The reign of Lewis—Lewis from beyond Sea—is of itself enough to confute

the common mistake of believing that the line of Charles the Great ended

in a race of imbecile _fainéants_, like those whom Pippin had set

aside.[287] Lewis may be called ambitious, turbulent, and perfidious,

but no man was ever less of a _fainéant_. His life was in truth one of

preternatural activity. Early adversity, combined with an education at

the hands of glorious Æthelstan, had brought out some very vigorous

qualities in his young nephew. If Lewis was ambitious, turbulent, and

perfidious, he was but paying off Hugh of Paris and William of Rouen in

their own coin. In truth no two positions can well be more unlike one

another than the position of [Sidenote: Contrast between the late

Karlings and the late Merwings.] the later Karlings and that of the

later Merwings. The Duke of the French might now and then put on

something of the guise of a Mayor of the Palace, but Pippin and Hugh had

very different masters to deal with. The nominal ruler of a vast realm,

led about as an occasional pageant and leaving the government of his

dominions to an all-powerful minister, is the exact opposite to a King

whose domains have shrunk up to the territory of a single city, and who

has to spend his life in hard blows to keep that last remnant of his

heritage from the ambition of vassals whose territories are far wider

than his own. Lewis had to strive in turn against France, Normandy, and

Vermandois, and now and then he was able to give each of them nearly as

good as they brought. And, small as was the extent of the King’s actual

domains, there was still an abiding reverence for the royal name, which

breathes in every page of the chroniclers, and which was not without

influence even on the minds of the men who fought against him. Still

Lewis had constantly to fight for the small remnant of dominion which

was left to him. The restless Herbert had to be [Sidenote: 938.] driven

from a fortress built on the very slope of the King’s [Sidenote: 939.]

own rock of Laon.[288] The next year we find both William and Hugh in

arms against the King in a quarrel arising out of the border disputes of

Normandy and Flanders.[289] William was at war with Arnulf, the quarrel

between these two great potentates being, if not caused in the first

[Sidenote: Affairs of Montreuil. 939.] instance, at any rate aggravated

by their differences as to the affairs of a smaller neighbour. This was

Herlwin, Count of Montreuil or Ponthieu, whose dominions lay between

Normandy and Flanders. Properly he seems to have been a vassal of the

Duke of the French,[290] but when his dominions were seized by Arnulf,

he got no help from Hugh, while he got very effective help from William.

[Sidenote: Montreuil taken by Arnulf and recovered by Herlwin.] By the

aid of a Norman force, headed, according to one account, by the Norman

Duke himself, Montreuil was recovered, and Herlwin reinstated.[291] But

greater powers than any of these were soon to come on the stage. One of

them indeed figures in a rather unlooked-for way in the story of

Herlwin. When Montreuil was taken by Arnulf, [Sidenote: Herlwin’s wife

and children sent to Æthelstan.] the wife and children of the

dispossessed Count were sent, of all the people in the world, to King

Æthelstan in England. That they should have taken refuge at his court

would have been only the natural course of things; but it sounds strange

at first that the prisoners should be sent to the King of the English,

if not actually as captives in bonds, yet at least as persons over whom

some degree of watch was to be kept.[292] The explanation is most likely

to be found in the close alliance between Æthelstan and Lewis, possibly

also in the kindred between Æthelstan and Arnulf, who was, like

Æthelstan, a grandson of Ælfred. Just now Arnulf was the friend, and

William [Sidenote: William excommunicated. 939.] the enemy, of Lewis,

and William was actually excommunicated by the Bishops in the King’s

interest for his harryings of the Flemish territory. That a similar fate

fell on Herbert for his aggressions on the lands of the archbishopric of

Rheims is less wonderful.[293] Æthelstan soon afterwards again appears

as the ally of his nephew, even when ties equally strong might have

drawn him towards [Sidenote: Otto the Great, King of the East-Franks.

936.] his nephew’s enemies. King Henry of Germany was now dead, and his

son, the great Otto, the brother-in-law of Æthelstan, had succeeded to

the throne of the Eastern Franks in the same year in which their common

nephew had succeeded to the royalty of the West. After some opposition

at the hands of his own brothers, the future restorer of the Empire had

received the Frankish diadem in the great Emperor’s minster at Aachen.

