overtake the host which was already at Fresnay. He crossed the Sarthe;
he continued his course along its left bank, and stopped for the first
time at Rouessée-les-fontaines.[582] This point is no great distance
from Alençon, and it is still some way north of Fresnay. The present
village of Rouessée contains no signs of any castle or mansion fitted
for a king’s reception. One suspects that the exact spot meant must be
the neighbouring castle of Bourg-le-roi, a castle said to take its
name from Rufus himself. Here a ruined round tower, with walls of
amazing thickness and girded by a deep ditch, looks down from a small
hill on what seems to be the preparation for a large town which has
never been built. A small village and church are sheltered within
walls of vast compass, pierced by gates of later date than the days of
Rufus and Helias. His next stage is distinctly spoken of as an
encampment. The King had now joined his army. That night his camp was
pitched at Montbizot, in the peninsula between the Sarthe and the
Cenomannian Orne.[583] On the third day he encamped in the meadows, by
the Sarthe, hard by the village of Coulaines.[584] He was still on the
left bank of the river, the same bank as the city itself, though the
bend which the stream makes immediately under the hill of Le Mans
gives the city almost the look of standing on the other side. Wide
meadows spread from the village of Coulaines to the foot of the hill;
they were now covered by the tents of Rufus. Right before the eyes of
the army, high on its hill, rose the city which they were come to
attack, and it rose so as to bring at once before their leader’s eyes
the objects which would specially stir up his wrath. As Le Mans is
seen from the meadows of Coulaines, the city and its hill lie almost
out of sight to the south-west. The prominent objects are those which
stand in the north-east corner of the city and in the adjoining
suburb. Highest of all, rising above the city itself, soared the abbey
of Saint Vincent without the walls, the house whose tenants had been
so cruelly oppressed by Robert of Bellême.[585] Saint Julian’s, on its
lower ground, almost closes in the view on the other side. When Rufus
drew nigh, the twin towers of Howel rose high in all the freshness of
their newly-finished masonry, to remind the King that the chair of the
prelate whom his father had appointed was now filled by a successor in
whose choice no regard had been paid to his own pleasure. Between the
two minsters rose the royal tower, the tower of his father, the
fortress which had passed away from him and from his father’s house,
held no longer even by a rebellious vassal, as he might deem Helias,
but by the invading stranger from Anjou. How deeply one at least of
these feelings rankled in the mind of Rufus is shown by his dealings
with the immediate neighbourhood of his encampment. The village of
Coulaines was an episcopal lordship. For the churl chivalry taught no
mercy; in his wrath against Hildebert, the King burned the church and
the whole village, and cruelly laid waste the neighbouring lands.[586]
[Sidenote: Sally from the city.]
[Sidenote: Rufus goes away.]
[Sidenote: Ballon betrayed to Rufus and occupied by Robert of Bellême.]
[Sidenote: The siege of Le Mans raised.]
But however fiercely Rufus might wreak his spite on the unlucky lands
and tenants of the bishopric without the walls, the flock of Hildebert
within the city was safe for a while. Le Mans was not to pass into the
King’s hands just yet, and Ralph of Beaumont and Geoffrey of Mayenne
might still keep their bat-like nature for some while longer. For it
is at this stage that the local historian places an exploit of the
citizens of Le Mans which reminds us of the way in which our own
Godwine was said to have won the special favour of Cnut for himself
and his fellow-Englishmen.[587] The men of the city marched
forth――whether under Angevin leadership we are not told――to attack the
King’s camp at Coulaines. Rufus, deeming that some treachery was on
foot, marched off in the night with his army. In the morning the
citizens occupied the camp and found no one there.[588] It is hard to
say what we are to make of this story, which has a somewhat mythical
sound. But it has at least thus much of truth in it, that Rufus was
obliged to break up the siege of Le Mans for a while. The castle of
Ballon, of which we have already so often heard, was betrayed to Rufus
by its lord Pagan of Mont-Doubleau, and it was held that this strong
position, nearly due north of the city, almost put the city itself
into the King’s power. Robert of Bellême was put in command at Ballon,
with three hundred knights. At his bidding the land was ravaged in
every way; the vines were rooted up and the crops were trampled down.
But at last the invaders began to feel the effects of the damage they
themselves had done. A failure of provisions, especially of oats for
the horses, hindered the Red King from keeping on the siege.[589] He
went away into Normandy, bidding his men go home and see to their
harvests, and come again when the crops were reaped.[590] Nothing is
more natural in the case of the native Normans, who would feel in such
a case very much as Englishmen felt; but one can hardly believe that
William allowed his great mercenary force to be wholly broken up. And
again, the question keeps always presenting itself, What was going on
in the Vexin? Was there any moment when so eager a warrior, with two
wars on his hands at once, left both of them to take care of
themselves? Throughout this story the relations between the French and
the Cenomannian wars form a never-ceasing puzzle. But we presently
come to an incident of the campaign which is the most characteristic
in the whole history of William Rufus.
[Sidenote: Fulk attacks Ballon.]
[Sidenote: Successful sally of the besieged.]
[Sidenote: William at Ballon, c. July 20, 1098.]
[Sidenote: His treatment of the captive knights.]
[Sidenote: Illustration of the chivalrous spirit.]
While William was away, Count Fulk, at the head of a mixed host,
Angevin and Cenomannian, laid siege to the newly-betrayed castle of
Ballon. The attack went on for some days; a message was sent to the
King for help. To meet this fresh danger, the nobles of Maine and
Anjou pressed in greater numbers to help the Count and his force. The
defenders of the castle planned a sally. Beggars went out as spies,
and brought in news that the besiegers were busy dining at the hour of
tierce. The sally was made; the besiegers were surprised in the midst
of their meal;[591] a hundred and forty knights and a crowd of
foot-soldiers were taken prisoners. The rest took to flight and left a
rich spoil of arms, clothes, and furniture as a prey to the Normans.
Many of the captives were men of high rank and great possessions. The
story almost reads as if Robert of Bellême condemned them to die of
hunger; if so, Rufus came before hunger had done its work; cold would
no longer be a means of torture. It was now not Lent, but the third
week in July, when King William with a great force came to Ballon. A
cry presently reached him from the prisoners, “Noble King William, set
us free.” The chivalrous King, who had no mercy for the peasants of
Coulaines, felt his heart stirred towards the captive knights of
Anjou. He ordered that a meal should be made ready for them along with
his own followers, and he set them free on their parole till the meal
was ready. Some of his companions suggested to him that, in the crowd
and confusion, they might easily escape. Rufus cast aside such a
suggestion with scorn. He would never believe that a good knight would
break his word; he who should do so would have punishment enough in
the scorn of all mankind that would follow him.[592] Here we see the
chivalrous character in all its fulness. Justice and mercy go for
nothing; the law of God and the law of man go for nothing; the oath of
the crowned king, the promise of a prince and a brother, go for
nothing; but the class tie of knighthood is sacred; the promise made
under its guaranty is sacred. As a good knight, William Rufus is
faithful to his own word pledged as such to others; as a good knight,
he will not believe that a brother of his order can be other than
faithful to his word pledged as such to him.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Fulk goes back to Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: Negotiations for peace.]
[Sidenote: Share of Helias.]
[Sidenote: Convention between William and Fulk. August, 1098.]
[Sidenote: Le Mans to be surrendered.]
[Sidenote: Helias to be set free.]
The siege of Ballon was at an end. Fulk, we are told, betook himself
to the city, and there stayed in some of the monasteries, waiting to
see what would happen.[593] But the defenders of Le Mans, both native
and Angevin, had now made up their minds that resistance to the power
of Rufus was hopeless; their object was to treat for peace. The
captive Helias was allowed a share in the negotiations; he was
specially fearful that Fulk might make some agreement by which he
himself might be cut off from Maine for ever.[594] By the King’s
leave, Bishop Hildebert and some of the chief men of the city visited
Helias, and they agreed on terms which were put into the form of an
agreement between Rufus and Fulk. It was rather a military convention
than a treaty of peace, and it left all the disputed questions
unsettled. Nothing was said either as to the general question about
the bishopric or as to the particular election of Hildebert. Nor was
it at all ruled who was to be looked on as lawful Count of Maine. It
was not even agreed that hostilities were to cease. The actual terms
are conceived in words which seem to come from Rufus himself. The
memory of his father is put prominently forward. Le Mans and all the
fortresses which had been held by the late King William were to be
surrendered to King William his son. Helias and all other prisoners on
both sides were to be set free.[595] All sides, we are told, rejoiced
at this agreement. To William and his followers it was a great
immediate triumph. To the people of Le Mans it was at least immediate
deliverance from a wasting struggle. And wary men may have seen that
the liberation of Helias was not too dearly bought even by the
surrender of his capital. If the valiant Count were set free, free
alike from fetters and from promises, he would win back his lost city
and dominion before long.
[Sidenote: Submission of Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: The castles occupied by the King’s troops.]
But for the present all went according to the pleasure of the Red
King. Rufus, as his father had twice done, entered Le Mans without
bloodshed, amidst at least the outward welcome of its inhabitants. And
it may well be that, if Helias was not to be had, they may have looked
on William as a more promising master than Fulk. The convention was
formally accepted, and it was immediately carried out. Robert the son
of Hugh of Montfort, that Hugh whom we have already heard of on Senlac
and at Dover,[596] was sent at the head of seven hundred chosen
knights, full armed in their helmets and coats of mail, to occupy the
fortresses of Le Mans.[597] They met with no opposition; the
garrisons, native or Angevin, marched out; the Normans took
possession. All the strong places of the city――the ancient palace of
the counts on the Roman wall――the donjon of William the Great, the
royal tower, standing so dangerously near to the north wall of Saint
Julian’s minster――the other fortress of the Conqueror, the tower of
Mont Barbet on its height, overlooking the city from the side of Saint
Vincent’s abbey――all that the father had either subdued or called into
being――now passed without a blow into the hands of the son. The King’s
banner――what was the ensign wrought upon it?――was hoisted amid shouts
of victory on the highest point of the royal tower. King William the
Red had achieved the object which in his thoughts came nearest to the
nature of a duty. He had brought under his hand all that had ever been
under the hand of his father.[598]
[Sidenote: William’s entry into Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: His reception by Hildebert.]
[Sidenote: The church of Saint Julian.]
On the day of the military occupation followed the day of the joyous
entry. The Red King entered, doubtless by the northern gate, the gate
between Saint Vincent’s abbey and the royal tower. His new subjects
welcomed him with shouts and songs, and were received by him to his
full peace.[599] Bishop Hildebert, seemingly now admitted to favour,
with his clergy and people, met the King with psalms and processions.
They led him by the royal tower, with his own banner floating on its
battlements, to the cathedral church, now a vaster and more splendid
pile than when the first Conqueror had been led to it with the same
pomp.[600] The twin towers of Howel soared in their freshness; the
aisles which we still see, with their abiding Roman masonry, had risen
at his bidding; it may well have been by the mighty portal of his
rearing that Rufus entered within the hallowed walls. Within, the
sight was different in every stone, in every adornment, from that on
which we now gaze. The columns and arches of Saint Julian’s nave were
still the columns and arches of the basilica which Aldric had raised
when Le Mans was a city of the Empire of the pious Lewis.[601] It may
be that of those columns we can here and there spell out some faint
traces amid the finer masonry and gorgeous foliage of the next age.
