CHAPTER IV.

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF NORMANDY DURING THE TENTH CENTURY.[188]

The two foreign conquests of England which form the main subject of

English history during the eleventh century were the work of nations

which came originally of the same stock. First came the Danes

themselves; [Sidenote: Normans and English originally kinsmen.] then

came the Normans, the descendants of Danish or other Scandinavian

settlers in Gaul. In mere blood therefore the Normans were allied in

different degrees to all the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain, and they

were very closely allied to the descendants of the Danish settlers in

the North and East of England. And there can be little doubt that this

original community of blood really had an important practical effect,

and that the speedy fusion of Normans and English was greatly promoted

by the fact that conquerors and conquered were in truth kinsmen.

[Sidenote: Practical, but unrecognized, effects of this kindred.] But

this influence was a purely silent one, and it was in no way

acknowledged by those on whom it acted. Neither side thought at all of

any kindred as existing between them. And to all appearance, no two

nations of Western Europe could have been found which, in speech,

feelings, [Sidenote: The Danes in England become Englishmen.] and

manners, differed more widely from one another. The Danes who settled in

England had been easily turned into Englishmen. Though the likeness of

speech and institutions between the two nations has often been

exaggerated, it was something not only real but palpable. It needed no

historical research to find it out; it was something which men of both

nations could feel for themselves. Among the earlier Teutonic settlers

in Britain, we can well believe that there were some whose original

kindred with the Teutons of Scandinavia was quite as close as their

original kindred with some of their fellow Teutons in Britain. Anyhow,

the languages of the two nations were closely allied; their institutions

were very similar, those of England being doubtless the more advanced

and regularly organized of the two. Religion formed the main difference

between them; but the Danes in England soon adopted the Christian faith,

and they were followed, after no very great interval, by their brethren

in Denmark. Thus the Danish settler in England, when once baptized,

readily became an Englishman, differing from the Angle or the Saxon only

as the Angle and the Saxon differed from one another. This absorption

into a kindred nation is less remarkable than the fact that the same

people in another land adopted, with not much greater difficulty, a

language and culture which was wholly alien to them. [Sidenote: The

Danes in Gaul become Frenchmen.] For, as the Danes who settled in

England became Englishmen, so the Danes who settled in Gaul equally

became Frenchmen. The Normans of the eleventh century were men of

Scandinavian descent who had cast away every outward trace of the

language, manners, and feelings which made them kindred to Englishmen,

and had adopted instead the language, manners, and feelings of Latin

France. Before they landed in England, they had become Frenchmen; though

still proud of the Norman name, they were content, as speakers of the

French tongue, to call themselves Frenchmen in distinction from the

Teutonic English.[189] No doubt the old Scandinavian element was still

at work within them; it made them Frenchmen on a far nobler and grander

scale than other Frenchmen, and it enabled them, when they had once

settled in England, unconsciously but surely to become Englishmen.

Still, when they followed their Duke to the conquest of England, they

were in every outward respect no longer Scandinavians but Frenchmen. In

a word, they were no longer _Northmen_ but _Normans_; the change in the

form of the name aptly sets forth the change in those who bore it.[190]

§ 1. _General Effects of the Scandinavian Settlements in Gaul._

[Sidenote: Importance of the Norman settlement in Gaul.]

The settlement of the Northmen in Gaul, and their consequent change into

Normans, is the great continental event of the first half of the tenth

century; it challenges a place alongside of the restoration of the

Empire by Otto [Sidenote: Comparison of the settlements of Rolf and

Guthrum.] in the second half. Its beginnings indeed might seem small. A

band of Scandinavian pirates settled in Northern Gaul, exactly as

another band of Scandinavian pirates had, thirty years before, settled

in Eastern Britain. In both cases the sovereign of the invaded land

found it expedient to secure the safety of the rest of his dominions, by

surrendering a portion of them to the invader and by requiring baptism

and nominal homage as guaranties for peace and good neighbourhood. The

settlement of Rolf in Neustria exactly answers to the settlement of

Guthrum in East-Anglia. Charles the Simple and his counsellors may well

have justified their act by quoting the example of Ælfred himself. But

the results of the two events were widely different. The East-Anglian

and Northumbrian Danes were fused into the general mass of Englishmen,

and they were soon distinguished from other Englishmen by [Sidenote:

Results of the Norman settlement on general history.] nothing more than

mere provincial differences. But the settlement of Rolf in Neustria had

far wider results. It affected the later history of all Europe. The

Scandinavians in Gaul embraced the creed, the language, and the manners

of their French neighbours, without losing a whit of their old

Scandinavian vigour and love of adventure. The people thus formed became

the foremost apostles alike of French chivalry and of Latin

Christianity. They were the Saracens of Christendom, spreading

themselves over every corner of the world and appearing in almost every

[Sidenote: Their prominence in devotion,] character. They were the

foremost in devotion, the most fervent votaries of their adopted creed,

the most lavish in gifts to holy places at home, the most unwearied in

pilgrimages to holy places abroad. And yet none knew better how to hold

their own against Pope and prelate; the special children of the Church

were as little disposed to unconditional obedience as the most

stiffnecked [Sidenote: and in war.] of Ghibelines. And they were no less

the foremost in war; they were mercenaries, crusaders, plunderers,

conquerors; [Sidenote: Change of their tactics.] but they had changed

their element and they had changed their mode of warfare. No Norman

fleets now went forth on the errand of the old wikings; the mounted

knight and the unerring bowman had taken the place of the elder tactics

which made the fortress of shields invincible. North, south, east, the

Norman lances were lifted; and they were lifted in the most opposite of

causes. [Sidenote: Their exploits in the Eastern Empire,] Norman

warriors pressed into the remotest East to guard Eastern Christendom

against the first Turkish invader;[191] other Norman warriors were soon

found to be the most dangerous enemies of Eastern Christendom in its own

[Sidenote: 1071.] home. If the Norman fought by the side of Rômanos at

[Sidenote: 1081.] Manzikert, he threatened the Empire of Alexios with

overthrow at Dyrrhachion. His conquests brought with [Sidenote: in

England,] them the most opposite results in different lands. To free

[Sidenote: in Sicily.] England he gave a line of oppressors; to enslaved

Sicily he gave a line of beneficent rulers. But to England he gave also

a conquering nobility, which in a few generations became as truly

English in England as it had become French in Normandy. If he overthrew

our Harolds and our Waltheofs, he gave us a Fitzwalter and a Bigod to

win back the rights for which Harold and Waltheof had fallen. In the

arts of peace, like his Mahometan prototypes, he invented nothing; but

he learned, adapted, improved, [Sidenote: Influence of the Normans on

art; their welcome of foreigners.] and disseminated everything. He

ransacked Europe for scholars, poets, theologians, and artists. At

Rouen, at Palermo, and at Winchester, he welcomed merit in men of every

race and every language. He guided Lanfranc and Anselm from Lombardy to

Bec and from Bec to Canterbury. Art, under his auspices, produced alike

the stern grandeur of Caen and Ely and the brilliant gorgeousness of

Palermo and Monreale. In a word, the indomitable vigour of the

Scandinavian, joined to the buoyant vivacity of the Gaul, produced the

conquering [Sidenote: Disappearance of the Norman race,] and ruling race

of Europe. And yet that race, as a race, has vanished. It has everywhere

been absorbed by the [Sidenote: in Sicily,] races which it has

conquered. From both Sicilies the Norman has vanished as though he had

never been. And there too have vanished along with him the races which

he used as his instruments, and which he alone taught to work in

harmony. Greek, Saracen, and Norman have alike disappeared from the

realm of good King William. [Sidenote: in Britain.] In our own land the

fate of the Norman has been different. He abides in his lineage and in

his works, but he is Norman no longer. He has settled in every corner of

the British islands; into every corner of those islands he has carried

with him the inborn qualities of his own race, but in every corner of

those islands he has assumed the outward characteristics of the races

among which he settled. The Scottish Bruce or the Irish Geraldine passed

from Scandinavia to Gaul, from Gaul to England, from England to his own

portion of our islands; but at each migration he ceased to be

Scandinavian, French, or English; his patriotism was in each case

transferred to his new country, and his historic being belongs wholly to

the home which he had last won. In England itself the Norman has

vanished from sight no less than from Apulia and insular Sicily. He has

sunk beneath the silent and passive influence of a race less brilliant

but more enduring than his own. The Norman has vanished from the world,

but he has indeed left a name [Sidenote: Famous men of Norman descent.]

behind him. Of him came Richard the Fearless and William the Bastard; of

him came that Robert whose foot was first placed upon the ransomed

battlements of the [Sidenote: 1099.] Holy City, and that mightier Robert

who in one year [Sidenote: 1086.] beheld the Cæsars of East and West

flee before him.[192] [Sidenote: Frederick the Second.] And of his

stock, far more truly than of the stock of Imperial Swabia, came the

Wonder of his own and of all succeeding ages,[193]—poet, scholar,

warrior, legislator—the terror and the marvel of Christendom and of

Islam—the foe alike of Roman Pontiffs and of Moslem Sultans—who won

alike the golden crown of Rome and the thorny crown of Salem—dreaded in

one world as the foremost champion of Christ, cursed in another as the

apostate votary of Mahomet—the gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless,

and the godless Frederick.

[Sidenote: Effects of the Norman settlement on French history.]

