of their strength in quarrelling with each other, but de Toesny's
appearance gave the signal for a league against the ruler whom they
despised. William was no longer a child, and rumors of his premature
sagacity, and his uncommon strength and quickness in war, were
flying about from town [Pg197] to town and warned his enemies that
they had no time to lose if they meant to crush him down. He was a
noble-looking lad and had shown a natural preference for a soldier's
life; at fifteen he had demanded to be made a knight of the old Norman
tradition in which lurked a memory of Scandinavian ceremonies. None
save Duke William could bend Duke William's bow, and while these
glowing accounts of him were written from a later standpoint, and his
story might easily be read backward, as a fulfilment of prophecy, we
can be sure, at least, that his power asserted itself in a marked
way, and that he soon gained importance and mustered a respectable
company of followers as the beginning of a brilliant and almost
irresistible court and army. Even King Henry of France was jealous
of his vassal's rising fame and popularity, and felt obliged to pay
William a deference that his years did not merit. All through the
first twelve years men felt that the boy William's life was in danger,
and that, whatever respect Henry paid him, was likely to be changed to
open animosity and disdain the moment that there was a good excuse.
We have a glimpse now and then of the lonely lad at his sport in
the forest about Falaise and Valognes, where he set apart preserves
for hunting. We follow him from Alan of Brittany's wardship, to the
guardian he chose himself, who held the place of tutor with that of
captain-general of the Norman army, but, guardian or no guardian, he
pushed forward single-handed, and mastered others, beside himself, in
a way that the world never will cease to wonder at. [Pg198]
Roger de Toesny refused allegiance to begin with, and with loud
expressions of his scorn of the Bastard, began to lay waste his
neighbors' lands as if they, too, had been Saracens and merited any
sort of punishment. We first hear the name of De Beaumont, famous
enough ever since, in an account of a battle which some of Roger's
outraged victims waged against him. Grantmesnil, too, is a name that
we shall know very well by and by, when William has gone over to
England with his Norman lords. Normandy never got over its excitement
and apparent astonishment at William's presence and claims; but
even in his boyhood he was the leader of a party. "So lively and
spirited was he, that it seemed to all a marvel," says one of the old
chroniclers, with enthusiasm. When he began to take deep interest in
his affairs, the news of revolts and disorderliness in the country
moved him to violent fits of irritation, but he soon learned to hide
these instinctively, and the chronicle goes on to say that he "had
welling up in his child's heart all the vigor of a man to teach the
Normans to forbear from all acts of irregularity." In this outbreak
against de Toesny he found an irresistible temptation to assert his
mastery, and boy as he was, he really made himself felt; De Toesny was
killed in the fierce little battle, and his death gave a temporary
relief from such uprisings; but William comes more and more to the
front, and all Normandy takes sides either for or against him. This
was no insignificant pretender, but one to be feared; his guardians
and faithful men who had held to him for good or bad reasons, were
mostly put out of the way [Pg199] by their enemies, and there was
nobody at last who could lead the Bastard's men to battle better than
he could himself.
Henry of France had been biding his time, and now Guy of Burgundy, the
son of William's cousin, whom he had welcomed kindly at his feudal
court, puts in a claim to the dukedom of Normandy. He helped forward
a conspiracy, and one night, while William was living in his favorite
castle at Valognes, the jester came knocking with his bauble, and
crying at the chamber door, begging him to fly for his life: "They are
already armed; they are getting ready; to delay is death!" cried poor
Golet the fool; and his master leaped out of bed, seized his clothes,
and ran to the stables for his horse. Presently he was galloping away
toward Falaise for dear life, and to this day the road he took is
called the Duke's road. This was in 1044, and William was nineteen
years old. He was not slow to understand that the rebels had again
risen, and that the conspiracy was more than a conspiracy; it was a
determined insurrection. All the night long, as he rode across the
country in the bright moonlight, he was thinking about his plans, no
doubt, and great energies and determinations were suddenly waked in
his heart. This was more than a dislike of himself and the tan-yard
inheritance; it was the old rivalry of the Frenchmen and Northmen. The
old question of supremacy and race prejudice was to be fought over
once more and for the last time with any sort of distinctness. This
was not the petty animosity of one baron or another; it was almost the
whole nobility of Normandy against their duke. [Pg200]
There was one episode of the duke's journey which is worth telling:
He had ridden for dear life, and had forded many a stream, and one,
more dangerous, tide inlet where the rivers Oune and Vire flowed out
to sea; and when he got safe across, he went into the Church of St.
