_Rouen under her own Dukes_
Normanni, si bono rigidoque dominatu reguntur, strenuissimi
sunt et in arduis rebus invicti omnes excellunt et cunctis
hostibus fortiores superare contendunt. Alioquin sese
vicissim dilaniant atque consumunt. Rebelliones enim
cupiunt, seditiones enim appetunt, et ad omne nefas prompti
sunt. Rectitudinis ergo forti censura coerceantur et fraeno
disciplinae per tramitem justitiae gradiri compellantur.
[Illustration: THE ARMS OF NORMANDY]
The unity of Charlemagne's Empire existed in name alone. The
agglomeration of essentially different races only served the purpose
of emphasising the distinctions of blood and climate which were to be
the eternal bars against unnatural union. But the residuum of separate
nations was some time in making its appearance. Their various rulers
would not accept the inevitable without a struggle; and in that
struggle the only power that gained was the Church. France had no
sooner thrown off the German yoke than she professed obedience to her
great ecclesiastics. In Neustria the only life and strength left after
the Empire died was in the Church. For the land was but a waste of
untilled soil, sparsely inhabited by serfs, and divided among the
overlords, and of these latter the richest were the abbots and the
bishops, round whose palaces and monasteries clustered the towns for
their defence. But their temporal power was soon destined to decay.
The empire of the mind they might regain; their leadership of France
was lost the instant that the Northmen's ships appeared upon the
Seine.
When the serfs of Neustria first heard the ivory horns of the Vikings
echoing along their river's banks, and saw the blood-red banner of the
North against the sky, few men realised that the invaders were to weld
them into the strongest Duchy of the West, and finally to make France
herself arise as an independent nation out of Europe. They fled, these
spiritless and defenceless villagers, to the nearest abbey's walls,
they hid before the altars which held the relics of their saints, but
neither relics nor sanctuary availed to save, as the monks of St.
Martin at Tours, of Saint Germain des Prés at Paris could testify.
These barbarians used the Christian rites merely to advance their own
base purposes. Ever since Harold had won a province for a baptism each
pirate chief in turn was the more eager to insist upon such lucrative
religion. When they could not make capital out of "conversions" they
took gold and provisions as the price of temporary peace. By degrees
they gave up going home in winter. The climate of these southern lands
was tempting. In various parts of France along the river-mouths, just
as they had taken the highway of the Humber into the heart of Britain,
they made their scattered settlements, even as far inland as Chartres.
But only one was destined to be permanent, and this was made by Rolf,
Rollo, or Rou, in Rouen, the kernel of the Northern province. In 841
Ogier the Dane had sailed up the "Route des Cygnes" to burn the
shrines of St. Wandrille and Jumièges, to pillage Rouen, even to
terrify Paris. After him came Bjorn Ironside and Ragnar Lodbrog. Twice
they reached Paris, knocking at the gates to pass through towards the
vineyards of Burgundy. In 861 they made a kind of camp upon an island
between Oissel and Pont de l'Arche. At last in 876 came Rolf the
Ganger, the King of the Sea, and made Rouen his headquarters.
There had been but little resistance to their advance. The fifty-three
great expeditions of Charlemagne had used up the fighting men and
scattered the bravest of the nobles over widely separated tracts of
conquered territory. The Frenchmen had disappeared, either in war or
by a voluntary submission to the lords under whose protection alone
could they find safety. No wonder that the chroniclers were obliged to
account for the barrenness and weakness of the land by exaggerating
the already certain slaughter at Fontenai....
"La peri de France la flor
Et des baronz tuit li meillor
Ainsi trovèrent Haenz terre
Vuide de gent, bonne à conquerre."
The land was left uncultivated. Forests grew thicker between Seine and
Loire. Wolves ravaged Aquitaine with none to hinder them. The South
was still infested by the Saracens. France seemed given up to wild
beasts. Nor were the pirates unaided in their work of rapine.
Necessarily few in number, for they came from far by sea, their ranks
were recruited by every reckless freebooter in the country, who was
quite ready to bow down to Thor and Odin, instead of to the shrines of
his own land, which had proved so powerless to protect it. Fast on the
heels of the first band of pirates came another, and another yet. Only
by the strength of Theobald of Blois was the Loire closed against
continual invasion, as the Seine was held by Rollo, who was to fix the
true race of the Northmen for ever in the land.
He made his settlement in Neustria in exactly the same way as Guthrum
thirty years before had taken possession of East Anglia. But while it
was an easy task for the Danes to become Englishmen, it was a far
harder one for the invaders of the Seine to become so completely
Frenchmen, as in fact they did. In the case of both Guthrum and Rollo,
the invaded sovereign had been compelled to give up part of his lands
to save the whole. Both the archbishop at Rouen and the "King" at
Paris saw no other way out of their difficulties; and Rollo was as
ready as Guthrum had been to go through the form of baptism and the
farce of a submission, requiring as a pledge the daughter of the King,
whose vassal or "man" he became. The treaty in which Charles the
Simple purchased peace was a close imitation of the Peace of Wedmore.
These things became more serious to the pirate later on. But his way
was at first made easy for him. At Rouen, Archbishop Franco,
remembering perhaps the gloomy prophecies of Charlemagne, gave up his
ruined and defenceless city without a blow.[11]
[Footnote 11: Chron. de St. Denis, iii. 99.--"Franco ... regarda
l'état de la cité et les murs qui étaient déchus et abattus," etc., or
in Wace's verses:
"Li Archeveske Frankes à Jumièges ala
A Rou et à sa gent par latinier parla....
... Donc vint Rou à Roem, amont Saine naja,
De joste Saint Morin sa navie atacha."]