But on no country was the effect of the Scandinavian settlement in Gaul

so deep as it was on Gaul itself. It may sound like a strange paradox,

but there can be little doubt that it was the settlement of the Northern

pirates which finally made Gaul French in the modern sense. Their

settlement was made during the transitional period of West-Frankish

history. The modern French nation and language were just beginning to

appear. Paris, not yet the capital, had been found to be the most

important military post in the kingdom, and the lords of Paris had shown

themselves to be its most vigorous defenders. [Sidenote: Period of

struggle in West-France. 887–987.] The tenth century was a period of

struggle between the Teutonic and the Romance tongues, between Laon and

Paris, between the descendants of Charles the Great and the descendants

of Robert the Strong.[194] The Norman stepped into the scene of

confusion, and he finally decided the quarrel in favour of the French

dynasty of [Sidenote: Origin of modern France.] Paris against the

Frankish dynasty of Laon. Modern France, we must ever remember, has no

part or lot in either of the two dynasties whose associations she so

persistently usurps, the Karlings and their predecessors the Merwings.

Till the ninth century there was no geographical division which at all

answered to modern France.[195] Charles the Great more than once

contemplated a division of his Empire; but not one of his proposed

divisions coincided even in the roughest way with the limits of the

[Sidenote: First glimpse of modern France.] kingdom of the Valois and

the Bourbons. Modern France makes its first indistinct appearance in the

division which was made on the death of Lewis the Pious. Then, for the

[Sidenote: 839.] first time, Northern and Southern Gaul, Neustria and

Aquitaine, were united to make the kingdom of Charles the Bald. The

kingdom thus formed was the first germ of modern France. It roughly

answers to its geographical extent, and, what is still more to the

purpose, we see that a new nation, with a new language, was springing up

[Sidenote: 843.] within it. The final settlement of Verdun confirmed the

existence of the new kingdom. The Empire was then divided into three

kingdoms, the Western, the Eastern, and the narrow debateable ground

between them, known as Lotharingia. This last kingdom fell to pieces,

while the kingdoms on each side of it grew, flourished, and contended

for its fragments. These are the two kingdoms of the East and the

West-Franks, which we are already sorely tempted to call by the familiar

names of Germany and France.

[Illustration: GAUL IN THE TENTH CENTURY.]

FOR THE DELEGATES OF THE CLARENDON PRESS.

Neustria and Aquitaine were never again formally separated [Sidenote:

1360.] till the Peace of Bretigny in the fourteenth century.[196]

[Sidenote: Union under Charles the Third. 885–887.] Neustria and

Austrasia, the kingdoms of the Western and the Eastern Franks, were

never again united except during the ephemeral reign of Charles the

Third or the Fat. That Emperor, the last who reigned over both the

Eastern and the Western Franks,[197] was deposed by common consent

[Sidenote: Division of the Empire. 888.] of his various Kingdoms. Four

kingdoms now appeared, answering to those of Germany, Italy, France, and

Burgundy. And now a more important step still was taken [Sidenote:

Kingdoms of East and West-Franks.] in the direction of modern France.

The Western Franks took to themselves a new dynasty and a new capital.

Since the death of the great Charles, the city on the [Sidenote: Growing

importance of Paris.] Seine, the old home of Julian, had been gradually

rising in consequence. It plays an important part during the reign of

his son Lewis the Pious. Characteristically [Sidenote: 830.] enough,

Paris first appears in Carolingian history as the scene of a conspiracy

against her Teutonic master. There it was that the rebels assembled who

seized and imprisoned, [Sidenote: Paris the chief bulwark against the

Northmen.] and at last deposed, the pious Emperor.[198] Later in the

ninth century Paris won for herself a more honourable renown; she became

the bulwark of Gaul against the inroads of the Northmen. The pirates

soon found out the importance of the position of the city in any attack

or defence of Gaul on her northern side. The Seine, and Paris upon the

Seine, now became the great objects of Scandinavian attack. Thrice in

the reign of Charles the Bald did the [Sidenote: Formation of the March

of Paris. 861.] invaders enter the city. At last a new power was formed,

chiefly with the object of defending Gaul from their attack. A large

district was granted in fief by Charles the Bald to Robert the Strong,

as a march or border territory, to be defended against the invading

Northman and the rebellious Breton. And of this march, under Robert’s

son Odo, Paris became the head. The power thus formed was destined to a

career which seems not unusual for such frontier districts. Rome

herself, then still the home of Empire, had begun her own career as a

march of the Latin against the Etruscan. So, in later times, the Mark of

Brandenburg, the outlying defence of Germany against the Slave, and the

Eastern Mark, her outlying defence against the Magyar, have, under the

names of Prussia and Austria, eclipsed the older names of Saxony,

Swabia, Bavaria, and Eastern Francia. So it was with this outlying march

granted to Count Robert by Charles the Bald. Paris now became a centre,

a capital; if not a royal, at least a ducal, city. The fief of Robert

grew into the duchy of France, and the duchy of France grew into the

kingdom. Robert himself became the forefather of the first Capets, of

the Valois, and of the Bourbons. [Sidenote: Paris defended by Odo.

885–886.] The great siege of Paris by the Northmen, and its gallant

defence by Count Odo, or Eudes, the son of Robert, greatly raised the

position alike of the city and of its lord. On the deposition of Charles

the Third ineffectual attempts were indeed made on behalf of other

candidates, but, in the [Sidenote: Odo elected King. 888.] end, Count

Odo was elected and consecrated to what now begins to be called the

Kingdom of France, a kingdom over [Sidenote: 1848.] which his

descendants were still reigning thirty years ago.[199]

Odo of Paris then became “Rex Francorum,” in a sense which, as applied

to his family, we cannot better represent than by the title of “King of

the French.” His own family was of German descent;[200] but, throughout

the following century, his dynasty represents, perhaps quite

unconsciously, the growing French nationality, just as the dynasty of

Laon represents the decaying Teutonic element. The Dukes and Kings of

Paris spoke French long before the end of the tenth century, while the

Karlings of Laon still spoke their ancestral Frankish.[201] The hundred

years’ struggle between the Carolingian house at Laon and the

Capetian[202] house at Paris now begins. This period falls naturally

into two stages. In the first stage, the lords of Paris directly

disputed the crown with the heirs of Charles; in the second, they

preferred the position of kingmakers to that of Kings. Odo was elected

as the hero of the siege of Paris, the true champion of Gaul and of

[Sidenote: Charles the Simple and Robert.] Christendom. But he soon

found a rival in Charles the Simple, whose only claim was the doubtful

belief that the blood of his great namesake flowed in his veins. It was

in the course of his troubled reign that the Scandinavian invaders made

that settlement in Gaul which grew into the Norman duchy. It was at his

hands that the first Norman Duke received the investiture of his

dominions. But the settlement was made at the immediate cost, not of the

Carolingian King at Laon, but of the Capetian Duke at Paris. It was from

France, in the strictest sense, that Normandy was cut off. The lord of

Rouen now stepped in as a kind of umpire between the two rival powers,

and throughout the whole struggle of the century no question was of

greater importance than whether the power of Normandy should be arrayed

on the side of Paris or on the side of Laon. We have now to record the

history of the Norman settlement itself, and the history of the Normans

in Gaul during the period of struggle, and to show how important an

element they were in determining the controversy in favour of the

competitor most foreign to their own ancient blood and speech.

§ 2. _Settlement and Reign of Rolf._ 911–927.

[Sidenote: Comparison of the Danish ravages in England and within the

Empire.]

The history of the ravages of the Northmen within the Empire, and of

their final settlement in Northern Gaul, reads like the tale of their

ravages and settlements in our own island told again. Their incursions

into the two countries were often closely connected. The same armies and

the same leaders are often heard of in Britain and in Gaul, and each

country drew a certain advantage from the sufferings of the other. Each

often enjoyed a season of comparative rest while the other was

undergoing some unusually fearful devastation. The two stories are

nearly the same, except that the Gaulish part of the tale especially

reads, so to speak, like one long reign of Æthelred from the very

beginning. There is nothing at all answering to our long succession of

great and victorious Kings from Ælfred onwards. That such was the case

was not wholly the fault of the princes who reigned in any part of the

Empire. The power of the great Charles had kept the heathen in awe, but

it is not granted to every man to [Sidenote: The progress of the Danes

favoured by the divisions in the Empire,] be a Charles or even an

Æthelstan. When the great Emperor was gone, when the terror of his name

was forgotten, ceaseless internal divisions made his Empire an easy

prey. Those divisions were themselves inevitable, but they brought with

them their inevitable consequences; the land lay open, almost

defenceless, before the enemy. Indeed the divisions were actually more

fatal because they [Sidenote: and by the partial unity which it

retained.] were not complete; the very amount of unity which the Empire

still kept proved a further source of weakness. The Empire did not at

once split up into national kingdoms, divided by ascertained boundaries,

each of them actuated by a national feeling and capable of national

resistance to an invader. The state of things was not unlike the elder

state of things in the days of the tyrants or provincial Emperors. In

those days each ambitious general gave himself out as Cæsar and

Augustus; he aspired to the whole Empire, and he held such portions of

it as he could win and keep. So now every King was a King of the Franks,

ready to hold so much of the common Frankish realm as he could win and

keep. Between potentates of this kind there could hardly be either the

same formal alliances, or the same sort of international good

understanding, which may exist between really distinct nations, each of

which is assured of its own position. None of the rival Kings could feel

sure that any other King would help him against the common enemy. None

of them could feel sure that some other King might not seize the

opportunity of a Danish inroad to deprive him of his kingdom, or even

that he might not league himself with the heathen invaders against him.

It followed therefore that the invaders never encountered the whole

strength of the Empire, that they seldom encountered the whole strength

even of any one of its component kingdoms. The Carolingian princes, as

far as mere vigour and ability goes, have been grossly and unfairly

depreciated.[203] The truth is that most of them were men of by no means

contemptible natural gifts, but that they were, partly by their own

fault, partly by force of circumstances, placed in a position in which

they could not use their real vigour and ability to any good purpose.

