The King of the French and his comrades must have been strangely

ignorant of the state of the country, when they chose a spot for their

halting-place so near to the home of such tried and loyal warriors as

these. They had brought with them a good stock of provisions of corn

and of wine, for the relief of the besieged of Arques. At Saint Aubin

they began to make ready a train of sumpter-horses with a military

convoy, to carry these good things to their suffering friends, just

as if they had been in a country where no danger was to be looked

for.[340] But, no doubt by the help of the loyal lord of Saint

Aubin,[341] the besiegers of Arques, in their wooden castle,[342]

soon learned the careless [Sidenote: Success of the Norman ambush.]

approach of the French. A plan was speedily devised; an ambush was

laid; a smaller party was sent forth to practise that stratagem of

pretended flight which Norman craft was to display thirteen years

later on a greater scale.[343] The Normans turned; the French pursued;

presently the liers-in-wait were upon them, and the noblest and bravest

of the invading host were slaughtered or taken prisoners before

[Sidenote: Capture of Hugh Bardulf.] the eyes of their King.[344] One

Norman traitor at least was taken. “Hugh Bardulf himself, that great

man,”[345] was among the captives. The exact nature and measure of

Hugh’s greatness does not appear; but his capture is spoken of as

one of the most important events of the fight. I know of no record of

his earlier exploits or of his later fate; but the name of Bardulf

occurs repeatedly in the later records both of the Norman and of

the English Exchequer, and one at least of his descendants seems to

have been as [Sidenote: Death of Count Ingelram of Ponthieu.] little

amenable to lawful authority as his ancestor.[346] By the side of the

captive Bardulf died a sovereign prince, a neighbour of Normandy,

bound by ties of the closest affinity [Sidenote: The Counts of

Ponthieu.] alike to William the Duke and to William the rebel. The

house of the Counts of Ponthieu is one whose name will meet us more

than once again in the course of the present volume. Sprung of the

blood of Herlwin of Montreuil, a name so familiar to us in Norman

history a hundred years before,[347] they held, as he had done, the

border land between Normandy and Flanders. But they had held it by

various [Sidenote: Hugh the First, Advocate of Saint Riquier.] tenures

and under various titles. Hugh, the great-grandfather of the present

ruler, a prince, if we may so call him, high in the favour of his

namesake the Parisian King, had borne no title but that of Advocate

of Saint Riquier.[348] He was, as the chronicles of the Abbey take

care to tell us, enriched at the expense of the great monastery of

which he was bound to be the defender.[349] The house of Saint Riquier

was the work of the bounty of the great Charles; it was the house

where a saintly Abbot and an Emperor’s daughter so strangely became

the parents of that famous Nithard, who figures alike as Count and as

Abbot, and who is yet more renowned as a lay historian in whose steps

neither Æthelweard [Sidenote: Ingelram the First, Count of Ponthieu or

Abbeville.] nor Fulk knew how to walk.[350] The son of Hugh, Ingelram

or Enguerrand[351] the First, was the first to bear the title of

Count of Ponthieu, a title sometimes exchanged for that of Count of

Abbeville.[352] The grange stolen away from the house of Saint Riquier

grew into the capital of a principality, and the town was in after days

adorned with that unfinished minster, which, as it is looked at from

the west or from the east, may be called the noblest or the meanest

in France. This elder Ingelram has already appeared in our history as

a foe of Count Gilbert of Brionne, his antagonist on the field where

Herlwin, not yet of Bec, taught the contending chiefs how a Christian

soldier had learned to [Sidenote: Hugh the Second. 1046–1052.] return

good for evil.[353] From him the County passed to a second Hugh, and

from him, only a year before, it had [Sidenote: Ingelram the Second.

1052–1053.] passed to a second Ingelram. This prince now, whether led

by border enmity, by loyalty to his suzerain, or by preference to one

domestic tie over another, had joined the call of King [Sidenote: His

affinity with both Williams.] Henry to an invasion of the Norman Duchy.

The Count of Ponthieu went forth to help the husband of his sister

against the brother of his wife. Count Hugh had given his daughter in

marriage to William of Arques,[354] but his son was also the husband

of a full sister of Duke William.[355] As such, he was himself the

son-in-law of the Tanner’s daughter, and he had therefore no right to

join the Lord of Arques in his sneers at the Bastard of Falaise. He

now felt the strength of the Norman steel, even in the absence of the

Prince against whom he came. He fell in the ambush [Sidenote: Guy,

1053–1100.] of Saint Aubin;[356] his County passed to his brother Guy,

soon again to appear in our story;[357] but his daughters, [Sidenote:

Daughters of Ingelram.] the nieces of Duke William, were treated as

members of the ducal family, and one of them, Judith the wife of

Waltheof, lived to leave behind her an evil renown in the history of

our own land.[358]

[Sidenote: King Henry retires.]

The Count of Ponthieu was thus slain fighting valiantly.[359] His

overlord King Henry escaped the ambush, and pressed on towards the hill

of Arques, in the hope of relieving the besieged. But he found Duke

William’s wooden castle too strong, and the courage of its defenders

too determined, for his attacks upon it to prevail.[360] He accordingly

returned home, having done nothing towards the immediate object of

his journey, the relief of the besieged Count of Arques.[361] He had

however gained some partizans in Normandy, and one Norman fortress

at least was betrayed into his hands. Its position shows that the

rebellion must have spread far beyond the immediate neighbourhood

of [Sidenote: Moulins betrayed to the King by Wimund.] Arques. One

Wimund, who commanded the fortress of Moulins, surrendered it to the

King.[362] The fortress thus gained by Henry lay on the other side

of the Seine, in the County of Hiesmes and Diocese of Seez, on the

very frontier of the debateable land of the House of Belesme.[363]

[Sidenote: It is garrisoned under Guy of Poitiers or Gascony.] The post

was therefore an important one. It received a French garrison, and its

command was entrusted to a man of princely rank from a distant quarter

of Gaul, whose presence in the royal host is not the least perplexing

thing about the story. This was Guy-Geoffrey, Count of Gascony,[364]

son of that William of Aquitaine who bore the title of the Great. He

was therefore brother of the prince who had suffered so hardly at

the hands of Geoffrey of Anjou; he was brother of the reigning Duke,

who, from Peter, had changed his name to William,[365] and brother

too of Agnes, the wife of the reigning Emperor, whose name was soon

to become famous during the minority of her son.[366] Guy-Geoffrey

himself, on his accession to his brother’s dominions a few years later,

also changed his baptismal name [Sidenote: 1058–1087.] for that so

familiar to his family, and reigned as William [Sidenote: Return of

Duke William.] the Eighth of Aquitaine and Sixth of Poitiers.[367] By

this time Duke William had returned to the siege; he had no longer to

fear the commission of any feudal offence by [Sidenote: The besieged

hard pressed.] fighting personally against his lord. The defenders

of Arques were now sorely pressed by hunger. They contrived to send

messages to King Henry; but all was in vain; no help came from their

royal ally.[368] At last the sure but slow means to which the Duke had

trusted had [Sidenote: The castle surrenders; wretched state of the

besieged.] thoroughly done its work; Count William and his garrison

surrendered, on the sole condition that the horrors of Alençon were

not to be repeated. Safety for life and limb was promised; the gates

were opened, and a company came forth in whose sad condition the

Norman panegyrist sees at least as much matter for scorn as for pity.

Knights of renown throughout France and Normandy came forth with marks

of hunger on their faces, and with their necks bowed down alike by

hunger and by shame. Some rode on famished horses, whose feeble feet

could hardly raise the dust or give forth an audible sound as they

crept along. Others came forth on foot, booted and spurred, bearing

saddles on their backs, seemingly ready for that last symbolical rite

of humiliation in which the vanquished offered himself for the victor

to mount upon his back.[369] And, if the proud gentlemen of France

and Normandy were brought so low as this, it is not wonderful if the

aspect of their more lowly followers, the light-armed troops [Sidenote:

Guy of Poitiers surrenders Moulins.] of the garrison, was equally

sad.[370] The news soon reached the fortress of Moulins, which was

still held by the French troops under Guy of Aquitaine. The Poitevin

prince, the brother-in-law of Cæsar, had no mind to tempt the strength

of the Norman. He and his garrison, and the garrisons of such other

posts as had been occupied by the royal forces, fled [Sidenote: The

Duke’s clemency to his uncle.] out of the land without waiting to be

attacked.[371] Towards his own subjects the Duke more than kept the

terms of his capitulation. Count William was not even required to

leave Normandy. He was offered licence to remain in the land and to

retain possession of a considerable estate, of which however it need

hardly be said that his own famous hill-fortress was not to form a

part.[372] But life in his native [Sidenote: Count William of Arques

retires to Boulogne.] country had no longer any charms for him. The

dispossessed Count and his wife, the sister of the slain Count of

Ponthieu, retired to the court of Count Eustace of Boulogne.[373] The

fall of one William of Arques led the way to the advancement of the

other. The Viscount had had no share in the treasons of the Count. He

was not indeed raised to fill a place which the Duke had learned to be

[Sidenote: The castle intrusted to William the Viscount.] too dangerous

an elevation for any subject. The County of Talou was abolished;

the castle of Arques became a ducal possession; but the care of the

fortress reared by the William of Arques who figures in Norman history

was entrusted to that other William of Arques whose name is written in

Domesday.[374]

[Sidenote: Marriage of Duke William. 1053.]

Duke William was now allowed a few months of peace, and, having brought

one troublesome matter to a happy end, he seems to have thought it a

fitting time to bring another matter of no less moment in his eyes

to an end no less happy. It was in this year, therefore probably in

the short interval between the French invasion which we have thus far

followed and the second invasion which followed it in the next year,

that William at last won his long-wished-for bride. Count Baldwin now

brought his daughter to the frontier castle of Eu, and William led

her thence to his palace at Rouen.[375] I have already discussed the

puzzling circumstances of this marriage; I have already spoken of the

indignation which it called forth among men so unlike one another

as Malger and Lanfranc.[376] Malger, it must not be forgotten, was

a brother of the fallen Count of Arques; he may have been concerned

in his treason; his deposition may have been his punishment. But the

clemency which William showed towards the uncle who had been actually

in arms may make us doubt whether he would have taken this kind of

revenge on a kinsman who was at least not more guilty.[377]

King Henry had failed to give any help to the defenders of Arques in

their last extremity; but hatred towards Normandy was far from being

lulled to rest in the breasts [Sidenote: Hatred of the French towards

Normandy.] either of the French King or of the French people. We seem

to be carried back a hundred years, to the wars waged by Lewis and Hugh

and Arnulf against the defenceless childhood of William Longsword.