Rolf found indeed very little except the "crowd without arms"
described by Dudo of St. Quentin in a town where hardly a stone wall
had been left upright and the population had been ruthlessly decimated
by his predecessors. As Wace says of the expedition of Hastings the
Dane:
"... À Roem sunt aresté
Tote destruitrent la cité
Aveir troverent à plenté
Mesonz ardent, froissent céliers,
Homes tuent, robent mostiers"....
so that it is almost astonishing to hear that even the church of St.
Martin de la Roquette remained standing, if, indeed, that is meant by
the phrase, "Portae cui innexa est ecclesia Sancti Martini naves
adhaesit," which may refer to the "Saint Morin" of Wace, or the
"Portus morandi" I spoke of on page 16. The town was still, it must be
remembered, in its primitive watery condition, the chapels, not only
of St. Martin, but of St. Clément and of St. Eloi, were on islands
that are now part of the firm soil of the river's bank. The waters of
the Robec itself formed one of the defences of the ruined city Rollo
took. Just beyond the line of the old Gallo-Roman walls, rose the
first rude monastery of St. Ouen; shrines were also consecrated to St.
Godard, to St. Martin, to St. Vincent sur Rive; but most of the houses
were still only of timber, and it was not till Rollo had closed up the
wandering bed of the river between these shifting islands that the
"Terres Neuves" were first formed that reached from the Rue Saint
Denis to the Eau de Robec, through the Place de la Calende, down to
the Rue de la Madeleine and the Rue aux Ours, and so to the Quai de la
Bourse by way of the Rue des Cordeliers. What is now merely No. 41 Rue
Nationale, was once the old church of St. Pierre du Chastel, and the
name commemorates the spot where Rollo built his first square tower,
the first of the many "Tours" that were built by the lords of Rouen,
native and foreign, princes or pirates, from the river to the northern
angle of the outer walls. Map B shows Rollo's castle and the three
which followed it, one on each side beneath, and one above.
It was in 912 that Rollo thus marked the beginning of the Duchy of
Normandy with the strong seal of his donjon-keep at Rouen, though he
and his descendants for another century were still known only as the
Pirates, and the Pirates' Duke. In that year he was baptised by the
Archbishop of Rouen, and received from the Karoling King all the lands
from "the river of Epte to the sea, and westwards to Brittany," with
the hand of the Princess Gisela. Robert, Duke of the Franks, came
back with him to Rouen to be his godfather, and for seven days the
"King of the Sea" wore the white robes of innocence, and his followers
eagerly joined him in the fold of Christianity, with results whose
worldwide importance were only to be seen more than a century later.
For the present the wolves were quite ready to lie down with the
lambs, but they kept their brutal dignity and coarse jests throughout
all the solemn ceremonial. The pirate who was sent to do submission
for the Duchy, embraced the royal foot so roughly that the King fell
backwards off his throne, and in a roar of Norman laughter the Norman
rule began that was to last for three centuries in France and spread
from Palermo to the Tees. The fable of this rudely-treated monarch
reflects more than the anxiety of Norman chroniclers to hide the least
appearance of submission; it suggests the fact of very actual weakness
in these dying Karolings. Rollo's coming had decided for the French
dynasty of Paris as against the Frankish dynasty of Laon. Both
Karolings and Merovingians had been essentially of German stock. It
was only late in the ninth century that Paris, the chief object of the
Northerners' attack upon the Seine, arose as the national bulwark
against the invader, and became a ducal city that was to be a royal.
Its Duke, Robert the Strong, the forefather of Capets, of Valois, and
of Bourbons, had a son, Eudes (or Odo), whose gallant repulse of the
Pirates had given him a throne that was still held by his descendants
a thousand years later, and he ruled in the French speech, while the
Karolings of Laon still used the Teutonic idiom. When Laon was joined
to Paris in 987 by the election of Hugh, modern France really began
with a French king ruling at Paris, and a German emperor as alien to
the realm of the Capets as was his brother of Byzantium. But there is
still much to happen before the date of 987 can be safely reached,
and the last ineffectual years of Charles the Simple gave Rollo every
opportunity to strengthen his new possessions in security.
The young blood, the adventurous spirit, the thirst for conquest, that
his Scandinavian followers brought to Rouen, was destined to work
wonders on its new soil. For these pirates took the creed, the
language and the manners of the French, and kept their own vigorous
characteristics as mercenaries, plunderers, conquerors, crusaders. If
in peace they invented nothing, they were quick to learn and adapt,
generous to disseminate. In Rouen itself they welcomed scholars,
poets, theologians, and artists. Their Scandinavian vigour mated to
the vivacity of Gaul was to produce a conquering race in Europe. At
Bayeux, where a Saxon emigration had settled down long before the days
of Rollo, the type of the original Norman can still be seen. The same
type comes out in every famous Norman of to-day, in that "figure de
coq," with its high nose and clever brow that marks the bold nature
tempered with the cunning, the lawyer and the soldier mixed. To these
men Rollo gave land instead of booty. Of himself and his doings little
accurate is known; but from the results of his rule his greatness can
be fairly judged, for he held his sceptre like a battleaxe, and
increased the bounds of his dominion. It was within his capital that
his rule was chiefly beneficial. Here and there his Norman names have
survived, as in Robec (Redbeck) Dieppedal (Deepdale) or Caudebec
(Coldbeck), but in the main he proved at once the high adaptability of
his race. His first assembly was of necessity aristocratic, and
without ecclesiastics, for every landowner was Scandinavian, and the
remnant of the aborigines were serfs whose revolts were pitilessly
crushed. Twice a year his barons came to his court, as feudatory
judges, the first faint beginnings of the Échiquier de Normandie. His
laws were made then, and made to be respected, and it is even said
that the cry of "Haro!" which was heard far later in the history of
Rouen, originated in the "Ha! Rou!" with which the citizens then began
their appeal to him for justice. The tale of the golden bracelets he
hung in the branches of his hunting forest by the Seine, which stayed
three years without being stolen, is an indication of the rigour of
the laws he made. In about 930 he died, and was the first layman to be
buried in the cathedral he had improved:--
"En mostier Nostre Dame, el costé verz midi
Ont li cler è li lai li cors ensepulcri."