But of the works to the east, still new when Rufus came, the splendid
reconstructions of later times have left us no signs. The choir of
Arnold still blazed in all its freshness with the rich decorations
which had been added by the skill and bounty of Howel. The first bloom
had not passed away from the painted ceiling, from the rich pavement,
from the narrow windows glowing with the deep richness of colour which
no later age could surpass. Through all these new-born splendours of
the holy place the scoffer and blasphemer was solemnly guided to the
shrines of Saint Julian and of all the saints of Le Mans. And there
were moments when the heart of Rufus was not wholly shut against
better thoughts. As at Saint Martin of the Place of Battle, so at
Saint Julian in newly-won Le Mans, we may deem that some dash of
thankfulness was mingled with his swelling pride, as he felt that he
had finished his father’s work.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: William leaves Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: General submission of Maine.]
The stay of William at Le Mans does not seem to have been long. The
government of the city was put into the hands of Count William of
Evreux and of Gilbert of Laigle. The royal tower, well provisioned,
stocked with arms and with all needful things, was placed under the
immediate command of Walter the son of Ansgar of Rouen.[602] The
nobles of Maine now came in to make their submission and to receive
the King’s garrisons into their castles. Among them were Count
Geoffrey of Mayenne and the Viscount Ralph of Beaumont. The terms of
their engagement were fulfilled. Their castles were to follow the
fortune of Le Mans, and Le Mans now was King William’s.[603]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Meeting of William and Helias.]
[Sidenote: Proposals of Helias.]
But he who had lately been the lord of them all was waiting for the
benefits of the convention to be extended to himself. We are a little
surprised when we presently find the King at Rouen, and when we
further find that Helias, who had been lately in ward in the castle
there, had now to be brought hither from a prison at Bayeux.[604] The
King and his captive met face to face. The contrast between the
outward look of the two men was as striking as the difference in their
inward souls. Before the victorious King, short, bulky, ruddy, fierce
of countenance, hasty and stammering in speech, stood the captive
Count, tall, thin, swarthy, master of eloquent and winning words.
Something of bodily neglect marked, perhaps not so much the rigour of
his confinement as a captive’s carelessness of wonted niceties. His
hair, usually neatly trimmed, was now rough and shaggy.[605] The King
seems to have begun the dialogue;[606] “I have you, Sir.” Helias
answered with dignity and respect, as a man of fallen fortunes
speaking to a superior in rank, and yet not stooping to any unworthy
submission. He called on the King, in the name of his might and his
renown, to help him. He had once, he said, been a count, lord of a
noble county. Fortune had now turned against him, and he had lost all.
He asked leave to enter the King’s service, to be allowed to keep his
rank and title of count, but pledging himself not to make any claim to
the Cenomannian county or city, till by some signal exploit on the
King’s behalf he should be deemed worthy to receive them as a grant
from the King’s free will. Till then it would be enough for him to
have his place in the royal following and to enjoy the royal
friendship.
[Sidenote: William disposed to accept Helias’ proposal.]
[Sidenote: He is hindered by Robert of Meulan.]
[Sidenote: Defiance of Helias.]
[Sidenote: Answer of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Helias set free.]
Such an appeal as this went straight to the better part of William’s
nature, and he was at once disposed to agree to the proposal of
Helias. But then stepped in the selfish prudence of Robert of Meulan,
who measured other men by himself. He was now the King’s chief
adviser, and he jealously grudged all influence which might fall to
the lot of any one else.[607] The admission of Helias to the King’s
friendship and councils would of all things be the least suited for
Robert’s purposes. He could not bear that any man, least of all a man
of a spirit so much higher than his own, should be so near the throne
as Helias threatened to be. The men of Maine, said the Count of
Meulan, were a cunning and faithless race. All that the captive Helias
sought by his offers was to insinuate himself into the King’s favour,
to learn his secrets, that he might be able, when a fitting moment
came, to rise up against him with more advantage and join himself to
his enemies with greater power. The purpose of Rufus was changed by
the malignant counsel of Count Robert. The petition of Helias was
refused; it was again made; it was again refused. Then the Count of
Maine spoke his defiance. “Willingly, Sir King, would I have served
you, if it had been your pleasure; willingly would I have earned
favour in your sight. But now, I pray you, blame me not, if I take
another course. I cannot bear with patience to see mine inheritance
taken from me. All right is denied to me by overwhelming violence;
wherefore let no man wonder if I again renew my claim, if I strive
with all my might to win back the honour of my fathers.” Rufus was
beside himself with wrath at words like these; but it was in words
only that his wrath spent itself. He stammered out, “Scoundrel, what
can you do? Be off, march, take to flight; I give you leave to do all
you can, and, by the face of Lucca, if you ever conquer me, I will not
ask you for any grace in return for my favour of to-day.” Even after
this outburst, the Count had self-command enough to ask for a
safe-conduct, and the King had self-command enough to grant it. Helias
was guided safely through the Norman duchy, and made his way, to the
delight of his friends, to his own immediate possessions on the
borders of Maine and Anjou.[608]
[Sidenote: Illustration of the King’s character.]
Of all the stories of the Red King there is none more characteristic
than this. His first impulse is to accept a generous and confiding
offer in the spirit in which it was made. For a moment he seems to
rise to the level of the man who stood before him. Even when his
better impulse is checked by an evil counsellor, he does not sink so
low as many would have sunk in the like case. In the wildest wrath of
his insulted pride, he does not forget that his word as a good knight
is pledged to the man who has defied him. Rufus was bound by all the
laws of chivalry to let Helias go this time, whatever he might do if
he caught him again. And the laws of chivalry Rufus obeyed in the
teeth of temptations of opposite kinds. A meaner tyrant might have
sent Helias at once to death or blinding. A calmer or more wary
prince, even though not a tyrant, might have argued that it was unsafe
for him and his dominions to let the man go free who had uttered such
a challenge. He might further have argued that a speech which was so
like an open declaration of war at once set aside the conditions of
peace. But William Rufus, when once on his point of honour, was not
led away from it either by the impulse of vengeance or by the
calculations of prudence. His knightly word was pledged that Helias
should go free. Free therefore he went, after his defiance had been
answered by a counter defiance, each alike emphatically characteristic
of the man who uttered it.
§ 3. _The End of the French War_.
_September-December_, 1098.
[Sidenote: William on the continent. 1097-1099.]
[Sidenote: Extent of William’s conquests in Maine.]
[Sidenote: He begins, but does not finish.]
The war of Maine was, or seemed to be, over. And, just at this point
we get a chronology clear enough to enable us to fix the connexion of
the two works which were going on at once. We have seen William in his
Norman capital at a time when we should rather have looked for him on
one or other of his Norman frontiers. But it seems plain that he spent
the whole year on the mainland, and that he did not cross to England
at any time between the two Christmas feasts which he is specially
said to have kept in Normandy. Helias was set free in August, and we
are led to believe that Rufus now deemed that the war of Maine was
over, or at least that he could afford to despise it in its present
stage. We shall presently see that the war of Maine was by no means
over, and that William’s Cenomannian conquests hardly reached beyond
the capital and the lands north of the capital. We are inclined to
wonder that a warlike prince like Rufus took no further heed to a
campaign which was manifestly unfinished, while an active enemy was
again at liberty and was still in possession of a strong line of
castles. But this is neither the first nor the last time in which we
find William the Red much more vigorous in beginning a campaign than
in ending it. And in this case he may, with two wars on his hands,
have not unreasonably thought that, after so great a conquest as that
of the capital of Maine, he could afford to turn his thoughts to the
other seat of warfare. In the month after Helias was set free, he made
up his mind for a special effort against the stubborn border-land of
France.
[Sidenote: William sets forth. September 27, 1098.]
[Sidenote: The sign in the sky.]
[Sidenote: Its meaning.]
[Sidenote: He marches to Pontoise.]
Two days before Michaelmas, William set forth, from what head-quarters
we are not told, at the head of a great army. On his way to the seat
of war he enjoyed the hospitality of Ralph of Toesny on the hill of
Conches. That night there was a sign in the heavens; the whole sky
blazed and seemed as red as blood. At other times such a portent in
the heavens might not have seemed too great to betoken some great
victory or defeat on the part of one or other of the contending kings
of the West. But, while Christendom was on its march to the eastern
land, the heavens could tell of nothing meaner than the ups and downs
of the strifes between two continents and two creeds. If the sky was
red over Conches and Evreux and the whole western world, it was
because at that moment Christians and heathens met in battle in the
eastern lands, and by God’s help the Christians had the victory.[609]
But William Rufus cared little for signs and wonders, even when he
himself was deemed to be the subject of their warning. His heart was
not in Palestine, but on the French border; and his present business
was a march against the most distant of the three fortresses to which
he laid claim. Chaumont and Trie still held out; but their garrisons
could not hinder him from carrying a destructive raid into districts
far more distant from his head-quarters at Gisors. He marched to the
south-east, burning, plundering, and carrying off prisoners from the
whole French territory as far as Pontoise.[610]
[Sidenote: Castle and town of Pontoise.]
[Sidenote: Strong position of the town.]
[Sidenote: Pontoise the furthest point of the raid.]
The invading King had now reached a point of French soil nearer to
Paris than the spot where Count Robert kept the Seine barred at
Meulan. At Pontoise, as the name implies, was the bridge spanning the
Oise, the tributary which joins its waters with those of the Seine at
Conflans――the Gaulish _Confluentes_――between Paris and Meulan. Here a
precipitous rock rises above the stream, a rock which, strengthened
and defended by art in every way, was crowned by the vast circuit of
the castle of Pontoise. Here is no town sloping down from the castle
to the river. The castle rock rises sheer――it rose most likely from
the water itself, till the Oise, like the Seine at Rouen, was curbed
by a quay. In the view from the bridge, the castle, shorn as it is of
its towers and of all that can give stateliness to such a building,
still lords it over everything. The town of Pontoise seems to crouch
by the side of the rock; the great church of Saint Maclou, with its
lofty tower of late architecture, is wholly hidden from sight. It is
only at some distance beyond the river, in the suburb known as that of
Saint Ouen _l’Aumône_, that we begin to see that the church stands on
ground not much lower than the site of the castle. We then learn that
the town of Pontoise, standing on a height separate from the
castle-rock, well walled, and with streets as steep as those of Le
Mans or Lincoln, was in itself no contemptible fortress. As usual,
there is little or nothing in town or church or castle that we can
positively assign to the period of our story. But the main features of
the spot must be the same now as they were when the Red King led his
plundering host as far as the bridge of the Oise. It is plain that
this was the end of his course on this side; it is plain that Pontoise
was not added to the list of fortresses which were taken by him or
betrayed to him. But we have nothing to explain why he turned back at
this point, whether he met with any repulse in an attack on Pontoise
or whether he attacked Pontoise at all. We only know that Pontoise
marks in one sense the furthest point of the French campaigns of
William Rufus. We shall presently find him on another side at a
greater distance from his own dominions; but Pontoise marks his
nearest approach to the capital of France. Had Pontoise been William’s
as well as Meulan, Paris would indeed have been threatened. But this
south-eastern journey was clearly, in its effect at least, a mere
plundering raid, from which Rufus came back to attempt a more regular
attack on the nearer enemy at Chaumont.
[Sidenote: Siege of Chaumont.]
[Sidenote: The archers of Chaumont shoot the horses only.]
[Sidenote: Chaumont not taken.]
The siege of Chaumont is described to us in greater detail than the
march on Pontoise, but we do not, any more than at Pontoise, get a
really intelligible account. It is plain that the siege was a
considerable enterprise, one to which Rufus led his whole army. It is
also plain from the result that its issue must have an important
effect on the turn of affairs. But of the siege itself all that we
hear is one of those strange stories by which we are sometimes met,
stories which must have some meaning, which must be grounded on some
fact, and which yet, as they stand, pass all belief. We are told that
the defenders of Chaumont were valiant men, strong to defend the
battlements of their own castle. But to defend their own castle was
all that they could do; their numbers were not enough to enable them
either to meet William’s great army in open battle, or even to hinder
his plunderers from laying waste the neighbouring lands. But the
defence of Chaumont itself was stout, and, as it turned out,
successful. Yet we are told that the garrison of Chaumont, out of the
fear of God and out of tenderness towards men, stood strictly on the
defensive, or took the offensive only towards brute beasts. In taking
aim at the besiegers, they avoided the persons of the riders, and
aimed all their blows at the horses. Seven hundred horses of great
price fell under the arrows and darts of the men of Chaumont, and
their carcases made a rich feast for the dogs and birds of prey of the
Vexin.[611] The virtue of these scrupulous warriors did not go
unrewarded. Our story breaks off somewhat suddenly; but we see that at
all events Chaumont was not taken.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Rare notices of southern Gaul.]