Thus the whole second half of the ninth century is taken up with almost

uninterrupted incursions of the Scandinavian pirates on the whole coast

of both the Eastern [Sidenote: Position of Germany,] and the Western

kingdoms. Germany indeed, owing to the inland position of the greater

part of her territory, remained comparatively unscathed. She suffered

far more from the Magyars than she suffered from the Northmen. Still the

whole Saxon and Frisian coast was as cruelly ravaged as any other part

of Europe, and the great rivers afforded the heathens the means of

making their way far [Sidenote: Gaul,] into the interior of the country.

The Western Kingdom, with its far greater extent of sea-board, suffered

far more [Sidenote: and Italy.] severely than the Eastern. Even the

Mediterranean coasts of Burgundy and Italy were not wholly spared,[204]

though in those seas the Northman was less to be dreaded than the

Saracen. In all these countries we find the same kind of devastations

which we find in England. In the course of the history, we come across

many noble examples of [Sidenote: Instances of resistance to the

invaders.] local resistance to the invaders, and several examples of

considerable victories gained over them. But we nowhere find any such

steady check put to their progress as marks the first half of the tenth

century in England. That is to say, no Carolingian prince had the means,

even if he had the ability, to carry out the vigorous policy of Eadward

the Elder. Yet it would be unjust to withhold their due share of honour

from several kings and princes who at [Sidenote: Victory of Arnulf,

891;] least did what they could. The Emperor Arnulf in the [Sidenote: of

Lewis, 881.] East,[205] the young King Lewis in the West,[206] gained

glorious and, for the moment, important victories over the invaders, and

the triumph of Lewis is commemorated in one of the earliest surviving

efforts of High-German poetry.[207] The great siege of Paris and its

defence by Odo have already been spoken of as among the determining

causes which led in the end to the change of dynasty. But such victories

were, after all, mere momentary checks; they delivered one part of the

country at the expense of another, and the evil went on till it was

gradually cured by various indirect [Sidenote: The ravages cease as the

Northmen settle and become French.] means. As in England, the Northmen

gradually changed from mere plunderers into conquerors and settlers.

Instead of ravaging the whole country, they occupied portions of it.

Thus they gradually changed, not only into members of the general

commonwealth of Christendom but into Frenchmen, distinguished from other

Frenchmen only by the large share of their inborn Scandinavian vigour

which [Sidenote: No attempt at political conquest, as in England.] they

still kept. As the North became more settled and Christianized, as it

began to form a political system of its own, the mere piratical

incursions gradually ceased, but the attempt at a complete conquest of

the whole country, which was successfully tried in England, was never

attempted in Gaul. No King of all Denmark or of all Norway ever tried to

displace a King of the West-Franks and to reign in his stead over his

kingdom. The insular position of Britain, the original kindred between

Danes and Englishmen, the actual occupation of so large a portion of the

country by earlier Danish settlers, all helped to make such a design

possible in England, while even the powers of Swegen or Cnut could

hardly have succeeded in carrying out such a scheme in Gaul.

[Sidenote: Scattered settlements of the Northmen in Gaul.]

The Northmen settled largely in Gaul, but they nowhere occupied any such

large unbroken sweep of territory as that which became the _Denalagu_ in

England. No such large extent of coast lay so invitingly open to them,

and it does not appear that there was any one Danish invasion of Gaul on

so great a scale as the great Danish invasion of England under Ingwar

and Hubba. The Danish settlements in Gaul were therefore scattered,

while in England they were continuous. The Danes in England therefore,

though they gradually became Englishmen, still kept on a distinct local

existence and local feelings, and they continued to form a distinct and

important element in the country. But the Danish settlers in Gaul,

holding a district here and a district there, sank much more completely

into the general mass of the inhabitants. Some of these settlements were

a good way inland, like Hasting’s settlement at Chartres.[208] Ragnald

too occupied, at least for a while, the country at the mouth of the

Loire.[209] But these settlements led to no permanent results. One alone

among the Scandinavian settlements in Gaul was destined to play a real

part in history. This was the settlement of Rolf or Rollo at Rouen.

[Sidenote: The Rouen settlement; its exceptional importance.]

This settlement, the kernel of the great Norman Duchy, had, I need

hardly say, results of its own and an importance of its own which

distinguish it from every other Danish colony in Gaul. But it is well to

bear in mind that it was only one colony among several, and that, when

the grant was made, it was probably not expected to be more lasting or

more important than the others. But, while the others soon lost any

distinctive character, the Rouen settlement lasted; it grew, it became a

power in Europe, and in Gaul it became even a determining power. It is

perhaps the unexpected developement of the Rouen settlement, together

with the peculiar turn which Norman policy soon took, which accounts for

the bitterness of hatred with which the Northmen of Rouen are spoken of

by the French writers down to at least the end of the tenth century. By

that time they had long been Christian in faith and French in speech,

and yet the most truly French writer of the age can never bring himself

to speak of them by any other name than that of the _Pirates_.[210] To

this feeling we see nothing at all analogous in English history. We see

traces of strong local diversities, sometimes rising into local

jealousies, between the Danes in England and their Anglian and Saxon

neighbours; but there is nothing to compare with the full bitterness of

hatred which breathes alike in the hostile rhetoric of Richer and in the

ominous silence of the discreet Flodoard.

[Sidenote: Rolf or Rollo the founder of the settlement.]

The lasting character of his work at once proves that the founder of the

Rouen colony was a great man; but he is a great man who must be content

to be judged in the main by the results of his actions. The authentic

history of Rolf, Rollo, or Rou,[211] may be summed up in a very short

space. We have no really contemporary narrative of his actions, unless a

few meagre and uncertain entries in some of the Frankish annals may be

thought to deserve that name. I cannot look on the narrative of our one

Norman writer, put together, from tradition and under courtly influence,

a hundred years after the settlement, as at all entitled to implicit

belief. Even less faith is due to Northern Sagas put together at a still

later time. The French authors again are themselves not

contemporary,[212] and their notices are exceedingly brief. I therefore

do not feel myself at all called upon to narrate in detail the exploits

which are attributed to Rolf in the time before his final settlement. He

is described as having been [Sidenote: Earlier exploits of Rolf.

876–911?] engaged in the calling of a wiking both in Gaul and in Britain

for nearly forty years before his final occupation of Rouen,[213] and he

is said to have entered into friendly relations with a King Æthelstan in

England. This Æthelstan has been confounded, in the teeth of all

chronology, with our great Æthelstan, but it is clear that the person

intended is Guthrum-Æthelstan of East-Anglia.[214] In all this there is

nothing improbable, but we can hardly look upon it as certain. And the

exploits attributed to Rolf are spread over so many years,[215] that we

cannot help suspecting that the deeds of other chieftains have been

attributed to him, perhaps that two leaders of the same name have been

confounded. Among countless expeditions in Gaul, Britain, and Germany,

we find Rolf charged with an earlier visit to Rouen,[216] with a share

in the great siege of Paris,[217] and with an occupation or destruction

of Bayeux.[218] But it is not till we have got some way into the reign

of Charles the Simple, not till we have gone through several years of

the tenth century, that Rolf begins clearly to stand out as a personal

historic [Sidenote: Rolf in possession of Rouen. 911.] reality. He now

appears in possession of Rouen, or of whatever remains of that city had

outlived his former harryings. From that starting-point he attacked

Chartres. [Sidenote: Defeat of Rolf at Chartres. 911.] Beneath the walls

of that city he underwent a defeat at the hands of the Dukes Rudolf of

Burgundy and Robert of Paris, which was attributed to the wonder-working

powers of the great local relic, the under-garment of the Virgin.[219]

But this victory, like most victories over the Northmen, had no lasting

effect. Rolf was not dislodged from Rouen, nor was his career of havoc

and conquest at all seriously checked. But, just as in the case of

Guthrum in England, his evident disposition to settle in the country

suggested an attempt to change him from a wasting enemy into a

[Sidenote: Peace of Clair-on-Epte. 912.] peaceable neighbour. The Peace

of Clair-on-Epte was the fellow of the Peace of Wedmore, and King

Charles and Duke Robert of Paris most likely had the Peace of Wedmore

before their eyes. [Sidenote: Comparison with the Peace of Wedmore.] A

definite district was granted to Rolf, for which he became the King’s

vassal; he was admitted to baptism, and received the King’s natural

daughter in marriage. And, just as in the English case, the territory

granted was not part of the King’s immediate dominions. No part of

Wessex was granted to Guthrum; he was merely confirmed in the possession

of the lands which he had already conquered at the expense of the

[Sidenote: Advantage of the cession to the Crown.] other English

kingdoms. Ælfred, as I have already shown,[220] though he lost as an

over-lord, gained as an immediate sovereign by the closer incorporation

of a large part of Mercia with his own kingdom. Charles also gained by

the settlement of Rolf, though certainly not in the same direct way. His

immediate territories were not increased, but they were at least not

diminished; the grant to Rolf was made at the cost, not of the Frankish

[Sidenote: The cession made at the expense of the Duchy of Paris.] King

at Laon but of the French Duke at Paris. The district ceded to Rolf was

part of the great Neustrian march or duchy which had been granted to Odo

of Paris, and which was now held by his brother Duke Robert. Rouen was

thus, from the very beginning, something taken away from Paris, and

which cut off Paris from the sea. Still the Parisian duchy was not so

utterly broken up as the kingdoms of Northumberland, East-Anglia, and

Mercia had been; the King had therefore no opportunity of annexing any

part of the dominions of Robert, as Ælfred had of annexing a large part

of the dominions of Burhred. Still Charles was strengthened indirectly.

