ever against the men of Maine and their Count; but he
withdrew his own personal presence, betaking himself doubtless to the
other seat of war.
[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême continues the war.]
[Sidenote: Castles held by him in Maine.]
Meanwhile Robert of Bellême was left to carry on the struggle with
Helias. He was ordered by Rufus to bring together as large a force as
he could in his own fortresses, nor did the King forget to supply him
with abundance of money for that purpose.[546] On such a bidding as
this, Robert of Bellême, Robert the Devil on Cenomannian lips, set to
work with a will which fully bore out his surname. He built new
fortresses, he strengthened the old ones with deep ditches.[547] He
had already occupied nine castles, besides fortified houses, on
Cenomannian ground.[548] The list is given as Blèves, Perray,
Mont-de-la-Nue, Saônes, Saint Remy-du-plain, Lurçon, Allières, Motte
de Gauthier-le-Clincamp, and Mamers. All these lie in the
north-eastern part of the county, the part immediately threatened from
Alençon and Bellême. They occupy nearly the whole of the land between
the Cenomannian Orne and the upper course of the Sarthe above Alençon,
lying on each side, north and south, of the great forest of Perseigne.
The line of the Sarthe from Alençon to Le Mans remained untouched,
while Ballon stood as the advanced guard of the capital, and Dangeul
was a yet further outpost of Helias, in the very teeth of the invader
from Bellême. Perray, alone among the points held by Robert, stands as
far south as the lower course of the Orne.
[Sidenote: Mamers.]
[Sidenote: Blèves.]
[Sidenote: Allières.]
[Sidenote: Saint Remy-du-plain.]
[Sidenote: Saônes.]
[Sidenote: Small architectural remains of the eleventh century.]
Several of the castles on this list occupied marked sites, and have
left considerable traces. Mamers and Blèves were strictly border
fortresses, points which Robert had seized just within the Cenomannian
border; the others were more advanced points in the heart of the
Cenomannian land. Mamers, with its streets sloping down to the young
Orne, is the only one of the places on our list which is now at all a
considerable town. But the only signs of its fortifications which are
to be seen are found in the names of its streets, which suggest the
former presence of a fort by the river and of a castle on somewhat
higher ground. Mamers, due west from Bellême, may well have been
Robert’s first conquest, and its occupation may have marked his first
advance into the dominions of his neighbour. But he must also, early
in his career, have made himself master of Blèves. This is a point
which has no natural advantages of height, but which, standing in the
very north-east corner of Maine, separated from Perche by a small
tributary of the Sarthe, is important from its border position and as
commanding a bridge. A mound which once stood there has been levelled;
a graceful _Renaissance_ house near its site is the present
representative of the castle; but parts of the ditches may still be
seen; the church, near but not within the enclosure, contains work
which may have been looked on by Hildebert and Helias, and ancient
masonry still remains at the manorial mill. Blèves lies north of the
forest of Perseigne; at Allières, on its eastern verge, all actual
traces of the castle have vanished; but the church again contains some
small parts which seem contemporary with our story, and the site of
the fortress may well be marked by the modern _château_ on the
hill-side commanding a wide view to the south. But more speaking
witnesses of this war may be seen at two points lying south of the
forest and directly west of Mamers. Saint Remy, distinguished as Saint
Remy _du Plain_ from a namesake to the south-east known as Saint Remy
_du Mont_, stands, not indeed in the plain, but on the edge of the
high ground. It commands an extensive view, reaching to the point
which bounds most of the views in northern Maine, the _butte_ of
Chaumont. A site of the like kind, but with a less wide prospect, is
held by Saônes at a short distance to the south, hard by that unusual
feature in these lands, a small lake. Saônes is now a small village,
but it was once of importance enough to give its name to the
surrounding district of _Saosnois_ or _Sonnois_. In both these cases
the castle-mound rises immediately to the west of the church, the
latter at Saint Remy being a late building of more pretension than is
usual in the neighbourhood. Each mound has its surrounding ditch,
which at Saint Remy is of most striking depth; each has its encircling
wall; each has its inner tower, that at Saônes of an irregular
four-sided shape, that of Saint Remy octagonal without and round
within. Here are two unmistakeable and most striking sites of the
fortresses which the invader from Perche rent away from the
Cenomannian county. But, with such small remains of walls as are still
left, it is hard to say in each case how much may be the work of
Robert of Bellême himself. The mounds――natural hills improved by
art――and their ditches are doubtless far older than his day; the walls
must often be far later. There is little architectural detail left to
decide such points; we are left to the less certain evidence of
masonry. Some of the masonry in the inner building at Saônes certainly
has the air of work of the eleventh century. In any case, whatever may
be the exact amount of his work among the existing remains, everything
bears witness to the impression which Robert’s invasion made on the
district and to the reputation which he left behind him. Not far from
Saônes, some remains of dykes, of the age or object of which it would
be rash to speak with certainty, still keep the name of Robert the
Devil.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Nature of the country and of the war.]