[Sidenote: Coming of William of Poitiers.]
[Sidenote: Alliance of Normandy and Aquitaine.]
The war now takes a turn of special interest, which makes us specially
regret the very unsatisfactory nature of our materials. The field of
our story is suddenly enlarged; but events do not crowd it at all in
proportion to its enlargement. It is but seldom that our tale brings
us into any direct dealing with the lands and the princes south of the
Loire. We have seen the tongue of _oil_ supplant the Danish tongue in
Normandy, and we have seen it appear as a rival to our own speech in
our own island. But we have been seldom called on to listen to the
accents of the tongue of _oc_. But at this moment the chief potentate
of that tongue suddenly appears on the field of our story, an
appearance from which we naturally look for great events. The young
lord of the Vexin and heir of France had to meet a new enemy, almost
as powerful, and quite as reckless and godless, as the old one.
Another William, William of Poitiers and Aquitaine, came to the help
of William of Normandy and England.[612] He was in the end to go to
the crusade――to go not exactly in the guise of Godfrey or Helias.[613]
But he had not yet set out; and, before he went, he came to strike a
blow on behalf of the prince to whom he was said to have sold the
reversion of his dominions. The mighty dukes of the North and the
South might seem to have utterly hemmed in the smaller realm of the
king whose men they were or should have been.[614] The final results
of their alliance were not memorable, but the coming of the southern
duke had the immediate effect of carrying the war into districts
little used to the presence of English or even of Norman warriors.
[Sidenote: Campaign to the west of Paris.]
[Sidenote: Valley of the Maudre.
[Sidenote: Maule.]
[Sidenote: Montfort-l’Amaury.]
[Sidenote: Neauphlé-le-Château.]
[Sidenote: Epernon.]
[Sidenote: The two Williams march against the Montfort castles.]
[Sidenote: Seat of war affected by the coming of William of Poitiers.]
It can hardly fail to have been the march of William of Aquitaine
which led to a campaign carried on in the lands west and south-west of
Paris, within the triangle which may be drawn between the three points
of Mantes, Paris, and Chartres. One side of this triangle is formed by
the Seine itself, and here the adhesion of the Count of Meulan must
have effectually guarded the seat of war from the north. Somewhat to
the west of Meulan, between that fortress and Mantes, the small stream
of the Maudre empties itself into the Seine. The course of this stream
and the valley through which it flows formed the chief seat of warfare
at this stage, seemingly after the attacks on Chaumont had proved
fruitless. Small as the Maudre is, its course makes a clearly marked
valley, running nearly north and south. About the middle of it lies
Maule, the fortress of Peter of Maule, the benefactor of the house of
Saint Evroul, and therefore high in favour with its historian. Further
to the south, where the stream is a mere brook, the valley widens into
a plain between hills, and here some of the strongest points are
occupied by the strongholds of the French house of Montfort, numbering
among them the spot which gave that house its ever-memorable name.
Here rose the hill which above all others glories in the name of the
Strong Mount, the home of the Simons and the Amalrics. Under the name
of Montfort-l’Amaury it still keeps the less illustrious of the two
names, one or other of which was always borne by its successive
counts. To the north-east of the cradle of their race, on the other
side of the Maudre, the Counts of Montfort had planted another
stronghold on a height, which, though all traces of a fortress have
passed away, still keeps the name of Neauphlé-_le-Château_, as
distinguished from another place of the same name, Neauphlé-_le-Vieux_.
Much further to the south-west, on the upper course of the Drouelle, a
tributary of the Eure, stood Epernon, another fortress of the house of
Montfort, a border fortress of the strictly French territory towards
the lands of the Counts of Chartres. On this district now fell the
heavy wrath of the two Williams, who led a mighty multitude against
Montfort and Epernon and laid waste the whole surrounding land. They
had traitors in their service; they came under the guidance of Almaric
the Young and of Nivard of Septeuil.[615] This last place lies in the
valley of the Vaucouleurs, a stream running almost parallel with the
Maudre and joining the Seine at Mantes. Such a position, lying nearly
due west from Maule, and at a greater distance north-east from
Montfort, marks a dangerous outpost thrown out from the Norman side
into the heart of the French territory. Of the line of march of the
Poitevin duke we have no account; but it must have been his coming
which caused the seat of war to be changed from the north-west of the
threatened capital of France to the south-west, a region so much
better suited for an invader from the south.
[Sidenote: No special mention of Lewis.]
[Sidenote: The castles resist singly.]
[Sidenote: Peter of Maule.]
[Sidenote: The two Simons of Montfort.]
[Sidenote: The elder Simon defends Neauphlé.]
[Sidenote: The castle of Montfort.]
[Sidenote: The church.]
[Sidenote: Defence of the younger Simon.]
[Sidenote: Interest of the defence.]
It is somewhat singular that, while we have so striking a general
picture of the courage and conduct of the young Lewis during this
struggle, we hear nothing of any particular exploit of his, we hear
nothing of any help given by him to any of the threatened fortresses.
It is their own lords, each for himself, who withstand, and
successfully withstand, the attacks of the powers of North and South.
Our chief informant――English, Norman, and French, all at
once――enlarges on the failure of Philip to give any help to his
vassals; but we should never learn from him that his place was
supplied by his son.[616] Every man, it would seem, fought for his own
hand. We are told this of a crowd of unnamed lords defending unnamed
fortresses. But we are not left to guess at the name of the friend of
Saint Evroul, Peter of Maule, who, with his sons Ansold and Theobald,
successfully defended his fortress in the valley of the Maudre.[617]
We must suppose that the forces of the two Williams were scattered and
frittered away in a series of desultory attacks against strongholds
scattered all over the country. But to us at least the main interest
of the campaign gathers round the dwellings of the house of Montfort.
We should be well pleased to have even such details of a warfare which
affected them as we have had of the sieges of Chaumont and as we shall
presently have of the siege of Mayet. But we hear only of the result,
how the arms of the two Simons, elder and younger, defended all the
possessions which looked up to the Strong Mount as their head. The
elder guarded the height of Neauphlé, where a curve in the hills,
theatre-shape, awakens some faint remembrance of the kingly mount of
Laon.[618] But the _Mons fortis_ itself, the hill from whence, in
after times, Simon the father went to work the bondage of Toulouse and
Simon the son to work the freedom of England, must have been among the
strongholds which were saved by the energy of the younger bearer of
the name which was to be so fearfully and so gloriously renowned. High
on its peninsular hill, still keeping some small traces of elder
towers along with one graceful fragment of far later days, the castle
of Montfort looks down over church and town, over hills and plains,
bidding defiance to foes on every side, but bidding the most direct
defiance of all to any foe who should advance by the path which must
have been trodden by the Aquitanian duke. For of all the outlooks from
the height of Montfort the widest and the most striking is that by
which the eye looks out towards those southern lands which came so
near to forming a South-Gaulish realm for its own lords. The church
stands beneath on a lower point of the steep. The works of later
times, which have filled its windows with the painted forms of the
basest of the later Valois, have spared one side of the more ancient
central tower, preserving to us forms which were looked on, not indeed
by the Simons of our own immediate story, but by the Simon of Muret
and the Simon of Evesham. A gate at the base of the castle mound,
though the actual building must be of later date, still keeps the name
of that Hugh Bardolf, himself joined by a tie of affinity to the house
of Montfort, of whom we have heard elsewhere as one of the most
abiding of the enemies of Normandy.[619] Here, while the father
defended Neauphlé, the son defended the cradle of their race, and
their other outlying possessions. Not a detail is given us; but our
historian emphatically tells us that it was by the help of God that
the lords of Montfort kept their fortresses safe from the twofold
enemy.[620] And, though a King of the English marched against them,
though doubtless there was no lack of native English warriors in his
train, yet we may join in the pious thankfulness of our guide at Saint
Evroul. It was not good for English interests in any wide or lasting
sense that the sovereign of England should even hold his ancestral
Normandy, much less that he should inherit Aquitaine and conquer
France. When the lords of Montfort in the eleventh century beat back
from their strongholds all the efforts of England and Normandy, of
Poitiers and Aquitaine, they were in truth working in the same cause
as their glorious descendant in the thirteenth. Unknowingly and
indirectly, they were, no less than he, fighting for the freedom and
the greatness of what in their eyes seemed hostile England.
[Sidenote: The war lingers on.]
[Sidenote: Christmas, 1098.]
[Sidenote: No successes of the two Williams.]
[Sidenote: A truce agreed to.]
The war seems to have lingered on through another winter, the second
of those when King William kept his Christmas feast in Normandy. But
no successes are recorded either of William of England or of William
of Aquitaine. The Red King had really done nothing, either alone or in
company with his Poitevin ally. The gallant resistance of the men of
the French borderland had beaten him back at every point. He was now
glad to conclude a truce, which the events which followed made
practically a peace.[621]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Survey of the French war. Its ill-success.]
[Sidenote: Illustration of William’s character.]
It is not at first easy to understand why so very little came of such
great preparations as those which William Rufus made for the French
war. The strength of two great states, during the later stages of the
war the strength of three great states, was broken by efforts which,
even allowing as much as we can for the energy of young Lewis, were
mainly those of the nobles and people of a single district. England,
Normandy, and Aquitaine, were baffled by the men of the French Vexin.
It is true indeed that the war of Maine was far from being really
ended, but Rufus seems at this stage to have thought little of the
efforts of the man whom he had bidden to do his worst against him. Nor
was there anything this year in England, as there was the year before,
to draw off the King’s attention from continental affairs. Scotland
was quiet under a king of his own naming; Magnus did not really
threaten England; the Welsh border might be left to Robert of Bellême
or those whom he had left in charge. All that we can do is to record
this singular break-down of a great force, without being able fully to
explain it. One remark may be made. Men of the temper of Rufus often
get simply weary of undertakings which bring little success, and in
which there is nothing to call forth any special point of personal
vengeance or personal honour. Rufus claimed the Vexin; but his heart
does not seem to have been set on its possession, as it clearly was
set on the possession of Le Mans. There was no one on the French
border who had stung him personally to the quick as Helias had done.
The want of success in the joint undertaking of the two Williams is
certainly hard to understand; but we can quite understand how William
of England and Normandy might, in sheer disgust, throw up an
undertaking in which he did not at once succeed. When he was once more
wounded in the most sensitive part, he was, as we shall presently see,
all himself again.
§ 4. _The Gemót of 1099._
[Sidenote: William keeps Christmas in Normandy. 1098-1099.]
[Sidenote: Easter Gemót. April 10, 1099.]
[Sidenote: Whitsun Gemót in the new hall at Westminster. May 10, 1099.]
William, master of Le Mans, but hardly to be called master of Maine,
and assuredly not master of the Vexin, stayed in Normandy during the
winter which followed the double war in those regions. The time of his
absence is spoken of as a time of special oppression in England, a
time when the exactions of Flambard and his fellows grew worse and
worse, on account of the great sums which had to be sent over the sea
for the King’s wars.[622] The Christmas feast was again kept in
Normandy, in what city or castle we are not told, but such incidental
notices as we have seem to point to Rouen as his usual head-quarters
when he was in the duchy. He came back to England in time for the
Easter feast; the feast implies the assembly; but we have no account
of its doings; there was no longer in England either an Anselm to
afford subjects for discussion or an Eadmer to report the debates. The
next festival was of greater importance, if only on account of the
place where it was held, a place ever-memorable in the history of
England from that day to this. “At Pentecost the King William held his
court for the first time in the new building at Westminster.”[623]
[Sidenote: Buildings of William Rufus.]