His son, William Longsword, succeeded to his Duchy, enlarged by the
additions which Rollo had known how to secure during the strife
between Laon and Paris that had been going on throughout his rule.
That he had paid little attention to the weak King Charles is evident
from the tale that tells of the first execution recorded in what is
now the Place du Marché Vieux. For Charles, with a simplicity worthy
of his title, had apparently sent two gallants of his court to console
his daughter Gisela for the roughness with which he heard her husband
treated her, and these two were promptly hanged. But there was more
material profit to be had out of the quarrels of the country, and
though he lost Eu for a time, Rollo had been able to gain from the war
by which he was surrounded in Maine, in Bessin, and in Brittany; which
meant that his son came into possession of Caen, Cerisy, Falaise, and
that Bayeux, which had been colonised from the North in the last days
of the Roman Empire, and remained Teutonic long after Rouen had been
"Parisianised," where you may still see all save the tongue of
England, in men and animals, even in fields and hedges. And William
Longsword, though he wavered towards France and Christianity, remained
at heart even more Pagan than his father, sending his son to these
stubborn Northmen of Bayeux where the Danish tongue was kept in all
its purity, and calling in fresh Danish colonists to occupy his own
province of Côtentin from St. Michael's Mount to Cherbourg. It was in
the battle that secured his hold on this new territory that 300
knights of Rouen, under Bernard the Dane, drove out 4000 from Côtentin
under their leader Count Riolf, who had disputed William's suzerainty,
upon the Pré de la Bataille that is now a cider market near the town.
(Roman de Rou, v. 2239.) It was at this time, too, that Prince Alan of
Brittany fled for refuge to England, and the crushing of the Breton
revolt resulted in the addition of the Channel Islands to the Duchy of
Normandy, which remained British after John Lackland had lost the last
of his continental possessions, retaining their local independence and
ancient institutions under the protection of England; a far better
thing for them than any enjoyment of the privileges, either of a
French Department, or of a British county represented in Parliament
like the ancient Norwegian Earldom of Orkney.
Few of the occurrences of this confused period are so clearly
prominent or have such far-reaching results as this; and after young
Louis d'Outremer had been called over from England to the throne of
France, this vacillating and weak Duke William was murdered by Arnoulf
of Flanders at the conference held on the island of Pecquigny in the
Somme, as William of Jumièges relates (III. cap. xi. _et seq._). His
courtiers found upon his body the silver key of the chest that guarded
the monk's cowl he had always desired to wear. So upon a sixteenth of
December 943 (in the year of the birth of Hugh Capet), the
strengthless descendant of the Viking died and was buried in the
Cathedral, and the Normans did homage to his young son Richard the
Fearless who was fetched from his Saxon home at Bayeux and guarded by
Bernard the Dane within the walls of Rouen. The boy was destined to a
perilous and adventurous career, which began as soon as he had taken
up his father's power, for the King of France came straight to Rouen
and would have seized the little Duke had not the citizens arisen to
protect him with such menaces of violence that the attempt was
postponed. But he enticed the boy to Laon and there imprisoned him
until the faithful Osmond got him out concealed in a bundle of hay and
bore him off on horseback to Coucy. Then Bernard the Dane called on
Harold Blacktooth of Denmark to bring his men from Coutances and
Bayeux and to sail up with his long ships from Cherbourg to avenge the
murder of Duke William. The King hastened to the walls of Rouen to see
what could be done by treaty with the invaders, but the crafty Normans
pretended that among his escort they saw the murderer himself, so they
fell suddenly upon the French, slew eighteen of their nobles, and
threw their king into prison from which he was only rescued by Hugh,
Duke of the French, at the price of the city of Laon. The interference
of Germany in the quarrel produced an alliance between Normandy and
Hugh of Paris that led eventually to the independence of the Duchy and
the downfall of the Karolings of Laon as soon as the German help had
been withdrawn. But this did not happen until an energetic attempt had
been made to crush Normandy and Paris by the new allies who failed to
take either Laon or Paris, but ravaged Normandy and were only repulsed
from Rouen after a siege in 946 that is one of the most picturesque
landmarks in the early story of the town. In the Roman de Rou, and in
Dudo of St. Quentin, the details of the fighting have been carefully
preserved.
The combined host of Germans under Otto, French under Louis, and
Flemings under Arnoul, advanced together upon Rouen, and their scouts
reported that the town showed no signs of resistance. But behind the
battlements[12] the citizens were stacking piles of stones and darts.
Masses of picked men were posted at various vantage-points for
sallying forth. Spies were hidden in the long reeds and grass all
round the city, and sentinels unseen were guarding all the walls, from
the main road at the Porte Beauvoisine, round the heavy ramparts to
the north and east. Upon their south-west was the river, and there was
plenty of provisions stored inside. The quiet reported to the allies
was but the confident repose of thorough preparation, and this the
Germans discovered as soon as they drew near the city. The young Duke
Richard suddenly dashed out over the drawbridge with seven hundred
full-armed Norman knights on horseback shouting "Dex Aie!" behind him.