But the men of border Lotharingia refused to acknowledge another Saxon;

there was now again a Karling who was a crowned King; none but that

Karling could be their lawful sovereign; the Saxon Duke had been chosen

King of Saxony only, because a chief was needed to defend the land

against the Slaves, and because the true Carolingian King was at that

[Sidenote: The Lotharingians transfer their allegiance from Otto to

Lewis. 939.] moment disqualified.[294] The Lotharingians therefore

transferred their allegiance from Otto to Lewis. Their first application

was rejected; a second, made by the temporal princes of the country—the

Bishops clave to Otto—was accepted.[295] A war naturally followed

between Lewis and Otto, in which Lotharingia was ravaged by the German

King. Lewis was however not without allies. The West-Saxon King stepped

in as the champion of his Frankish [Sidenote: The English fleet in the

Channel.] nephew against his Old-Saxon brother-in-law; an English fleet

appeared in the channel; but in an inland war this naval help could be

of little avail, and nothing came of the English intervention beyond the

ravage of some parts of the opposite coast.[296] A series of intrigues

and backslidings now follow which fairly baffle the chronicler. While

Lewis was gaining new subjects to the East, his vassals within his own

kingdom almost unanimously forsook [Sidenote: The Western princes do

homage to Otto.] him. Not only his old enemies Hugh and Herbert, but the

fickle Duke of the Normans, and Arnulf, in whose cause he had himself

been so lately warring, all met Otto and transferred their homage from

Lewis to him.[297] The motive for this course is not very clear. Otto

was indeed a more distant, but he was a far more powerful, over-lord,

one far more likely to exercise effective authority over his [Sidenote:

Activity of Lewis.] vassals. But the indefatigable Lewis found new

friends in Lotharingia; he went into Elsass to a conference with

[Sidenote: Lotharingia won and lost.] Hugh of Provence;[298] he drove

the partisans of Otto out of Lotharingia, and returned to Laon to

chastise a Bishop suspected of treason. These successes were only

momentary; Lotharingia was soon recovered by Otto.[299] But the

conspiracy of the Western princes against their King was no [Sidenote:

William does homage and makes special promises to Lewis. 940.] less

transitory. In the year following the general defection William of

Normandy changed sides; he met Lewis in the neighbourhood of Amiens; he

did homage, and received from the King a fresh grant of his

dominions.[300] And he seems to have made something more than the usual

promises of allegiance. He is said to have pledged himself either to die

in the King’s cause or to restore him to the full exercise of his royal

authority.[301] Yet before the year was out William was again in arms,

helping Hugh [Sidenote: The princes, William among them, besiege Rheims,

and depose Archbishop Artald. 940.] and Herbert in a siege of

Rheims.[302] The metropolitan see was disputed between Hugh, a son of

Herbert, and Artald, a vigorous champion of the King, who had performed

the ceremony of his coronation. Artald was now in possession of the

bishopric, and had been endowed by the King with great temporal

privileges and with the title of Count.[303] War against the Primate was

in every sense war against the King. The city surrendered; Herbert’s

Archbishop was admitted; and the conspirators then went a step further

in rebellion by besieging the King’s [Sidenote: Hugh and Herbert again

do homage to Otto at Attigny. 940.] own city of Laon. Hugh and Herbert

presently took a still more daring step by inviting Otto to Attigny,

within the acknowledged West-Frankish border, and there renewing their

homage to him.[304] With this last transaction William [Sidenote:

William renews his homage to Lewis.] had nothing to do; before long we

find him again the faithful homager of King Lewis, receiving him with

all kingly-state at Rouen, and seemingly bringing with him to their due

allegiance, not only his own Breton vassals, but his brother-in-law

William of Aquitaine.[305]

We are now drawing near to the end of the troubled career of William

Longsword. We here find ourselves involved in such a mass of

contradictory statements that I reserve their special examination for

another place.[306] [Sidenote: William Longsword murdered by Arnulf.

943.] That William was lured by Arnulf of Flanders to a conference on

the island of Picquigny in the Somme, and that he was there murdered by

the contrivance of the Flemish prince, there seems no reason to doubt.

But as to the motives and circumstances which led to the act, whether

Arnulf acted alone or in concert with any of the other Western princes,

whether King Otto himself was in any way the unwitting cause of a crime

at which his noble heart would have revolted, are questions which I

shall [Sidenote: Council of Attigny, held by the two Kings of the Franks

as colleagues.] discuss elsewhere. But I cannot, even here, wholly pass

by the Council of Attigny, a council at which events took place which

one version closely connects with the death of William. Otto was

reconciled to Lewis, who had now become his brother-in-law by a marriage

with his widowed sister Gerberga, and by Otto’s means the Duke of the

French was reconciled to the King. The two Kings then, as colleagues in

the administration of one Frankish realm, held a solemn council, at

which the great vassals of the Western Kingdom attended. The kings sat

side by side; but though the Western King was on his own ground, his

Eastern colleague, the truer successor of Charles, the King crowned at

Aachen and already no doubt looking to be the Emperor crowned at Rome,

took the seat of honour, which, if one tale be true, the Norman alone

was found bold enough to challenge for his own immediate lord.