Clement, in the Bayeux district, to kneel down and say his prayers.
As the sun rose, he came close to the church and castle of Rye, and
the Lord of Rye was standing at the castle gate in the clear morning
air. William spurred his horse, and was for hurrying by, but this
faithful vassal, whose name was Hubert, knew him, and stopped him, and
begged to be told the reason of such a headlong journey. The Lord of
Rye was very hospitable, and the tired duke dismounted, and was made
welcome in the house; and presently a fresh horse was brought out for
him, and the three brave sons of the loyal house were mounted also
to ride by his side to Falaise. This hospitality was not forgotten.
Later, in England, their grateful guest set them in high places, and
favored them in princely fashion. Guy, of Burgundy had been brought up
with William as a friend and kinsman, and had been treated with great
generosity. He was master of some great estates, and one of these was
a powerful border fortress between Normandy and France. His friends
were many, and he found listeners enough to his propositions. Born of
the princely houses of Burgundy and Normandy, he claimed the duchy as
his inherited right; and while so many in court and camp were ashamed
of their lawful leader, and ready to deny his authority, came Guy's
opportunity. [Pg201]
William was cautious, and not without experience. When he was only a
baby he had caught at the straw on which he lay, and would not let go
his hold, and this sign of his future power and persistence had been
proved a true one. The quarrelsome, lawless lords felt that their days
of liberty for themselves, and oppression of everybody else, would
soon be over if they did not strike quickly. They dreaded so strong
and stern a master, and rallied to the standard of the Bastard's
rival, Guy of Burgundy.
There were some of the first nobles of the Côtentin who forsook
their young duke for this rival who was hardly Norman at all, as
they usually decided such points. His Norman descent was on the
spindle side rather than the sword, to use the old distinction, and
his mother's ancestors would not have prevented him in other days
from being called almost a Frenchman. There is a tradition that Guy
promised to divide the lands of Normandy with his allies, keeping only
the old French grant to Rolf for himself, and this must have been
the cause of the treason of the descendants of Rolf's and William
Longsword's loyal colonists. It would amaze us to see the change in
the life and surroundings of the feudal lords even in the years of
William's minority. The leader of the barons in the revolt was the
Viscount of Coutances, the son of that chief who had defeated Æthelred
of England and his host nearly half a century before. He lived in a
castle on the river Oune, near which he afterward built his great St.
Saviour's Abbey. This was the central point of the insurrection, and
from his tower Neal of St. [Pg202] Saviour could take a wide survey
of his beautiful Côtentin country with its plough-land and pastures
and forests, the great minster of Lessay, and the cliffs and marshes;
the sturdy castles of his feudal lords scattered far and wide. There
came to Saint Saviour's also Randolf of Bayeux, and Hamon of Thorigny
and of Creuilly, and Grimbald of Plessis, and each of them made his
fortress ready for a siege, and swore to defend Guy of Burgundy and
to use every art of war and even treachery to subdue and disgrace
William. I say "even treachery," but that was the first resort of
these insurgents rather than the last. They had laid the deep plot to
seize and murder him at Valognes, and Grimbald was to have struck the
blow.