[Sidenote: Teaching of the landscapes in Maine.]
[Sidenote: The castles.]
[Sidenote: Their object private war.]
[Sidenote: Contrast with England.]
[Sidenote: Comparative rarity of castles in England.]
[Sidenote: State of the Cenomannian castles.]
A visit to the scene of this war, a look-out from any of the chief
fortified points, brings forcibly home to us the nature of that kind
of struggle with which we are dealing. Nothing but an actual sight of
Italy and Greece fully brings home to the mind the state of things
when each city was a sovereign commonwealth, armed with all the powers
of war and peace. Till we take in the fact with our own eyes, we do
not thoroughly understand how men felt and acted when they constantly
lived with rivals, rivals who might at any moment become enemies,
within sight of their own territory. The out-look from any of the
Cenomannian heights, the out-look from the home and centre of mischief
on the hill of Bellême, brings home to us another state of things with
equal force. Had the _commune_ of Le Mans lived on, had other
neighbouring cities followed its example, the older Greek, the later
Italian, model might have been seen in all its fulness on the soil of
northern Gaul. And warfare between Le Mans and Tours, between Le Mans
and Alençon, carried on with that mixture of lofty and petty motives
which is characteristic of warfare between rival cities, would have
been ennobling compared with the state of things which actually was.
For here we see every available point seized on to make what, at least
in the hands of Robert of Bellême, was a mere den of robbers.[549]
From his own scarped mound at Bellême the destroyer could see far
enough into the Cenomannian land to give a keen whet to his appetite
for havoc. Within the land which thus lay open to his attack, we see
from every height the sites, not of one or two only, but of a whole
crowd of strongholds which have passed away. A very few only of these
strongholds could ever have been needed for the protection of any town
or for the general defence of the country. They were strongholds which
had been first raised for the purpose of private war, and which, in
the hands of their present master, were turned to the purpose of
general oppression. One wonders how, in such a state of things, when
almost every village was overshadowed by its robber’s nest, a single
husbandman could till his field, or a single merchant carry his wares
from town to town. And we must remember that, unless during the
nineteen years of anarchy, this state of things never existed in
England. Our forefathers raised their wail over the building of the
castles and over the evil deeds which were wrought by those who built
them. But at no time in England, save on the borders which were
exposed to the foreign enemies of the kingdom, did castles stand so
thick on the ground as they did in the land on which we now look. The
eye which has been used to track out the scenes of the Cenomannian war
comes back to an English landscape of the same kind, to mark the steep
bluff or the isolated mount, which seems designed to be girt with a
ditch and crowned with a donjon, and almost to wonder that no ditch or
donjon ever was there. And, as we gaze on the land where they crowned
every tempting site, we better understand the joy and thankfulness
with which men hailed the reign of any prince who put some curb on the
pride and power of the knightly disturbers of the peace and gave to
smaller men some chance of possessing their own in safety. We can
understand how in such a prince this overwhelming merit was held to
outweigh not a few vices and crimes in his own person. We can
understand how, at the beginning of every period of restored order, a
general sweeping away of castles was as it were the symbolic act of
its inauguration. And perhaps the thought comes all the more home to
the mind, because the Cenomannian castles are, to so great an extent,
a memory and not a presence. They are not like those castles by the
Rhine which have come to take their place as parts of a picturesque
landscape. As a rule, it is not the castles themselves, but the sites
where we know that they once stood, which catch the eye as it ranges
from Mamers to Sillé, from Ballon to Alençon. But when we see how many
spots within that region had been made the sites of these dens of
havoc――when we think how many of them had, in the hands of Robert of
Bellême, become dens of havoc more fearful than ever――we shall better
understand how men cherished the names of William the Great and of his
youngest son; we shall better understand the work which had now to be
done in the Cenomannian land by one nobler than either the son or the
father.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Wrong and sacrilege of Robert of Bellême.]
[Sidenote: Helias defeats Robert at Saônes.]
[Sidenote: Cruelty of Robert.]