§ 4. _Reign of Richard the Fearless._ 943–996.

[Sidenote: Richard the Fearless succeeds. 943.]

William Longsword left one son, Richard, surnamed the Fearless, born of

a Breton mother Sprota, who stood, as we have seen, to Duke William in

that doubtful position in which she might, in different mouths, be

called an honourable matron, a concubine, or a harlot.[307] Her son had

been taught both the languages of his country, and he was equally at

home in Romance Rouen and in Scandinavian Bayeux.[308] Whether his birth

were strictly legitimate or not was a matter of very little moment

either in [Sidenote: His doubtful legitimacy little thought of.] Norman

or in Frankish eyes. If a man was of princely birth and showed a spirit

worthy of his forefathers, few cared to pry over minutely into the legal

or canonical condition of his mother. The young Richard had been

already, without any difficulty, acknowledged by the Norman and Breton

chiefs as his father’s future successor in the duchy,[309] [Sidenote: He

is invested with the Duchy by Lewis.] and he now found as little

difficulty in obtaining a formal investiture of the fief from his lord

King Lewis.[310] In England his minority, for he was only about ten

years old, would have been a far greater hindrance to his succession

than his doubtful birth. But even in England, within the same century,

minors reigned when no better qualified member of the kingly house was

forthcoming, and young [Sidenote: Reign of Richard. 943–996.] Richard

was the only male descendant of Rolf. The long reign of Richard,

reaching over more than fifty years, is one of the most important in the

history of Normandy and of France, and it is in his time that we hear of

the first direct collision between Normandy and England. And the early

part of Richard’s reign is perhaps more crowded with picturesque

incidents than any other portion of time [Sidenote: Romantic interest of

his early life.] of equal length. The early life of the orphan child,

his dangers, his captivity, his escape, his bitter enemies and his

faithful friends, the mighty powers which strove for the possession of

his person or for influence over his counsels—the tale has all the

interest of a complicated romance. Many of the details are doubtless due

to the invention of Norman legend-makers; but there is enough in the

soberer French and German writers to show that the main outline of the

story is trustworthy. But for the purpose of the present sketch, I must

set forth the romantic tale of Richard’s childhood only in a greatly

abridged shape, and content myself with pointing out those parts of the

story which are of political importance.[311]

The year in which William Longsword was murdered was an important year

in many ways for the whole of Gaul. It marks in some sort the beginning

of a new [Sidenote: Events of the year 943;] epoch. Besides the death of

William and the important events which followed upon it, this year was

marked by a birth and a death which had no small influence on the

[Sidenote: death of Herbert of Vermandois; birth of Hugh Capet.] course

of affairs. Herbert of Vermandois, the regicide, the tyrant as he is

called, died this year, and died, according to some accounts, in a

mysterious and horrible fashion.[312] His dominions were divided among

his sons, except some portions which passed into the hands of Hugh of

Paris. The royal power thus lost one of its most formidable enemies,

while another enemy yet more formidable was still further strengthened.

And this year, for the first time, Hugh had a son to be the heir of his

greatness. His English wife Eadhild had died childless; but her

successor, Hugh’s third wife, Hadwisa, daughter of King Henry and sister

of King Otto and Queen Gerberga, now bore him a son, Hugh surnamed

Capet, the future King. [Sidenote: Effect of Hugh’s birth on Hugh the

Great’s policy.] One can hardly doubt that the birth of his son had an

effect on Hugh the Great’s policy. He would not be a King himself, but

he would put no hindrance in the way of his son being a King. From this

time onwards the contrast between the two dynasties, between the old and

the new, between the Frank and the Frenchman, between Laon and Paris,

becomes even more sharply marked than before.

[Sidenote: Constant influence of Germany in Western affairs.]