Duke Robert had to yield to manifest destiny. He had lost Rouen, and his

only way to keep Paris was to enter into friendly relations with the new

lord of Rouen. [Sidenote: Prominent agency of Duke Robert.] Robert was

therefore the chief mover in the whole business; he was Rolf’s godfather

at his baptism and gave him his own Christian name. The Duke thus made

the most of his loss; but to the King the transaction was a distinct

gain. He got two vassals instead of one, two vassals whose relations to

one another were likely to be dangerous, and between whom it might often

be easy to play off one against the other. Events soon proved that the

King had gained a far more faithful vassal in the new proselyte to

Christianity and French culture than he already possessed in the

turbulent and dangerous lord of Paris. At a later time we shall find the

relations between Laon, Rouen, and Paris altogether changed; but for a

while the Northmen of the Seine were the firmest support [Sidenote: The

Normans the chief support of Charles the Simple.] of the Carolingian

throne. During all the later warfare of the reign of Charles the Simple,

Rolf clave steadily to the cause of the lord whose man he had become.

The Duke of Rouen had no object in opposing the King of Laon, while, by

supporting him, he might easily gain an increase of territory at the

expense of his nearer neighbours.

[Sidenote: Tale of Rolf’s homage to Charles.]

The legendary details of Rolf’s homage to Charles are familiar to every

one. It is a well-known tale how Rolf was called on to kiss the feet of

his benefactor, how he refused with an oath, how he bade one of his

followers to perform the degrading ceremony in his stead, how the rude

Northman did indeed kiss the King’s foot, but only by lifting it to his

own mouth to the imminent danger of the monarch’s seat on his

throne.[221] The tale may rest on a true tradition, or it may be a mere

invention of Norman vanity; in either case alike it sets forth the

original spirit of the men who were to become the noblest

representatives of the system within whose pale they were now entering.

[Sidenote: Rolf the vassal of Charles.] But whatever was the exact form

of the homage, there can be no reasonable doubt that Rolf became, in the

full [Sidenote: Exaggerated claims of independence made] sense of the

word, the vassal of King Charles.[222] The interested and extravagant

Norman writers constantly assert an entire independence on the part of

the colonists [Sidenote: by the Norman writers.] and their chief. The

land was granted, but it was granted as a pure allodial possession; the

Duke of the Normans, though he did not bear the kingly title,

nevertheless held, as a King, the monarchy of the Norman land.[223] If

anything, it was King Charles who swore fealty to Rolf rather than Rolf

who swore fealty to King Charles. All this we may safely put aside,

partly as the deliberate creation of Norman vanity, partly as the

inflated rhetoric of an author who was writing as the mere laureate of

the Norman court. The historian’s own tale of the homage, with its real

or mythical incidents, is of itself enough to upset his constitutional

theories. That Rolf did homage is plain enough, and, on Rolf’s death,

his successor in the duchy [Sidenote: Little practical submission

implied in the homage.] renewed the homage. But I must again repeat the

caution how little of real subjection is implied in such vassalage at

any time, and how purely nominal it became whenever the lord was weak

and the vassal strong. Rolf became King Charles’s man and King Charles

became Rolf’s lord; but the obligation, after all, amounted to little

more than an obligation of mutual defence; all internal sovereignty over

the ceded land passed to Rolf without reserve. In the hands of Charles

the Great or of Æthelstan such an over-lordship as this was a reality;

in the hands of Æthelred or of Charles the Simple it was a mere name.

Yet Rolf undoubtedly proved a really faithful vassal to King Charles. No

doubt his interest happily coincided with his duty. Still we can well

believe that in a new Christian and a new vassal, and a man evidently

disposed honestly to do his duty in his new state of life, the sense of

right and wrong, in this as in other respects, may well have been far

stronger than it was in Dukes of Paris or Burgundy who had long been

used to form and to break such engagements with equal ease.

It must not be thought that the district now granted to [Sidenote:

Extent of the territory granted to Rolf.] Rolf took in the whole of the

later duchy of Normandy. Rouen was the heart of the new state, which

took in lands on both sides of the Seine. From the Epte to the sea was

its undoubted extent from the south-east to the north. But the western

frontier is much less clearly defined. On the one hand, the Normans

always claimed a certain not very well defined superiority over Britanny

as part of the original grant. On the other hand, it is quite certain

that Rolf did not obtain immediate possession of what was afterwards the

noblest portion of the heritage of his [Sidenote: The Bessin and the

Côtentin later acquisitions.] descendants. The _Bessin_, the district of

Bayeux, was not won till several years later, and the _Côtentin_, the

peninsula of Coutances, was not won till after the death of Rolf. The

district granted to Rolf was doubtless, as in the case of Guthrum,

mainly determined by the extent of his actual possessions. If, as is

most likely, the Dive was the western boundary, the ceded territory

answered to nothing in earlier geography, civil or ecclesiastical. It

was larger than the diocese of Rouen; it was very much smaller

[Sidenote: No geographical name for the “Terra Northmannorum.”] than the

province. As a new division, it had—sharing therein the fate of Germany

and France—no recognized geographical name. Its inhabitants were the

Northmen, the Northmen of the Seine, the Northmen of Rouen. The land

itself was, till near the end of the century, simply the Land of the

Northmen,[224] a land capable of indefinite extension. So in Britain the

vague description of the _Denalagu_ supplanted the ancient names and

boundaries of more than one Old-English kingdom. The title of the chief

was as little fixed as the name of his dominions; he is Prince, Duke,

Count, Marquess, Patrician,[225] according to the taste of each writer.

In the mouths of vigorous and plain-spoken enemies his people are only

the Pirates, and himself the leader of the Pirates, down to the end of

the century.[226]

[Sidenote: Internal government of Rolf known only from its results.]

Of Rolf’s internal government, of the laws and institutions of the new

state, of the details of the settlement of the country, we know

absolutely nothing. Norman tradition sets Rolf before us as the mirror

of princes, as the type of that class of ruler which that age most

valued, the stern, speedy, impartial, minister of justice.[227] But we

may judge of the reign of Rolf from its results. What Normandy became

shows plainly enough that its first prince must have been a worthy

forerunner of our own Cnut. Once settled in the land, he seems to have

become as eager for its welfare as he had before been for its

devastation. He must have promoted the general adoption, not only of the

religion, but of the speech and manners of his neighbours. Otherwise

Normandy could never have played the part which it did play even in the

next reign, nor could his capital have become so thoroughly French as it

was within a short time after his [Sidenote: No records of early Norman

history.] death. But of the early institutions and early internal

history of Normandy all records have perished, or, more probably, no

records ever existed. We have no chronicles, no charters, nothing

whatever to guide us but the results. [Sidenote: The settlement probably

analogous to the Danish settlement in England.] From such indications as

we have we may perhaps infer that the settlement was, on the whole, of

much the same kind as the Danish settlement in England.[228] We cannot

conceive any systematic extirpation or expulsion of the older

inhabitants, such as accompanied the English Conquest of Britain. At the

same time we can well believe that, after so many years of systematic

havoc at the hands of the wikings, large districts may have stood almost

as empty and untilled as if such systematic [Sidenote: Evidence from the

peasant revolt. 997.] extirpation or expulsion had taken place. But it

is certain that, a hundred years after the conquest, there was a

peasantry at once oppressed enough and powerful enough to rise in a

well-organized revolt.[229] Though in Normandy, as in England, the

condition of the private settlers is likely to have gradually sunk,

still we cannot believe that any descendants of the original conquerors

could, in so short a time, have been brought down to such utter bondage.

These peasants must have been mainly the descendants of the original

Gauls, with whatever intermixture of Roman and Teutonic elements the

successive conquests of the country had brought with them. [Sidenote:

Probable position of the races in the country.] Probably the landowners,

great and small, were almost universally of Scandinavian descent, while

the remnant of the original population had been brought down to a state

of serfdom. It is certain that there is nothing in English history at

all answering to this insurrection till we come to the great revolt of

the villains of the fourteenth century. This difference seems to point

to a wholly different condition of the lower orders in the two

countries. [Sidenote: Vestiges of the Danish language.] As regards the

language of Normandy, the Danish tongue has utterly vanished out of the

land; it had vanished out of the greater part of the land even before we

reach any contemporary records; still considerable vestiges, strangely

disguised as they are, may to this day be made out in the local

nomenclature. In Northern Gaul, just as in Eastern England, many a place

lost its name, and took a new name from its new Scandinavian lord. Here

and there also we find descriptive names, meaningless in French, but

which are, with a slight effort, intelligible in English.[230] These

may, according to their geographical position, be either remnants of the

Danish speech of Rolf and his followers or remnants of the speech of an

earlier Teutonic settlement in part of the country of which I shall

presently have to speak. Of the early political condition of the duchy

we have absolutely no [Sidenote: Normandy not an absolute monarchy.]

account. On the absence of such information one illustrious

inquirer[231] has grounded a theory that Normandy had no assembly, no

Parliament, no Estates of any kind, but that the Duke, Marquess,

Patrician, or whatever he is to be called, ruled without any restraint

on his personal will. I confess that I find it impossible to accept a

theory so utterly repugnant to the analogy of every other Teutonic

people. If there be any truth in Norman tradition, the followers of

Rolf, as long as they stayed on ship-board, acknowledged no lord, and

professed principles of the most extreme democratic equality.[232]

However this may be, it is not likely that, as soon as they were settled

on land, they should at once cast away those free institutions which

were common to them with all the [Sidenote: Instances of the action of

the States.] other branches of the common stock. And there is evidence

enough to show that an assembly of some kind was often consulted from

the very beginnings of the Norman state, and especially that the

transfer of the ducal crown from one prince to another was effected with

much the same forms as the same change would have called for in

England.[233] At the same time I fully admit that to fix the exact

constitution of the Norman assembly at this early time would be still

harder than to fix the exact constitution of an English Witenagemót. The

little light which we have may perhaps enable us to infer that it put on

an aristocratic character almost from the beginning. It has also been

supposed that, unlike perhaps every other assembly of the kind, it

contained no ecclesiastical members;[234] but if this was the case in

the earlier days of the duchy, the rule had clearly been relaxed before

the reign of the great William.