Through the whole extent of the King’s domains, and through the domains

of his chief vassals, the feeling of jealousy against Normandy was

bitter indeed. The King complained that Normandy, a land which had

been part of the immediate possessions of his forefathers, even before

they wore a Crown,[378] had now itself become almost a Kingdom.[379]

He, a crowned King, the overlord of so many Princes, the ally of the

Roman Emperor himself,[380] looked with an evil eye on the one corner

of his realm whose master paid him no obedience.[381] We may doubt

whether the vassalage of Flanders or Aquitaine, to say nothing of

Barcelona, involved more of practical submission than the vassalage of

Normandy; but, as I have explained more than once, there was no other

among the great vassals of the Crown whose greatness seemed so directly

stolen from that of the Crown itself, no other whose fief, by its very

position, seemed [Sidenote: Jealousy of the other Princes against

William.] so literally to hold its royal overlord in fetters.[382]

And jealousy of William and his Duchy was by no means confined to the

King and his immediate subjects; nearly all the Princes of Gaul seem

to have been for once ready to abet their suzerain against one whom

they all equally [Sidenote: Geoffrey Martel;] dreaded and envied. That

the Hammer of Anjou was eagerly waiting for the fitting moment to

deal another [Sidenote: Theobald of Blois and Champagne;] blow need

hardly be said. And the old hereditary grudge may have rankled in the

breast of Theobald of Blois, now rejoicing in the higher dignity of

Count of Champagne. He had won that County by driving out his nephew

Odo,[383] and the favourable reception which the dispossessed prince

found at the court of William, his marriage with a near kinswoman of

the Duke,[384] may have been either the cause or [Sidenote: William

[Peter] of Aquitaine.] the result of his uncle’s enmity. But it is hard

to see how the power of Normandy could be threatening to a prince so

distant as the Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine. Nor had William

given his southern namesake any offence, unless indeed the Duke of

Aquitaine thought it his duty to avenge the ignominious escape of his

brother from the dominions of the Duke of the Normans. Yet all these

princes, we are told, were eager, in an unusual fit of loyalty, to

avenge the wrongs of the King whom they all so faithfully served, but

to whom the upstart Bastard at Rouen refused all obedience.[385] And

all, King and Princes, were specially stirred up by certain members of

the royal family, whom it is not easy to identify, but who are said to

have thought that Normandy, or some part of it, might form convenient

appanages for themselves.[386] A joint expedition against Normandy, on

a scale which should surpass all former expeditions, was agreed upon.

The panegyrist of William lavishes all his rhetoric and all his powers

of classical allusion to set forth the greatness of the danger by

which Normandy was now [Sidenote: Danger of Normandy.] threatened.

Cæsar himself, the conqueror of the Gauls, or a general greater than

Cæsar, if Rome herself had produced a greater, might have felt fear

at the approach of such a host as was now poured from every region of

Gaul upon the devoted Duchy.[387] The whole land was stirred even to

its remotest corners. The movement reached to the Ducal Burgundy, the

most eastern fief of the Parisian Crown. It aroused the Gascon at the

foot of the Pyrenees, and the men who dwelt among the volcanic peaks

of less distant Auvergne. All these drew the sword; but France and

Britanny, as the nearest of all to the Norman land, were the most eager

for its destruction.[388] Through all Normandy, the men of peaceful

callings, the priest, the peasant, the burgher, all trembled for their

wives, their children, their goods, their very lives. But they thought

what a champion they had in their mighty Duke, and their hearts were

comforted. Laying aside flourishes like these, and confessing the

extreme difficulty of seeing the warriors of Gascony and Auvergne, or

even those of Burgundy, there is no doubt that a great and unusual

effort was made, both by the King and by those of his great vassals

who were [Sidenote: Union of several Princes against Normandy.]

most immediately open to his influence. An invasion of Normandy was

decreed, which really was planned on a greater scale, and carried out

in a more systematic way, than any that had ever gone before it. The

whole forces of the royal domain—of France, in the language of the

time—together [Sidenote: Guy of Ponthieu and Theobald.] with the forces

of Count Theobald and of Count Guy of Ponthieu, were assembled for

a combined attack [Sidenote: Seeming absence of Geoffrey of Anjou.]

on the Duchy. Guy came, naturally enough, to avenge the death of his

brother;[389] what is most to be remarked is the seeming absence of

the Prince whom we should have expected to find first at the muster,

the restless Hammer of Anjou. Some of his subjects seem indeed to have

shared in the expedition, but there is no certain account of Geoffrey

himself till the campaign was over.[390] His absence is not easily to

be accounted for. The chronicles of his own country do not supply us

with any records of other undertakings which might explain his failure

to share in an enterprise which one would have thought would have had

every charm for him. But, even in his [Sidenote: Double invasion of

Normandy. 1054.] absence, the muster was a great one. The forces of the

King and his vassals were divided into two armies for the invasion of

Normandy at two distinct points. Our Latin authorities, glad as ever to

fall back on the geography of a past age, tell us how the forces both

of Celtic and of Belgic Gaul were gathered together in two divisions.

The Celtic host was to march under the command of the King in person,

the forces of the Belgian lands under that of his brother Odo. With

Odo was joined in command the King’s special favourite, Reginald of

Clermont, not the more famous Clermont in the distant land of Auvergne,

but the lowlier Clermont in the nearer land of Beauvais. With them

marched two other leaders of the rank of Count, Ralph of Montdidier and

he of whom we have already heard, Guy of Ponthieu.[391] The vernacular

poet more kindly helps us to the real names of the districts which are

veiled under the obsolete titles delighted in by the Latin writers.

Normandy was to be invaded on each side of the Seine, and the Seine was

taken as the limit alike of the lands to be invaded and of the hosts

which [Sidenote: Forces of “Belgic Gaul” under Odo.] were severally to

invade them.[392] The Northern, the Belgic, host was to enter the elder

Normandy, the first home of Rolf, the French-speaking land of Rouen.

They were to enter by way of Beauvais, to advance and ravage the land

of Caux, the coast-land to the right of the Seine, the land around the

minster of Fécamp and the castle of Lillebonne. They were to harry the

whole district and diocese of Rouen, and to carry their ravages up

to the metropolis itself.[393] To the muster of Odo came the men of

primatial Rheims; the men too of Soissons, once the home of Merovingian

royalty, and so soon to become the guerdon of a Norman traitor.[394]

There also were the men of Laôn, where the line of the Teutonic Emperor

had so long lingered, and the men of Noyons, the city which had beheld

the permanent inauguration of the Parisian Kingdom.[395] There marched

the forces of Vermandois, whose Carolingian Lord appeared as the loyal

homager of the upstart dynasty.[396] The promise of Norman spoil drew

the men of Amiens, soon to become the flock of the Prelate whose verse

was to hand down to us the minutest contemporary record of Norman

victory.[397] Himself, not yet a father of the Church, may well have

followed, among the men of his native Ponthieu, to avenge a slaughtered

nephew and a self-banished niece.[398] Thither men came from Meulan

on the Seine and from Beaumont on the Oise,[399] from the corn-fields

of Brie and from the rose-gardens[400] of Provins. By twenties, by

hundreds, by thousands, the force of all the lands right of the Seine

gathered under the banners of Guy and Odo, to carry slaughter and

devastation through those parts of Normandy which lay on their own side

of the great Norman river. [Sidenote: Forces of “Celtic Gaul” under

the King.] The other muster gathered round the standard of the King

himself. Thither came the men of those ancient cities of central Gaul,

which, now no less than then, which then no less than in the days of

Cæsar and in the old time before him, still sit, each one as a lady for

ever,[401] by the banks of their ancient rivers or on the proud crests

of their everlasting hills. If their peaceful calling did not keep

them by their thrones and altars, the crosses of three Metropolitans

might have been borne to the camp of Henry. The men of Bourges and

Berry[402] came from around the steep of old Avaricum, whence Ambigatus

had sent forth his swarming colonists to more southern lands,[403]

and where Vercingetorix had bid defiance to the mightiest of southern

invaders.[404] Thither too came the men of Sens, the countrymen of

Brennus and his host, the city whose sons had encamped upon the

Roman forum and had wound their way round the steep of the Roman

capitol.[405] And from the banks of the rushing Loire, from around the

towers of Saint Martin and Saint Gatian, came the men of Tours, the

fellow-citizens of so many saints, whose land, now crushed beneath

the Hammer of Anjou, had once seen [Sidenote: 732.] the Hammer of

Christendom break in pieces the hosts of the False Prophet. Thither too

came the contingents of the other cities by the great boundary stream,

the men of Count Theobald’s Blois and of King Henry’s Orleans. There

were the men of the border-land of Perche, and of the King’s own towns

of Etampes and Montlhery, towns whose fame, such as it is, was reserved

for later days. Thither came the men of the bocage and the men of the

plain,[406] the men of the vast cornland which surrounds the hill of

Chartres, the hill where Druids had once held their orgies, but where

the rites of the heathen had now given way to the learning and holiness

of Prelates like Fulbert and like Ivo. Full no doubt of faith in that

revered relic before which Rolf and his pirate-host had quailed,[407]

the land of the old enemy of Richard the Fearless[408] sent forth its

forces to wreak a tardy vengeance on the successor alike of Rolf and of

Richard.

[Sidenote: The King’s division assembles at Mantes.]