They rode straight upon the German spears, cut their way through and
back again taking fifteen captives with them, and slaying their
leader, the "Edeling" himself who had followed them to the very
bridge. Otto fainted at the sight of the dead body of the brave
Edeling whose "Flamberg" and Castilian steed are often mentioned in
the story though his name does not appear. Then the braying of
aurochs' horns, of cornets and of trumpets, announced the coming
vengeance of the allies. Their catapults rained missiles on the town,
and their men-at-arms waited impatiently for a breach to be battered
in the Porte Beauvoisine. But it remained steadfastly shut, and the
Duke made another brilliant sally from a postern gate with the
blood-red standard waving again above his Norman knights, and swept
back once more the assailing lines of Germany until the French had to
bring up their reinforcements from the rear and save the field. That
evening, in Otto's pavilion, the funeral service of the Edeling was
held. All night he lay beneath the silk of his funeral pall with
tapers burning at his head and feet, and the low chant of prayer
sounded till the dawn. All night had Otto stayed awake in sorrow and
unrest. At last, with the rising of the sun he heard a burst of
minstrelsy. Rouen was silent no longer; the songs of triumph and
defiance burst from every parapet and tower, while the very birds
(says the chronicler) seemed to join in the chorus of happiness all
round the beaten camp. Then Otto rode moodily along the city walls and
watched the waggons bringing in supplies across the bridge, and noted
that the bridge-head at Ermondeville (St. Sever as it is to-day), was
weakly held, so he rode back determined to starve Rouen into
submission.
[Footnote 12: "As herteiches montent et al mur quernelé." (Wace, R. de
R., 4057.)]
But the council of his knights refused the plan, so he was obliged to
veil his anger by asking the Normans for permission to pray at the
Shrine of St. Ouen and bury his noble kinsman beyond the walls of
their town. Safe conduct was immediately granted, and all the leaders
except Arnoul of Flanders passed in procession to the abbey. There,
after gifts of gold and precious carpets to the abbot, Otto proposed
that Arnoul should be given up, but returned before the answer to
these treacherous negotiations had been given. The night that followed
was full of terrors and alarms. Suspecting that he would be betrayed,
Arnoul took all his Flemish host as soon as darkness fell, and
lumbered heavily out of the camp of the allies, his cumbrous waggons
creaking noisily beneath the weight of the camp-furniture. Both French
and Germans heard the sound and started to their feet imagining a
night-attack from Rouen. Panic seized the camp at once. Men cut the
cords of the rich tents, and scattered their spoil about the ground,
rushing half clad in all directions and shouting for their arms; a
fire broke out at headquarters; the camp-followers seized their
opportunity, dashed upon Otto's tent and plundered it of armour and of
all its royal ornaments; the rest fled hastily all ways at once not
seeing where they went, and in an unknown country.
[Illustration: FIGURE FROM THE BORDER OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY]
Meanwhile the rising clamour roused the sentinels of Rouen, and all
the garrison made ready for attack, hurried to their posts, and waited
steadfastly under arms until the dawn. As the light shone from the
east they saw the rout and disorder of their enemies' camp, and loud
jeers and laughter rose along the walls, and echo still in the rough
verses of Dudo their historian. The Flemish had the advantage of an
early start, and got clear away. The French had followed fast upon
their heels, but the Germans had plunged in unwieldy panic into the
labyrinth of the woods and fens. The Normans spread out at once and
caught them. At the Place de la Rougemare they slaughtered so many
that the fields were dyed red with their blood. At Bihorel more were
massacred. In Maupertuis, or Maromme, hundreds were butchered. Then
the peasants took up the bloody task. With sharpened scythes and
pitchforks, with pointed staves and heavy truncheons and ironshod
clubs, they killed the miserable Germans all day long, and the line of
escape was marked along the Beauvoisine road by corpses almost to
Amiens itself.
This strange victory seems to have pulled the men of Rouen together,
and given them confidence. The Laws of Rollo had been restored to
their old strength by Harold Blacktooth, and at last Neustrians and
Scandinavians seemed in a fair way to amalgamate and produce that
nation of warriors and lawyers which they afterwards became. In 954
King Louis died after a last flicker of expiring power in retrieving
Laon. But though Lothair followed him as King of the French, Hugh
Capet was ruling in 956 as Duke of Paris, and it was to Hugh that Duke
Richard of Normandy did homage for his fief. Thirty-one years later
the last Karoling was passed over, and Hugh Capet was crowned King at
Noyon. In the starting of this new dynasty, which is the
starting-point for the true history of France, Duke Richard of
Normandy had played a most important part, for it was in no small
measure by his help that Gaul had been made French and had won a
French Lord of Paris for her King. At the coronation of Hugh Capet,
Normandy ceased to be the Land of Pirates, and became the mightiest
and noblest fief of the French crown, its most loyal and most daring
vassal. In the years of Duke Richard too, Normandy was completed
internally. Her army and her fleet were organised. Her frontiers, her
laws, her feudal system came to perfection. Her national character
crystallised. Already in the Norman Baronage we can find English names
like that of the Harcourts, descended from Bernard the Dane, on a
castle-wall we can read the name of Bruce, in a tiny village trace the
name of Percy. Among the elms and apple-orchards that still faithfully
reflect our English countryside, the square gray keeps are rising
already which were handed on by Norman builders to the cliffs of
Richmond or the banks of Thames. In 996 Duke Richard built one of
these upon the right bank of Robec near the Seine, a new
Palace-Prison, another "Tour de Rouen" to replace the fallen masonry
of Rollo's ancient keep. It was founded where the Place de la Haute
Vieille Tour preserves its memory still, with the Duke's private
chapel on the spot where the Fierte St. Romain stands to this day.