[Sidenote: They are reckoned among national grievances.]
[Sidenote: Various grievances.]
[Sidenote: Complaints in 1096,]
[Sidenote: in 1097.]
[Sidenote: Signs and wonders in 1098.]
[Sidenote: Bad weather of 1098.]
[Sidenote: The great buildings in London. 1097.]
The architectural works of William Rufus form a marked feature in his
reign; but the place which they hold in the national annals is
singular. They are set down among the grievances of that unhappy time.
Besides the bad weather, which was not the Red King’s fault, and the
bad harvests which were deemed to be in some measure his fault, there
were the unrighteous taxes and the other forms of unlaw which were
directly his fault; lastly there were the great buildings which are
set down as not the least among his ways of oppressing the people. We
have heard some of the wails which the Chronicler sends up year by
year. The year of the purchase of Normandy was a year when the land
was pressed down by manifold gelds and by a heavy time of hunger.[624]
The next year, the year of Anselm’s going, was a year of signs in the
heavens, and of _ungelds_ and _unweather_ below.[625] The next year,
the year of Maine, the year of the Vexin, the year of Anglesey, had
also its physical wonders. In the summer a pool at Finchampstead in
Berkshire was said to have welled up blood.[626] At Michaelmas the
heaven seemed well-nigh all night as if it were burning.[627] That was
a very grievous year, through manifold _ungeld_ and through mickle
rains that all the year never stopped; and――what came home to
those who could look back to the bright days of the Golden
Borough――well-nigh all tilth in the marsh-land died out.[628] Such are
the mournful voices to which we listen year by year; but in the
central year of the three another grievance is added. “Eke many shires
that with work to London belonged were sorely harassed through the
wall that they wrought around the Tower, and through the bridge that
well nigh all flooded away was, and through the King’s hall-work that
man in Westminster wrought, and many men therewith harassed.”[629]
[Sidenote: Earlier parallels.]
[Sidenote: Abuse of the old law.]
[Sidenote: The bridge and the Tower.]
[Sidenote: Question as to the hall.]
This was the light in which three great works of building on which
Englishmen of later days learned to look with national pride were
looked on by the men of the time when they were wrought. We hear the
cry of the Hebrew in the brick-field toiling to rear up the
treasure-cities of the Pharaohs. We hear the cry of the Roman
plebeian, as the proud Tarquin constrained him to give the sweat of
his brow to fence in the seven hills with walls or to burrow beneath
the ground to lay the foundations and turn the arches of the great
sewer.[630] So it was in the days of the Red King with the Tower of
London, the bridge of London, the hall of Westminster. We may believe
that, as so often happened, the old law of England was turned to
purposes of oppression. The repair of bridges and fortresses was the
universal burthen on the Englishman’s _eðel_, the duty which he owed,
not to a personal lord, but to the commonwealth of which he was a
member.[631] In one case at least we know that the defences of the
local capital were laid by local law upon the people of the whole
shire.[632] What was law at Chester would seem from the words of the
Chronicler to have been law in London also. There were certain “shires
that with work to London belonged.” William Rufus may therefore have
been quite within the letter of the ancient law in calling on the
people of certain shires to contribute in money or labour to any works
which were needed for either the Tower or the bridge of London. But it
is clear that this is the kind of law which opens the way to a great
amount of oppression in detail, and that the law itself supplies
temptations to extort more than the law gives. The bridge at least was
an useful work, and if the men of London thought that the Tower stood
by their walls rather to overawe them than to defend them, that was an
argument which could not be openly brought forward. But it is by no
means clear whether the ancient law about bridges and fortresses could
be stretched so as to take in works at the King’s palace. Anyhow the
burthen laid on the people was frightfully oppressive, and those who
felt the burthen bitterly complained. And, if we rightly understand
the Chronicler, the grievance of building the bridge was doubled by a
flood which swept away the unfinished work, and made it needful to
build it over again.[633]
[Sidenote: Growth of the greatness of London.]
[Sidenote: Relations of London and Winchester.]
Thus, amid the toils and groans of the people, three mighty works
arose, to hand down the name of William Rufus to after ages as a great
builder. While Rufus was harrying the land of Maine, a land which but
for him might have remained peaceful and happy under a righteous
ruler, while he was striving in vain to bring the heights of Chaumont
and Montfort under his power, the people of a large part of England
were giving their strength and their money to make London put on a new
face, to make all things ready for the time when the King should again
come to his island kingdom to wear his crown in or hard by its
greatest city. All these works point, among other things, to the
steady growth of the greatness of London. The city had grown fast in
importance during the whole century which was now drawing to an end,
and at no time faster than during Harold’s nine months of little
stillness.[634] London had become the city of the King; Winchester was
left to be the city of the Old Lady.[635] The attractions of the New
Forest drew the Conqueror, specially after the death of Eadgyth, back
again to the old West-Saxon capital; but this preference of Winchester
as the head-quarters of sport in no way checked the advance of London
as the real head of the kingdom. Harsh as may have been the means by
which the Red King raised his great buildings, richly as he and they
may have earned the curses of his subjects at the time, we can say
nothing against either the taste or the policy which led him to the
defence and the adornment of the great city and of the palace which
lay under its shadow.
[Sidenote: The wall round the Tower.]
[Sidenote: London Bridge.]
[Sidenote: Westminster Hall.]
[Sidenote: Its two founders.]
[Sidenote: Its architecture.]
[Sidenote: Recasting by Richard the Second.]
[Sidenote: Legal position of the reign of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: History of the hall.]
Notwithstanding any momentary checks, the works went on and prospered.
The great tower of Gundulf――strange work for the meek follower of
Anselm――was fenced in with a surrounding wall. The river was spanned
by its first stone bridge, that long range of narrow arches, itself a
thickly-peopled city over the stream, of which the last traces
vanished in our own early days. But above all there now arose that
famous hall of Westminster whose name has come to be another name for
the law of England. Strange founder for such a pile might seem the
prince whose reign was before all others the reign of unlaw. And yet
it was not wholly unfitting that the Prytaneion of England should
first arise at the bidding of William the Red, and should take a new
form at the bidding of a later king in whose days unlaw was again
mighty. The great hall arose at the bidding of Rufus, in the stern and
solemn form of the art of his day――the day, be it remembered, of
William of Saint-Calais and the choir of Durham――with its low massive
walls, its two ranges of pillars and arches, far removed, we may be
sure, from the graceful forms which had been at Spalato and which were
to be again at Oakham, but standing firm in their strength, bearing
the full impress of the style whose leading feature is that of simple,
changeless, abiding, rest.[636] At the bidding of Richard of Bourdeaux
the walls were cased, and pierced with windows of forms unknown in the
days of the Red King; his pillars and arches were swept away; the
central space and its aisles were thrown into a single body; the
timber roof of wondrous span and wondrous workmanship leaped boldly
from wall to wall, with a daring which might have pleased the swelling
pride of Rufus himself. Thus, at the word of two despotic kings, arose
the pile which may claim, no less than its neighbours, Saint Peter’s
chapter-house and Saint Stephen’s chapel, to be the chosen home of
English freedom. For in England law has ever grown out of unlaw. The
despotism of Normans and of Tudors only paved the way for the
outbursts of freedom in the thirteenth century and in the seventeenth;
a reforming Henry dogged the steps alike of Rufus and of Richard. And
if from one side the reign of Rufus was a reign of unlaw, from another
side it was a reign of overmuch law. It saw the beginning of those
legal subtleties, that web woven by the wicked skill of Flambard,
which makes the Red King’s day a marked epoch in legal history. His
reign bridges the space between the days when we had laws but when we
had no lawyers, and the days when lawyers had grown so many and so
subtle that the true ends of law were sometimes forgotten among them.
If from one side the hall of Westminster has been one of the cradles
of English freedom, from another side it has been the special home of
that form of unlaw by which men have been sent to a wrongful doom
under the outward forms of justice. Of all that is good and bad in the
history of the law of England the hall of Rufus is the material
embodying. Within no other building reared by the hand of man has so
great a share of English history been wrought.
[Sidenote: Object of the hall.]
[Sidenote: Personal pride of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Legends of the hall.]
[Sidenote: Alleged sayings of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: The Whitsun feast.]
[Sidenote: The sword borne by the King of Scots.]
But it was not directly as the dwelling-place either of law or of its
opposite that Rufus first reared his hall. It was built rather as a
trophy of his own swelling pride. The home of the Confessor, the home
of the Conqueror, was not stately enough for the Red King. He would be
lodged, at least in that special home of kingship, as better became
the idea which he had formed of his own greatness. It was the hall of
the king, rather than the hall of the kingdom, the centre and crown of
his own house, the place for the display of his own splendour, which
Rufus sought to call into being. When the work was done, other men
deemed that it was as great, perhaps greater, than even so great a
king could need. But its founder was not satisfied. Nero, when he had
finished his Golden House, allowed that he was at last lodged like a
man. Rufus, when he had outdone the works of all that had gone before
him, hardly deemed that he was lodged like a man in his palace of
Westminster. The new hall, when it was done, was not half so great as
he had meant it to be.[637] Some add a wilder saying, that he would
build a house on such a scale that the great hall should be but one of
its bed-chambers.[638] But the hall, such as it was, vast in the eyes
of other men, small in the eyes of its master, was ready for use by
the day of the Pentecostal feast. Then the assembly came together;
then the accustomed rites were gone through in the West Minster; then
the banquet and the council were held, as was wont, under its shadow,
in the accustomed place, but within new walls and under a new roof.
Within those walls, beneath that roof, men for the first time saw King
William of England, lord, as he deemed, of Scotland, Normandy, and
Maine, in all his own greatness and glory, in all the greatness and
glory of his new work. One feature in that great gathering might
indeed have helped to swell his heart even higher than it had ever
before been swollen. The crown was, as usual, placed on his head in
the minster and worn in the hall. And on that day at least he must
have felt that the crown which was placed on his head was in truth an
imperial diadem. William the Red was not indeed rowed on the Thames by
vassal kings, like Eadgar the Giver-of-peace. But in the pomps of that
day he saw a king march before him as his vassal, a king who had
received his crown at his own bidding. When King William of England
wore his _cynehelm_ in church and hall, King Eadgar of Scotland, first
of his men in rank and honour, bore the sword of state before his
lord.[639] Was that day of pride and pomp merely a day of pride and
pomp, or were any of the great affairs of William’s kingdom and empire
dealt with in the joint presence of the Monarch of Britain and his
kingly vassal? One thing only we know; one act alone of that gathering
is recorded. But that act is one which has no small fitness as the one
act which we know that the Red King did in his new building.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Deaths of bishops and abbots.]
[Sidenote: Walkelin of Winchester. January 3, 1098.]
[Sidenote: Character and acts of Walkelin.]
[Sidenote: The monks take possession of Walkelin’s church.
April 8, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Walkelin joint-regent with Flambard. 1097.]
[Sidenote: The King’s demand for money. Christmas, 1097-1098.]