The host of Celtic Gaul held its trysting-place at a spot doomed

to be memorable and fatal above all other spots in the history of

the Conqueror. King Henry’s standard was pitched in the border town

of Mantes, the town ruled by a grandson of Æthelred, a nephew of

Eadward,[409] a prince whose death was to bring undeserved reproach

upon the Conqueror’s name and whose city was to behold the last

[Sidenote: Description of the town.] and the least worthy of his

exploits. Mantes, the frontier post of France against Normandy, was a

spot whose position had made it a favourite haunt of William’s Wiking

fathers in the days when Rouen was still a post to be won, and when

Paris was still a post to be threatened. No other spot lay as a more

convenient centre between the two great cities of the Seine. On the

left bank, the higher ground on which the town itself stands slopes

gently to the river. A range of loftier hills, as all along this part

of the course of the Seine, bounds the valley on the other side. But

at this point the stream divides, and two large islands, resorts such

as the pirates of the North so dearly loved, at once divide and unite

by bridges, old and new, the town itself and its suburb of Limay. The

islands of the Seine, like the islands of the Loire, had ofttimes seen

Rolf and Hasting moor their barks and tell over their plunder; and now

it was around those islands that the host assembled which was at last

to take vengeance for those old wrongs, and to bring the sons of the

Pirates to an utter, if a tardy, submission. The host that gathered at

Mantes, the host under the command of the King himself, was to enter

and harry the land of Evreux and the land of Rouen; the King of the

French would ride by Lisieux to the sea from which the hated intruders

could no longer keep him; he would return by Auge, lord of all those

lands within the Norman border where the tongue and life of France had

taken root, and whose inhabitants had been his brothers-in-arms on the

day of Val-ès-dunes.[410] The Bastard might perhaps still be allowed

to reign over his old enemies; the rough Northern blood of Bayeux and

Coutances might have him, if they would, for their ruler; but the old

grant, wrung in the days of weakness from King Charles and Duke Robert,

should be recovered by a prince who united the claims of Laôn and of

Paris, and who had made up his mind to be no longer kept out of his

own Rouen and cut off from the mouth of his own Seine.

[Sidenote: Preparations of William.]

The preparations of Duke William were equal to the [Sidenote: He

gathers two armies.] great emergency in which he found himself. He

called out the whole force of his Duchy. To meet the twofold invasion

he gathered a twofold army, each division of which was to defend one

side of the Seine against the [Sidenote: His own division is opposed

to the King.] approaching enemy. For his own share he took the defence

of the lands on the left bank of the river, the lands threatened by

the King in person. Had he cast [Sidenote: Question of the feudal

scruple.] away the feudal scruple which we have seen acting upon his

mind during the siege of Arques? Did he now deem that so many injuries

had at last absolved him from every duty of a vassal, and that he might

now, without a stain on his honour or his conscience, go forth, and,

if need be, meet his lord in battle face to face? Or did he foresee

that, as the event proved, no such meeting would be needful? Did he

know that the surest way to avoid meeting his lord face to face was to

go forth in person to meet him? However this may be, William now took

on himself the immediate duty of protecting the lands against which

King Henry was marching, the lands between the [Sidenote: William’s

muster from Western Normandy.] Seine and the Dive.[411] For their

defence he gathered the forces of the neighbouring districts. The

warriors of the hilly land of Auge, where the mouth of the Dive was

then a famous haven, came to meet the King who had specially marked

out their district as one object of his attack. The men of Falaise

and of the whole County of Hiesmes pressed as ever to the standard

of the sovereign who was more specially their own. Ralph of Tesson,

no longer doubtful, no longer hesitating between his loyalty and his

plighted oath, came once more to yield that help which had been found

so effectual on an earlier day of battle.[412] All these were men

who had fought on William’s side when the French monarch had passed

as a deliverer through the lands which he now entered as an enemy.

[Sidenote: Loyalty of the Bessin and the Côtentin.] But others came

on that day to William’s muster who, at Henry’s former coming, had

fought against King and Duke alike. The men of the Bessin were there to

atone for the error of the day when they had met their prince in arms.

Hamon Dentatus slept in his honoured tomb at Esquay;[413] Grimbald

lay with his fettered limbs in some lowlier grave;[414] and, since

they were gone, no traitor had disturbed the fidelity of the Saxon

land. And it is with a special thrill of pride that the island poet

tells us how the Barons of the Côtentin[415] were there too, ready as

before to break a lance with the French invader,[416] but this time

to break it not as the rebels but as the loyal subjects of their own

prince. And from still more distant corners of his Duchy men pressed

to William’s standard. The brother whom he had advanced, Robert the

son of Herleva and Herlwin, led the men of his county to [Sidenote:

Contingent from Mortain,] the ducal muster. He came from the fortress

of which the Duke had deprived, perhaps defrauded, his cousin and

namesake, now a wanderer and an adventurer in the most distant field

of Norman valour.[417] The Lord of Mortain had fixed his home in

perhaps the most picturesque of all the picturesque sites in which

the Norman chiefs seem to have delighted. His castle on the rock has

been wantonly destroyed to make way for one of the barbarous official

buildings of modern France. But the land from which Robert brought

his warriors still retains its charm; the cliffs, the winding dells,

and, rarest sight of all, the waterfalls, great and small, bounding

from one rocky stage to another, are there still; the grand and simple

church, of a somewhat later age, still remains, and, yet above town and

castle, rise still loftier heights, from which the eye may range as far

as the Mount of the Archangel. And, [Sidenote: and Avranches.] more

distant still[418] than the men of Mortain, came the men of the march

against the Breton, the men of Avranches, viscounty and city, where

the proudest steep in all the Norman land, crowned, alas, no longer by

its vanished minster, takes in the Archangel’s Mount as but one point

in a landscape where half Normandy and Britanny seem to lie at the

beholder’s feet. From the Coesnon to the Dive, from Seez to Cherbourg,

all were there, stout of heart and ready of hand, to guard their

country and their sovereign against the attacks of their faithless

overlord.

[Sidenote: William’s plan of defence.]

The plan of the Duke was to stand wholly on the defensive. All

provisions of every kind were to be moved out of the King’s line of

march; the cattle were to be driven to the woods, and the peasants to

be sent to take care of them there.[419] He would himself with his

division follow the King’s steps; he would encamp near him, and be

sure to cut off every man who strayed from the royal camp for forage

or plunder.[420] The like policy was enjoined [Sidenote: The leaders

beyond the Seine.] on the defenders of the lands beyond the Seine. The

men of Caux and of the other districts in that quarter were placed

under four of the chief men of their own district. Old Hugh of Gournay,

at the head of the men of Braye, came from his frontier town by the

minster of Saint Hildebert, the town whose name he was to transfer to

more than one spot in conquered England.[421] Count Robert of Eu came

from the other frontier town so lately honoured by the marriage rites

of his sovereign. William Crespin came from the less famous Bec of

the land of Caux,[422] whose name is eclipsed by that more honoured

namesake which was then the light of Normandy. And Walter Giffard, who

had so well kept the wooden castle below the steep of Arques,[423] was

now to take his share in warfare of a freer and a wilder kind. Till the

whole force of the land could be got together, the Barons of Eastern

Normandy were bidden to watch the foe, to skulk in the woods, and to

give the invaders no opportunity for an attack.[424]

[Sidenote: Ravages of the French.]

The right division of the French army, the division of Belgic Gaul,

seems to have entered Normandy somewhere near the frontier town of

Aumale. They passed on, committing every sort of ravage as they went.

Saracens, we are told, could not have done worse.[425] Houses great

and small were burned, so were churches and monasteries, moveable

goods were carried off, among which, as in old Greek warfare, human

prey seems to have been thought not the least valuable. The peasants

whom they fell in with were seized and carried off;[426] women were

everywhere ravished; children and old men seem to have been dispatched

at [Sidenote: They reach Mortemer.] once.[427] In this way they marched

on till they reached Mortemer, not Mortemer by the forest of Lions, but

a more northern Mortemer, which draws its whole claim to remembrance

from the events of this campaign. The country through which they

passed may be called hilly; but the hills have no specially marked

or picturesque character. The town of Aumale stands on a comparative

height, which slopes away by a gradual descent to the west. A bottom,

in no way specially marked by nature, divides this hill from another

of the same kind, the road over which leads the traveller to the town

of Drincourt on the Dieppe, now known as Neufchâtel-in-Braye. From the

neighbourhood of this point the river Eaulne flows down to meet the

Dieppe and the Varenne [Sidenote: Description of the place.] by the

castle of Arques. In the space between the two hills, a little way from

the road, and almost hidden by trees, lie the shell of a round tower

on its mound, a church of but small attractions, and a few scattered

houses and gardens, so far from forming a town that they are hardly

[Sidenote: The town destroyed and not rebuilt.] worthy to be called a

village. That spot is Mortemer; and the absence of anything remarkable

in the Mortemer of the present day is the best witness of the event

which made Mortemer famous in the days of William. In those days

Mortemer was evidently a town of some size, according to the standard

of the eleventh century. There is no sign that the town was fortified;

the tower which still remains has doubtless supplanted a donjon of

the earlier type; but it was the mere private fortress of the lord

and not the defence of the town itself. The change in the condition

of the place must have been great. Mortemer could now hardly supply

entertainment to a passing traveller; but we are told that the French

army took up their head-quarters there, on account of the good and

plentiful accommodation which the town afforded.[428] Mortemer became

a centre of systematic plunder. The French devoted the day to pillage;

the neighbourhood was harried with fire and sword; stores of cattle and

wine were brought in to Mortemer; and the night was given to feasting,

drinking, and every sort of excess.[429]

[Sidenote: The French at Mortemer surprised by the Normans.]

The Norman leaders had been well served by spies, and they had now

found exactly the opportunity for which they had been waiting. One

vigorous blow might crush one division of the invaders altogether, and

the force of all Normandy might then turn against the other. The four

leaders, with Hugh of Montfort, and Roger of Mortemer, the lord of

the town in which the enemy had fixed themselves, at the head of the

whole levies of the country, made a night march upon the unexpecting

invaders. The Norman force reached Mortemer at day-break. They found

no preparations for defence; most of the French were still asleep.

With the true Norman instinct, fire was the first means of attack

resorted to. The Frenchmen were awakened by the burning of the houses

in which they were quartered. The confusion was frightful; men had to

arm themselves in the midst of the flames and with the enemy pressing

around them. One man would fain mount his horse, but he could not find

his bridle; another, still less lucky, could not find the door of the

house in which he was lodged.[430] The most part strove to cut their

way out of the burning town, but they found the head of each street

guarded by Norman soldiers.[431] Yet, according to every account, the

French, though taken at such a disadvantage, resisted manfully, and

kept up the struggle for several hours, from the dawn of a winter’s

day, [Sidenote: Utter discomfiture of the French.] till three hours

after noon.[432] The great mass of the French were cut to pieces; a few

escaped to skulk in the woods, but the greater number were cut down

either in the town itself or in the attempt to escape. The burned and

charred ruins, the dunghills, the fields and paths around the town,

were covered with dead and wounded men. Only those were spared who were

worth sparing for the sake of their ransom. Many a Norman soldier,

down to the meanest serving-man in the ranks, carried off his French

prisoner; many an one carried off his two or three goodly steeds with

their rich harness. In all Normandy there was not a prison that was

not full of Frenchmen.[433] As for the leaders [Sidenote: Fate of

the leaders. Escape of Odo and Reginald.] of the expedition, Odo the

King’s brother was among the first to escape; Reginald of Clermont was

equally lucky.[434] But the princes of Ponthieu were less fortunate.

