THE NORMAN DUKES
Normandy is probably at the same time the best and the least known
place on the Continent to Englishmen: the best known, because the
most accessible; the least known, because, beyond the fact that the
Duke of Normandy conquered England in the year 1066, and that it
is in consequence from Normandy that our line of kings is derived,
the average Englishman knows little or nothing of its history or
associations. Ask him plainly: What is the extent of Normandy? and
he will answer vaguely, “It is the north of France.” So it is, a
part of the north of France, but not the whole. As a matter of fact,
the term Normandy has now little geographical meaning. Normandy is
not a province for practical purposes, nor does it carry any civil
boundaries marking customs, or law, or government. Normandy embraces
the departments of Manche, Orne, Eure, Calvados, and Seine Inférieure;
that is to say, it reaches from Eu and its port Le Tréport on the east;
to the stream Couesnon, which flows into the English Channel a little
beyond Mont St Michel on the west; and southward it just takes in
Alençon, dips down to a point near La Ferté Bernard, returning with a
wavering north-eastward line across the Seine at Vernon, and by Gisors
to Eu aforesaid. It answers also to the modern dioceses of Rouen,
Evreux, Séez, Bayeux, and Coutances. The Archbishop of Rouen still
keeps the title of Primate of Normandy, otherwise the name has gone out
of formal use, and Normandy is merged in France.
Yet it is extraordinary with what tenacity and affection Englishmen
regard a name which links the dwellers in the land to them as kin, and
it is still more extraordinary how, after centuries of submersion,
beneath a rule entirely French, the kinship makes itself felt in
manner and character as well as in memory. The qualities of the sturdy
northmen whose bravery and roving dispositions led them to lands far
from their own, and made them at home everywhere, still exist in their
descendants, as the colonies of England testify. When the Danes had
settled down upon the north of France “they were,” says Freeman, “no
longer Northmen but Normans; the change in the form of the name aptly
expresses the change in those who bore it.” Yet many and many a vessel
full of vikings discharged itself on that land without making any
impression, until one came bearing the mighty Rollo, who was destined
to stay and make a permanent mark.
The France of those days, torn by dissensions, was not the homogeneous
country we now know. Long before Cæsar first conquered Gaul, and in
the time of his successor Augustus, Lyons was the capital; then came
the Germans and Goths, who began to overrun the land, and a little
later the low German tribe of the Franks came also; they were destined
to give their name to a land alien from their own, just as the modern
name of Scotland was brought over the sea originally by the men of
Ireland. It was in the beginning of the sixth century that the greater
part of Gaul lay under the dominion of Clovis, King of the Franks. Yet
after his death, in accordance with the German custom, the kingdom was
divided among his sons, one province being Neustria, which included
what we know as Normandy, and endless struggles ensued, until in the
middle of the seventh century arose the great Charlemagne, who ruled by
his might over all central Europe, now divided into many nations. But
in the struggle between his grandsons, his great dominion was split up,
one grandson taking what is now Germany, another Italy, and the third,
and most powerful, Charles the Bald, holding France. He had for his
kingdom “all Gaul west of the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saône, and the
Rhone; it ran down to the Mediterranean, and was thence bounded by the
Pyrenees and the Atlantic.” Brittany was still savagely independent,
however, and the northern coasts of Neustria were ravaged by the
Northmen. The county of Paris became part of the possessions of the
duchy of France, and Robert the Strong, made duke by Charles the Bald,
was set to fight against the northern marauders, who had penetrated
even to Paris. But the descendants of the great Charles were weak and
feeble, and as his house declined that of Robert the Strong grew,
culminating in his great-grandson, Hugh Capet, who, on the death of the
last of the direct line of degenerate Carlovingians, became king of the
France that we know.