King Henry of France was another enemy at heart. It is difficult at
first to understand his course toward his young neighbor. He never
had fairly acknowledged him, and William on his part had never put
his hands into the king's and announced with the loyal homage of his
ancestors that he was Henry's man. While Normandy was masterless in
William's youth, there was a good chance, never likely to come again
in one man's lifetime, for the king to assert his authority and to
seize at least part of the Norman territory. The discontent with the
base-born heir to the dukedom might not have been enough by itself to
warrant such usurpation, but then, while the feudal lords were in such
turmoil and so taken up with, for the most part, merely neighborhood
quarrels; while they had so little national and such fierce sectional
feeling, would have [Pg203] been the time for an outsider to enrich
himself at their expense. It was not yet time for Normandy to be
provoked into a closer unification by any outside danger. The French
and Scandinavian factions were still distinct and suspicious of each
other, but it was already too late when King Henry at last, without
note or warning, poured his soldiers across the Norman boundary and
invaded the Evreçin; too late indeed in view of what followed, and in
spite of the temporary blazing up of new jealousies and the revival
of old grievances and hatreds. Henry won a victory and triumph for
the time being; he demanded the famous border castle of Tillières and
insisted that it should be destroyed, and though the brave commander
held out for some time even against William's orders, he finally
surrendered. Henry placed a strong garrison there at once, and after
getting an apparently strong hold on Normandy there followed a time
of peace. The king seemed to be satisfied, but no doubt the young
duke's mind was busy enough with a forced survey of his enemies,
already declared or still masked by hypocrisy, and of his own possible
and probable resources. A readiness to do the things that must be
done was making a true man of Duke William even in his boyhood. For
many years he had seen revolt and violence grow more easy and more
frequent in his dukedom; the noise of quarrels and fighting grew
louder and louder. In his first great battle at Val-ès-dunes the rule
of the Côtentin lords and Guy of Burgundy, or the rule of William the
Bastard, struggled for the mastery. [Pg204]
It was a great battle in importance rather than in numbers. William
called to his loyal provinces for help, and the knights came riding
to court from the romance-side of Normandy, while from the Bessin and
the Côtentin the rebels came down to meet them. It seems strange that,
when William represents to us the ideal descendant of the Northmen,
the Scandinavian element in his dukedom was the first to oppose him.
For once King Henry stood by his vassal, and when William asked for
help in that most critical time, it was not withheld. Henry had not
been ashamed to take part with the Norman traitors in past times,
and now that there was a chance of breaking the ducal government in
pieces and adding a great district to France, we are more than ever
puzzled to know why he did not make the most of the occasion. Perhaps
he felt that the rule of the dukes was better than the rule of the
mutinous barons of the Côtentin, and likely, on the whole, to prove
less dangerous. So when William claimed protection, it was readily
granted, and the king came to his aid at the head of a body of troops,
and helped to win the victory.
We hear nothing of the Norman archers yet in the chronicler's story
of the fight. They were famous enough afterward, but this battle was
between mounted knights, a true battle of chivalry. The place was
near the river Orne, and the long slopes of the low hills stretched
far and wide, covered with soft turf, like the English downs across
the Channel, lying pleasantly toward the sun. Master Wace writes the
story of the day in the "Roman de Rou," [Pg205] and sketches the
battle-field with vivid touches of his pen. Mr. Freeman says, in a
note beneath his own description, that he went over the ground with
Mr. Green, his fellow-historian, for company, and Master Wace's book
in hand for guide. In the "Roman de Rou" there is a hint that not
only the peasantry, but the poorer gentlemen as well, were secretly
on William's side, that the prejudice and distrust toward the feudal
lords was very great, and that there was more confidence in a
sovereign than in the irksome tyranny of less powerful lords.
The barons of Saxon Bayeux and Danish Coutances were matched against
the loyal burghers of Falaise, Romanized Rouen, and the men of the
bishop's cities of Liseux and Evreux. King Henry stopped at the little
village of Valmeray to hear mass, as he came up from the south with
his followers, and presently the duke joined them in the great plain
beyond. The rebels are there too; the horses will not stand in place
together, they have caught the spirit of the encounter, and the bright
bosses of the shields; the lances, tied with gay ribbons, glitter and
shine, as the long line of knights bends and lifts and wavers like
some fluttering gay decoration,—some many-colored huge silken splendor
all along the green grass. The birds fly over swiftly, and return as
quickly, puzzled by the strange appearance of their country-side.