The hands of Randolf Flambard must have been just then full of work,
and the coffers of King William must have been just then well filled
with wealth flowing in from the usual sources. Bishops and abbots had
for some time been dying most conveniently for the King and his
minister. Within the first few days of the year of Le Mans and
Chaumont died the friend, some said the kinsman, of the Conqueror, the
Norman Walkelin, the successor of English Stigand in the see of
Winchester.[640] Though he had appeared as an adversary of
Anselm,[641] though he had once designed to supplant the monks of the
Old Minster by secular canons,[642] though he was said to have
lessened the revenues of the monks to increase those of the
bishopric,[643] he still left behind him a good name in the monastic
annals of his church, both for the austerity of his own life and for
the affection which he afterwards learned to show to the
brethren.[644] Winchester tradition loved to tell of the pious fraud
by which he had cajoled the Conqueror out of the whole timber of a
great wood towards the rebuilding of his church.[645] It told how, in
the year of the King’s temporary penitence, the monks had, in the
presence of well-nigh all the prelacy of England, taken possession of
the church of Walkelin’s building, and how they had presently gone on
to rase to the ground the church of Æthelwald which had been deemed so
stately a pile not much more than a hundred years before.[646] It told
how, when the King set forth for the French war, the Bishop of
Winchester was left as joint-ruler of the realm with the mighty
chaplain and Justiciar.[647] And it told the last tale, how, when he
had barely entered on his new office, on the very Christmas morning,
while the holiest rite of Christian worship was going on, the King’s
messenger came to demand two hundred pounds without delay. The Bishop,
like Anselm, knew that he could raise no such sum without robbery of
the Church and oppression of the poor. He prayed that he might be set
free from a world of which he was weary. Two days later his prayer was
answered; while the Red King warred at Chaumont and Mayet, Randolf
Flambard remained sole ruler of England.[648]
[Sidenote: Death of Turold of Peterborough,]
[Sidenote: and of Robert of New Minster.]
[Sidenote: Death of Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s. December 29, 1097.]
[Sidenote: Acts of Baldwin.]
[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the Church.]
[Sidenote: Miracles of Saint Eadmund.]
[Sidenote: Osgod Clapa.]
[Sidenote: Bishop Herfast.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Curzon.]
[Sidenote: Completion of the Church. 1094.]
[Sidenote: The King forbids the dedication.]
[Sidenote: Translation of Saint Eadmund. April 30, 1095.]
[Sidenote: Baldwin’s relation to the English.]
On the death of Bishop Walkelin presently followed the deaths of two
other heads of great monastic bodies. One was Turold, the martial
abbot of Peterborough, of whom we heard in the days of Hereward;[649]
the other was Robert of New Minster, he whose staff had been bought
for him by his too dutiful son the Bishop of Norwich.[650] And, a few
days before the death of Walkelin, another great abbot passed away who
was, in a way in which none of those three was, a link with earlier
days. Abbot Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s, the skilful leech of King
Eadward, if not himself of English birth, had at least received his
staff from an English King. His house had been growing in wealth and
fame ever since the penitent devotion of Cnut had changed the secular
canons of Beadricsworth into the monks of Saint Eadmund’s. We have
already heard of Baldwin’s medical skill and of his strivings for the
privileges of his church against the East-Anglian bishopric.[651] He
won fame also, like other abbots of his day, as the rebuilder of his
church, the church which, besides his royal patron, sheltered the
relics of the holy abbot Botolf and the valiant ætheling Jurwine.[652]
The latest research has added largely to our knowledge of Baldwin and
his house, and has brought to light several details which illustrate
the reign of the Red King and the characters of some of the chief
actors in it. Saint Eadmund had long ago begun to work signs and
wonders. In King Eadward’s day he had avenged himself on our old
friend Osgod Clapa, reverenced at Waltham but not reverenced at Saint
Eadmund’s, because he had thrust himself into the holy place with his
Danish axe in warlike guise on his shoulder.[653] In the days of the
elder William, when the dispute was going on between the abbey and the
bishopric, the saint had directly interfered to bring Bishop Herfast
to a better mind by a bodily chastisement.[654] He had even appeared,
as he had done to the tyrant Swegen,[655] mounted and lance in hand,
to smite, and in smiting to reform, a courtier of the Conqueror’s,
Randolf by name.[656] But we are more concerned with stories which
directly bear on our own history. When Roger Bigod did so much evil in
eastern England in the days of the general rebellion, Saint Eadmund
did not fail to defend his own lands, and to smite with madness a
certain Robert of Curzon to whom the rebel had presumed to grant a
manor belonging to the abbey.[657] We read too how, when the new
church was finished, King William, seemingly in the assembly at
Hastings, by what caprice is not explained, gave permission for the
translation of the martyr, but forbade the dedication of the
church.[658] Meanwhile, a rumour, of which we have heard the like more
than once, is spread abroad that the body of Saint Eadmund is not
really there, and that the precious things which adorned the empty
shrine might well be applied to the objects of the King’s warfare. The
danger passed away, and, notwithstanding some opposition from Bishop
Herbert, a solemn translation, in the presence of Bishop Walkelin of
Winchester and of Randolf the chaplain, removed all doubts.[659] Abbot
Baldwin survived this triumph two years and a half. His career had
been a long and a busy one. In the course of his warfare with the
East-Anglian bishops, he had found it needful to visit Rome, and he
too, like others, found how great was the strength of gold and silver
at the threshold of the Apostles.[660] He had gone on that journey
with English companions, and when he died, during the Christmas feast
which followed the departure of Anselm, he was mourned by men of both
races.[661]
[Sidenote: Vacancy of Durham.]
[Sidenote: The bishopric granted to Flambard.]
[Sidenote: Consecration of Flambard. June 5, 1099.]
We cannot, as these stories alone show, go very far in the reign of
Rufus without coming across the name of Randolf Flambard, chaplain and
Justiciar. We are now about to hear of him in a new character. The
churches of the prelates who so opportunely died, remained unfilled;
their temporalities passed into the King’s hands; their revenues were
to be gathered in, their tenants were to be squeezed as might be
needful, by the zealous care of the faithful Randolf. But one church,
of higher dignity than all these, which had stood vacant longer than
all these, was at last to have a shepherd. The careful guardian of
them all was at last to have his reward. The reward was a great one,
but in the course of his long service he had doubtless gathered enough
into his private hoard to pay the price even for such a gift. The hall
was built; the Witan were assembled in it; and, as the one recorded
act of the assembly, the King gave the bishopric of Durham to Randolf
his chaplain, that ere drave all his gemóts over all England.[662] In
the new hall of Westminster, the hall of justice, often the hall of
injustice, the man who had wrought so much of real injustice, but who
had raised the name of justice, in its official meaning, to the high
place which it has ever after kept――the Justiciar Randolf Flambard,
the founder of the greatness of his office, the creator of the feudal
law of England――received one of the greatest of the prizes to which
men of his class could look forward. The driver of gemóts, the
_exactor_ of the moneys of rich and poor, became, not only lord of
strong castles and of barons and knights not a few, but also shepherd
of souls in a great diocese, abbot of monks in a monastery too young
as yet to have wholly lost its first love. The new successor of Saint
Cuthberht, Randolf Bishop of Durham, was presently consecrated in
Saint Paul’s minster by his metropolitan Archbishop Thomas. But the
local patriotism of Durham takes care to put on record that, as his
predecessor William of Saint-Calais had made no profession, so neither
did he.[663]
[Sidenote: Character of the appointment.]
[Sidenote: Flambard’s episcopate. 1099-1128.]
[Sidenote: His works at Durham.]
[Sidenote: The castle of Norham. 1121.]
[Sidenote: His personal character.]
[Sidenote: 1106?-1128.]
The appointment of Randolf Flambard to a great bishopric, as it is the
last recorded kingly act of Rufus in England, was the crowning act of
that abuse of the royal power in ecclesiastical matters, that bringing
low of the Church and her ministers, which is so marked a feature of
his reign.[664] To place the bishop’s staff in the hands of Randolf
Flambard was going a step further than to place it in the hands of
Robert Bloet. Yet Flambard showed himself in some ways, in all
temporal ways, as a great prelate. A mighty builder, he joined his
efforts with those of his monks to carry on Saint Cuthberht’s abbey on
a plan as noble as that on which William of Saint-Calais had begun it,
and with greater richness of detail.[665] He strengthened the
fortifications of his castle and city; he laid out the green between
the castle and the abbey. At the extreme border of what was now the
English kingdom, not on the extreme border of his own diocese, he
founded the famous castle of Norham. It was built, we are told, as a
defence alike against border thieves and against attacks of invading
Scots.[666] But this last motive was hardly needed in the days of
Eadgar, Alexander, and David. Every temporal right of his church he
defended to the uttermost.[667] Still eager to be first, pretending
with voice and gesture more of wrath than he really felt, we see in
the mighty Bishop of Durham essentially the same man as the royal
officer who made sad the enthronization day of Anselm.[668] As to his
life and conversation strange tales are told. The Bishop is said to
have wantonly exposed his monks to temptations most contrary to
monastic rule, to have entertained them in the episcopal hall along
with guests most unbecoming for an episcopal castle, and to have
marked as hypocrites all who refused to join in his unseemly
revelries.[669] But the mass of Flambard’s doings as bishop, good or
bad, belong to the reign of Henry, to his own second episcopate. Our
own story will show him, after a short occupation of his see, an
exile, an exile after the type of William of Saint-Calais rather than
after the type of Anselm. From that exile he came back, as his
predecessor came back, to go on with his great work, to rule, with
unabated strength of mind and body, to extreme old age, and to die
with every sign of penitence.[670]
[Sidenote: Later events of the year. 1099.]
The appointment of Flambard is the last recorded act of the Red King
on English ground. We take leave of him, as far as the affairs of our
own country are concerned, in the new hall of Westminster, placing the
bishop’s staff in a hand which doubtless grasped it more readily than
the hand of Anselm. But we have still to see somewhat of him in two
other characters, in either of which he was more at home than in that
of the civil ruler. We have to look at him as the hunter and as the
warrior. From the great ceremony at Westminster he seems to have
straightway taken himself to enjoy the sports of the woods in
Wiltshire. The prince who ruled on both sides of the channel had come
back to his island realm to busy himself both with English affairs and
with English pleasures. While thus engaged, his thoughts were once
more suddenly called to matters beyond the sea.
§ 5. _The Second War of Maine._
_April-September 1099._
[Sidenote: Action of Helias. August, 1098-April 1099.]
[Sidenote: August, 1098.]
[Sidenote: Helias withdraws to La Flèche.]
[Sidenote: He strengthens the castles on the Loir.]
[Sidenote: La Chartre.]
[Sidenote: La Flèche.]
[Sidenote: Château-du-Loir.]
[Sidenote: Preparations of Helias. August 1098-April 1099.]
[Sidenote: April 10, 1099.]