But before Capet had succeeded in seating himself on the throne, the
Northmen had settled permanently in France. In the reign of Charles the
Bald’s grandson, Charles the Simple, Rollo or Rolf, the Northman, had
established himself at Rouen, and the king had made terms with him,
giving him his daughter to wife, and granting him a tract of land from
the Epte to the sea, with Rouen as its heart. This was in 912, and is
the first recognised settlement of the Northmen. Rollo himself is a
fine bold figure, only surpassed by one other among his descendants.
His frame was gigantic, and when in full armour no horse could carry
him. He seems to have combined, with the strenuous virile qualities of
the northerners, the capacity for organisation and settled government
belonging to a later period, and a more civilised people. He embraced
the faith of his wife Gisella, and was baptized under the name of
Robert, though it is as Rollo he will be known and remembered. He
was the founder of Normandy, and under his government, learning and
industry sprang up and flourished. His followers received the softening
influences of the French, and the French language began to be spoken in
Normandy.
The first Normandy was, as has been said, the district lying around
Rouen, but in 924 the district of Bayeux was added to it, hereafter
to become a stronghold of the older language and customs against the
Frenchified influences of Rouen. Freeman says: “Nowhere out of old
Saxon or Frisian lands can we find another portion of continental
Europe which is so truly a brother land of our own. The district of
Bayeux, occupied by a Saxon colony in the latest days of the old
Roman empire, occupied again by a Scandinavian colony as the result
of its conquest by Rolf, has retained to this day a character which
distinguishes it from any other Romance-speaking portion of the
Continent.”
[Illustration: AN APPROACH TO THE ABBEY, MONT ST MICHEL]
As we have seen, at the time of Rolf’s settlement in Neustria there
were two powers in France, the King of France, Charles the Simple,
and the powerful Duke of the French, who included in his dominions
the future capital, Paris. It was to the King of France that Rolf did
homage as overlord; and the story goes that the proud Northman, on
being told to kiss the monarch’s foot by way of homage, deputed one of
his men to act as his proxy, and that this man, no humbler than his
master, contemptuously raised the king’s foot to his own mouth, thereby
oversetting the monarch. The story is probably apocryphal, but it
has lived with odd persistence.
Rollo died in 931, and a few years after his death his son William
Longsword had the satisfaction of adding to his lands the district
of Côntentin, including the peninsula and the land as far south as
Granville. He obtained this additional land when he was suppressing
what was called a revolt of the Bretons--for the Dukes of Normandy
held shadowy rights over Brittany, rights which they were never able
to enforce. By his new conquest the Channel Isles were included in
Normandy, and oddly enough it was thus they became attached to the
English crown, for when the Norman dukes, as kings of England, lost
all their other French possessions, they retained the islands. William
Longsword was of a softer mould than his father, and from what can be
gathered from the chronicles of the time he was a man of a thoughtful
cast of mind, serious and gentle, a character rare enough in his age.
He was succeeded by his son Richard, who, of all the Norman dukes
except the Conqueror himself, is the best known to English people from
Miss Yonge’s charming story, _The Little Duke_, in which it is to be
feared she regards both father and son through a haze of idealisation;
but it is indeed difficult if not impossible to make sufficient
allowances for the radically different cast of thought in a bygone age,
and to draw men as they really were. Richard the Fearless reigned for
more than fifty years, and it was ten years before his death that Hugh
Capet combined in himself the power of the kings and dukes of France,
and became the first king of consolidated France. Richard had been sent
as a lad to Bayeux, in order that he might be brought up under the
influences of the country of his ancestors instead of becoming too much
Frenchified; but he was of a vigorous disposition, and there seems to
have been no reason to believe that he would have suffered unduly from
any softening influence.