Waleran, [Sidenote: Death of Waleran of Ponthieu.] the Count’s brother,

was slain, fighting valiantly.[435] Count [Sidenote: Imprisonment

of Count Guy.] Guy himself was taken prisoner, and was kept as the

Duke’s captive at Bayeux for two years. He was at last [Sidenote: He

is released on doing homage to William.] released, but only on doing

homage and binding himself to the Duke of the Normans for the yearly

service of a hundred knights whenever called upon.[436] Ralph of

Montdidier fell into the hands of Roger of Mortemer, whose castle,

perhaps [Sidenote: Roger of Mortemer releases Ralph of Montdidier

through a feudal scruple.] the only stone building in the town,

remained standing among the flames. By one of those strange feudal

complications which we so often meet with in those times, the Lord of

Mortemer had become the man of the Count of Montdidier.[437] Roger

remembered his duty to his lord, even when that lord appeared in the

guise of an enemy. He tended him friendly in his castle for three days,

and then took him to his own house in peace.[438] But this discharge of

feudal duty was held by Duke William to be inconsistent with his duty

as the vassal and the subject of a greater master. All Roger’s services

could not plead against this [Sidenote: Roger banished by the Duke, and

his castle confiscated,] ill-timed tenderness to a foe. He was banished

from Normandy, and, though after a while he was allowed to return

and to receive again the rest of his lands, the castle from which

he drew his name was withheld from him. [Sidenote: and bestowed on

William of Warren.] That castle the Duke granted to a brave and rising

knight, William of Warren,[439] who took his name from a fortress by

the northern Varenne which has since exchanged its name for that of

Bellencombre.[440] He, like his predecessor Roger, and so many others,

was the Duke’s kinsman through the forester of Caux;[441] he lived to

become the husband of the Duke’s stepdaughter,[442] to win for himself

an Earldom in England, and to be the forefather of one who, two hundred

years later, could appeal, like the Bastard himself, to his own sword

as the surest tenure by which he held it.[443]

[Sidenote: The news brought to William.]

The joyful news, we are told, was carried the same night[444] to

the Duke in his quarters on the other side of the Seine. His first

impulse was thankfulness to God, who had given him so great a success

without any loss, at any rate without any considerable loss, of his

own men.[445] His next thought was how to improve the occasion so as

to get rid of the other division of the invading army with [Sidenote:

His stratagem and message to the King.] even less trouble. He would

himself send the news to his royal overlord. We are not told exactly

where the two armies were encamped, but it was doubtless somewhere

between the Seine and the Dive, and one description places the French

army by the side of a river with overhanging cliffs.[446] The camp of

the Duke was not far off. A messenger was at once sent off, to announce

in a startling way the loss which had fallen on the royal army on the

[Sidenote: Ralph of Toesny.] other side of the Seine. Some make the

messenger chosen for his task a man of lofty and famous lineage. He

was, we are told, Ralph of Toesny or of Conches, the grandson of the

famous Roger, the proud descendant of Malahulc, the man who had sought

for a kingdom in Spain, and had been one of the scourges of Normandy

in the days of William’s childhood.[447] Of Ralph we shall hear again

at Senlac, how he refused, like Walter Giffard, to discharge any

function, however honourable, which kept him back from dealing his

blows against the English.[448] Thus high of birth and of spirit, he

and his were connected by marriage with other houses of equal fame.

His own wife was of the line of Montfort;[449] his sister was the wife

of the famous William Fitz-Osbern,[450] and his son, in after years,

when his house was transferred from Normandy to England, became the

husband of one of the daughters [Sidenote: Delivery of the message at

midnight.] of our martyred Waltheof.[451] Ralph of Toesny then, or it

may be some lowlier messenger, rode to the French camp; he climbed,

some say a tree, some say a lofty rock, which overlooked the tent of

the King.[452] The stillness of the night was broken, the slumbers of

the King were disturbed, by a voice, which might seem to come from

another world, shouting aloud, “Frenchmen, awake, ye are sleeping too

long; go forth and bury your friends who lie dead at Mortemer.” The

King and his friends talked together and wondered. But the tidings

thus strangely brought to them were soon spread abroad. Some make the

Norman Baron reveal himself, and tell in his own person how Odo had

fled, how Guy was in bonds, how Waleran was slain.[453] Others seem to

make the news come from some other source, from some fugitive escaped

from Mortemer, or from that mere mysterious power of rumour which

seems to travel faster than any [Sidenote: Panic and retreat of the

French army.] post.[454] At all events we are told that a panic fell

on King Henry and his host. Before the sun had well dawned, all was

ready for a retreat. Horsemen were mounted, sumpter-horses were loaded,

the tents and huts which had formed the royal camp were all burning.

All faces were now turned, not towards Rouen or Lisieux, but towards

Paris or more distant cities. The retreat was a hasty one; men were

glad to get as fast as they could out of so dangerous a land. Their

march, or rather their flight, was undisturbed by William; King Henry

reached his capital in safety, and his Barons and other followers, the

mighty armament of all Celtic Gaul, were scattered every man to his own

home.[455]

[Sidenote: The story illustrative of Norman craft.]

There is something half romantic, half grotesque, about the details of

this campaign. Yet the substance of the tale comes from contemporary

writers, and the whole story is eminently characteristic of William,

and indeed of his people. No people of warriors were ever more ready

than the Normans to exchange, whenever need called for the exchange,

the skin of the lion for that of the fox.[456] Assuredly neither

William the Bastard nor Robert Wiscard was at all lacking in any form

of courage; but it was, after all, their craft rather than their

courage which set them so high [Sidenote: Illustration of William’s

character.] above the rest of the world. It is quite possible that

seven years may have abated somewhat of that impetuous energy of early

youth with which William spurred across the plain of Val-ès-dunes

to smite the rebel of Bayeux [Sidenote: His policy.] with his own

hand.[457] He may have learned—perhaps from the teaching of King

Henry himself[458]—that it is not always the duty of a general to

thrust himself forward wherever danger happens to be keenest. But it

is certain that, twelve years later, William was as ready as he had

ever been for deeds of the highest personal prowess, whenever personal

prowess was the surest way to success. The difference between William

and most men of his age was that he had now learned that it was no

mark of wisdom or of courage to run risks which might be avoided, or

to jeopard his own life and the lives of his followers, when the same

object might be gained by easier means. He had, by this time at least,

learned to rise above the follies of mere chivalry, above the mere

senseless love of giving and taking blows without an object. Nor had

he a spark of that impetuous patriotism which led the nobler soul of

Harold to deem no shame so great as the shame of leaving a rood of

English ground to be harried by the stranger. We may acquit William

of all wanton oppression; we may fully believe that the sufferings

of his people roused his indignation.[459] But he could stifle that

indignation; he could stand calmly by and behold their sufferings, if

he thought that he could gain his object better by biding his time and

letting the [Sidenote: Vein of pleasantry in the Norman character.]

enemy for a while work his wicked will. And, mingled with all this,

there is a certain element of grim merriment, a delight in a joke

spoken or acted, which runs through the whole career of the Conqueror.

It needed a ready wit to send Roger of Toesny, or any other man, to the

top of a tree or of a rock to announce in the dead of the night that

the French had been cut to pieces at Mortemer. Here again William is

only a representative of his people. A touch of pleasantry, however

rough, runs through most Norman sayings and doings. We may be sure

that the messenger, whoever he was, thoroughly enjoyed his errand and

entered into its spirit. And the policy of William in this campaign,

whatever we think of it in any other light, had at least, as his policy

commonly had, the merit of success. Most princes of his time would

have sought eagerly for a pitched battle. Most of the few princes who

might have shrunk from a pitched battle would have been unable to form

any intelligible military plan of any other kind. William, evidently

seconded by men who understood him, knew how to win victories without

fighting. His dominions were invaded by two powerful armies at once.

He laid his plans; he bode his time. One army was cut to pieces with

hardly the loss of a Norman life. The other was hurried out of the land

without so much as striking a blow.

[Sidenote: William fortifies Breteuil as a check on Tillières.]

King Henry seems by this time to have had enough of Norman warfare

for a while. We hear vaguely of hostilities still going on,[460] but

there is only one act on either side of which we meet with any distinct

mention. This is the fortification by the Duke of a post which was

intended to check for the future such incursions as his southern

march had just undergone. The time had not yet come for William again

to demand that fortress of Tillières of which Henry had so unfairly

dispossessed him in the early days of his reign.[461] But he now raised

a counter-fortress within his own dominions, which was expressly

designed to act as a check on Tillières itself.[462] This was at

Breteuil on the Iton, a tributary of the Eure, near the wood of its

own name, in the Diocese of Evreux, not far [Sidenote: It is entrusted

to William Fitz-Osbern.] from Ralph of Toesny’s castle and abbey of

Conches. The castle was built, and was committed to the trusty care of

William Fitz-Osbern.[463]

[Sidenote: Peace concluded. 1055.]

At last the King sought for peace. His main object was to bring about

the redemption of the many French captives who were still lingering in

Norman prison-houses. The knights were at last set free on paying their

ransoms, but their harness remained as the prey of the victors.[464]

[Sidenote: William authorized to make conquests at the expense of

Anjou.] A more remarkable article of the peace was that by which the

King engaged not to interfere with any conquests which William had

made, or might make, at the expense of the Count of Anjou. Henry

indeed seems to have done more, and to have promised William the

regular feudal investiture of any such possible conquests.[465] This

agreement seems to amount almost to proof positive that Geoffrey had

not had any share in the late invasion of Normandy. It was seemingly

as a punishment for his defection that his possessions were now openly

offered to the Norman. Before long we shall again find Henry and

Geoffrey allied against William, but just at this moment we must look

upon King and Duke as once more allies against the Angevin Count.