[Sidenote: Rolf’s attachment to the Carolingian party.]

We must remember that we are now in the very thick of the struggle

between the two dynasties of Laon and Paris. The Norman stepped in as if

sent to be the fated arbiter between the two. When Rolf made his

settlement, Charles the Simple was the acknowledged King of the

West-Franks; from him he received his grant; with him he entered into

the mutual engagements of lord and vassal. With him and his dynasty Rolf

sided, and he probably saved the Carolingian crown from utter overthrow,

just as a change of policy in his successors finally decided the

[Sidenote: End of the Karlings in Germany. 912.] same controversy the

other way. It must be remembered that, in the year of Rolf’s settlement,

the Carolingian line came to an end in the Eastern Kingdom. The

East-Frankish Duke Conrad was now raised to the Teutonic throne, and was

presently followed by Henry of Saxony. But Lotharingia refused to

acknowledge either of the Kings so chosen. The border land appears

throughout our history as ever fluctuating between the Eastern and

Western kingdoms. But Lotharingian policy was dictated by one

intelligible rule, that of unswerving loyalty to the Carolingian house,

wherever its representative might be [Sidenote: Lotharingia attaches

itself to Charles the Simple.] found. So now Lotharingia transferred its

allegiance to the single Karling who still kept the royal title, and

acknowledged the King of Laon as its lord. The power of Charles was thus

directly strengthened to the East, while it was indirectly strengthened

by the grant to the Northmen in the West. This increase of power on the

part of Charles probably led to the conspiracy which soon broke out

against [Sidenote: Robert of Paris chosen King. 922.] him, and which

issued in the election of Robert of Paris as an opposition King. In the

wars which followed, Charles [Sidenote: Rolf sides with Charles.] rested

to a great extent on the arms of the Northmen, both Rolf’s settled

Northmen of the Seine and the Northmen of the Loire, the followers of

Ragnald, who had not [Sidenote: Robert killed at Soissons. 923.] yet won

so distinct a local habitation.[235] When Robert was killed at Soissons,

his son Hugh the Great refused the crown for himself. He was known as

Duke of the French, [Sidenote: Rudolf of Burgundy chosen.] and,

satisfied with that title, he bestowed the kingly name on his

brother-in-law Rudolf, Duke of French Burgundy.[236] [Sidenote:

Imprisonment of Charles at Peronne. 923.] Charles was afterwards

treacherously seized and imprisoned by Rudolf’s fellow-conspirator

Herbert Count of Vermandois, in the same fortress in which in after days

a King [Sidenote: 1468.] of France was imprisoned by a Duke of

Burgundy.[237] Rolf’s combined policy and loyalty led him to refuse all

allegiance [Sidenote: War between Normandy and France. 923–927.] to the

usurpers. A war of several years followed between him and the French of

Paris under Duke Hugh. The horrors of warfare were not felt on one side

only. The Norman land was twice invaded, and Rolf’s fortress of Eu, its

chief defence on its north-eastern border, was taken by storm.[238] But

these incursions were more than repaid in kind; a large _Danegeld_ was

more than once paid to Rolf, and was levied throughout France and

Burgundy,[239] and the [Sidenote: Acquisition of Maine and Bayeux. 924.]

general results of the war left Rolf in possession of a most important

increase of territory. He obtained the district of Bayeux; he obtained

also a more fully recognized superiority over Britanny, and it is also

distinctly asserted that [Sidenote: Abdication [927?] and death [932?]

of Rolf.] he obtained a grant of the land of Maine.[240] Rolf did not

long survive these successes; the year of his death is uncertain; but it

seems most likely that, by the consent—perhaps at the demand—of the

estates of his principality, he resigned [Sidenote: William Longsword

succeeds, and does homage to Charles. 927.] the government in favour of

his son William, surnamed Longsword.[241] A change in the policy of

Herbert of Vermandois had restored Charles to freedom and to some

nominal measure of authority. The new prince of the Northmen therefore

paid to the true Carolingian King the homage which his father had paid

before him, but which he had steadily refused to the Parisian and

Burgundian pretenders.

[Sidenote: Value of Rolf’s last acquisition.]

The acquisition of the territory which this last war added to the

dominions of Rolf was inferior in importance only to the original

acquisition of Rouen. And it is only on the ground of its being the

original acquisition, the beginning and starting-point of the whole

settlement, that the possession of Rouen itself can be looked on as more

important than the possession of the noble region which [Sidenote:

Maine.] was now added to the Land of the Northmen. Maine indeed was the

most precarious of all possessions. The struggles for its retention and

recovery, the adventures of its gallant Counts and of its no less

gallant citizens, form no small part of the later history of the Norman

[Sidenote: The _Bessin_.] duchy. But the acquisition of Bayeux and its

territory gave Normandy all that created and preserved the genuine and

Norman character; it gave her the cities which are adorned with the

noblest works of the days of her independence; it gave her the spot

which was to be the earliest home of her mightiest son. Caen, around

whose castle and whose abbeys so much of Norman and French history was

to centre—Bayeux itself, the see of the mighty Odo, where the tale of

the Conquest of England still lives in the pictured history which forms

its most authentic record—Cerisy, with its stern and solemn minster, the

characteristic work of the Conqueror’s father—Falaise, immortal as the

birthplace of the Conqueror himself—all these historic spots lie within

the region which the last warfare of the reclaimed wiking had added to

the Norman land. [Sidenote: The Saxon colony at Bayeux;] Bayeux itself

is a city whose history has an especial claim on the attention of

Englishmen. Nowhere, out of the Old-Saxon and Frisian lands, can we find

another district 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,[242] 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 every other

Romance-speaking [Sidenote: its lasting influence on the district.]

portion of the continent. The Saxons of Bayeux kept their name and their

distinct being under the Frankish dominion;[243] we can hardly doubt

that the Scandinavian settlers found some parts at least of the district

still Teutonic, and that nearness of blood and speech exercised over

them the same influence which the same causes exercised over the

Scandinavian settlers in England. Danes and Saxons were welded together

into one Teutonic people, and they kept their Teutonic language and

character long after Rouen had become, in speech at least, no less

French than Paris. With their old Teutonic speech, the second body of

settlers seem to have largely kept their old Teutonic faith. We shall

presently find Bayeux the centre of a heathen and Danish party in the

duchy, in opposition to Rouen, the centre of the new speech and the new

creed. The blood of the inhabitants of the Bessin must be composed of

nearly the same elements, mingled in nearly the same proportions, as the

blood of the inhabitants of the Danish districts of England.[244] To

this day there is no Romance-speaking region of the continent in which

an Englishman feels himself so thoroughly at home as in this old Saxon

and Danish land. In every part of Normandy, as compared with France or

Aquitaine,[245] the Englishman feels himself at home; but in the

district of Bayeux he seems hardly to have left his own island. The

kindred speech indeed is gone; but everything else remains. The land is

decidedly not French; men, beasts, everything, are distinctively of a

grander and better type than their fellows in the mere French districts;

the general aspect of the land, its fields, its hedges, all have an

English look. And no contrast can be greater than that which may be

often seen between the tall, vigorous, English-looking, Norman yeoman,

out of whose mouth we instinctively feel that the common mother-tongue

ought to come, and the French soldier, whose stature, whose colour,

whose every feature, proclaims him to be a man of another race, and

whose presence proclaims no less unmistakeably that the glory of

Normandy has passed away.

§ 3. _Reign of William Longsword._ 927–943.

Rolf, the converted pirate, died, according to his Norman [Sidenote:

Religion of Rolf.] admirers, in the odour of sanctity.[246] According to

the wild reports of his enemies, he mingled the two religions, and,

while making gifts to the Christian churches, offered Christian captives

in sacrifice to his Scandinavian idols. Such a strange confusion is

possible at some earlier stage of his career; but we need much better

evidence than we have to convince us that he was guilty of any such

doings just before his death.[247] But, whatever traces of heathendom

may have cloven to Rolf himself, it is certain that his son [Sidenote:

Birth and education of William Longsword.] William Longsword, half a

Frenchman by birth, was almost wholly a Frenchman in feeling. His mother

was French; but he did not spring from the union of the converted

Northman with the royal blood of the West-Franks. Gisla bore no children

to her already aged husband, and William was the son of a consort who

both preceded and followed her in his affections. She was known as Popa,

whether that designation was really a baptismal name or, as some hint, a

mere name of endearment. She was the daughter of a certain Count

Berengar, and was carried off as a captive by Rolf when he took Bayeux

in his pirate days.[248] Her brother, Bernard Count of Senlis, plays an

important part in the reigns of his nephew and great-nephew. Popa and

her son seem to have stood in a doubtful position which they share with

more than one [Sidenote: Norman and Frankish laxity as to marriage.]

other Norman Duke and his mother. Rolf and Popa were most likely

married, as the phrase was, “Danish fashion,”[249] which, in the eyes of

the Church, was the same as not being married at all. A woman in such a

position might, almost at pleasure, be called either wife or concubine,

and might be treated as either the one or the other. Her children might,

as happened to be convenient, be either branded as bastards or held

entitled to every right of legitimate birth. Rolf put away Popa when he

married King Charles’s daughter, and when King Charles’s daughter died,

he took Popa back again.[250] So William, Popa’s son, put away Sprota,

the mother of his son Richard, when he married Liudgardis of

Vermandois.[251] This strange laxity with regard to marriage, though

spoken of as something specially Danish, was in truth hardly more Danish

than Frankish. The private history of the Frankish Kings, Merwings and

Karlings alike, is one long record of the strangest conjugal relations.