In the August of the last year William had given Helias of Maine his
full leave to do what he could against him, reserving doubtless to
himself the like power to do what he could against Helias. In the
months which had since passed the Count of Maine had shown that he
could do a good deal; but it seemingly was not till he had shown the
full range of his powers of doing that the King felt himself called on
once more to try his own powers against him. William did not stir
himself till the news came that Helias was again in Le Mans, and then
he stirred himself indeed. Helias, when he was set free in August,
went at once to his own immediate possessions on the border of Maine
and Anjou. If he was no longer Count of Maine, he was still lord of La
Flèche. If he could no longer reign on the Cenomannian height, in the
palace on the Roman wall or in the tower before whose rising strength
the Roman wall itself had given way, he could at least keep his own
native town and castle. At La Flèche, and in the whole southern part
of the county, Helias still reigned, undisputed and unthreatened. He
was still lord of the whole line of fortresses which guarded the
course of the Loir, the tributary of the greater stream with which its
name is so easily confounded. The castles along that river, reared
doubtless to guard the Cenomannian border against attacks from the
south, served, now that things had so strangely turned about, to
protect the southern districts of Maine against attacks from its own
capital. In front of the land to be guarded stood the castles of Mayet
and Outillé. Along the Loir itself stood a formidable line of
defences; La Chartre guarded one end, La Flèche the other; between
them lay La Lude and the fortress which is still specially known as
the Castle of the Loir. The stream flows below the hill-fort of La
Chartre, once held by Geoffrey of Mayenne,[671] but the name of this
castle is not mentioned in our present story. The omission is
singular, as La Chartre must always have been a post of special
importance, guarding Maine towards the land of Chartres as well as
towards the now Angevin land of Tours. It rises, like Bellême and
Saint Cenery, on the bluff of a promontory where two mounds with their
fosses mark the site of the fortress, and where the rocky sides of the
hill are pierced, like the hill of Nottingham, like so many hills
along the greater Loire, with the dwelling-places of man. Much lower
down the Loir is Helias’ own special home of La Flèche, where all
traces of his day have vanished, but where the castle of John and
Paula must have stood, on a site most unlike that of La Chartre, on
one of the rich and grassy islands which are there formed by the
branching of the stream. Château-du-Loir lies between the two, and the
river from which it takes its name is a far less prominent feature
there than at either La Flèche or La Chartre. The fortress which is
specially called the Castle of the Loir stands at a greater distance
from its waters than either of the other two. But of the stronghold
itself it has more to show than either. The castle stands half-hidden
in the midst of the small modern town, and the approaches to it have
been carefully defaced and levelled. But the stump of a tower of
irregular shape still remains, which may well be a fragment of the
stronghold of Helias; the neighbouring church too still keeps under
its choir a crypt which must be far older than his day. Still in
possession of a considerable part of his dominions, master of a
district so strongly guarded, the undisputed lord of La Flèche began
to make everything ready for a campaign which might make him once more
Count of Le Mans. From August till April, Helias kept within his own
lands――like a bull in the hiding-places of the woods, says the local
writer[672]――strengthening his own fortresses and making alliances
wherever he could. The whole line of castles, together with the
fortified villages in the neighbourhood, had by Easter-tide been made
ready for defence against the attacks of any enemy.[673]
[Sidenote: Helias begins operations.]
[Sidenote: He marches against Le Mans. June, 1099.]
[Sidenote: Junction of Sarthe and Huisne.]
[Sidenote: Battle at Pontlieue.]
[Sidenote: Victory of Helias; he recovers Le Mans.]
Helias now deemed that the time was come for offensive operations
against the invaders of Maine. He began to attack the posts which were
occupied by the King’s forces, and to lay waste the lands in their
possession. In this work he was secretly favoured by the people of the
country,[674] and before long a large body of his friends and
neighbours had openly joined his banner. In June he set forth at the
head of a great force for an enterprise against the city itself.[675]
We should like to know what, in such a case, was deemed a great force;
but we may suspect that the following of Helias would largely consist
of irregular levies, not well fitted, unless with the advantage of
very superior numbers, to measure themselves with the picked and tried
mercenaries of Rufus. The army marched northwards towards Le Mans. A
little to the south-west of the city the Sarthe is joined by the
Huisne, the stream which, with its tributaries, waters the whole
north-eastern part of Maine. The river is at this point shallow and
weedy, with woody banks and small islands in its bed. Two old lines of
road lead from the south towards the lower course of the Huisne. One
leads towards the bridge of Pontlieue, a bridge which has a history in
modern times.[676] The other leads to a ford less than a mile lower
down the stream, now known as the ford of Mauny. One of our accounts
distinctly makes Helias cross by a ford; the other seems less
distinctly to imply that he crossed by a bridge.[677] At any rate he
crossed in this quarter, immediately south of Le Mans. He challenged
the King’s troops in the city to come forth. The challenge was
accepted, and a battle followed on the ground between the Huisne and
the city. Pontlieue may now pass as a suburb of Le Mans, and not its
least busy suburb. In those days the flat ground was doubtless all
open; the hospital reared by Henry the Second in the neighbourhood of
his native city must have been placed there as in a rural retreat. The
fight was stout; the King’s troops fought valiantly; but they were put
to flight by the greater numbers of the liberating host. The beaten
garrison sought shelter in the city; fliers and pursuers streamed in
together; the gates could not be shut; Count Helias was again in Le
Mans at the head of a conquering army.[678]
[Sidenote: Joy of the citizens.]
[Sidenote: The castles still held for Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Comparison with the deliverance of York in 1069.]
[Sidenote: The Normans set fire to the city.]
[Sidenote: Discouragement of the citizens.]
The joy of the citizens of Le Mans was indeed great at his
coming.[679] Their own lord, their native count, the happiness of
whose former reign they remembered in its fair contrast with the
Norman dominion, was again amongst his faithful people. The formal
welcome which had greeted the coming of Rufus was exchanged for
heartfelt delight at the coming of Helias. But there was still work to
be done. Helias was in Le Mans; but the garrison of Rufus was in Le
Mans also. The garrison had not been able to hinder the Count’s
followers from entering the city; but the Count’s followers had not
been able to hinder the garrison from securing themselves in the
fortresses of the city, in the King’s tower and in Mont-Barbet.[680]
And now the story reads almost word for word like a famous scene in
our own history just thirty years before.[681] Helias entered Le Mans
as Eadgar and Waltheof entered York. And at Le Mans, as at York, the
native deliverers occupied the city while the foreign garrison still
held the castles. The Normans at Le Mans betook themselves to the same
means of defence as the Normans at York, the familiar means of defence
of their nation. Whether he would or not, the joyous entry of Helias
was to be celebrated with the same kind of offerings as the crowning
and the churching of the Conqueror. Westminster, York, Mantes, had
felt the Norman power of destruction; the turn of Le Mans was now
come. Walter the son of Ansgar set his engineers to work, and, when
the evening came, flaming brands and hot cinders were hurled from
their engines upon the houses of the city. It was summer; all things
were dry; a strong east wind was blowing, and all Le Mans was
presently in a blaze.[682] How the great minster, so near to the
King’s tower, escaped without damage does not appear. But, as the
church stands between the castle and the main part of the city, we may
conceive that the fiery bolts launched by the engines from the tower
might fly over the roof of its nave without doing harm. In any case,
before the end of the day on which Helias entered, a large part of the
city and suburbs was burned. The true prince was again in his own
city; but he had nothing there to reign over, except smoking ruins
commanded by a hostile fortress. And we are told that the love of the
citizens for their count was somewhat lessened by this mischance of
warfare, which was surely no fault of his. We are significantly told
that they were less eager to fight for him in the evening than they
had been in the morning.[683] Wooden houses indeed could easily be
rebuilt; it may even be that that day’s fire cleared the space for
those noble domestic buildings of a little later date, some of which
the official barbarism of our own day has deigned to spare, and of
which those that still remain count among the choicest treasures of Le
Mans.[684] But at the moment the effect must have been disheartening,
and the change in the feelings of the people is in no way wonderful.
[Sidenote: Operation against the castles.]
[Sidenote: The castles besieged in vain.]
[Sidenote: Question of the church towers.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême strengthens Ballon.]
At Le Mans, as at York in the like case, the business of the moment
was the assault of the castles; but at Le Mans the enterprise of the
deliverers was less fortunate than it had been at York. The citizens
of Le Mans were not, like the citizens of York, to have the pleasure
of breaking down the stronghold of the stranger. Helias himself, after
all, was a French prince of the eleventh century, and he would hardly
have been so ready as Waltheof was to encourage such a work. He had
never, during his earlier reign, thought of playing Timoleôn in that
special fashion. But in any case the fortresses were first to be
taken. Walter the son of Ansgar seems to have been a more wary captain
than William Malet and Gilbert of Ghent. He did not risk a sally, and
Helias had not the same opportunity as Waltheof of showing his
personal prowess by cutting off Norman heads in the gate.[685] He was
driven to a formal siege of the castle. Amid the ashes of the burned
city he planted his engines to play upon the royal tower. We may
almost suspect, from a story which we shall come to presently, that
the new towers of Saint Julian’s were profaned to warlike uses, and
were made, as they well might be, to play a part in the attack. But in
any case the attack was in vain. The strength of the fortresses, the
skill with which their defenders brought engines to answer engines,
were too great for all the battering-works of Helias.[686] The King’s
tower and Mont Barbet both held out, and Robert of Bellême took the
further precaution of strengthening the defences of Ballon.[687]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The news sent to the King.]
[Sidenote: The news brought to him in the New Forest.]
But it was not enough for the garrisons to hold out. They served a
master beyond the sea; and that master had yet to learn either that
they were holding out or that there was any enemy for them to hold out
against. We are in this story doubtless dealing with the work of a
very few days. The fight by the ford, the entry of Helias, and the
fire, all took place on the same day. The siege of the castles would
begin at the first moment that any engines could be brought up.
Whether Helias had brought them with him, or whether he had to send
for them, we are not told. We may be sure that there was no great
delay in sending the news to the King; but the messenger did not start
till he had something more to tell than that Le Mans, or what was left
of it, was in the hands of its own count. A Norman Pheidippidês,
Amalchis by name, the special courier of Robert of Bellême, was sent
with the news.[688] He crossed the sea; he hastened to the King’s
hunting-seat of Clarendon, and met William and a party of his
favourite companions going forth to hunt in the New Forest. The King
asked the messenger what the news was. The news was speedily told; Le
Mans was taken by treason. But Amalchis could add some words of
comfort, how his own lord held Ballon, how the King’s troops in the
city, though besieged and attacked by the enemy, still held out in the
fortresses, how they were longing for the King to come in person to
their help.[689] We can hardly believe that Rufus had heard nothing of
the general movements of Helias in southern Maine; but all that had
happened since the Count set forth for Pontlieue came to his ears in a
single message.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: William rides to the coast.]
[Sidenote: He crosses to Touques.]
At the hearing of such a tale as this William the Red did not tarry.
He waited for no counsellors. His words were only, “Let us go beyond
the sea and help our friends.” When those around him bade him wait
till a force could be made ready, he answered, “I will see who will
follow me. Do you think that I shall be left without men? I know well
the youth of my lands, they will hasten to come to me, even at the
risk of shipwreck.” So saying, without following, without preparation,
he loosened his bridle, he put spurs to his horse, he rode straight to
the sea-shore at Southampton, and at once trusted himself all alone to
an old crazy ship which he found there. The sky was cloudy; the wind
was contrary; the blasts tossed up huge waves; the sailors prayed him
to wait till the winds and the waves should be more inclined to peace
and mercy. “I never heard of a king being drowned,” cried Rufus; “make
haste, loose your cables; you will see the elements join to obey me.”
He set sail, and the next morning he reached the haven of Touques,
God, we are told by the monk of Saint Evroul, being his guide.[690]
[Sidenote: Touques in Rufus’ time.]
[Sidenote: Landing of the King.]
[Sidenote: His ride to Bonneville.]
The spot where William landed must, especially at the moment of
William’s landing, have had a widely different look from that which it
bears in our own day. The river from which the town of Touques takes
its name, flowing down from Lisieux to its mouth by the modern
pleasure-town of Trouville, has had its course shifted by modern
improvements; but it has perhaps not greatly changed in width or bulk
of stream since the time of our story. Touques lies a few miles
inland; but a high tide would easily bring up the small vessels of
that day to the point which was once a busy haven, but which now
affords at the most a landing-place for barges. The single long
street, full of picturesque wooden buildings of later times, and
containing a striking disused church of the days of Rufus or his
father, now turns away from the stream, as if to show that the days of
Touques as a haven have passed away. In those days the inland port,
placed in the rich vale of the stream, under the shadow of the hills,
those to the right forming the forest-land of Touques, was a
frequented spot; and at the moment when the ship came which bore Rufus
and his fortunes, it presented a busy scene. As was usual in the
summer-tide, a crowd of persons, both clerical and lay, was gathered
at the riverside.[691] When they saw a ship coming from England, they
pressed to ask what the news might be. Specially they asked how the
King fared. And lo, the King was there as his own messenger to answer
them.[692] He returned their greetings in merry mood, and all wondered
and were glad.[693] We must remember that Normandy had better reason
to be glad at the presence of Rufus than either England or Maine. The
King landed; he sprang on the first beast that he could find, a mare
belonging to a priest, and so took the road which led towards the
south-east to the castle of Bonneville, on the slope of the hills
which overlook and guard the haven. The distance is short, and most of
it is uphill, and the speed of the priest’s mare was most likely not
equal to the speed of the King’s own horse which had borne him from
Clarendon to Southampton. A loyal crowd, clerks and peasants, were
thus able to follow him on foot, cheering their sovereign as he rode
up the hill-side to the castle.[694]
[Sidenote: The castle of Bonneville.]