Robert Wace preserves a story that indicates the close terms on which
Duke Richard was with religion, and also shows that the steady growth
in wealth and influence of the clergy through his reign, was not
unaccompanied by an immorality which was conspicuous under Archbishop
Hugh II., and became flagrant during the office of Mauger later on. It
appears that the Sacristan of St. Ouen fell most uncanonically in love
with a lady who dwelt on the other side of the Robec. On his way to
meet her one dark night, his foot slipped from the plank that crossed
the rapid little stream, and he fell into the water. Whereon a
sprightly devilkin seized hurriedly upon his soul and was on the point
of bearing it away to Hell, when an angel (mindful doubtless of the
abbey's piety) arrived, objecting with a nicely argued piece of logic
that the sacristan had not been carried off "en male veie," but before
any sin had been committed. So the contending parties brought the case
(that is the body) before the Duke for judgment.[13] His Grace
insisted that the soul should be put back into its mortal envelope,
and he would then decide according to the action of the sacristan. The
ardour of the resuscitated monk seems to have been sufficiently cooled
by his involuntary bath in Robec, and he hurried back to his lonely
bed in the Abbey of St. Ouen, and at the Duke's command confessed his
wickedness to the abbot. But his escapade remains enshrined in a
proverb that lasted well into the sixteenth century, and is given by
Wace in its original form:
"Sire Moine, suef alez
Al passer planche vus gardez."
[Footnote 13: Students of that invaluable vision of antiquity "Les
Contes Drolatiques" will remember that it was also before Duke Richard
that Tryballot, the lusty old ruffian known as "Vieulx Par-chemins,"
was brought up for judgment, and that the statue commemorating His
Grace's sympathetic verdict remained in Rouen till the modesty of the
English invaders removed it.]
In 996, the Fearless Duke himself gave up the ghost, after having
enlarged the Cathedral of Rouen, and given it new pavement.[14] His
son, another Richard, like him in name alone, succeeded, and in the
first year of the new reign, we hear of a peasant revolt that shows an
extraordinary foreshadowing of the changes that were to come after the
fateful thousandth year had passed. The keynote of the movement is
struck in the strange word used by Wace, that occurs now for the first
time in history:
"Asez tost oï Richard dire
Ke vilains _cumune_ faseient."
[Footnote 14:
L'iglise de l'Arceveskie
De mensam plus riche fie
Fist abatre e fere graineur
A la Mere Nostre Seignur
Plus lunge la fist è plus lée
Plus haute è miex empaventée
R. de R., 5851.]
These downtrodden serfs, of mixed Celtic, Roman, and Frankish
parentage, had actually spoken that word of fear to every feudal
baron, a "commune." They established a regular representative
Parliament with two peasants sent from each district to a general
assembly whose decision should be binding on the whole. This was a
considerably higher political organisation than the aristocratic
household of their masters round the King. And bitterly their masters
resented such forward and unscrupulous behaviour. The Duke's uncle,
Rudolf, Count of Ivry, crushed the "revolt" with hideous cruelty, and
sent back the people's representatives maimed and useless to their
hovels. "Legatos cepit," says William of Jumièges, "truncatisque
manibus et pedibus _inutiles_ suis remisit," adding with unconscious
ferocity "his rustici expertis ad sua aratra sunt reversi." But the
germs of freedom did not die, for villenage in Normandy was lighter,
and ceased far sooner, than in the rest of France. These first
martyrs did not suffer in vain.
If you look closely at the few carvings remaining on the churches of
the tenth and eleventh centuries, you will understand the terror under
which all men were crushed as the thousandth year drew nearer, which
was believed to be the end of the world. Grimacing dumbly in their
stiffened attitudes of fear, these thin anatomies implore with
clenched uplifted hands, the death that shall save them from the
misery of their life. A world so filled with ruins might well give up
all hope on this side of the tomb. The revolt of the Norman peasants
had been crushed in blood. The first religious persecutions had begun,
in the slaying of the Manichean heretics at Orléans. The seasons in
their courses seemed to fight against humanity, for famine and
pestilence, storm and tempest swept down upon the land and the people
died in thousands of sheer starvation. The Roman Empire had crumbled
in the dust; after it fell that of Charlemagne into the abyss. The
chronicles of Raoul Glaber are full of the most gruesome details of
cannibalism, of diabolical appearances, of tortures that cannot be
named. The only refuge seemed to be within the walls of the churches,
where the shivering congregations gathered, mute in a palsied
supplication like the stone figures carved upon the walls above them.
At last the terrible year passed by, and the stars fell not, nor did
the heaven depart as a scroll when it is rolled together, and the
kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief
captains and the mighty men and every bondman and every freeman came
forth from their houses and from their dens and from the rocks of the
mountain, and went with one accord to give thanks to Holy Church for
their deliverance. The wave of religious feeling swept from one end of
Europe to the other, and nowhere was it so strong as in Normandy. For
the Normans saw their advantage in it, just as the first pirates had
seen their gain in baptism. The laws of Rollo and his descendants were
too strict for brigandage at home, so the more restless spirits
started over Europe in the guise of pilgrims, "gaaignant," as Wace
says, towards Monte Cassino, to St. James of Compostella, to the Holy
Sepulchre itself. It was as pilgrims that they travelled into Southern
Italy, where a poor Norman knight had been rewarded for his fighting
against the infidels by the County of Aversa. Tancred of Hauteville,
from the Côtentin, followed there. By 1002 the citizens of Rouen were
already admiring the oranges, or "Pommes d'Or" which their adventurous
"Crusaders" had sent back from Salerno, as the first-fruits of that
Kingdom of Calabria and Sicily which a Norman, Robert Guiscard, was to
make his own.