Ordinary concubinage is not amazing anywhere; what stands out specially

conspicuous in the history of these Kings—nowhere more conspicuous than

in the history of the great Charles—is the liberty which they assumed of

divorcing their Queens at pleasure, and sometimes of having several

acknowledged Queens at once. [Sidenote: William Longsword French rather

than Danish.] William, born of a doubtful union of this kind, was far

more French than Danish in feeling. His tutor was Botho, a Danish

companion of Rolf, but one who threw himself thoroughly into the French

and Christian interest. Such an education made William familiar with the

language and feelings of both classes of his subjects; but his own

sympathies lay with the speech, as well as with the creed, of his

mother; he was more at home in Romanized Rouen than in Teutonic Bayeux.

In the existing state of things, divided as the duchy was between the

Danish or heathen and the French or Christian party, the personal

sympathies of the prince were of the highest importance, and there can

be no doubt that the French feelings and Christian convictions of

William had a most decisive effect on the history of the Norman

state.[252]

The first great event in the internal history of the duchy [Sidenote:

Breton revolt. 931.] during the reign of William is a general revolt of

its Breton dependencies. This event was probably not unconnected with

the general course of affairs in Gaul. At William’s accession, two

Kings, Charles the Simple and Rudolf of Burgundy, disputed the crown of

the West-Franks. William, as we have seen, became the vassal of

[Sidenote: William’s attachment to the cause of Charles. His peace with

Hugh and Herbert. 928.] Charles, and refused all submission to Rudolf.

Even in finally making peace with his great French neighbours, Hugh of

Paris and Herbert of Vermandois, William made it a condition that

Herbert should do homage to Charles as he himself had done. Herbert, it

should be remembered, was himself of Carolingian descent, and might have

further designs of his own. It was only on these terms that William

restored Herbert’s son, who had been given to his father Rolf as a

hostage.[253] Charles remained for some while a puppet in the hands of

Herbert, brought forth as a sovereign or confined as a prisoner, as

suited the ever-shifting [Sidenote: Death of Charles the Simple. 929.]

relations of Herbert, Hugh, and Rudolf. At last the unhappy descendant

and namesake of the great Emperor died in bonds at Peronne, whether

actually murdered by Herbert, or simply worn out by sorrow and

captivity, it matters little.[254] Rudolf was now the only acknowledged

King, and he soon showed himself to be, in one respect at least, fully

worthy of his crown. The independent and unsettled Northmen of the Loire

had committed [Sidenote: King Rudolf defeats the Northmen of the Loire

at Limoges. 930.] great devastations in Aquitaine. King Rudolf overcame

them in a great battle at Limoges, where he utterly broke their power,

and procured the acknowledgement of his own supremacy over

Aquitaine.[255] It was probably this great defeat of one Norman army by

a King to whom no [Sidenote: The Bretons rise.] Norman had hitherto done

homage which encouraged the Bretons to make an attempt to throw off the

Norman yoke altogether. That yoke was of a twofold kind; there was the

more regular and endurable supremacy of the Norman Duke at Rouen, and

there was also the constant annoyance of small bands or colonies of

independent adventurers within their frontiers or upon their borders.

Under their princes, [Sidenote: Massacre of the Normans, Michaelmas

931.] Juhel Berengar and Alan, the Bretons rose; they made a massacre of

the Normans in their own country, which may have given a precedent for

the later massacre of the Danes in England.[256] The feast of Saint

Michael in the one case was what the feast of Saint Brice was in the

other. [Sidenote: The Bretons attack Bayeux.] Flushed with success, they

entered the Norman duchy, and attacked Rolf’s latest and most precious

acquisition, Teutonic Bayeux.[257] Alike under Saxon and under Norman

occupation, the Teutonic colony was a thorn in the side of the Celts,

which they were always eager to get rid of. [Sidenote: The revolt

crushed.] But William completely crushed the revolt, and its only result

was to bring all Britanny more completely under Norman control, and to

extend the immediate boundaries [Sidenote: Normandy gains the Côtentin

peninsula.] of his duchy. The districts of Avranches and Coutances, with

the noble peninsula to which the latter city gives its name, were now

added to the immediate Norman dominion.[258]

[Sidenote: High position of England under Æthelstan.]

At this point comes the first of many signs which we shall meet with in

the course of our story, all of which show the high position which

England held at this time, and the important influence exercised on

foreign politics by the renowned prince who now filled the West-Saxon

throne. In this, as in every other respect, all depended on the personal

character of the King. It was now exactly as it was ages later. England

under Æthelstan differed from England under Æthelred, just as England

under Elizabeth or Cromwell differed from England under the first or the

second pair of Stewarts. Through the whole of this period, the King of

the English, the common friend and kinsman of most of the contending

princes, appears as a dignified mediator among them. Through the

marriages of his sisters, some contracted before, some after his

election to the crown, Æthelstan was the brother-in-law of most of the

chief princes of Western Europe. [Sidenote: His connexion with most of

the Western Princes.] He stood in this relation to King Otto, to King

Charles, to King Lewis of Arles, to Duke Hugh of Paris, and to a

nameless prince near the Alps.[259] On the imprisonment [Sidenote:

Eadgifu and Lewis take refuge in England.] of Charles, his Queen

Eadgifu,[260] with her young son Lewis, had taken refuge in

England,[261] and the future King of the West-Franks was now learning

lessons of war and statesmanship at the hands of his glorious uncle. So

[Sidenote: Alan of Britanny does the like.] now, on the extinction of

the Breton insurrection, while Berenger submitted to the Normans, Alan

took shelter with Æthelstan,[262] as his father before him is said to

have taken shelter with Eadward. England might in either case seem a

strange place of refuge for a banished Armorican prince and his

following. The descendants of those who had originally fled before the

English conquerors now sought for safety in the very land from which

their forefathers had been driven. And at this particular moment such a

refuge might seem stranger than ever. The Breton exiles sought shelter

in England at the hands of the very King by whom the last footsteps of

Celtic independence in Southern Britain were trampled out. Æthelstan and

William of Rouen might well seem to be carrying out [Sidenote: Relations

of England with Normandy less friendly than with the other states.] the

same work on opposite sides of the sea. But a nearer tie of common

hostility might well at that moment unite the Breton and the Englishman.

Each was engaged in a struggle with Scandinavian intruders in his own

land. Between the Danes in England and the Danes in Normandy

communications never wholly ceased, and, long after this time, we shall

find the connexion between Denmark and Normandy directly affecting the

course of English events. The Normans and their Duke seem always to have

been on less intimate terms with England than most of the neighbouring

states; William stands almost alone among princes of equal rank in not

being honoured with the hand of a sister of glorious Æthelstan. The

Norman historian even puts forth a claim on the part of his Duke to a

dominion over England,[263] which is among the most ridiculous

outpourings of his lying vanity. Still such a boast speaks something as

to the feelings which existed between the Danes in Gaul and the great

destroyer of the Danish power in Britain. With Æthelstan then, the

common champion of Christian and civilized Europe, at the court which

was the common shelter of the oppressed, the common school of every

princely virtue, did the Breton prince, fleeing from his conqueror,

[Sidenote: Restoration of Alan. 936.] seek the safest and the most

honourable refuge. At a later date, when the influence of Æthelstan on

the affairs of Gaul was specially great, Alan and his companions were

allowed to return.[264] He received a large part of Britanny as a vassal

of the Norman Duke; he appears to have remained steady in his

allegiance, and he is henceforth constantly mentioned among the chief

peers of the Norman [Sidenote: His struggles with the Northmen of the

Loire.] state.[265] But he could win back the actual possession of his

dominions only by hard fighting against the independent Normans of the

Loire. These pirates, even after Rudolf’s victory at Limoges, held many

points of the country, and they were hardly more inclined to submit to

the Norman Duke at Rouen than to the Breton Count at Vannes.[266] Alan

restored the ruined city of Nantes, and did much for his recovered

dominions in various ways. The relations between Normandy and Britanny

were now definitely settled, as far as anything could ever be said to be

settled in that age. The boundary between the dominions of the vassal

and his lord was fixed by the Norman acquisition [Sidenote: The Côtentin

becomes thoroughly Norman.] of the Côtentin and Avranchin. These lands,

the last won part of Normandy, form one of the districts which became

most thoroughly Norman. They stood open for Norman colonization; and we

shall presently see that colonization was allowed, perhaps invited, not

only from the settled parts of Normandy, but even directly from the

heathen North itself.