[Sidenote: Extension of William’s frontier southwards. 1048–1063.]

It was in William’s earlier days of good service to his overlord that

he had first carried his arms, and extended his dominion, beyond the

range of hills which seems to form the natural southern frontier of

Western Normandy. In his first campaign against the Angevin he had

added or restored to his Duchy the Cenomannian fortress of [Sidenote:

Domfront.] Domfront,[466] a prize which was no unworthy instalment of

the nobler and more distant prize in the same region which was, before

many years, to fall into his hands. That first campaign, William’s

first deed of prowess beyond the bounds of his own Duchy, had made him

master of a fortress which men deemed impregnable, and of a district

which, as his earliest conquest, he no doubt looked on with special

affection. That part of the ancient Cenomannian Diocese and County

which surrounds the hill of Domfront has remained to this day an

integral portion of the Norman land. The southern bulwark of William’s

Duchy was now the proud fortress by the Varenne, the town which, still

largely girded by its ancient walls, abides to this day perched on its

ancient eyrie, and has not, like so many greater cities, descended

into the plain below. The shattered donjon,[467] reared, like that of

his own Falaise, on wild and craggy rocks, looks forth on the wilder

and heath-crowned rocks of a rival height, whose distorted strata bear

witness to the struggles and revolutions of days before man had yet

appeared on earth. The fortress won by the terror of his name, once

an outpost threatening the Norman border, was now the surest guard of

the Norman heights to the north, the most threatening menace to that

boundless plain, broken by gentler hills, which stretched away over

the disputed land of Maine towards the home of the hostile Angevin.

Around the hill lay the thickly wooded land, rich in the silvan sports

so dear to William’s heart, the land which the Hammer of Anjou had

yielded without a stroke to the youthful lord of Normandy. Lower down

the stream stood what was now his furthest outpost, his own creation

[Sidenote: Ambrières.] of Ambrières, another donjon on a height, hard

by the point where the Varenne joins the greater stream of the Mayenne.

The shattered walls of that donjon still bear the impress of William’s

age, though the district in which it stands is no longer entitled to

the honours of the Norman name.

Domfront then had passed irrevocably into William’s hands, but

Ambrières was still, in some way or other, a [Sidenote: Its former

occupation by William, [1049];] subject of contention. There seems

no doubt that William had occupied and fortified the post in the

earlier campaign.[468] Possibly it had been since that time taken and

dismantled by Geoffrey; possibly the post was to be made stronger and

more extensive, with a view to further conquests in the same direction.

At all events, works of some kind at [Sidenote: its present rebuilding

or strengthening.] Ambrières, whether works of mere strengthening or

of construction from the ground, were just now an object on which

William’s mind was eagerly set. His first act after the conclusion of

the peace with France, at the very meeting—was it a meeting with the

King in person?—at which the peace was signed, was to summon all the

chief military tenants of Normandy to appear within forty days to help

in carrying on the needful works at Ambrières.[469] A message to the

same effect was sent to Count Geoffrey. [Sidenote: William’s challenge

to Geoffrey Martel.] The Duke of the Normans would, on the fortieth

day, appear at Ambrières with his force and take possession of his

fortress.[470] The prospect of so terrible a neighbour struck dread

into the heart of the nearest vassal of Anjou, [Sidenote: Geoffrey of

Mayenne;] Geoffrey, Lord of Mayenne, a town on the lower course of

the river from which it takes its name, and which was, a few years

later, to be the scene of one of William’s [Sidenote: his counsel to

Geoffrey Martel.] boldest exploits.[471] The Lord of Mayenne poured his

forebodings into the ears of his own lord at Angers. If the Normans

were allowed to take possession of Ambrières, nothing but ravage and

utter destruction would be the fate of the Angevin lands. The heart

of Count Geoffrey was lifted up, and he bade his namesake of Mayenne

cast him aside as a base and shameful lord, if he allowed the threats

of the Norman to be carried [Sidenote: William at Ambrières.] out in

act.[472] The appointed day came; the Duke appeared at Ambrières; the

works, of whatever nature, were begun.[473] News came that Geoffrey

Martel was [Sidenote: Geoffrey’s delay.] on his march. William waited

a while, but the enemy came not, and provisions began to fail. Great

and small began to complain of the lack of food; and no doubt, in

Normandy as well as in England, men were much more ready to fight

than to remain under arms without fighting.[474] [Sidenote: William

garrisons the castle, and goes away.] The Duke therefore left a

garrison in Ambrières, and retired with the remainder of his army,

bidding them hold themselves in readiness to assemble again at a

moment’s notice.[475] It would have been foolhardiness indeed to have

shut himself up without any adequate cause [Sidenote: Geoffrey and

his allies come to Ambrières.] within the walls of a border fortress.

But, if the Norman historian is to be believed, the Norman Duke’s back

was no sooner turned[476] than the Angevin Count and his allies came

hastening to the siege of the stronghold of Ambrières. [Sidenote:

William of Aquitaine.] With Count Geoffrey came his lord, as he is

called[477]—at all events his step-son—Peter, now William, Count of

Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine.[478] He came perhaps to avenge the

ignominious flight of his brother from Moulins;[479] but with him came

another chief in whose heart many an old enmity must have been choked,

many a bitter remembrance must have been handed over to forgetfulness,

before he could consent to take service in the same host as Geoffrey.

[Sidenote: Odo of Britanny.] Yet so it was; a Breton prince, Odo, the

uncle of the reigning Count Conan,[480] came to fight under the Angevin

banner [Sidenote: They besiege Ambrières.] against the common enemy

at Rouen. The three princes attacked the castle of Ambrières with all

the resources known to the military art of the time. An attempt at a

storm was beaten back by the defenders. The archers shot their arrows,

the petraria hurled its stones, the ram was dashed against the wall,

but all was in vain.[481] Meanwhile the news of the siege, and of the

gallant resistance of the [Sidenote: Return of William.] garrison,

was borne to Duke William. He collected his troops with all speed,

and hastened, with such haste as he knew how to use when haste was

needed,[482] to the relief of [Sidenote: Flight of the besiegers.]

Ambrières. At his mere approach, we are told, the three allied Counts

took to flight.[483] The Lord of Mayenne was less lucky; he was carried

off as a prisoner into the [Sidenote: Homage of Geoffrey of Mayenne.]

furthest parts of Normandy, and he was not released till he had

acknowledged himself the man of Duke William.[484]

[Sidenote: Increase of William’s power.]

The fame of William was no doubt widely spread by this series of

successful exploits and stratagems, and his direct influence was

distinctly increased by his receiving the homage of the Count of

Ponthieu in one direction and [Sidenote: Extension of his frontier

towards Anjou.] of the Lord of Mayenne in another. It would seem

also that this was the time when William made, in conformity with

the licence granted him by King Henry,[485] a further acquisition

of Cenomannian territory at the cost of the Count of Anjou. It was

not unimportant to him to extend his power as far as might be in the

district through [Sidenote: 1049.] which he had, six years before,

made his famous night-march from Domfront to Alençon.[486] At a short

distance west of Alençon, and south-west of the episcopal town of Seez,

the Sarthon, a small tributary of the Sarthe, was the boundary between

Normandy and Maine. The Duke now took possession of a point beyond

the frontier stream; a castle and town arose, which were entrusted to

the care of Roger of Montgomery. It lay in the near neighbourhood of

the hereditary possessions of his wife, and from her the new bulwark

of Normandy was honoured or disgraced by the name of the Rock of

Mabel.[487]

[Sidenote: Three years’ peace. 1055–1058.]

The strength of William’s enemies seems to have been nearly exhausted

by their late efforts, or else their courage was chilled by the ill

success of their arms. For three years Normandy saw neither rebellion

nor foreign war. William thus had time to devote himself either to the

prosecution of his vengeance, or to the vindication of ecclesiastical

discipline, in the deposition of his uncle the [Sidenote: 1055.]

Primate Malger.[488] This took place in the same year as the campaign

of Ambrières. After that date, besides the Duke’s quarrel and

reconciliation with Lanfranc,[489] there is nothing to recount till,

three years later, we come to another, and the last, invasion of

Normandy by the combined [Sidenote: Last French and Angevin invasion.

August, 1058.] forces of France and Anjou. Geoffrey, the old enemy,

was, we are told, ever ready to strike a blow at Normandy,[490] and

no doubt the memory of his late losses rankled in his mind. Another

great expedition was planned and carried out. In August, when the corn

was on the ground,[491] the King and the Count entered Normandy in the

quarter most convenient for a junction of French and Angevin forces,

in William’s own County of Hiesmes.[492] Their design was a systematic

plundering expedition through all Normandy west of the Seine. They

were to pass through the district of Hiesmes into the land of Bayeux

and Caen; then they were to cross the Dive and, after harrying Auge

and the district of Lisieux, to return home with their plunder.[493]

Above all things, they were to reach the sea in the districts both

west and east of the Dive, and to show that the upstart Duke of the

Pirates could no [Sidenote: William’s scheme of defence. He waits at

Falaise till the enemy reach the Dive.] longer keep his liege lord

barred up in an inland prison. The scheme was laid, and one half of it

was carried out. William determined not to attack the invaders on their

entrance into his Duchy. His plan was to wait for a favourable moment

when he might smite them on their return, gorged with the plunder of

his subjects, and no doubt with their discipline and their energy not

a little relaxed. He gathered his knights, not indeed for immediate

action; he gave orders for the strengthening of castles and the

cleansing of their fosses; and then, leaving the open country exposed

to the ravages of the enemy, he waited in his own stronghold of Falaise

for the moment which [Sidenote: Advance and ravages of the French.]

he knew would not fail soon to come.[494] The French and Angevin host

entered Normandy, and passed through the land burning and plundering in

the usual fashion. They took the town of Hiesmes, which gave its name

to the County. They then marched on to Saint Peter on the Dive; they

occupied the whole town, and the King was lodged at the great Abbey,

then in all the freshness of its new foundation by the pious Lescelina

of Eu.[495] They then struck westward, ravaging the whole Bessin;

but the city itself, as well as the various castles of the district,

seems to have remained untouched. The sea-coast especially, the land

of William’s faithful Hubert, was harried as far as the mouth of the

Seule. The enemy then marched in a [Sidenote: Caen as yet unfortified.]

south-easterly direction to Caen. That town was growing in importance,

but as yet it neither contained anything which could withstand the

attacks of an enemy nor anything which was likely to remain to later

days as a memorial of his visit. Caen was as yet undefended by walls

or castle;[496] the foundations of the two great Abbeys which are its

chief glory were as yet not laid. Whatever Caen then consisted of, it

was certainly sacked, most likely burned. King Henry and Count Geoffrey

had now successfully carried out one half of their scheme of ravage.