Meanwhile within the bounds of Normandy itself, the great religious
revival went on side by side with growing civic and military strength.
In 1004, Olaf, King of Norway, who had come over to help the second
Duke Richard, was baptised in the Cathedral of Rouen. Sweyn, King of
Denmark, and Lacman, King of Sweden, were in the city at the same
time, and doubtless felt the same impulse to profession of the
Christian faith when visiting their Scandinavian relatives. Rouen was
indeed a gathering place for all the northern royalties, for Ethelred
II. who had lost the Anglo-Saxon throne, was there as well, with his
wife Emma the daughter of the Duke. It seems in fact to have already
become the fashion for princes of the royal house of Britain to
complete their education by a little tour in France. A curious trait
of the manners of the time is recorded by Wace, who describes one of
the many banquets that must have been given so often during all these
royal visits. He speaks of the long sleeves and white shirts of the
barons, and relates the first instance of aristocratic kleptomania at
a dinner-table, when a knight took a silver spoon and hid it in his
sleeve (R. de R. 7030). The reign of this second Richard and of his
son the third passed without much incident, and then came the sixth
Duke, Robert the Magnificent as his courtiers called him, Robert the
Devil as his people knew him. He is chiefly famous as the father of
his mighty son, and he did little in his capital of Rouen that is of
interest beyond its walls, save the attempt to restore the Saxon
princes Alfred and Edward to their father's throne, which failed
because his fleet was stopped by persistent headwinds and could do
nothing more than thoroughly subjugate the neighbouring fief of
Brittany. After this, the Duke fell in, like all around, with the
dominant religious passion, took up the pilgrim's cross, and died with
his Crusaders at Nicaea.
"À Faleize ont li Dus hanté,"
says Wace,
"Une meschine i ont amée,
Arlot ont nom, de burgeis née."
And from this love-match with a tanner's daughter sprang William the
Bastard in 1028. Though his father had insisted upon this child's
inheritance on his departure for the East, the election of a boy of
seven to the Ducal throne was naturally bitterly opposed by such great
baronial houses as those of Belesme and others. A period of anarchy
and assassination was the obvious result. But Alan of Brittany, the
Seneschal Osbern, and Count Gilbert stood staunchly by the heir. All
three were murdered, and young William himself with difficulty
escaped. Then Ralph of Wacey and William Fitz-Osbern attached
themselves to the boy who must have shown promise of his greatness
early to attract such faithful friendships through the twenty years of
civil war that preceded his firm holding of the throne. He had been
knighted young, and he was soon to prove the strength of his right
arm. But his first actions strangely enough are connected with the
Church that overshadowed so much of public life. He made the mistake
of giving the See of Rouen to the profligate Mauger (though the error
was sternly corrected later on) just as he gave the See of Bayeux to
his half-brother Odo. Benedictine monasteries began to flourish all
over Normandy, chief among which was the Abbey of Bec, which in
Lanfranc and Anselm was to provide Canterbury with two prelates later
on. Religion was responsible, at the same time, for at least one
benefit to the land in the famous institution of the "Truce of God,"
which was fully confirmed later on, and proclaimed that from Wednesday
evening until Monday morning in every week the poor and weak were to
be free from the oppressions of their overlords and from the tyranny
of private war. And a still more valuable result of the prevalent
religious enthusiasm was the gradual drawing together of Normandy and
the Papal See which had its greatest outcome in the "Crusade" against
England.
But William had much to do in his own Duchy before he could find time
for any extension of his dominions. At Val-ès-Dunes he fought his
first pitched battle, crying the "Dex Aie" of the Normans as he swept
the rebellious barons, under Guy of Burgundy, off the field. Then
feeling more secure in his own power, after he had taken Alençon and
Domfront and laid his iron hand on Maine, while Anjou and Brittany
were too bent upon intestine strife to trouble him, he pacified the
continual quarrels with Flanders by taking Matilda the daughter of its
Count Baldwin as his wife. Descended from the stock of Wessex, of
Burgundy, and of Italy, with the blood of Charlemagne in her veins,
Matilda was beautiful, virtuous and accomplished, and worthy to be the
mate of one who set an example of domestic purity to all the princes
of his time. What had been politic at first became a marriage of
affection afterwards, strengthened no doubt by the opposition that at
first arose. For the Duke's Uncle Mauger objected to the match as
being within the forbidden degrees of relationship, and the Pope at
the Council of Rheims actually pronounced against it. But now came the
first-fruits of the policy which had already shown signs of drawing
together Normandy and the Papacy. For it only needed a little pressure
on the part of the Guiscards in Apulia to secure the consent of the
Papal Legate to the banishment of Mauger to the Channel Islands, which
he appears to have richly deserved for many other reasons, if Wace be
right in his indictment; and after four years of waiting, Matilda was
married to the Duke in the Cathedral of Rouen by the new Bishop
Maurilius who finished the new church that was consecrated in 1063.
Another objection to the marriage received very different treatment.
For in Lanfranc of Bec William had recognised the clever Italian who
would be useful in Council as much as in the Church, and it was
through Lanfranc's personal intercession that the Papal authority had
finally been brought to William. The "penance" inflicted for his
wedding was, we may well believe, cheerfully performed in the building
of the hospitals at Rouen, Bayeux, Caen and Cherbourg, and the two
mighty abbeys (for William and for Matilda) that remain at Caen.