[Sidenote: Early history and legends of Bonneville.]
The headlong rush by land and sea was now over, and the Red King again
found himself in one of the chief strongholds of Normandy. The castle
of Bonneville, placed, not on the top of the hill, but on a small spur
projecting from its side, was in fact the citadel of Touques. It
specially guarded the inland haven; otherwise one might rather have
looked for the site of such a fortress on the hills which overlook the
sea and guard the actual mouth of the stream. Yet from the towers of
Bonneville we look out on a wide and a goodly prospect. Almost at the
foot of the hill lies Touques itself. The river stretches away to its
mouth at Deauville; on the right the valley is fenced in by the high
ground of the forest, on the left by the hill crowned by the castle of
Lassay, famous in later times, with the small priory of Saint Arnold,
still keeping work of the Conqueror’s day, nestling on the hill-side.
But at Bonneville itself no strictly architectural work remains which
can have served the Red King as a resting-place after his fierce
journey. The existing castle, a shell-keep strengthened by round
towers, seems to be in all parts later than the days of Rufus, later
than the days of Norman independence. A single gateway only could
possibly be placed even within the latter years of the twelfth
century. But the site is an ancient one; the castle is girded by a
ditch, and the ditch is in some parts further strengthened by an
embankment, which seem more likely to have been taken advantage of by
the Norman dukes than to be their original work. Bonneville had been
one of the dwelling-places of William the Great, and it is one of the
many towns and castles which claim to have been the scene of the oath
of Harold.[695] Though the existing buildings are later, the hill
itself and its earthworks are there, as when Rufus drew breath among
them. He there rested for a moment, after being borne with the
swiftest speed of his own age from the sports of the West-Saxon forest
to the serious business which pressed on a ruler of Normandy when Le
Mans was again held by a hostile power.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: William at Bonneville.]
[Sidenote: His levy.]
[Sidenote: He marches towards Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: Helias flees to Château-du-Loir.]
The castle which Rufus had now reached, the nearest fortress in
Normandy to the spot in England from which he had so wildly rushed,
now became the starting-point of a campaign which, in its beginning,
was not unskilfully planned. At Bonneville the King began to make his
preparations for the recovery of Le Mans. He sent his messengers to
and fro, and soon gathered a large force. He then began his march
southward; he crossed the frontier, and pressed on towards Le Mans,
harrying the land as he went.[696] The effect of his coming was
immediate. When the news came that the King was on his way, the forces
of Helias began to fail him; he no longer dared to go on with the
siege of the castles; he no longer dared even to hold the city.[697]
He fled from Le Mans, and hastened to the defence of his immediate
possessions in the southern part of the county. Here he took up his
head-quarters in his own fortress specially known as the Castle of the
Loir. Within its walls the Count of Maine again waited for better
days, while the hosts of Normandy drew near to his capital.[698]
[Sidenote: Flight of the citizens.]
[Sidenote: William passes through Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: His camp beyond the Huisne.]
Meanwhile despair reigned in Le Mans. A crowd of the citizens, with
their wives and children and all that they had, followed their
prince.[699] When Rufus heard of the flight of Helias, he was still
north of Le Mans. He pressed on to overtake his enemy; he reached the
city; but, like Harold on the march to Stamfordbridge, he did not deem
it a time to tarry even a single night within its walls. And in the
mind of Rufus there was doubtless another motive at work besides
either military precaution or even simple military ardour. With him it
would be a point of honour to occupy, at the first moment that he
could, the ground on which his choice troops had been put to flight by
the hasty levies of Helias. He marched through the city, over the
battleground of Pontlieue; he crossed the bridge of the Huisne, and
pitched his camp on the broad plain[700] to the south of the stream.
He had thus passed into what might seem the immediate dominions of his
rival, as his rival had passed at the same point to attack the city
which he claimed as specially his own.
[Sidenote: He harries southern Maine.]
[Sidenote: Helias burns the castles.]
[Sidenote: Helias keeps on the defensive.]
From his camp on the left back of the Huisne Rufus began a deliberate
and fearful harrying of the whole southern part of Maine. But before
his troops could reach the strongholds of the enemy, they found the
land laid waste before them. Even two castles, those of Outillé and
Vaux-en-Belin,[701] were set fire to by the Count’s own partisans.
Robert of Montfort――the Norman Montfort――pressed on with five hundred
knights, put out the fire at Vaux, repaired the fortress, and held it
for the King.[702] Helias meanwhile was biding his time in the Castle
of the Loir. His force was still strong; but he deemed it no time for
any attack on his part. Perhaps he knew Rufus well enough to feel sure
that against him the tactics of Fabius were the tactics which were
most likely to prevail.
[Sidenote: William besieges Mayet.]
[Sidenote: Observance of the Truce of God.]
For in this campaign, exactly as in the earlier campaign in Maine and
in the campaign in the Vexin, the thing which most strikes us is the
way in which it ends, or, more truly, the way in which it comes to no
end at all. While Helias held out at Château-du-Loir, William, instead
of attacking him, laid siege to Mayet. At this last point, lying some
way north of Château-du-Loir, we find the scene of some of the most
remarkable anecdotes in our whole story, and it is here that the last
serious warfare of the Red King seems to have taken place.[703] The
siege was not a long one, and its result was strange and unexpected;
but the few days which it took are crowded with incident, and they set
William Rufus before us in more than one character. He first appears
in a mood which may be thought wholly unexpected; perhaps as touched
by devotion himself, at all events as hearkening readily to the
devotional scruples of others. The King’s host appeared before Mayet
on a Friday, and he gave orders for a general attack on the castle on
the next day.[704] The sabbath morning dawns; the warriors are vying
with one another in girding on their weapons and making ready for the
attack.[705] Then a pious scruple, a scruple which seems to have
occurred to no man on the day of Senlac, touched the hearts of some of
the elders of the host. Certain unrecorded wise men crave of the King
that, out of reverence for the Lord’s burial and resurrection, he will
spare the besieged both that day and the next, and will grant them a
truce till Monday. In other words, they demand the observance of the
Truce of God.[706] The King gives glory to God, and gives orders that
it shall be as they wish; nothing shall be done against the castle on
either Saturday or Sunday; on Monday the attack shall be made.[707]
[Sidenote: No bribery in Maine.]
[Sidenote: Preparations of the besieged.]
[Sidenote: The castle attacked on Monday.]
[Sidenote: Story of Robert of Bellême.]
[Sidenote: Illustrations of chivalry.]
[Sidenote: The besiegers fill the ditch with wood.]
We now get a glimpse within the walls. The defenders of Mayet, we are
told, were men of proved valour and endurance, faithful to their lord
and ready to fight for him to the death.[708] It is worth notice that,
through the whole story, the Red King’s favourite arms are never heard
of within the bounds of Maine. The wealth of England, which carried
such weight within Normandy and France, which proved such an
unanswerable argument in the mind of King Philip, goes for nothing on
the banks of the Sarthe and the Loir. It seems never to enter into any
man’s mind that it was worth trying to buy over any man who owned
Helias as his lord. So now in the Red King’s camp steel lies idle on
the holy days of the older and the newer law; and gold seems to lie
idle no less. But those days were not days of idleness within the
bulwarks of Mayet. The gallant defenders of the castle were making
ready for the attack. One special means of defence was to place wicker
crates along the walls in order to break the force of the stones
hurled by the King’s artillery.[709] At last Monday came, and the
assault began. The deep and wide ditch of the castle was found to be
no small hindrance to the besiegers. A wild story is told that the
King ordered the ditch to be filled up with horses and mules, the
beasts seemingly of draught and burthen.[710] For them, as the
villains of the brute world, there was no mercy; the _destrier_ of the
knight was, in knightly hearts, entitled to some share of the respect
due to his rider. But the tale adds that Robert of Bellême, the man so
hateful in Cenomannian memory, improved on the King’s order, and bade
the ditch be filled, not only with horses, but with human villains
also.[711] Such an order would really be thoroughly in the spirit of
chivalry. It would have come well from the mouths of those French
gentlemen who called at Crecy for the slaughter of the so-called
peasants whom they had hired from Genoa.[712] But William the Red had
learned beneath the walls of Rochester what the churls of one land at
least could do, and he was not likely to carry his knightly ideal
quite so far as this. The tale, we may suspect, is a bit of local
Cenomannian romance, part of the popular tale of the devil of Mamers.
Those who tell it add that the effect of the order was to cause the
immediate flight of all the members of the despised class who were
within hearing.[713] But the most trustworthy narrative of the siege
of Mayet tells us nothing of any of these strange ways of filling up a
ditch. There we read only of vast piles of wood which were hurled into
it, and of a path raised on piles which the besiegers strove to make
level with the palisade of the castle.
[Sidenote: The besieged burn the wood.]
[Sidenote: Narrow escape of William.]
[Sidenote: William’s captains advise a retreat.]
[Sidenote: The siege raised on Tuesday.]
[Sidenote: The land ravaged.]
But the devices of the garrison of Mayet were at least equal to the
devices of their enemies. They hurled down masses of burning charcoal,
and so, by the help of the summer heat, they burned up the piles of
wood with which the besiegers were filling up the ditch.[714] All
Monday both sides strove with all their might against one another, and
the King began to be grieved and angry that all his efforts had
availed nothing.[715] While he was thus troubled in mind, a stone was
aimed at him from a lofty turret. It missed William himself, but a
warrior who stood by him was crushed to pieces by the falling
mass.[716] Then there rose a loud shout of mockery from the wall; “Lo,
the King now has fresh meat; let it be taken to the kitchen and made
ready for his supper.”[717] We might have looked to hear that for such
scorn as this the Red King vowed a vengeance like his father’s
vengeance at Alençon. But either Rufus and his counsellors were
strangely cowed, or else they were glad of any excuse to throw up an
enterprise one day of which seems to have been enough to weary them.
The lords and high captains of the King’s host impressed on their
master’s mind that the defences of Mayet were very strong, that its
defenders were very brave, that, sheltered as they were behind their
strong walls, they had a great advantage over besiegers encamped in
the open air.[718] These sound strange arguments in an age when
warfare chiefly consisted in attacking and defending strong places.
They sound strangest of all when they are addressed to a king who, so
short a time before, had taken it for granted that not only men and
walls, but the winds and the waves, would yield to his will. But the
reasoning of these prudent warriors is said to have carried conviction
to the King’s mind. Rufus saw that the best thing that he could do was
to march off while he was still safe. There were other ways besides
besieging castles by which more damage could be done to the enemy with
less risk to his own followers.[719] Orders were given to march to
Lucé with the first light of Tuesday. The host arose early, and went
on, making a fearful harrying as they went. Vines were rooted up,
fruit-trees cut down, walls and houses overthrown. The whole of that
fertile land was utterly laid waste with fire and sword.[720]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: No real success on the King’s part.]
[Sidenote: Illustration of Rufus’ character.]