In the minds of Helias and his contemporaries the occupation of so
large a part of their country was yet more keenly embittered by the
despite done to holy places and the wrong wrought on men who enjoyed
exceptional respect even in the fiercest times. Some of the
strongholds of Robert the Devil were planted on lands belonging to the
Church, especially to the abbeys of Saint Vincent and La Couture
without the walls of Le Mans. The peaceful tenants of these religious
houses, accustomed to a milder rule than their neighbours, groaned
under the oppressions of their new masters.[550] Stirred up by this
wrong and sacrilege, the Count of Maine marched forth to protect his
people. Now that the King was gone, he even ventured on something like
a pitched battle. He met Robert of Bellême at the head of a superior
force near the lake and castle of Saônes, not far, it may be, from the
dyke which specially bears the tyrant’s name. The pious Count and his
followers, calling on God and Saint Julian, attacked the sacrilegious
invaders and put them to flight.[551] Several of the nobles of
Normandy were wounded or taken prisoners. Robert of Courcy, a name not
new to us,[552] lost his right eye. William of Wacey and several
others were taken, and were released on the payment of heavy
ransoms.[553] Helias, in short, carried on a defensive warfare in the
spirit of a Christian knight. Not so his enemy. Robert of Bellême
carried on a war of aggression in the spirit of a murdering savage.
All the worst horrors of war were let loose upon the land. Robert’s
treatment of prisoners was not that which the captive Normans met with
at the hands of Helias. In the holy season of Lent, when other
sinners, we are told, forsook their sins for a while, the son of Mabel
only did worse than ever. Three hundred prisoners perished in his
dungeons. Large ransoms were offered for their release; but Robert
would not forego for money the pleasure of letting them die of cold,
hunger, and wretchedness.[554]
[Sidenote: April, 1098.]
[Sidenote: Second victory of Helias. April 28, 1098.]
[Sidenote: Helias taken prisoner near Dangeul.]
The war thus went on till the end of April. On the Wednesday in the
last week of that month Helias made an expedition against Robert. The
exact point of attack is not told us; but doubtless it was some of the
fortresses held by the enemy. It was perhaps Perray, the hostile point
furthest to the south, perhaps Saônes, the scene of his own former
victory over the invaders. The starting-points of the Count’s
operations were the two points which he held as outposts of the city
against attacks from the north, Ballon and his own immediate
dwelling-place at Dangeul. From these castles Helias led forth his
forces. The day’s skirmish was successful; the pride of Robert the
Devil received another check.[555] But fortune soon turned from the
better to the worse cause. The Count bade the main body of his
followers march on to Ballon, while he himself, with seven knights
only, was minded to halt at his own castle of Dangeul. As he drew near
to the fortress, he saw a few men lurking among the trees and
bushes.[556] Trees and bushes are still there in abundance,
surrounding the modern house which in a figure represents the castle
of Helias. The presence of liers-in-wait so near his own home was
threatening. Helias rode against them and scattered them; in so doing
he also scattered his own small party. But the few men in the thickets
were only the advanced guard of a larger body. The arch-fiend Robert
was himself near in ambush. At the lucky moment he sprang forth; his
comrades seized the Count, along with his standard-bearer Hervey of
the Cenomannian Montfort,[557] and the more part of his small
following. The few who escaped made their way to Ballon, to turn the
joy of their comrades into sorrow at the news that Count Helias was a
prisoner.[558]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Contrast between Robert of Bellême and William Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Helias surrendered to the King.]
[Sidenote: William and Helias.]
[Sidenote: Helias kept at Rouen.]
The noblest man in Gaul was now at the mercy of the vilest. Helias was
helpless in the hands of Robert of Bellême. The tale which follows is
picturesque in itself, and it is specially valuable as throwing light
on the mixed character of the Red King. With all his evil deeds, he
was at least not the worst man with whom we have to do. We now see
what mere chivalry could do and what it could not do. It could not
raise a man to the level of Helias; but it kept him from sinking to
the level of Robert of Bellême. Helias was far too important a captive
to be left to die a lingering death in the dungeons of Robert. He was
taken to Rouen, and handed over to the King; and in the King’s hands
he at least ran no risk as to life or limb. William Rufus might
perhaps not understand a patriot fighting for his city and country. He
could perhaps understand a prince fighting for the inheritance of his
fathers. He could most fully understand and admire a gallant and
honourable knight fighting manfully in any cause, even though his
gallantry was directed against himself. In one or other of those
characters, Helias extorted a kind of respect from the King who was so
bitterly enraged against him. The fortune of war had gone against the
defender of Maine, but William was not disposed to press his advantage
harshly. Helias was kept in the castle of Rouen, a prisoner, but a
prisoner whose durance was, by the King’s express order, relieved by
honourable treatment.[559]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: State of things at Le Mans;]
[Sidenote: the new municipality.]