[Illustration: FIGURE FROM THE BORDER OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY]
Meanwhile the power of Normandy continued to wax greater. Even two
centuries after this time it comprised a third part of the wealth and
importance of the kingdom, and in the days of our own Fifth Henry no
advice more dangerous to France could be given to an English King
than to preserve by every means the independence of this Duchy. To the
France of the eleventh century, it was a far greater peril still.
Sullenly hostile, or actively menacing, it was only by perpetual
harassing that Normandy could be kept down at all. At last in 1054 the
King roused all the cities of Central Gaul, Burgundian, Gascon, Breton
and Auvergnat in one combined onset, and gathered them at Mantes, the
natural frontier between Normandy and France. Duke William's strategy
and daring were equal to his task. He divided the invaders into two,
annihilated one division at Mortemer with very little loss, and
watched the other with grim merriment as it vanished from his Duchy,
afraid to strike a blow. Four years later France and Anjou came on for
another attempt. Again the Duke was ready. He caught their hosts where
the river Dive cut the army in twain, and fell suddenly with all his
knights and clubmen and a thundershower of arrows on the division that
held the lower bank. King Henry had to watch in idleness above, while
his rear-guard was being helplessly cut to pieces. By the taking of Le
Mans in 1063, William made still further preparation for the greater
fight that was to come. Presages of the coming struggle were not long
in making their appearance.
In 1064 Earl Harold on a pleasure-trip from England was wrecked upon
the coast of Ponthieu. Duke William at once had him brought to Eu,
where he met him and escorted him, in all good fellowship and
chivalry, to Rouen. What actually happened during this important visit
cannot be accurately determined. But of a few facts there seems to be
no doubt. If Harold, for instance, received knighthood at William's
hands, he thereby became his "man." More probably he swore brotherhood
with the strong Duke. Certainly he took part in the expedition that
crushed a Breton revolt, and chased its leader to the dangerous
quicksands of St. Michael's Mount. Certainly too, an oath of some kind
was plighted between the host and his somewhat unwilling guest. In
this the Duke must have made mention of the promise given by Edward
the Confessor as to the English Succession. This Edward it will be
remembered was one of the Saxon princes who had lived for some time in
Rouen, and was always fond of his Norman mother and her friends.
Mention is also made of a betrothal of William's daughter to the Earl.
In any case, we may be sure that Harold was sufficiently engaged to
satisfy the politic Duke before he was allowed to return to England.
Nor may we imagine that the next news which came across the Channel
was wholly unexpected. For as the Duke was hunting with his courtiers
and squires in his pleasaunce at Quévilly, across the Seine from
Rouen, a messenger brought the tidings that Edward the Confessor was
dead, and that Harold son of Godwin had seized the throne. Wace
describes how Fitz-Osbern paced up and down the hunting-hall with his
master as they discussed the news, and the Duke soon made his mind up
as to the course to be pursued. A message was at once sent over to
Harold, reminding him of the famous Oath, which had been taken, as
some say, and according to the suggestions in the Bayeux Tapestry,
over the sacred relics of the saints. What the Duke had expected and
even hoped for, of course happened. Harold repudiated all knowledge of
a binding agreement as to the Succession, and Normandy could
thenceforth call upon the outraged Sanctity of Religion to help her in
what was cleverly published as a Holy War.
Now the full effects of the religious trend in William's policy were
seen at last, as clearly as was the wisdom of his own carefully
religious life. The champion of the poor, the fatherless and the
widow, the worshipper and communicant in Rouen Cathedral, the builder
of hospitals and monasteries, above all the friend of Lanfranc, was
easily able to secure the voice of the Pope in favour of a claim based
not on heredity, not on election, not on bequest, but made by virtue
of the personal injury done to him by Harold, and made to avenge the
insulted saints of Normandy by recalling pagan England into the fold
of Rome. Never were the highest motives so skilfully interwoven with
appeals to lower instincts in the mingled crowd whom the Duke William
gathered to his standard. He had before this crushed the Norman
rebels, conquered the men of Maine or Anjou or Brittany, defeated the
King of France. But this was a far greater task. Yet if Normans had
won the Kingdom of the Sicilies, Normans should cross the sea to
England and win that as well. And all the faithful of the earth should
help them. It is a mistake to think that Normans alone conquered the
land of Harold. From Flanders, from the Rhine, from Burgundy, Piedmont
and Aquitaine, from all the northern coasts, an army of volunteers
flocked to the standard of the Duke. And their leader went swiftly on
to make preparations worthy of so great a host. While all the woods of
Normandy are ringing to the axe, and all the shipwrights' yards are
sounding to the hammer, we may pause and see what this mighty
expedition means to Rouen.