Nothing is more striking in the early annals of France than the
succession of weak rulers she produced; occasionally there arose a man
of capacity and power, but his sons were invariably weaklings. France
does not seem to have been able to carry on a strong ruling race. In
contrast to this, note the towering figures of the Norman dukes--the
gigantic Rolf, the wise William Longsword, Richard the Fearless, Robert
the Devil, William the Conqueror--all men of exceptional power and
capacity. The infusion of Norman blood seems to have given just that
basic power of endurance needed in the Teutonic nation. Richard the
Fearless was succeeded by his son Richard the Good, and he by two of
his sons successively, another Richard, and Robert the Devil or the
Magnificent (see p. 34). It was Roberts son William, who, left as a
child to his inheritance, became the most famous of his race. No story
of romance or legend is more wonderful than that of the Conqueror. At
present we leave it aside to form the theme of a separate chapter,
so as not to prolong too far this sketch of Norman history, which is
necessary for any understanding of the topographical allusions.
With the Conquest, Normandy began to sink in importance; as in the case
of a mother who has brought forth a son, destined to wield power and
occupy positions far beyond her capacity, she herself took a secondary
place. To be the independent King of England was grander than to be
Duke of Normandy subject to the kings of France, and it needed but a
generation or two to make the English forget the fact of their being
conquered, and to look upon Normandy as a appanage of the English
crown. It was a strange position altogether; the best blood of Normandy
was emptied into England at the Conquest; abbots, warriors, nobles,
men of learning and men of birth settled in the new country and became
the English, and England found herself so much Normanised as to be
transformed.
It is customary to consider that the history of Normandy ends with
the conquest of England, being thenceforth merged in that of the
greater country; but though the importance of Normandy as a country
was lessened by the union, her history is by no means identical with
that of England. Normandy several times enjoyed a sovereign prince
altogether distinct from him who wore the crown of England, and this
state of affairs began immediately after the death of William the
Conqueror, who left the duchy to his eldest son Robert, while the
second son William became King of England. Of Robert we know chiefly
that he suffered from an incurable “mollesse,” and further, as regards
personal details, that as “Jambes eût cortes, gros les os,” he earned
the nickname of Court-hose. This son of a famous father and admirable
mother, was a libertine, given over to pleasure, incapable of taking
decisive action, one of those weak characters on which experience
cannot engrave permanent lines, but withal full of the courage of
his race. He was, however, unable to hold what had been left him.
William had prophesied that his youngest son Henry should be greater
than both his brothers, and Henry soon began to fulfil the parental
prophecy by seizing and holding for himself the Côtentin peninsula,
and with it the lordship of Mortain. Nothing is more significant of
the grasping natures of the trio of brothers than the way in which
they changed over, first one couple joining against the remaining
one, and then almost immediately breaking up for a fresh combination.
William and Henry warred against Robert; Henry and Robert combined to
thwart William; William and Robert mutually agreed to keep Henry out
of the succession, and so on; exactly as self-interest dictated for
the moment. Finally William came uppermost, and Robert submitted, and
henceforth practically held his duchy at the pleasure of his brother.
It was Henry’s turn to be the “odd man out,” and he fled before his
elder brothers, taking refuge in Mont St Michel, where they both
besieged him. He had to submit, and, yielding up the fortress, retired
a penniless adventurer. But in some way he afterwards regained the
whole of the Côtentin. When the crusading mania began, Robert was
seized with it; under his rule Normandy had been wretchedly governed,
and little he cared. For a comparatively small sum he mortgaged his
duchy to his brother William the Red, for six years, and went off
to the Holy Land. Normandy was probably the better for his action.