They had now to cross the Dive, and to carry fire and sword into the

other half of the doomed region.

The moment for which William had so long been waiting had at last

come. His policy had been in some sort a cruel policy for his Duchy;

but it now enabled him to strike a vigorous and decisive blow at

the retreating enemy. French warfare in Normandy was destined to be

successful only when the banners of King and Duke floated side by

side. King Henry had shared in the triumph of Val-ès-dunes; his men

had been smitten by William’s men in the ambush of Saint Aubin and

in the surprise of Mortemer; he had now himself to feel the might of

William’s own [Sidenote: They reach the Dive at Varaville.] hand in

the second surprise of Varaville. In their march eastward the French

had reached the village of that name, the point which had been chosen

for their passage across the Dive into the land of Auge. Varaville,

now, and probably then, only a small village, lies north-east of Caen,

a little way from the left bank of the old frontier stream. It was an

old battle-ground of France and Normandy. On that spot, or at least

in that neighbourhood, it was that King Harold of Denmark and King

Lewis of France had met face to face; [Sidenote: 945.] it was there

that the Karling had found his master in the valiant heathen who came

to defend the last planted outpost of his race.[497] And now another

King of the French, of another line, of another speech, and another

royal city, came to undergo an overthrow yet more ignominious at the

hands of a Norman Duke who could now hold his own independently alike

of French and of Danish help. Varaville was seemingly an usual point

for crossing into the lands on the right bank [Sidenote: Description of

the spot.] of the river. The contrast between the two sides of the Dive

is here very striking. On the left, the side of Varaville, the land

is flat, and it was in those days doubtless a mere marsh. A causeway,

which still exists, and which is maintained as a modern road, leads

from the village to a point where the stream has for many ages been

crossed by a bridge, but which, in the eleventh century, seems to have

been known only as a ford.[498] Here the French army was to pass over

to the opposite side, the land of Auge. There, within the original

settlement of Rolf, the country is of quite a different character.

The right bank of the Dive is backed at a short distance by a range

of hills of height considerable enough to form a very marked object

in any country not strictly mountainous. They form in fact a bold and

picturesque range, stretching right away to the seashore. Over these

hills the army had to make its way into the rich land of Lisieux.

[Sidenote: The French vanguard crosses the river.] The vanguard, under

the command of the King, had already begun to climb the heights, when

unexpected sounds from the rearward smote on their ears. From the high

ground of Bastebourg,[499] commanding a view of the whole valley, King

Henry turned round only to behold the [Sidenote: William’s march.]

utter discomfiture of his host. The Duke of the Normans had laid his

plan with all the subtlety of his wily brain, and he was now carrying

it out with all the might of his irresistible arm. He had watched

the spot, he had watched the hour, which the enemy seem not to have

watched, and he came upon them at the very moment when he was able to

strike a deadly blow with most effect, and at the same time once more

to avoid the necessity of meeting his lord face to face in battle.

William knew every movement of the enemy; when the right time was come,

he marched forth from Falaise with such troops as he had kept around

him, and summoned all the peasantry of the district to join them. They

came, armed as they were able to arm themselves, with clubs, darts,

anything; no sort of warrior, no sort of weapon, was unfit to bear a

part in the enterprise [Sidenote: BATTLE OF VARAVILLE. August, 1058.]

which William now designed. He marched in stealth up the valley by

Bavent, and reached Varaville in the very nick of time.[500] The King

and his vanguard were, as we have seen, far ahead; the long baggage

train, rich with Norman spoil, and the whole rear-guard of the army,

were still on the left bank. The tide was flowing in, and it soon

became impossible to cross. The French stood in perplexity, one half

of the army finding itself utterly cut off from the other half.[501]

In a moment Duke William was upon them. Every weapon known to Norman

warfare was at once in its fullest activity; the lance and the sword

of the knight on his destrier, the club and dart of the peasant on

foot, [Sidenote: First mention of the Norman archers.] were all alike

plied against the unlucky Frenchmen. And along with these older arms,

we now hear for the first time of another weapon, destined to be,

above all others, terrible and deadly upon a more awful field. For the

first time in our story, the thunder-shower of the Norman arrows[502]

is heard of as carrying dismay and slaughter among the ranks of the

enemy. And no enemy could well be more helpless than those on whom

knights, archers, clubmen, were now called on to display their prowess.

Encumbered as they were with their baggage train, huddled together on

the long, narrow, neglected[503] causeway, resistance [Sidenote: The

French rear-guard cut to pieces.] was almost impossible. A desperate

effort carried the foremost among them to the banks of the river; but,

except to skilful swimmers, the ford was impassable because of the

tide. Multitudes fell into the water and were drowned; the surface

of the Dive was soon covered with floating bodies and harness.[504]

Others strove to escape how they might among the ditches and paths

of the marshy shore. They cast away their weapons, and blundered on

hopelessly through the unknown and treacherous country. The Normans,

knowing the ground, followed, and cut them down without mercy. Of the

whole rear-guard of the French army not a man is said to have escaped.

All were slain, or taken captive, or swept away by the waters.

[Sidenote: King Henry sees the slaughter from the hills.]

It must not be forgotten that all this went on under the eye of the

King of the French—and doubtless of his Angevin ally also—who was

looking down from the high ground which the vanguard had already

reached. Beneath him in full view lay the plain, the causeway, the

stream, the marshes, where the work of death was going on. Like

Xerxes, Henry beheld his subjects cut in pieces before his eyes; but

unlike Xerxes, he was at least eager to go to their help. The Norman

poet tells us how the King saw his men speared and shot down, some

struggling in the waters, some bound and borne off as captives.[505]

His limbs trembled, his face was hot with rage, he was eager and

yet unable to strike a blow or take any step for the rescue of his

unfortunate soldiers. In a moment of desperation he proposed to descend

the hill, and to seek for some other spot where he might cross the

river, and do something at least to avenge, if not to rescue, his

rear-guard.[506] But he had men around him who knew the hopelessness of

[Sidenote: His retreat.] such an attempt. Their counsels persuaded him

to submit to a fate which he could not resist, and to march with all

speed out of the Norman land with the half of his army which was still

left to him.

[Sidenote: Peace with France; Tillières restored to Normandy.]

The battle, or rather massacre, of Varaville was the last act of the

wars between William and Henry. The King was now growing old, and he

might well think that he had had enough of Norman warfare. He presently

brought himself to ask for peace, and to offer as its price the

restoration of the famous fortress of which he had deprived William in

his childhood. The terms were accepted; peace was made, and Tillières,

so long lost to Normandy, became [Sidenote: Death of Henry. 1060.]

once more a bulwark of the Norman frontier.[507] Henry did not long

survive this happy ending of this long struggle. Two years afterwards

he died. His death was attributed to poison, seemingly accidentally

administered.[508] He left his Crown to an heir still under age. The

mother of the new [Sidenote: His Russian marriage.] King had been

brought from a distant land. Henry saw the difficulty of finding any

wife among the princely houses of Western Europe who was not related

to him within the forbidden degrees; he was specially warned by the

troubles which his father had undergone through his first uncanonical

marriage.[509] He therefore sought for a bride in a land among whose

princes there was little fear of any kindred or affinity with a King

of the French. He married Anne, the daughter of the Russian Duke

Yaroslaf.[510] The princes of Russia boasted of a connexion with the

Emperors of the East;[511] and the happy ambiguity of the Macedonian

name[512] had led the great dynasty which was founded by a Slavonian

groom to identify itself with the ancient Kings of Pella and Edessa.

The Russian princess brought with her into France the ancient

Macedonian name of Philip, and her son became the first of a long line

of Kings, princes, and nobles, through whom a name hitherto unknown

to Western Europe became one of [Sidenote: Coronation and accession

of Philip the First. 1059–60.] the most renowned in French history.

In the last year of his father’s lifetime, the young Philip was,

according to several precedents, crowned at Rheims, and the ceremony

was attended by most of the great vassals of his Kingdom.[513] We do

not however hear whether the Duke of the Normans so far honoured his

youthful overlord as to make one of the illustrious assemblage. But

the ties between Normandy and France were now for a time drawn much

more closely than before. Henry had chosen the nearest ally of William

as the guardian of his son and as the [Sidenote: Baldwin of Flanders

Regent of France.] Regent of his Kingdom. During the minority of the

young King, the government of the royal domain was placed in the hands

of William’s father-in-law, the “mighty Marquess”[514] of Flanders.

Baldwin honourably fulfilled his trust towards France, and we need not

say that he kept the peace towards Normandy.[515]

The same year which beheld the death of King Henry beheld also the

death of the most inveterate enemy of Normandy among his great vassals.

The Angevin chroniclers significantly cut short the Norman warfare of

Geoffrey Martel, a sure sign that, however much Norman vanity may have

exaggerated in detail, the general result of the struggle cannot have

been greatly misrepresented. [Sidenote: Last days and death of Geoffrey

Martel. 1060.] Geoffrey’s last days seem to have been clouded over by

ill-success in other quarters. He indeed recovered the city of Nantes

from Hoel of Britanny.[516] But we also read of his being besieged by

his step-son, Peter or William of Poitiers, in the castle of Saumur,

on the steep which looks down, not on the Varenne or on the Mayenne,

but on the mighty Loire itself.[517] The siege was raised through the

sudden death of the Aquitanian prince,[518] and we hear of no further

[Sidenote: His dominions divided between his nephews, Geoffrey and

Fulk Rechin.] exploit on the part of Geoffrey of the Hammer. On the

day before his death he assumed the monastic habit,[519] and, as he

left no sons, he divided his dominions between the two sons of his

sister Hermengarde, the wife of Alberic, Count of the Gatinois. To his

namesake Geoffrey, surnamed the Bearded, he left Anjou and Saintogne,

while Fulk Rechin, already known to us as one of our authorities for

Angevin history, received the city and county of Tours.[520] Normandy

was thus delivered from both her enemies. In her next warfare we shall

find her seeking, not merely to defend her borders, but to extend them.