Along with the peninsula of Coutances the Norman Dukes obtained a

possession which was afterwards to form a bond of connexion of a

singular kind between Normandy and England.[267] In comparing the extent

of the West-Frankish kingdom at this age with that of modern France in

our own day,[268] while mentioning many [Sidenote: Normandy acquires the

Channel Islands.] points in which the French frontier has advanced, I

had to mention three points where it has fallen back. The extent of the

land whose princes acknowledged a nominal superior in the West-Frankish

King took in Flanders, Barcelona, and the Channel Islands. Those

islands, a natural appendage to the Constantine peninsula, now became

Norman. When continental Normandy was lost by John, the insular part of

the duchy was still retained, and it has ever since remained a

possession of the English crown. As long as the English Kings kept the

title either of Duke of Normandy or of King of France, here was a

portion of the duchy or of the kingdom whose actual possession might be

said to make good their claim to the rest. This insular Normandy remains

to this day French in speech, but deeply attached, and with good reason,

to the [Sidenote: Peculiar relation of the islands to England.] English

connexion. The islands form distinct commonwealths, dependent on the

British crown, but not incorporated with the United Kingdom. This

condition of a dependency is perhaps that which best suits a community

which has a distinct existence of its own, but which could not possibly

maintain its independence as a distinct and sovereign state. Keeping

their ancient constitutions, and enjoying the protection of the power of

England, the Norman islands unite the safety of a great kingdom with the

local independence of a small commonwealth. How much they would lose by

becoming a French department I need not stop to point out. But they

would also lose, not nearly so much, but still not a little, by becoming

an English county. The right of sending one or two members to the

British Parliament, where, among so many greater interests, their voice

could hardly be heard, would be a poor exchange for their present

legislative independence. Parliament can indeed, on any emergency which

may call for its interference, legislate for the Norman islands. But it

must legislate specially for them, after special consideration of the

circumstances of the case. The islands cannot find themselves

unexpectedly bound by some piece of general legislation, passed without

their knowledge and possibly contrary to their interests. Thus the

dependent condition of the islands secures a greater consideration of

their interests than they could receive if they formed an integral

portion of the kingdom. We occasionally hear of internal abuses in the

Channel Islands which are held to need the intervention of Parliament,

but we never hear of external grievances laid to the charge of

Parliament itself. The Norman islands seem to be far [Sidenote:

Comparison with Orkney.] more contented as dependencies than those

Norwegian islands which, having been formed into a Scottish county, have

become an integral part of the United Kingdom. The ancient earldom of

Orkney, represented in Parliament by a single member, has its wrongs, or

at least its grievances; of the wrongs or grievances of Jersey or

Guernsey no one ever heard. And this singular and beneficial relation in

which these interesting little communities stand at this day to the

English crown is connected by a direct chain of cause and effect with

the revolt of the Bretons against Norman supremacy nine hundred and

forty years ago.

William, thus become the conqueror of the Bretons, ruled for the present

as a French prince. As such, his French speech, French connexions, and

French religion, caused him to be hated and dreaded by a large portion

of his subjects. A strong Danish and heathen party still survived within

the older limits of the duchy, and the newly won lands probably

contained some of those independent Danish settlements by which Britanny

in general was so [Sidenote: Revolt of the Danish party in Normandy,

932.] infested. Out of these two elements a Danish and heathen revolt

was organized. Its leader was Riulf, seemingly an independent Danish

chief settled in the Constantine [Sidenote: Legendary details of the

revolt and its suppression.] peninsula. The story, as we have it,[269]

reads like a romance. The rebels rise in arms; they demand one

concession after another; the panic-stricken Duke is ready to yield

everything; he even proposes to resign his duchy and to flee to his

French uncle at Senlis. But he is recalled to a better mind by his

veteran counsellor, the Danish-born Bernard. He then wins an almost

miraculous victory over the rebels, and, for the time at least, crushes

all signs of revolt. These details cannot be accepted as historical; but

one or two points in the story are instructive. The rebels are made to

demand the cession of all the country west of the river Risle. The land

which would have been left to the Duke after such a cession nearly

answers to the original grant to Rolf, excluding the later acquisitions

of [Sidenote: Geographical character of the two parties.] Bayeux and

Coutances. This demand, like everything else in the history, shows how

thoroughly the Norman parties were geographical parties. The Christian

and French-speaking Duke might keep Christian and French-speaking Rouen

and Evreux; but the heathen and Danish land to the west must be

independent of a prince who had cast [Sidenote: Christianity and French

manners supported by a party among the native Danes.] away the creed and

speech of his forefathers. On the other hand, we see that there were men

of Danish birth, old companions of Rolf, men who retained a strong

national feeling, who still distinctly threw in their lot with the

French party. They wished Normandy to remain an united and independent

state; they had not the slightest wish to merge Normandy in France in

any political sense; but they wished the Norman duchy to be a member of

the general French commonwealth, French in religion, language, and

civilization. Such a man was Botho, the old tutor of William and

afterwards tutor to William’s son; such were Oslac, bearing a name

famous in our own Northumbrian history, and Bernard the Dane, who plays

an important part in Norman affairs for many years to [Sidenote:

William’s French and Christian government.] come. Through the overthrow

of the rebellion this party was now dominant, and William reigned as a

Christian prince, as a French prince, aiming at an influence in French

affairs proportioned to the extent of his dominion on Gaulish soil.

Through his whole life he was subject to strong religious impulses, and,

according to a legend which may well contain some groundwork of truth,

he was with difficulty hindered from becoming a monk in his own

foundation of Jumièges.[270] Yet he was by no means lavish in grants to

the Church, and the ecclesiastical foundations, which had suffered so

cruelly during the Scandinavian incursions, still remained weak and

impoverished, and, in many cases, altogether desolate. His general

government is described as just and vigorous, and he seems to have

[Sidenote: He does not wholly break with the Danish element.] deservedly

won the general love of his subjects. And it is certain that, though he

laboured to bring his dominions within the pale of Christian and French

civilization, he did not wholly cast away the national speech and

national feelings of his fathers. It is not unlikely that his policy

towards the Danish element in the duchy varied at different periods of

his reign. He may have found that the transformation of a nation must

needs be a work of time, that too much haste might hinder the object

which he had at heart, that a certain measure of toleration, in

language, in manners, and even in religion, might be needful in order to

bring about a final change in [Sidenote: Towards the end of his reign he

makes further advances to the Danes.] any of those points. In his later

days he may even have gone further than this. After all his efforts to

identify himself with the French, and to act as a French prince among

other French princes, he still found himself scorned and hated, still

looked on as Duke only of the Pirates. Under the influence of such

feelings, he may to some extent have thrown himself into the hands of

the Danish party. According to a story which cannot be received as it

stands, but which probably contains some germs of truth, he admitted a

fresh Danish colony, direct from Denmark, into the newly-acquired

peninsula of Coutances.[271] It is certain that he entrusted his son

Richard to the care, not of any French clerk or Bishop, but to his own

old [Sidenote: Danish education of his son Richard.] tutor, the

Danish-born Botho. The boy was purposely taken to Bayeux, the Teutonic

city which Botho himself, in his pirate days, had helped to harry. He

was sent thither expressly to become familiar with the ancestral tongue,

which was already forgotten at Rouen,[272] but which was still spoken by

the mixed Saxon and Danish population of the Bessin. The boy was to be

brought up in a Danish city, but by a native Dane who had accepted

Christianity and French manners. We may be sure that no religious

apostasy was dreamed of; but William now saw that the sovereign of

Normandy must be neither pure Dane nor pure Frenchman, but, as far as

might be, Dane and Frenchman at once.

[Sidenote: Part played by William Longsword in general history.]

For the purposes of the present sketch, the internal developement of the

Norman duchy, the distinction between its Danish and its French

elements, its relations to its Celtic neighbours and vassals, are points

of more importance than the part played by its second Duke in the

general politics of Gaul. Yet the history of Normandy would be hardly

intelligible without some understanding of the general position of the

duchy as one of the great [Sidenote: Utter confusion of this period.]

fiefs of the West-Frankish crown. The reign of William Longsword forms

the most confused part even of the confused Gaulish history of the tenth

century. It is a period utterly without principles, almost without

definite parties; even the strife between Laon and Paris, between the

Karling and the house of Robert, between the Frank and the Frenchman, is

in a manner lulled as long as Rudolf of Burgundy fills the Western

throne. Every vassal of the Western crown sought little beyond his own

gain and aggrandizement, and all of them freely changed sides as often

as it suited their interest so to do. And William himself added as much

to the confusion as any man, by changing sides perhaps oftener

[Sidenote: Comparison between William and the French Princes.] than

anybody else. And hardly any practical difference was made by the fact

that William seems to have been several degrees less selfish and

unprincipled than his neighbours. He was evidently a creature of

impulse, and his impulses, if they often led him astray, often led him

to righteous and generous actions. Though we cannot set him down, with

his panegyrist, as a saint and a martyr, we can at least see in him far

nobler qualities than any that can be seen in the contemporary princes

of Vermandois, of Flanders, or even of ducal France. Still the practical

difference was slight. William was doubtless morally a better man than

his neighbours; but politically he was as untrustworthy as the worst of

them. His plighted faith went for as little as the plighted faith of a

deliberate perjurer. Impulse led him to one course one day, and impulse

led him to an opposite course the next day. He probably never was

intentionally treacherous, but he did as many of what were in effect

treacherous actions as the basest traitor among them all.

[Sidenote: Condition of Gaul.]

Northern Gaul was at this time divided in very unequal proportions

between the King and several vassal princes more powerful than himself.

Of Southern Gaul [Sidenote: Practical independence of Aquitaine.] it is

hardly needful to speak; of Aquitaine we hear just enough to show that

the lands north and south of the Loire were aware of each other’s

existence, and that a nominal connexion was held to exist between them.

The Aquitanian princes now and then stooped to pay a nominal homage to

the King of the West-Franks; otherwise the South moved in a world of its

own, a world which was very slightly touched by the revolutions of Laon,

Rouen, or Paris. It must always be remembered that the royal city was

Laon, a city close upon the Lotharingian frontier, in a district where

the Teutonic speech still lingered.[273] [Sidenote: The King’s domain.]