In returning from the Holy Land, he managed to occupy a year in the
journey, and on the way he married Sybilla, daughter of Count Geoffrey
of Flanders. He had already, it may be stated, two sons and a daughter,
who seem to have inherited the best of the traits of his house. One of
the sons, Richard, while on a visit to his uncle William in England,
was accidentally killed in the New Forest.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO MONT ST MICHEL]
Sybilla attempted to reclaim her husband from the crowd of bad
companions who gathered round him on his re-entry into Normandy, and
when Robert was tired of her, as he soon became of everything, he
found this inconvenient, so in less than two years she died suddenly
of poison. Robert had returned too late to put in a bid for the throne
of England! which was already occupied by Henry; but the death of
William freed him from any obligation to pay back the debt on his
duchy, and Sybilla’s dowry went in other directions. Henry now made
a treaty with his brother, by which he delivered up the Côtentin, but
kept Domfront and Mortain. However, becoming once more embroiled with
Robert, he quickly won for himself the whole duchy, clinching the
matter at the famous battle of Tinchebray, whereby the process of his
father was reversed, and the King of England now conquered Normandy as
the Duke of Normandy had then conquered England. After the terrible
death of his son near Barfleur, Henry set his heart on the succession
of his daughter Maude, who had been married first to the Emperor
of Germany, and afterwards on his death, evidently by her father’s
choice, to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Maine, one of the
most powerful of the rulers who might have opposed her succession in
Normandy. Yet Maude never ascended the throne that her father had
so carefully guarded for her. It is true that a claimant who might
have proved very formidable, William, the remaining son of Robert,
had died seven years before his uncle Henry, but there remained the
two sons of Adela, daughter of the Conqueror; of these the younger,
Stephen, was determined to oust his cousin. During the weary civil war
that followed, Normandy was many times traversed by one party or the
other, but on the whole the country declared for Stephen. The Count
of Anjou was an hereditary enemy, and the Normans did not relish the
idea of being governed by him in his wife’s name. When at last, after
the death of Stephen’s son Eustace, it was settled that Henry
should be recognised as next heir to his cousin, the land enjoyed
peace. With the accession of Henry a fresh era began, for the new
king held in France not only Normandy, but in right of his mother and
his wife, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, and Acquitaine--together more than
half the country--a formidable vassal for the French king! Henry was
tenacious of his rights, and it was only as his turbulent sons grew
older, and displayed to the full those unfilial dispositions so common
in their race, that he consented to divide some of his possessions
among them, to be held from him as lord. His gifts were many times
changed, but it seems certain that Richard had ruled in Acquitaine as
an independent sovereign before his father’s death, while Geoffrey,
by his marriage with Constance, heiress of Brittany, became Duke of
Brittany. Henry gave to his youngest and best loved John the title of
Count of Mortain, and with it the vicounty of the Côtentin; and in 1181
he made his eldest son, Henry, Duke of Normandy. But Henry the younger
did not long survive, dying at the early age of twenty-eight, after
rebelling against his father almost continuously since his attainment
of manhood. Therefore, at the death of the king, Richard came to the
throne. John still continued ruler of Mortain and the Côtentin under
his brother, and these dominions gave him an opportunity for putting
in practice those treasonable conspiracies by which he hoped to throw
off Richard’s yoke, and become an independent sovereign. Richard,
however, was too strong for him; he marched into Normandy, and speedily
showed himself master. Thereupon John came humbly to ask forgiveness at
Lisieux. The story goes that Richard, with the open-minded heartiness
which won him so much more love than his worse qualities merited,
exclaimed that he forgave him freely, and set his behaviour down to bad
influence, as he was only a child. As John was then six-and-twenty,
this reason must have galled him had he possessed an atom of pride,
but we have reason to think he did not. While Richard was otherwise
engaged in the Holy Land and on the Continent, John made a second
attempt to win his realms, which was brought to an end by a knowledge
of his brother’s death. He heard this while at Carentan, and gleefully
hastened to take advantage of it. True, there was still a boy to be
reckoned with, young Arthur, son of his dead brother Geoffrey--a boy
who was already Duke of Brittany, and who inherited to the full the