[Sidenote: Coincidence of the Battle of Varaville with Harold’s

journey. 1058.]

It may be worth notice that the great invasion of Normandy which ended,

so disastrously for the French, in the rout of Varaville, happened

in the very year in which there is every reason to believe that Earl

Harold made his remarkable journey to examine into the political

state of Gaul.[521] His inquiries might perhaps lead him to different

conclusions, according as his visit happened before or after the utter

discomfiture of Henry and Geoffrey. Yet the campaign of Varaville

could do little more than add one more to the many proofs that William

was a foe whom no [Sidenote: Harold’s possible negotiations.] enemy

could afford to neglect. I have already hinted that the mysterious

words of Eadward’s Biographer[522] might perhaps be taken as implying

that Harold sought the friendship, if not the actual alliance, of the

King or of some of his great vassals, as a support in case of any

hostile movements on the part of Normandy. If this be so, we may see

in the almost contemporary deaths of so many French princes a reason

why such negotiations bore [Sidenote: Changes in the aspect of Gaul by

the deaths of Geoffrey Martel and King Henry.] no fruit. King Henry,

Geoffrey Martel, William of Aquitaine, all died within two years after

Harold’s journey. By their deaths the political state of Gaul was

altogether changed, and changed in a direction altogether favourable to

William of Normandy. William of Aquitaine was the only one of the three

who had a successor at all likely to act as a check upon any designs

of his Norman namesake. Guy, Geoffrey, or William, whichever we are

to call the prince who made so hasty a flight from Moulins,[523] was

not likely to cherish much love for William of Normandy, but he seems

to have been mainly occupied by wars with Anjou, and by an expedition

into Spain, in which last, by some means or other, he was followed by

Norman warriors.[524] In any case his solitary help could be of little

service. If Harold hoped to meet any attack on England on the part of

William by a diversion in his rear in the form of a joint attack of his

continental neighbours, the chance of organizing such a confederacy

died with King Henry and Geoffrey Martel. Under the Regency of Baldwin

the Court of Paris became the closest ally of Normandy, and the new

Count of Anjou seems to have been fully occupied at home. We hear of

him chiefly as engaged in asserting certain novel claims over the Abbey

of Marmoutiers,[525] and as having, at the very crisis of the fate of

England, to defend his dominions against his brother Fulk.[526] He was

therefore by no means likely to bear a part in any schemes of policy

which reached [Sidenote: England’s lack of continental allies.] as far

as Britain.[527] The death of the Emperor Henry a few years earlier had

deprived England of another friend. She had in short no continental

ally left except Swend of Denmark. I merely throw out these remarks as

vague hints on a very obscure subject; but it certainly is striking

that the intentionally mystified language of the Biographer should

admit of an interpretation which falls in so well with the state of

things at the particular moment of Harold’s journey.

§ 3. _The War of Maine. 1060–1064._

The main interest of this period of William’s reign gathers round his

great conquest of the Cenomannian County and City. But before we enter

on the narrative of that campaign, a few events in the internal history

of his Duchy may be usefully cleared out of the way.

William was already beginning to show himself, in the words of the

English Chronicler, beyond measure stark to all who withstood his

will.[528] The unrestrained exercise [Sidenote: Banishment of various

Norman nobles.] of power seems to have wrought its usual bad effect.

We now begin to find a prince who had hitherto been distinguished for

clemency to rebellious enemies meting out, to say the least, somewhat

hasty sentences against some of the chief men of his dominions. We

presently find him giving ground for suspicions, unfounded as they

doubtless were, that he had learned to stoop to the base trade of the

poisoner.[529] Several of his nobles were banished about this time,

and every account seems to describe them as banished without just

cause, through the false accusations of envious persons. Among these

false accusers Roger of Montgomery and his wicked wife Mabel stand

pre-eminent.[530] The first recorded victim was Ralph of Toesny, whom

we have seen as, according to one account, the bearer of the news of

the defeat of Mortemer to the French King.[531] He was banished; but

he must have returned within a few years, and he had his share in the

Conquest of England. We may say the same of Hugh of Grantmesnil, one of

the joint founders of Saint Evroul.[532] The banishment of Arnold of

Escalfoy is not wonderful, as both he and his uncle Robert seem to have

ventured on open rebellion. They seem even to have taken the Angevin

side against their country, either in the wars which have been already

described, or in some of the border skirmishes which no doubt still

continued. Robert defended his castle against [Sidenote: Mysterious

death of Robert the son of Geroy. 1060.] the Duke, and he died by a

strange and suspicious death in the year which carried off King Henry

and Count Geoffrey. He sat one day in a merry mood by his winter fire

with his wife Adelaide, a kinswoman of the Duke. She had four apples in

her hand; he snatched two from her in jest; he [Sidenote: Adventures

and death of Arnold of Escalfoy. 1063.] ate of them and died.[533]

His nephew Arnold succeeded him, and for three years he carried on a

devastating warfare in the neighbourhood of Lisieux.[534] He then made

peace with the Duke, on condition of going to the wars in Apulia.[535]

After a while he returned, but only to die by poison administered to

him through the plots of the ruthless daughter of William Talvas.[536]

[Sidenote: Banishment of Abbot Robert of Saint Evroul. 1063.]

Another person who now fell under the Duke’s displeasure was Robert

of Grantmesnil, brother of Hugh, and co-founder, and now himself

Abbot, of Saint Evroul. He was now deposed and banished by William. I

forbear to enter on the interminable details of the negotiations for

his restoration, from which I shrank at an earlier stage of my Norman

history.[537] But two points are of importance. It is made a distinct

charge against William that he ventured to depose a churchman without

the sentence of any ecclesiastical Synod, and seemingly without any

form of trial at all.[538] One account also distinctly says that the

Duke’s motive was hostility to Robert’s family.[539] It is hard to

judge on such slight evidence; but it is to be noticed, on the one

hand, that William’s special panegyrist is silent on the whole subject

of these banishments, and on the other that William’s ecclesiastical

government is the part of his character in which we should least

readily look for an unworthy motive.

[Sidenote: Synod of Caen. 1061. Ordinance of the Curfew.]

The fortunes of an Abbot bring us once more within the ecclesiastical

circle. In the year after King Henry’s death, in a Synod held at Caen

by the Duke’s authority, and attended by Bishops, Abbots, and Barons,

it was ordered that a bell should be rung every evening, at hearing

of which prayer should be offered, and all people should get within

their houses and shut their doors.[540] This odd mixture of piety and

police seems to be the origin of the famous and misrepresented curfew.

Whatever was its object, it was at least not ordained as any special

hardship on William’s English subjects.

[Sidenote: The CONQUEST of MAINE. 1063.]

We now come to that great acquisition of William’s arms and policy

which ranks in the annals of his reign next to the Conquest of England

itself. The various fortunes, the takings and the retakings, of the

city of Le Mans and its County, form a constantly recurring subject

throughout the remaining history of William and of his sons. And the

object struggled for was worthy of the [Sidenote: Old Norman claims

over Maine.] struggle. The land and city over which William was now

about to extend his long dormant claims was a prize which became one

of the proudest jewels in his continental coronet. The Duke of the

Normans, even the King of the English, thought it no scorn to add to

those loftier titles a third which dated from this earlier conquest.

[Sidenote: Beginning of Norman aggrandizement on the Continent.] As

Prince or Count of the Cenomannians, William began the first of those

stages of continental aggrandizement, which, before another century

had passed, extended the sway of the sovereign of England and Normandy

from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees, and made him master of the mouths

of the Loire and the Garonne no less than of those of the Seine and

the Thames. The work had been begun by the conquest of Domfront and

Ambrières; it was now to be extended over the whole of the land which

lies between [Sidenote: History of Maine.] Normandy and Anjou. A long

history, princely, municipal, and episcopal, forms the annals of the

Cenomannian [Sidenote: The ancient Cenomanni in Gaul and Italy.] state

and city. The Cenomannian tribe[541] was illustrious in the earliest

legendary history of Gaul; it shares with the Senones the credit of

that ancient colonization in Italy which brought Rome so near to her

downfall.[542] But it had no part in the actual beleaguering of Rome

by the Senonian [Sidenote: Their close connexion with Rome.] Brennus.

The Cenomanni beyond the Alps were ever found among the faithful allies

of Rome, just as their mother state remains to this day proud of the

relics of Roman dominion. Even during the storm of the Hannibalian

War, the Cenomanni remained faithful to the Republic.[543] Their

metropolis is perhaps less prominent in the pages of Cæsar than we

might have looked for; still the name [Sidenote: The Cenomanni of

Gaul support Vercingetorix.] of the tribe occurs among those who sent

their contingents to the host of Vercingetorix.[544] Under the Roman

domination, we are told that Cenomannia was among the first parts of

Gaul to receive the Christian faith, and the local [Sidenote: Early

preaching of Christianity.] legend traces that line of Bishops which

became so famous in after days up to the very days of the Apostles.

[Sidenote: Succession of Bishops of Le Mans.] In the days of Nerva and

Trajan the Cenomannian Church was founded by Saint Julian, whose name

still lives as the patron of the cathedral of Le Mans. Unlike most of

his [Sidenote: Legend of Saint Julian.] apostolic brethren, the crown

of martyrdom was not destined for him. He died in peace, having fully

organized the local Church, and having been aided in all things by his

convert the local Prince Defensor.[545] In this last mythical personage

we of course see a personification of the _Defensores Civitatis_, the

local Tribunes, under the later [Sidenote: Special ecclesiastical and

popular elements in the history of Maine.] Roman and early Frankish

rulers.[546] This early friendship between the Bishop and the local

magistrate not inaptly prefigures a state of things with which William

himself had to contend. The vast power of the local Church sometimes

combined with the popular element of the city to [Sidenote: Maine

under the Frankish Kings; a march against Bretons and Northmen.]

withstand the more distant sovereign.[547] I pass lightly over the days

of the Merwings and the early Karlings. In those times the name of

Cenomannia, city and district, appears over and over again, as a post

of importance, an outpost against Breton enemies and afterwards against

Scandinavian invaders.[548] It was not uncommonly placed in the hands

of members of the royal house.[549] But these intermediate times do

less to illustrate the events with which we are immediately concerned

than the history or legends of the earliest days. These last, mythical

as they may be, are at least happily invented to adorn the beginnings

of a state which so long remained at once so intensely Roman and so

intensely ecclesiastical.