The royal domain took in only Laon, Compiègne, and a small territory

about those towns. Through the election of Rudolf, ducal Burgundy was

brought into a temporary connexion with the crown, but that connexion

lasted no longer than the reign of Rudolf himself. To [Sidenote:

Lotharingia; explanation of its continual revolutions.] the east and

north-east of the royal dominions lay Lotharingia, the border land, ever

fluctuating in its allegiance between the Eastern and Western kingdoms.

But all its fluctuations follow one unvarying principle, namely that its

inhabitants preferred the rule of a Karling to that of any one else, but

that, when no Karling was to be had, they preferred the rule of a

[Sidenote: Germany.] German to that of a Frenchman. Beyond Lotharingia

lay the Eastern _Francia_, the Teutonic Kingdom, now rapidly rising into

greatness under the vigorous Kings [Sidenote: The Saxon Kings.] of the

Saxon house. Deeming themselves the true successors of Charles, speaking

his tongue and crowned in his royal city, the Saxon Kings already

aspired to reunite the scattered fragments of his Empire. Within the

Western [Sidenote: Arnulf of Flanders.] Kingdom we find three chief

princes, Arnulf of Flanders, Herbert of Vermandois, and Hugh of Paris.

The Flanders of those days, it should be remembered, reached far to the

south of any border which Flanders has had for some centuries past.

Calais, Boulogne, and Arras were all Flemish, and in those days Flemish

still meant Low-Dutch. Ponthieu was a frontier district, with a Count of

its own, whose homage was disputed between Flanders and Normandy. Of the

present sovereign of Flanders it is enough to say that his actions show

him to have been [Sidenote: Herbert of Vermandois.] capable of any

crime. To the south of Flanders lay Vermandois, governed by the

faithless, unprincipled Herbert, himself of Carolingian descent, but the

greatest of all sinners against Carolingian royalty; the gaoler, most

likely the murderer, of Charles the Simple. His one object was to extend

by any means his comparatively narrow territories. More powerful than

any other Western prince, far more powerful than his nominal King, was

the lord of the Western _Francia_, the Duke of the French, [Sidenote:

The Duchy of France.] Hugh the Great of Paris. His dominions took in the

greater part of central Gaul north of the Loire, but, since the

establishment of the Norman duchy, they nowhere [Sidenote: Ducal

Burgundy.] reached to the sea. Ducal Burgundy need hardly be mentioned;

on the death of Rudolf, Duke and King, the duchy was split into several

parts, a large share [Sidenote: Archbishopric of Rheims.] falling to the

lot of Hugh himself. Along with these temporal principalities we might

almost reckon the metropolitan see of Rheims, whose Primate, alone among

Western bishops, made some faint approach to the position of the

princely prelates of Germany. This great and wealthy church constantly

formed an apple of discord among the temporal powers which surrounded

it. The rival princes were always striving, sometimes to thrust their

nominees into the archbishopric, sometimes to appropriate to themselves

the estates of the see. A large share of the history of the times is

taken up with disputes about the succession to the archbishopric, which

sometimes take the form of ecclesiastical synods, sometimes that of

temporal campaigns and sieges. In the end the temporal importance of the

see was greatly lessened through the loss of several of its most

valuable possessions, [Sidenote: Hugh the Great.] among them the famous

lordship of Coucy. Among all these princes Hugh of France stands out the

foremost, alike from the extent of his dominions and from the

peculiarity of his personal position. The nephew of King Odo, the son of

King Robert, the father of King Hugh, the brother-in-law of King Rudolf,

King Æthelstan, and King Otto himself, the Duke of the French never

would be himself a King. He had no scruple against making [Sidenote: His

Policy.] war on the King, none against robbing him of his dominions,

none against assuming a complete control over his actions and even

keeping him in personal bondage. He had no scruple even against

transferring his allegiance from one King to another, against becoming a

vassal of the Eastern instead of the Western crown. But if he went thus

far, he would go no further; he would always have a King over him, if

only to show how much greater he was than any King; but a King he

himself never would be. Three times at least he might easily have

mounted the throne; but he always declined the glittering bauble that

lay within his grasp. In all this there seems something like a guiding

principle; and even in other respects, faithless and ambitious as Hugh

was, he was distinctly better than some of his fellows. It is some

slight comfort to find that a man who was honoured with the hand of a

sister of Æthelstan was at least not stained with any such frightful

crimes as those which have handed down the names of Arnulf and Herbert

to everlasting shame.[274]

[Sidenote: William’s relation to the Kingdom, (927); his fidelity to

Charles.]

When William succeeded his father, Normandy was at war with France; that

is, it was at war with Herbert of Vermandois and Hugh of Paris, and with

Rudolf of Burgundy, their King of the West-Franks. But Rolf, and after

him William, acknowledged no King but the imprisoned Charles. From him

Rolf had received his lands; to him Rolf had done homage; to him William

repeated that homage on the earliest opportunity, and he never did

homage to Rudolf till the death of Charles left the Burgundian Duke

without a competitor for the [Sidenote: 926–928.] kingly title. Peace

was made and peace was again confirmed, without any acknowledgement of

the usurper’s claim. It was not till three years later, when Charles

[Sidenote: After Charles’s death William does homage to Rudolf. 933.]

was dead, and when Rudolf, by his victory at Limoges, had shown himself

worthy to reign, that William, seemingly of his own act and deed and

without any special circumstances calling for such a course, did homage

to Rudolf,[275] and received from him a grant of the maritime Britanny.

[Sidenote: Rudolf’s grant of Britanny.] This grant most likely carried

with it both a general confirmation of the superiority of Normandy over

Britanny and a special confirmation of the transfer of Avranches and

Coutances to the immediate dominion of the Norman Duke. Meanwhile Hugh

and Herbert were running their usual course; it is hardly the duty of an

English, or even of a Norman, historian to reckon up the number of times

that they transferred their allegiance from Charles to [Sidenote:

Herbert does homage to Henry. 931.] Rudolf and from Rudolf to Charles.

It is of more importance to mark that Herbert, at a moment when Rudolf

and Hugh were both at war with him, did not scruple to transfer his

allegiance to the Eastern King [Sidenote: Rudolf dies. 936.] Henry.[276]

At last Rudolf died, and now a most important change took place. It

might not be very clear what was the use of a King, if his vassals,

several of them more powerful than himself, might rebel against him and

make war on him at pleasure. Still, though all the princes were agreed

in allowing to the King the smallest possible amount of territory and

power, none of the princes was [Sidenote: Diet of election for the new

King.] prepared to do without a King altogether. A Diet of election was

held, of which some most remarkable details are preserved.[277] The

prime mover in the whole matter was Hugh the Great. He might himself

have become a candidate; all central and southern Gaul, his own duchy

[Sidenote: Central and Southern Gaul favours Hugh; the Eastern part

favours Lewis.] and the lands beyond the Loire, sought to confer the

crown upon him. But the Eastern part of the kingdom, where there still

lingered some traces of Teutonic blood and speech, some feelings of

reverence for the blood of the great Emperor, favoured the election of

Lewis the son of Charles, who was now living under the protection of his

[Sidenote: Hugh declines the crown and procures the election of Lewis.]

English uncle. Hugh, according to his invariable policy, declined the

crown for himself. He already enjoyed the reality of kingship, and he

shrank with a superstitious dread from a title which had brought little

gain to his uncle and his brother-in-law and still less to his own

father. It was on the motion of the Duke of the French that the assembly

agreed to elect Lewis as King of the [Sidenote: Embassy to Æthelstan.

936.] West-Franks, and to send an embassy to Æthelstan to ask for the

restoration of his nephew to the throne of his fathers. The embassy

passed over into England, and found the King at York.[278] It was the

year before Brunanburh, when the presence of Æthelstan was doubtless

specially called for in his northern dominions. The ambassadors spoke in

the name of Duke Hugh and of all the chief men of the Gauls, and prayed

for Lewis to be their [Sidenote: Negotiations between Æthelstan and

Hugh.] King. Æthelstan, somewhat doubtful of their good faith,[279]

demanded oaths and proposed a further conference. The King of the

English hastened to the coast of Kent, and the Duke of the French to the

coast of Flanders, not far from Boulogne. Fire signals were exchanged on

each side, the materials being found in the wooden houses which lined

the shores.[280] Let us hope that, whatever Hugh or Arnulf may have

done, Æthelstan at least made good the loss to his subjects. Several

English Bishops and Thegns passed over, having at their head Oda, Bishop

of the Wilsætas or of Ramsbury, afterwards the famous Primate.[281]

Before Æthelstan would trust his nephew across the sea, he demanded

satisfactory oaths from the assembled princes; otherwise he would give

Lewis one of his own kingdoms, where he might reign safely and

prosperously.[282] This was no empty boast; the Emperor of Britain had

kingdoms to bestow, lower indeed in rank, but safer and more powerful,

than the nominal royalty of Laon. The princes of Gaul swore as they were

bidden; but it was agreed that the Duke of the French should be the

chief adviser, or rather the protector and guardian, of the new

King.[283] Lewis crossed the sea; he landed in the realm which was now

his, he sprang on his horse,[284] and rode on amid the cheers of

[Sidenote: Lewis crowned King. 936.] his new subjects. He went to his

royal city of Laon, where he was consecrated King by Artald Archbishop

of Rheims; he then went with his guardian on an expedition into

Burgundy, more to his guardian’s profit than to his own.[285] He then

visited his powerful vassal at Paris; but in the next year, safe on the

rock of Laon, he threw off [Sidenote: He declares his independence of

Hugh. 937.] the yoke; he declared his independence of Duke Hugh, and

sent for his mother Eadgifu, seemingly to take Hugh’s place as his chief

counsellor.[286]

[Sidenote: Character of King Lewis; his vigorous and active reign.]