proud fierce temper of his mother Constance. But John had two points in
his favour: first, that in the old days a brother was often considered
to have a better right to a throne, especially if he were a man, than
a nephew who was still a child, and this idea had not altogether died
out; secondly, the Normans of all people would have been the last
to yield homage to the duke of the hated Bretons, their nearest
neighbours, with whom they had been perpetually at war, and for whom
they felt a fierce jealousy. On the other hand, Arthur had a powerful
ally in Philip, King of France, who saw that it would be much more to
his own advantage to have a weak boy as ruler of Normandy than a man
equal to himself in cunning and craftiness. Therefore Philip helped
Arthur, and even promised him his little daughter in marriage. But
unluckily for the boy who was the principal actor in the drama, he fell
into the hands of his uncle,--some say he was captured by treachery
while asleep,--however that may be, he was in John’s clutches, and
little chance was there for him to get out again. This was in August
1202. John carried his prisoner at once to one of the strongest castles
in his dominions, namely Falaise. Arthur was now between fourteen and
fifteen years of age, and John, reckoning without that stubborn courage
of nature which the boy inherited, attempted to make him abdicate his
rights, in vain. Finding this hopeless, he hurried him away to Rouen,
there to dispose of him finally. Arthur’s incarceration at Falaise
is dealt with in the chapter on Falaise, and his captivity at Rouen
is treated in the chapter on Rouen. The fury of the Bretons, who saw
the last of their ruling race, a promising boy, thus foully murdered
by the duke of the Normans, their life-long foes, may be imagined;
it hardly needed the French king’s call to arms to make them rise in
their wrath and flood in upon the neighbouring towns of Normandy. The
conduct of John after this displays a pitiable weakness. He alone of
all the Conqueror’s line showed a lack of courage; others had been
weak, vacillating, unfilial, cruel, vicious, but it remained for John
to combine all these qualities in himself. His movements were like
those of a timid animal who knows the huntsmen are closing in on him,
but has not courage to make a dash through the ring. He hurried from
Rouen to Caen, from Caen to Brix, and Brix to Valognes. Back again to
Caen, and then to Domfront. He returned to the Côtentin, and at last
embarked at Barfleur without striking a blow to save that land, which
he had not hesitated to gain by murdering a boy, when he thought there
was no personal danger in the action. He did indeed return in 1206 for
a short time, but never in such a spirit as to make the retrieving
of his dominions possible. Meantime the Normans did not submit so
quietly; they could not endure the entry of the Bretons, and sternly
defended themselves at Mont St Michel, which was set on fire, and at
Caen; but it was of no use; the Bretons, after a triumphal progress,
met the French king, who had received the submission of Caen as well as
Lisieux and Bayeux, and thus with hardly a struggle there fell into the
hands of France that territory which she had so long and so jealously
regarded. If ever a king deserved to lose his land, it was the craven
John.
[Illustration: A STREET, MONT ST MICHEL]
By a curious oversight in the ratification and the submission which
followed this conquest, the Channel Islands were overlooked. It has
been suggested they were simply forgotten; if so, the event proved
fortunate for them, for they have remained ever since in the happy
independence granted them by England. The title of Duke of Normandy
was dropped by Henry III., John’s son, at the Treaty of Saintes in
1259, when it was agreed that Acquitaine should remain an English
possession, and the title was afterwards borne by a scion of the ruling
French house. But the tale of Normandy’s wars is not ended. For in
the time of Edward, that monarch was set upon recovering not only the
territory lost by his grandfather, but, if possible, the French crown
for himself; he landed at Barfleur, and, quickly subduing the Côtentin,
passed on to St Lo, Coutances, and Caen, taking towns and seizing
vast quantities of precious stuffs wherever he went. These triumphs
were followed by the famous battles of Crécy and Poitiers, and the
historic siege of Calais. However, his conquest left no permanent mark
on Normandy, for by the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, though he received
much else, he resigned Normandy with his claim to the French crown,
and it was reserved for his great-grandson, Henry V., to recover the
duchy by the sword. This he actually did, after a brilliant series
of victories; so that in the years 1417 and 1418 Normandy became an
appanage of the English crown, but under the rule of the weak Henry
VI. his father’s conquests lapsed, and by 1450 Normandy was once more
included in the dominions of France, never again to be severed.