Their nests in the grass are trampled under foot—the world is alive
with men in armor, who laugh loudly and swear roundly, and are there
for something strange, to kill each other if they can, rather than
live, for the sake of [Pg206] Normandy. Far away the green fields
stretch into the haze, the cottages look like toys, and the sheep and
cattle feed without fear in the pastures. Church towers rise gray and
straight-walled into the blue sky. It is a great day for Normandy, and
her best knights and gentlemen finger their sword-hilts, or buckle
their saddle-girths, and wait impatiently for the battle to begin on
that day of Val-ès-dunes.
Among the Côtentin lords was Ralph of Tesson, lord of the forest of
Cinquelais and the castle of Harcourt-Thury. Behind him rode a hundred
and twenty knights, well armed and gallant, who would follow him to
the death. He had sworn on the holy relics of the saints at Bayeux to
smite William wherever he met him, yet he had no ground for complaint
against him. His heart fell when he saw his rightful lord face to
face. A tanner's grandson, indeed, and a man whose father and mother
had done him wrong; all that was true, yet this young Duke William was
good to look upon, and as brave a gentleman as any son of Rolf's, or
the fearless Richard's. Ralph Tesson (the Badger they called him), a
man both shrewd and powerful, stood apart, and would not rank himself
and his men with either faction, and his knights crowded round him, to
remind him that he had done homage once to William, and would fight
against his natural lord. The Côtentin lords were dismayed and angry,
they promised him great rewards, but nothing touched him, and he stood
silent, a little way from the armies. The young duke and the king
noticed him, and the six-score-and-six brave knights in his troop, all
with their [Pg207] lances raised and trimmed with their ladies' silk
tokens. William said that they would come to his aid; neither Tesson
nor his men had any grudge against him.
Suddenly Tesson put spurs to his horse, and came dashing across the
open field, and all the lords and gentlemen held their breath as
they watched him. "Thury! Thury!" he shouted as he came, and "Thury!
Thury!" the cry echoed back again from the distance. He rode straight
to the duke; there was a murmur from the Côtentin men; he struck the
duke gently with his glove. It was but a playful mockery of his vow to
the saints at Bayeux; he had struck William, but he and his knights
were William's men again; the young duke said, "Thanks to thee!" and
the fight began, all the hotter for the anger of the deserted barons
and their desire for revenge. The day had begun with a bad omen for
their success. "/Dexaide!/" the old Norman war-cry, rang out, and
those who had followed the lilies of France cried "/Montjoie Saint
Denis!/" as they fought.
Nowadays, a soldier is a soldier, and men who choose other professions
can keep to them, unless in their country's extremity of danger,
but in that day every man must go to the wars, if there were need
of him, and be surgeon or lawyer, and soldier too; yes, even the
priests and bishops put on their swords and went out to fight. It
would be interesting to know more names on the roll-call that day at
Val-ès-dunes, but we can almost hear the shouts to the patron saints,
and the clash of the armor. King [Pg208] Henry fought like a brave
man, and the storm of the battle raged fiercest round him. The knights
broke their lances, and fought sword to sword. There was no play of
army tactics and manœuvring, but a hand-to-hand fight, with the sheer
strength of horse and man. Once King Henry was overthrown by the
thrust of a Côtentin lance, and sprang up quickly to show himself to
his men. Again he was in the thickest of the encounter, and was met
by one of the three great rebel chiefs and thrown upon the ground,
but this Lord of Thorigny was struck, in his turn, by a loyal French
knight, and presently his lamenting followers carried him away dead
on his shield like any Spartan of old. And the king honored his valor
and commanded that he should be buried with splendid ceremonies in a
church not far from the battlefield. Long afterward the Norman men and
women loved to sing and to tell stories about the young Duke William's
bravery and noble deeds of arms in that first great fight that made
him duke from one end of Normandy to the other. He slew with his own
hand the noblest and most daring warrior of Bayeux. Master Wace,
the chronicler, tells us how William drove the sharp steel straight
through his hardy foe, and how the body fell beneath his stroke and
its soul departed. Wace was a Bayeux man himself, and though he was a
loyal songster and true to his great duke, he cannot help a sigh of
pride and sorrow over Hardrez' fate.