[Sidenote: The campaign unfinished.]
[Sidenote: William satisfied by the recovery of Le Mans.]
This seems a somewhat paltry ending for a campaign which began with
the King’s breathless rush from the New Forest to Bonneville. Not very
much had come of the headlong ride or of the sail in the crazy ship.
William Rufus had gained no real success, military or political. He
was as far as ever from the real possession of the whole land of
Maine. He had rooted up a great many vines and cut down a great many
fruit trees; but he had neither won a battle nor taken a fortress. His
garrisons at Le Mans and at Ballon had held out; Helias had left Le
Mans open to him; at Vaux Robert of Montfort had overcome, not Helias,
but the flames. On the other hand, Helias himself was safe, in full
command of most of his southern castles; from the only one of them
which the King had actually attacked, he had turned away baffled after
one day’s fighting. In all these cases it would seem as if the fiery
impulses of Rufus soon spent themselves, as if all depended on the
first rush. If that failed, he never had perseverance to go on. In his
strangely mingled nature, he could be either a ruler or a captain when
the fit to be either took him. He had not steadiness to be either for
any long time together. Certain it is that he left all his continental
campaigns unfinished; and this one, which was begun with such a
special blaze of energy, was left more utterly unfinished than any of
the others. And yet perhaps, after all, William Rufus had succeeded in
the chief wish of his heart. Le Mans was the special prize of his
father; its castles were the work of his father. But his father had
had no special dealings with Mayet or Château-du-Loir. He might be
satisfied to do without such small and distant possessions, he might
be satisfied even to undergo defeat before them, as long as the city
which his father had twice won, as long as the royal tower which his
father had reared, were his beyond dispute.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: William’s good treatment of Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: He enters the city.]
[Sidenote: He stops the oppressions of his garrison.]
[Sidenote: He drives out the canons.]
[Sidenote: He leaves garrisons and returns to England. September, 1099.]
But it is at least to William’s honour that, in his last entry at Le
Mans, he showed himself a benefactor to the city which had suffered so
much. Rufus had, as we have seen in the case of Robert of Bellême, men
about him who were worse than himself. Or rather, putting aside such
exceptional sinners as Robert of Bellême, he had men about him who
simply did, as a matter of course, according to the fashion of the
time, without either rising or sinking to those parts of the character
of Rufus which are special to himself. So now the citizens of Le Mans
found in the Red King himself a deliverer from the oppressions done by
his officers. Those among the inhabitants who had stayed in the city
and had not followed their Count in his flight, had suffered every
kind of wrong-doing at the hands of the King’s garrisons. The tale,
according to the local historian, was too long and sad to tell in
full.[721] But matters grew better when the King came himself. William
again entered Le Mans in triumph, a triumph won chiefly over vines and
apple-trees, certainly not over the garrison of Mayet.[722] Anyhow he
came in a merciful mood. He checked the excesses of his soldiers; it
was owing to his bounty only that the city was saved from utter
ruin.[723] But on one class of its inhabitants his hand was harder
than on the rest. The canons of Saint Julian’s, or so many of them as
had agreed to the election of Hildebert, were driven out by the King’s
order.[724] William then disbanded his army,[725] leaving garrisons in
the castles of Le Mans, and doubtless in that of Ballon also. He then
left the mainland for the last time, and, after an absence of three
months, came back to England about the time of the feast of
Michaelmas.[726]
[Sidenote: William and Hildebert.]
[Sidenote: Hildebert reconciled to the King.]
[Sidenote: Charges brought against him.]
[Sidenote: William bids Hildebert pull down the towers of Saint
Julian’s.]
[Sidenote: Dialogue between William and Hildebert.]
[Sidenote: The southern tower.]
[Sidenote: Appearance on the north side.]
But, if William Rufus, on his last visit to Le Mans, saved the
inhabitants of the city from ruin, he presently deprived the city
itself of one of its chief material ornaments. It was the election of
Hildebert which had first stirred up his wrath, and he had picked out
the lands of the bishopric, as the lands of a personal enemy, for
special havoc.[727] Yet we read that, at some very early stage of his
march, before he had yet crossed the frontier of Normandy and Maine,
Hildebert met the King, and was received as a friend, on showing that
he had had no hand in bringing about the occupation of the city by
Helias.[728] But, after William had again entered Le Mans, the charge
was once more brought against the Bishop by some of the clergy of
Saint Julian’s who had opposed his election from the beginning. It was
by Hildebert’s counsel, they said, that Helias had been received, and
that the King’s castles had been besieged; nay, the towers of the
minster itself, the twin towers of Howel, had been used, as they well
might be, for the attack on the royal tower. William hearkened to the
enemies of Hildebert, and gave him his choice, either to pull down the
towers which were so liable to abuse, or else to follow him at once
into England.[729] To the Bishop of Le Mans the sea-voyage itself
seemed frightful;[730] and when its dangers were passed, when
Hildebert had reached the shores of our island, his enemies, who seem
to have crossed also, again began to accuse him to the King.[731] A
strange dialogue followed between the two. William, in his craft,
offered to purchase the destruction of the towers at a price which
would have greatly increased the internal splendour of the church. Let
the Bishop agree to pull down the towers, and he, King William, will
give him a vast mass of gold and silver for the adornment of the new
shrine of Saint Julian.[732] But the Bishop had his craft also. He was
in the land so famous for gold and silver work, the land where Otto
and Theodoric were doubtless still plying their craft. They had no
such goldsmiths at Le Mans; let the King keep his precious ingots for
works within his own kingdom.[733] Still the destruction of the towers
is pressed upon him; all that he can gain, and that with difficulty,
is a little delay. Hildebert at last went back to Le Mans, taking with
him, not indeed the King’s great ingots, but some lesser ornaments for
his church.[734] The burning of the city, the dispersion of his
canons, the havoc wrought in his own lands, all weighed him down. He
poured forth the full bitterness of his soul in his extant letters.
The unrepealed order for the pulling down of the two towers still hung
over him. Was it ever carried out? Our author does not say distinctly.
We might rather infer from his story that the death of Rufus and the
return of Helias saved the Bishop from his difficulties.[735] Yet the
appearance of the building itself looks the other way. As the church
of Saint Julian now stands, the southern tower of Howel has its
existing representative. It is slender, and, if it stood against a
building of ordinary height, it would be tall. Its upper part belongs
to the late rebuilding of the transepts, but the lowest stage belongs
to the latest and richest style of Romanesque, contemporary with the
great recasting of the nave. It is no work of Howel or even of
Hildebert; but it is the work of one who wished to reproduce, with the
richer detail of his own day, the general likeness of what Howel’s
tower had been. On the north side this tower has no fellow; the space
at the end of the transept which answers to it is occupied by a ruined
building of earlier Romanesque, which may well be the stump of the
original tower of Howel.[736] Are we to infer that the bidding of
Rufus was carried out――that the towers, or their upper stages, were
actually destroyed――that every later ruler of Le Mans, the devout
Helias among them, deemed the northern tower too near to the royal
fortress to allow of its rebuilding, but that the rebuilding of the
more distant tower on the southern side was begun in the earlier and
finished in the later recasting of the church? May we look on the
shattered building which joins hard to the northern transept of Saint
Julian’s as being truly the remnant of a tower which Howel reared with
the good will of William the Great, and which Hildebert, with a heavy
heart, pulled down at the bidding of William the Red? If it be so, I
know of no spot where architectural evidence speaks more strongly to
the mind, where walls and columns and arches bring us more directly
into the presence of the men who made and who unmade them. Among all
the wonders of Saint Julian’s minster――beside the nave which is
inseparably bound up with so many living pages of our story――beside
the choir which in itself concerns not the historian of Norman kings
and Cenomannian counts, but on which we gaze in breathless wonder as
one of the noblest of the works of man――no spot comes more truly home
to us than that where we see the small remnants of what once was there
and is there no longer. Alongside of the soaring apse to the east, of
the wide portal to the west, the northern tower of Howel is indeed
conspicuous by its absence.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Robert at Jerusalem. July, 1099.]
[Sidenote: Death of Pope Urban. July 29.]
[Sidenote: Revolt in Anglesey. 1099.]
[Sidenote: Return of Cadwgan and Gruffydd.]
[Sidenote: Recovery of Anglesey and Ceredigion by the Welsh.]
The second war with Maine is the only event beyond the bounds of
England which our own annalists record under this year, except indeed
those œcumenical events besides which the affairs of Maine, and even
the affairs of England, seem for the moment but as trifles. In the
same month of July in which William made his way into Le Mans, his
brother Robert, in quite another warfare, made his way into
Jerusalem.[737] Presently, before he could have heard of his own work,
the great preacher of the crusade, Pope Urban the Second, passed
away.[738] With the affairs of Maine these events have a direct
connexion. It was not the fault of Count Helias that he did not obey
the teaching of Urban, that he did not enter the Holy City alongside
of Robert and Godfrey. But it needs an effort to turn away either from
Jerusalem or from Le Mans to record the last counter-revolution in
Anglesey. Yet it is not amiss to remember that two lands were at the
same moment striving for freedom against the Red King, and that the
Briton and the Cenomannian had to hold their own against the same
enemy. He who ruled at once at Bellême and at Shrewsbury was terrible
to both alike. We may believe that the Britons marked their time while
the fierce Earl had his hands full beyond the Channel, to strike
another blow to win back their land, and specially to win back the
island which had been the scene of the warfare of the last year. But
it would seem that, in some parts at least of the land, there was
little need for blows. The two princes who had fled to Ireland,
Cadwgan son of Bleddyn and Gruffydd son of Cynan, now came back.
Cadwgan obtained a peaceful settlement in Ceredigion; Gruffydd got
possession of Anglesey, perhaps as the price of warfare. A son of
Cadwgan, Llywelyn, was presently killed by the men of Brecheiniog,
that is doubtless by the followers of Bernard of Newmarch.[739]
Another Welsh prince, Howel by name, had to flee to Ireland.[740] We
may infer that the central border-land was still firmly held by the
conquerors, but that, though the French had constrained the Britons of
Anglesey to become Saxons,[741] French and Saxons alike had to yield
to the returning Britons both in Anglesey and in Ceredigion. Gruffydd
and Cadwgan, names which are by this time familiar to us, are again
established in Britain. Both of them play a part in the later history
of their own land, and Cadwgan at least will appear again within the
range of our own story.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Natural phænomenon.]
[Sidenote: The great tide. November 3, 1099.]
[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Osmund of Salisbury. December 3, 1099.]
These Welsh matters find no place in the English Chronicles, which
find so little space even for the deeds of Helias. Most likely they
made no great impression on the mind of Rufus, now that, not Maine
indeed, but at least Le Mans, was again his. He came back to England,
a conqueror doubtless in his own eyes, about the feast of Saint
Michael. The year did not end without one of those natural phenomena
in which the reign is so rich. This time it was the wonderful
flood-tide which, in the beginning of November, on a day of new moon,
came up the Thames, flooded the land, overwhelmed houses and villages,
and swept away men, oxen, and sheep.[742] A month later a new source
of revenue began to flow into the Red King’s coffers. Bishop Osmund of
Salisbury, the founder alike of the elder church and of the abiding
ritual of his diocese, died early in December.[743] His temporalities
passed, like those of Canterbury and Winchester, into the King’s
hands. The Bishop of Durham had doubtless bade farewell to such
duties; but the race of _exactores_, of clerical _exactores_, had not
died out. There were still plenty of men in the Red King’s court who
were ready to help in wringing the last penny out of the lands of
bishops till they had wrung enough to buy bishoprics for themselves.
The end is now drawing nigh; but till the end came, the groans of the
Church, of the tenants of the Church, and of the whole people of the
land, went up with a voice ever louder and louder.