[Sidenote: Bishop Hildebert and the Council.]
[Sidenote: William’s council at Rouen.]
[Sidenote: His speech.]
[Sidenote: A great levy ordered.]
One element of the Cenomannian state, and that the highest, was thus
lost to it. But at Le Mans the prince was only one element in the
state; the ecclesiastical and the civic powers appear alongside of him
at every stage. As soon as the Count was in the hands of the enemy,
another power, perhaps not the old _commune_, yet some form of
republican or municipal government, at once sprang up. Bishop
Hildebert appears at the head of a council or assembly of some kind
which devised measures daily for the safety of the commonwealth.[560]
We must not build too much on the expressions of rhetorical writers
who loved to bring in classical allusions; still, considering what Le
Mans had been, a momentary burst of the old freedom is no more than we
might reasonably look for. If so, the restored commonwealth had, at
its first birth, to brave the full might of the younger William, as
the former commonwealth had had to brave the full might of the elder.
We can only tell the tale as we have it, and we have no means of
connecting what was going on in Maine with what was going on at the
same time in the Vexin. Yet one is a little surprised to find William,
at this stage of the year, sitting quietly at Rouen, holding a
council, and presently sending forth orders for the levying of a great
army, as if two wars were not already waging. In his council of the
Norman barons the Red King is made to express himself in a humane and
devout strain. Hitherto he had been careless about winning back the
heritage of his father; he had been unwilling, for the mere sake of
enlarging his dominions, to trouble a peaceful population or to cause
the death of human beings.[561] Now however God, who knew his right,
had, without any knowledge of his, delivered his enemy into his hands;
what should he do further?[562] The writers of these times do indeed
allow themselves strange liberties in putting speeches, and sometimes
very inappropriate speeches, into the mouths of the actors in their
story. But surely to put words like these into the mouth of William
Rufus, as something uttered in seriousness, would be going beyond any
conceivable licence of this kind. Considering his better authenticated
speeches, one is tempted to believe that we have here the memory of
some mocking gibe. He, King William, had not laid waste the fields of
Maine nor caused men to die of hunger in prison. It was only Robert of
Bellême who had done such things. It would be quite in character with
Rufus, as with Jehu, to ask, Who slew all these?[563] Nor is such
brutal mockery in any way inconsistent with the display of chivalrous
generosity whenever any appeal is made personally to himself in his
knightly character. Anyhow we are told that the barons advised that a
summons should go forth bidding the whole force of Normandy to come
together for an expedition to win back the land of Maine. They
themselves would come, willingly and with all daring, in their own
persons.[564]
[Sidenote: Numbers of the army.]
All this reads strangely in a narrative which, a page or two before,
had told us of the warfare around Gisors which, one would think, must
have been going on at this very moment. But we read that the
messengers went forth, and that the host came together. Not only from
Normandy, but from Britanny and Flanders, from Burgundy and
France――not a word as to the treason implied in this last name――men
flocked to the banners of the prince who was so bountiful a
paymaster.[565] At some stage of their march, an aged French warrior,
a survivor of the wars of King Henry――one therefore who could remember
the ambush of Varaville and the flames of Mortemer, perhaps even the
clashing of lances at Val-es-dunes――Gilo de Soleio by name, beheld the
host from the top of a high hill. He had seen many and great
gatherings of men, but never on this side the Alps――had he fought then
in Apulia or at Dyrrhachion?――had he seen so vast an army. He told the
number of the men at fifty thousand.[566] Be the figures trustworthy
or not as to this particular army, this is one of several hints which
help to show us what passed in those days for an army of unusual
numbers.[567]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The army meets at Alençon. June, 1098.]
[Sidenote: The army at Fresnay.]
[Sidenote: The castle and church of Fresnay.]
[Sidenote: Beaumont-le-Vicomte.]
[Sidenote: The Viscount Ralph asks for a truce.]
[Sidenote: Rufus grants it.]
[Sidenote: Action of Geoffrey of Mayenne.]