To Normandy it brings at once the climax of her power and the
beginning of her fall. For a Duchy that was but secondary to the
Kingdom over seas could never claim again the full strength of the
rulers who had raised her first. By degrees she fell away from the
land across the channel and became absorbed in the kingdom of which
she was territorially a natural part. But, as we have seen, she had
already done much towards the making of that kingdom in her
independence, and when she formed an integral part of it herself she
was its firmest bulwark against invasion from the North. In Rouen
itself the beginnings of commercial greatness had been indicated, even
before the coming of Rollo, by the Mint which had been established
there, as a branch of that founded by Charlemagne at Quantowitch,
which was destroyed by the first Pirates. The money of Rouen was
marked with the letter B to signify that it was the second in
importance in the Kingdom. That the trade of the town soon justified
this proud distinction on its currency is evident from the law of King
Ethelred II., which exempted all Rouen merchants from taxation on
their wine and "Marsouin" within the port of London. Other signs of
commercial activity are to be found in bridge-building, and the
numerous Fairs which arose under the Norman Dukes. In 1024 a toll upon
the wooden bridge of Rouen is recorded, and when in 1030, it was
destroyed by a revolt under Robert the Devil, the timbers were very
shortly afterwards replaced, and remained until in 1160 the Empress
Matilda built the famous "Pont de Pierre" that lasted for so many
centuries. Of the great Fairs of Rouen, the first seems to be that of
St. Gervais, instituted by the second Duke Richard in 1020, which was
given with the church of the same name to the monks of the Abbey of
Fécamp. It is still held in June in the Faubourg Cauchoise. The Foire
du Pré was next founded in 1064 on the day after the Ascension by the
great Duke William, under the auspices of the Priory of Notre Dame du
Pré which his wife had built in the suburb of Émendreville across the
river, where St. Sever now stands. The church itself took the name of
Bonne-Nouvelle when the Duchess heard, as she was praying there, that
the Victory of Hastings had made her Queen of England. Within its
walls were buried the Empress Matilda, and the hapless Prince Arthur
of Brittany. It was burnt down in 1243, and struck by lightning in
1351, destroyed during the siege by the English in 1418, and rebuilt
only to be destroyed again by the Calvinists in 1562. In 1604 it was
rebuilt for the last time, but the rights of jurisdiction and of the
fair given it by William the Conqueror were only surrendered to the
town of Rouen in 1493. In 1070 the Fête de l'Immaculée Conception,
called the Fête aux Normands, was celebrated for the first time in
memory of a vow after a safe voyage. The Confrèrie de la Conception,
sometimes called Le Puy, was founded in connection with this, with the
poems that were written each year in honour of the Feasts, which gave
rise to the jocund office of the Prince des Palinods, of whom we shall
hear more later. Their first poem, written by Robert Wace (the author
of the "Roman de Rou," who was born in Jersey in 1100 and died at the
age of 84 in England) was called "L'Establissement de la feste de la
conception, dicte la Feste as Normands."
The most famous Fair of all was founded a little later by Guillaume
Bonne Âme, forty-eighth bishop of Rouen, when he transported the body
of St. Romain in a new and precious shrine from the church of St.
Godard to the Cathedral. At this first procession in 1079 both William
the Conqueror and his wife assisted. The change had been necessitated
by the great crowds of people who had come every year to receive
pardons and indulgences at the shrine of the famous guardian saint of
the city, and who thronged into the neighbouring field, called the
Champ-du-Pardon to this day. When the saint's body had been removed to
the Cathedral, the Foire du Pardon was held in his honour in the same
open space, and the whole ceremony was without doubt the beginning of
that Levée de la Fierte which preserved the memory of St. Romain until
the end of the eighteenth century. By William, the fair was originally
fixed on two days in October, and in 1468 its duration was still
further extended.[15] In the church of St. Étienne des Tonneliers,
which was put under the protection of the monks of St. Ouen at this
time, we can trace further evidence of the gradual consolidation of
various trades; even the institution of the curfew bell, at the
assembly of Caen in 1061, shows that increasing commerce had insisted
upon greater security in the public streets. The Parvis of the
Cathedral, too, was at this time not merely a place of inviolable
sanctuary, but an open space on which merchants could display their
goods and erect booths without any interference save from the canons.
These shops were built up against the crenelated wall that surrounded
the Parvis until the quarrel between canons and bourgeois pulled them
down in 1192. The place was a frequent scene of conflict, and also of
amusement, for in spite of the presence of a cemetery which extended
over the Place de la Calende and the Portail des Libraires and was
only abolished in the last century, the mystery plays were often given
here, using the cemetery as a "background," as was frequently done.
Till 1199 bakers sold bread here. Till 1429 the "Marché aux herbes et
menues denrées" was held here, and then transferred to the Clos aux
Juifs. In 1325 the working jewellers also frequented this locality,
and in the name of the great north porch of the Cathedral is still
preserved the memory of the booksellers of times far more modern.
[Footnote 15: The Champ du Pardon attained a grisly notoriety in the
fourteenth century from the presence of the "fourches Patibulaires" or
public place of execution upon the "Mont de la Justice" in one corner
of the field.]
[Illustration: THE OLDEST ROUEN SHOWING GALLO-ROMAN WALLS
MAP C.]
The foundations of another cathedral had been laid in 990, where Robec
and Aubette still defined an "Ile Notre Dame de Rouen" whose
inhabitants were under the jurisdiction of the chapterhouse. It was
brought to a conclusion by Maurilius in 1063, and in the foundation
and lower storeys of the northern tower of the west façade (known as
the Tour St. Romain) are perhaps some of the few relics that remain of
the architecture of these destructive years. But a far more beautiful
and more authentic fragment is to be seen close to the Abbey Church of
St. Ouen, in the exquisite little piece of architecture known as the
Tour aux Clercs in the north-eastern corner of the apse, (see Chap.
VIII.). This is part of the apse of the second abbey, which was begun
by Nicolas of Normandy in 1042, finished in 1126, and burnt to the
ground in 1136. Its fate was the common one of all ecclesiastical
buildings of the time. In the next chapter we shall find but two more
churches that can certainly be dated as before the years when Normandy
became a part of France. The School of Art which gave a name to all
those English buildings of which Durham Cathedral is the type and
flower, left scarcely a stone in its own capital as a memorial of its
source. Nor can Rouen point to a single building now remaining which
was a palace or a prison of its Norman dukes. The greatest monument of
its greatest duke is the Tower of London. Even the ruined Abbey of St.
Amand, which was dedicated in 1070, does not now possess a stone that
can be traced with certainty to the period of its Norman foundation.
For whatever ruins now remain are those of the church built in 1274,
whose tower was rebuilt after 1570, and whose last abbess, Madame de
Lorge, died in October 1745.