[Sidenote: Maine in the tenth century.]

The history of Maine and Le Mans with which we are immediately

concerned begins in the tenth century. We have [Sidenote: Alleged

grants to Rolf, 924; to Hugh the Great, 924; and to Geoffrey

Grisegonelle, 978?] seen[550] that the Norman Dukes put forward some

shadow of a claim to Maine by virtue of a grant in the days of King

Rudolf, at the same time that Rolf obtained his second grant, that

of the district of Bayeux.[551] But the chronicler who records this

fact records also a grant of earlier date, but within the same year,

to Hugh the Great of Paris.[552] A grant to Geoffrey Grisegonelle of

Anjou is also, on no less authority than that of Count Fulk Nerra

himself, attributed, by some strange confusion of chronology, to King

[Sidenote: Maine part of the Duchy of France.] Robert.[553] On the

whole, there can be little doubt that Maine formed a part of the great

Duchy of France, and there is still less doubt as to the rivalry and

hatred which reigned between the Angevin Counts and the dynasty which

we find established in Maine towards the end of [Sidenote: Rivalry of

the Counts and Bishops.] the tenth century. There is as little doubt

as to the position of the local Bishops, always at variance, sometimes

at war, with the local Counts, but keeping up a close connexion both

with the King and with the [Sidenote: Count David. 922–970?] Counts

of Anjou. I do not presume to decide whether the Hugh, the David, and

the Hugh-David, whom we [Sidenote: 955–1015?] hear of as reigning in

Maine in the course of the tenth century, and as claiming a descent

from Charles the Great, were really one prince, or two, or three.[554]

But there is no doubt that a Hugh, whether surnamed after the Hebrew

King or not, was reigning late in the tenth and early in the eleventh

century, and that he was the father of [Sidenote: Sainfred Bishop of Le

Mans. 960–994.] the better known Count Herbert. He had great disputes

with Bishop Sainfred of the house of Belesme, a Prelate of whom the

chronicler of the Cenomanniam Bishops draws [Sidenote: Fulk Nerra

overruns Maine. 987–994?] no favourable picture.[555] He is charged

with wasting the revenues of his see in grants to Fulk of Anjou and

to Burchard Count of Vendôme, in order to gain their help against

the nearer enemy.[556] It was perhaps through the instigation of the

Prelate that Fulk invaded Maine, and brought the land and its ruler

into vassalage, if not into [Sidenote: Hugh escapes from Tillières.

996–1015.] actual subjection.[557] Hugh appears also as an enemy of

Normandy, as an ally of Odo of Chartres in an attempt on Tillières, and

as escaping only by a mean disguise from the pursuit of its valiant

defenders.[558] This must have been towards the end of his days, as the

foundation of Tillières [Sidenote: Herbert Wake-Dog Count 1015–1036.]

comes within the reign of Richard the Good. The enmity between the

temporal and spiritual chiefs of Maine went on during the reign of

Hugh’s famous son Herbert, and [Sidenote: Avesgaud Bishop 994–1036.]

during the long episcopate of Avesgaud, the nephew and successor of

Sainfred, and like him a member of the border [Sidenote: Herbert wars

with the House of Belesme.] house of Belesme.[559] With that house, a

house loyal to neither of its lords and terrible to all its neighbours,

Count Herbert had much warfare, and we have come across more than one

incidental mention of those wars, as affording scope for the valour

and faithfulness of the house of Geroy.[560] The impression given by

these stories is that the mighty Lords Marchers found the Cenomannian

[Sidenote: He disputes with Bishop Avesgaud.] Count at least their

match. The ecclesiastical historian implies that this warfare began by

William of Belesme coming to the help of his brother the Bishop. It is

certain that Avesgaud had constantly to contend against Count Herbert

both by temporal and by spiritual arms, and that he called in against

him the help both of spiritual and of temporal allies. At one time we

find him defending the stronghold of La Fertè Bernard[561] against the

Count, who could dislodge him only by the help of a Breton [Sidenote:

Fulbert of Chartres excommunicates Herbert.] force obtained from Count

Alan.[562] At another time he called in the help of the holy Bishop

Fulbert of Chartres, the great letter-writer of the age, who, on what

principle of ecclesiastical law it is not easy to see, addressed an

epistle of excommunication to the Count of Maine, which brought about

a temporary peace.[563] But Herbert was not afraid to measure himself

against a much more dangerous enemy. It was in warfare against Fulk

of Anjou, whose authority he cast aside, that he won his surname of

[Sidenote: His name of Wake-Dog, from his nightly raids against

Anjou.] _Wake-Dog_.[564] So constant were the nightly raids of Count

Herbert that, not only in the open country, in the flat land of Anjou,

but in the fortified towns of the province, nay in the city itself, in

Black Angers on its steep by the Mayenne, men and dogs were ever on the

alert, and ventured not to slumber.[565] These exploits must belong

to the later years of his reign; for, at its beginning, [Sidenote:

His share in the battle of Pontlevois. 1016.] we find him acting as

an ally or vassal of Anjou at the battle of Pontlevois against Odo of

Chartres.[566] Indeed the Angevin writers allow that the victory on

their side was in a great measure owing to the courage and conduct of

[Sidenote: Fulk imprisons Herbert at Saintes. 1026–1028.] Herbert and

his followers.[567] Ten years later, we find Fulk, according to the

approved custom of his house, dealing with Herbert much as his son

dealt with Theobald of Chartres and with William of Aquitaine.[568]

He beguiled him into a visit at Saintes, and there kept him in ward

two years till he agreed to the hard conditions on which liberty was

offered.[569] After an active reign of twenty-one years, Herbert died.

His daughter Biota became the wife of Walter of Mantes, the elder son

of Drogo and [Sidenote: Hugh. (1035–1051).] Godgifu, and nephew of

King Eadward of England.[570] His young son Hugh succeeded him in the

County of Maine, [Sidenote: Regency of Herbert Bacco.] seemingly under

the guardianship of a great uncle, Herbert Bacco.[571] Bishop Avesgaud

died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and was succeeded in the almost

hereditary Bishoprick [Sidenote: Gervase Bishop. 1036–1058.] by his

nephew Gervase.[572] This Prelate was the godfather of the young Count,

and he is described as his defender against his faithless uncle as well

as the defender [Sidenote: He commends the Bishoprick to Geoffrey of

Anjou.] of the rights of his own see.[573] He took one step however

than which none could be more fatal, and one which illustrates the

peculiar position of the Bishoprick. It would seem that, after all

the grants that had been made of the temporal sovereignty of Maine,

the royal rights over the Church of Le Mans were still in the hands

of the King. Whether he held them strictly as King, or as Duke of the

French, was now no longer a practical question.[574] In either case

the Bishop still held, not of the local Count but of his overlord at

Paris. In short, throughout the territories which had formed part of

the Duchy of France, the surrender of the royal rights, especially in

ecclesiastical matters, was by no means so complete as it was in the

great Duchies north and south of the royal dominions.[575] The Count of

Anjou or of Maine did not, after all, possess the same undivided and

uninterrupted sovereignty within his own states which belonged to the

Duke of the Normans. Bishop Gervase, a vassal of the King, unable to

defend himself against his neighbour the Count or the Count’s guardian,

receiving no help from his own lord, petitioned the King to grant

the royal rights over the see, the rights of advocacy and [Sidenote:

Herbert Bacco driven out and Hugh restored.] patronage, to the Count

of Anjou for life.[576] The grant was made; greater strife than before

arose between the Bishop and the guardian uncle; a popular movement,

headed by the Prelate, expelled Herbert Bacco, and restored the young

Count Hugh to his lawful rights.[577] The Prelate’s next business was

to seek, like Jehoiada of old, a wife for the prince whom he had taken

under his [Sidenote: Marriage of Hugh.] guardianship. He found one

in the sister of Count Theobald,[578] the widow of that Count Alan

of Britanny whom we have seen die of poison while besieging a Norman

castle.[579] The marriage was supposed to be in some way dangerous to

the interests of the Count of Anjou, and Martel now poured forth his

whole wrath upon the [Sidenote: Bishop Gervase imprisoned by Geoffrey

Martel. 1044–1051.] Bishop who had advised it. By some of his usual

tricks, he gained possession of the Bishop’s person, and kept him in

prison for seven years. As was usual with the prisoners of an Angevin

Count, he had the option of obtaining his liberty by the surrender

of some part of his possessions. The ransom demanded by Geoffrey

was the surrender of a strong castle which was valiantly defended

by the [Sidenote: His liberation demanded by the Council of Rheims.

1049.] Bishop’s soldiers.[580] A demand of the Council of Rheims for

the liberation of the Prelate had no effect on the obdurate mind of

Geoffrey.[581] Gervase seems all this while to have looked forward to

deliverance through his godson, we can hardly say his sovereign, the

Count of Maine. But at last he heard that Hugh was dead, [Sidenote:

Geoffrey Martel occupies Le Mans. 1051–1061.] that Geoffrey had taken

possession of Le Mans, that the citizens had received him joyfully,

and had driven out the widow and children of Hugh.[582] Gervase now

thought it was time to yield; he gave up his castle, [Sidenote: Release

of Gervase; he takes refuge in Normandy. 1061.] but even now he only

obtained his freedom on condition of never setting foot in his own city

during Geoffrey’s life-time.[583] Banished in this way, he sought for

shelter at the court of the Duke of the Normans.[584] It does not seem

that William actively interfered on his behalf, but he gave him an

honourable reception, and retained him as his guest, till a prospect

was opened to the homeless Prelate of obtaining at once a higher and a

more peaceful position [Sidenote: Gervase Archbishop of Rheims.] among

the Prelates of Gaul. While Gervase tarried in Normandy, the primatial

see of Rheims became vacant by the death of its Archbishop Guy. Gervase

now obtained the first place among the Prelates and Princes of the

Parisian Kingdom, and it fell to his lot to pour the oil of Remigius

and Hlodwig on the head of the youthful Philip.[585]

[Sidenote: Death of Geoffrey. 1060. Herbert’s hopes revive.]