The trysting-place of this great host was at Alençon, the border town
and fortress of Normandy, where the Sarthe divides the Norman and
Cenomannian lands.[568] Once famous as the town whose people had felt
so stern a vengeance for their insults to the great William, it was
now a stronghold of Normandy against Maine, at all events a stronghold
of Robert of Bellême against those who still maintained the cause of
the captive Helias. There the army met in June.[569] Rufus, in
invading Maine, was repeating an exploit of his father. He entered by
the same road, and began by threatening the same fortress. The words
of our authorities may lead us to think that he himself tarried at
Alençon, while his army, or the bulk of it, marched to Fresnay.[570]
Fresnay-le-Vicomte, Fresnay-on-Sarthe, was the first castle in Maine
to which the Conqueror had laid siege, and under its walls Robert of
Bellême had been girt with the belt of knighthood.[571] At that time
Fresnay, along with Beaumont lower down the river, had dared to
withstand the invader. Both fortresses stand on heights overlooking
the Sarthe; Fresnay, seated on a limestone rock rising sheer from the
stream, might seem well able to defy any enemy. Of the ancient part of
the castle nothing is left but shattered walls and a stern gateway of
a later age. The church, a gem of the art of an age nearly a hundred
years later, contains only a small part which can have been standing
in the days of Rufus. Beaumont is not mentioned in our present story.
But its square keep must have already looked down on the Sarthe and
its islands, while a mound on each side of the town, one seemingly
artificial, one by the river-side only improved by art, may perhaps
mark the sites of besieging towers raised by the Conqueror to bring
town and castle into subjection.[572] The then lord of Fresnay and
Beaumont, the Viscount Hubert, had at a later stage forsaken both his
castles on the Sarthe, to defy, and that successfully, the whole might
of William the Great from his more inaccessible donjon on the rock of
Sainte-Susanne.[573] His successor, the Viscount Ralph, felt no call
to run any such risks. When the army drew near to Fresnay, when no
hostilities beyond a little skirmishing had as yet taken place, Ralph
went to the King at Alençon and asked for a truce. He pleaded that he
was but one member of a body; he could not take on himself the duties
of the head of that body; he could not without dishonour be the first
man in Maine to yield his castle without fighting. The council of
Maine was sitting in the city; he, Ralph, was bound by their resolves;
let the King go on to Le Mans and negotiate; as he should find peace
or war at Le Mans, he should find peace or war at Fresnay.[574] Rufus,
always ready to answer any appeal to his personal generosity, praised
the proposal of Ralph, and granted him the truce which he asked
for.[575] He did the like to others whose lands lay on his line of
march. Among these we hear of Rotrou of the Cenomannian Montfort, and
of one whose name has for so many years been sure to meet us the first
moment he set foot on Cenomannian soil, the now surely aged Geoffrey
of Mayenne.[576]
[Sidenote: Estimate of their conduct.]
[Sidenote: Fulk Rechin at Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: May 5, 1098.]
[Sidenote: He is received.]
[Sidenote: Fulk’s son Geoffrey left at Le Mans.]
The conduct of these lords seems to show lukewarmness, to say the
least, in the cause of Cenomannian independence. We are again reminded
of the days of the _commune_, of the unwillingness of the nobles to
accept the republican government, of the special treason of Geoffrey
himself.[577] We can understand that many of the lords of castles
throughout Maine, though they might prefer their own count to the king
who came against them, might yet prefer the king to any form of
commonwealth. The local historian does not scruple to use strong
language on the subject. For we can hardly doubt that Geoffrey, Ralph,
Rotrou, and others in the like case, are the persons who are referred
to as the faithless men by whose consent Rufus was led to hasten to
the city.[578] But the King had another motive to call him thither. By
this time there was no longer a commonwealth to be dealt with; Le Mans
had again a prince, though no longer her native prince. In the very
week after Helias was taken prisoner, Fulk of Anjou came to Le Mans,
and brought with him his son Geoffrey. He himself came in his
character of superior lord,[579] while Geoffrey, to whom Eremburga,
the only child of Helias, was betrothed, might pass in some sort for
the heir of the county.[580] The citizens, we are told, received the
Angevin count willingly; any master was better than the Norman. Fulk
put garrisons in the fortresses of La Mans, with his son in command.
He then left the city, seemingly for operations in other parts of
Maine.[581]
[Illustration:
LE MANS
_E. Weller_
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._]
[Sidenote: March of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Castle of Bourg-le-roi.]
[Sidenote: Rufus at Montbizot]
[Sidenote: and Coulaines.]
[Sidenote: View of Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: Rufus ravages Coulaines.]