Neal of St. Saviour fought steadily and cheered his men eagerly as
the hour went on, but Randolf of Bayeux felt his courage begin to
fail him. Hamon [Pg209] was dead. Their great ally, Hardrez, had
been the flower of his own knights, and he was lying dead of a cruel
sword-thrust there in plain sight. He lost sight of Neal, perhaps, for
he was suddenly afraid of betrayal, and grieved that he had ever put
his helmet on. There is a touching bit of description in the "Roman de
Rou" just now. The battle pleased him no more, is told in the quaint
short lines. He thought how sad it was to be a captive, and sadder
still to be slain. He gave way feebly at every charge; he wandered
to and fro aimlessly, a thing to be stumbled over, we fancy him, now
in the front of the fight, now in the rear; at last he dropped his
lance and shield. "He stretched forth his neck and rode for his life,"
says Master Wace, quite ashamed of his countryman. But we can see the
poor knight's head drooping low, and his good, tired horse—the better
man of the two—mustering all his broken strength to carry his master
beyond the reach of danger. All the cowards rode after him pell-mell,
but brave Saint Saviour fought to the last and held the field until
his right arm failed and he could not strike again. The French pressed
him hard, the Norman men looked few and spent, and the mighty lord of
the Côtentin knew that all hope was lost. There on the rising ground
of Saint Lawrence the last blow was struck.
Away went the rebels in groups of three or four—away for dear life
every one of them, riding this way and that, trying to get out of
reach of their enemies and into some sort of shelter. The duke chased
them like a hound on the track of hares on, on [Pg210] toward Bayeux,
past the great Abbey of Fontenay and the Allemagne quarries, until
they reached the river Orne with its deep current. Men and horses
floundered in the water there, and many hot wounds tinged it with
a crimson stain. They were drowned, poor knights, and poor, brave
horses too. They went struggling and drifting down stream; the banks
were strewn with the dead; and the mill-wheels of Borbillon, a little
farther down, were stopped in their slow turning by the strange wreck
and floating worthless fragments of those lords and gentlemen who had
lost the battle of the Val-ès-dunes.
And William was the conqueror of Normandy. Guy of Burgundy was a
traitor to his friends, and won a heritage of shame for his flight
from the field. We hear nothing of him while the fight went on, only
that he ran away. It appears that he must have been one of the first
to start for a place of safety, because they blame him so much; there
is nothing said about all the rebels running away together a little
later. That was the fortune of war and inevitable; not personal
cowardice, they might tell us. Guy of Burgundy was the man who had
led the three Côtentin lords out by fair promises and taunts about
their bastard duke, and he should have been brave and full of prowess,
since he undertook to be the rival of so brave a man. He did not go
toward the banks of the fateful river, but in quite another direction
to his own castle of Brionne, and a troop of his vassals escaped with
him and defended themselves there for a long time, until William
fairly starved them out like rats in a hole. They held [Pg211] their
own bravely, too, and no man was put to death when they surrendered,
while Guy was even allowed to come back to court. Master Wace stoutly
maintains that they should have been hung, and says long afterward
that some of those high in favor at court were the traitors of the
great rebellion.
Strange to say, nobody was put to death. Mr. Freeman says of this
something that gives us such a clear look at William's character
that I must copy it entire. "In those days, both in Normandy and
elsewhere, the legal execution of a state criminal was an event that
seldom happened. Men's lives were recklessly wasted in the endless
warfare of the times, and there were men, as we have seen, who did not
shrink from private murder, even in its basest forms. But the formal
hanging or beheading of a noble prisoner, so common in later times,
was, in the eleventh century, a most unusual sight. And, strange as
it may sound, there was a sense in which William the Conqueror was
not a man of blood. He would sacrifice any number of lives to his
boundless ambition; he did not scruple to condemn his enemies to cruel
personal mutilations; he would keep men for years as a mere measure
of security, in the horrible prison-houses of those days; but the
extinction of human life in cold blood was something from which he
shrank."
At the time of the first great victory, the historian goes on to
say, William was of an age when men are commonly disposed to be
generous, and the worst points of his character had not begun to show
themselves. Later in life, when he had broken the [Pg212] rule, or
perhaps we must call it only his prejudice and superstition, we find
that the star of his glory is already going down, pale and spent, into
the mists of shame and disappointment.