From this time onwards also we must remark another tendency which was

doubtless closely connected with the one just mentioned, and of which we

have already seen the beginning. I mean the continued and constantly

strengthening influence of Germany, the Eastern Kingdom, in the affairs

of the West. The Council of Attigny, with the two Kings of the Franks

sitting and acting as colleagues, was but the first of a long series of

assemblies of the like kind. It is to Otto that all parties in the

Western Kingdom appeal as their natural mediator; the King appeals to

him as his natural protector. If the Eastern King receives no formal

homage as over-lord, still he is clearly looked on both by Lewis and by

Hugh as something more than a mere neighbour and brother. Towards Lewis

Otto appears as the senior colleague in a common office; in the language

of the elder days of the Empire, the Saxon acts as the Augustus, while

the Frank is only the Cæsar.[313] While Otto is absent on distant

expeditions, his vice-gerent in Lotharingia, Duke Conrad[314] or

Archbishop Bruno, is competent to [Sidenote: From 942 [Attigny] to 973

[death of Otto].] act in his name as moderator of the Western realm.

This kind of relation between the two kingdoms lasted during the whole

remainder of the reign of Otto the Great, that is, during the rest of

the reign of Lewis and during the minority and early reign of his son

Lothar. The changed state of things in the days of the two cousins, Otto

the Second and Lothar, was undoubtedly one determining cause of the fall

of the dynasty of Laon. But there was another determining cause of its

fall with which we have more immediately to do. Under Rolf Normandy had

stuck faithfully to the King; under William it had fluctuated backwards

and [Sidenote: Normandy under Richard attached to France.] forwards

between King and Duke. Under Richard, Normandy, becoming every day more

French and more feudal, became, both in its policy and through actual

feudal ties, permanently attached to the Duke and therefore commonly

hostile to the King.

[Sidenote: Events following the death of William. 943.]

Great disturbances in Normandy followed on the unlooked-for death of

William Longsword. A new invasion [Sidenote: New Danish settlement under

Sihtric.] or settlement direct from the North seems to have happened

nearly at the same time as the Duke’s murder; it may even possibly have

happened with the Duke’s consent.[315] At any rate the heathen King

Sihtric now [Sidenote: The Danes joined by the heathen party in

Normandy.] sailed up the Seine with a fleet, and he was at once welcomed

by the Danish and heathen party in the country. Large numbers of the

Normans, under a chief named Thurmod, fell away from Christianity, and

it appears that [Sidenote: Apostasy of young Richard.] the young Duke

himself was persuaded or constrained to join in their heathen

worship.[316] In such a state of things [Sidenote: The Christian party

in Normandy seek French help.] we can neither wonder at nor blame the

Christian party in Normandy if they drew as close as they could to their

Christian neighbours, even at some risk to the independence of the

duchy. To become subjects either of the King of Laon or of the Duke of

Paris was better than to be eaten up by heathen wikings. Nor are we

entitled to be unduly hard on either King or Duke for trying to make the

most of such an opportunity for recovering [Sidenote: Position of Lewis

and Hugh] the ground which they had lost. The Land of the Normans had

been given up to Rolf by the joint act of [Sidenote: towards Normandy.]

its immediate ruler, the father of the present Duke, and of its

over-lord, the father of the present King. The grant had been made on

the express condition that the Normans should become members of a

Christian and Frankish commonwealth. If heathen invasions were to begin

again, and to be powerfully helped by men settled on Gaulish soil, the

Norman duchy was serving an object exactly opposite to that for which it

was founded. In such a case both Duke and King might well feel

themselves justified in getting rid of the nuisance altogether. Feudal

ideas also were fast developing, and King Lewis may have already begun

to entertain some dim notion that wardship over the fief of a minor

vassal was a right [Sidenote: The Christians commend themselves, some to

Hugh, some to Lewis.] which of necessity belonged to the lord. In any

case, neither Hugh nor Lewis was unwilling to extend his dominions, and

at first a large party in the duchy seemed ready to welcome either of

them. The Christian Normans were divided between the rival attractions

of the King and the Duke. The Duke, nearer and more powerful, could give

the most effectual aid at the moment; the King, more distant, would be

less dangerous as a permanent protector, and the kingly title still

commanded a feeling of deep, if vague and unreasoning, veneration. Some

of the Norman chiefs therefore commended themselves to King Lewis and

others to Duke Hugh. This choice of different protectors seems to mark a

difference of feeling among the Normans themselves;[317] but the

relations of King and Duke were just now unusually friendly, and no

immediate dissension seems to have arisen between them on this account.

It was in this same year, though later than these Norman transactions,

that Hugh not only acted as godfather to a daughter of the King, but was

confirmed by his new spiritual brother in the possession of the duchies

of France [Sidenote: Lewis and Hugh both enter Normandy.] and

Burgundy.[318] Hugh entered Normandy; he fought several battles with the

heathens and apostates, and was willingly received at Evreux, where the

citizens were of [Sidenote: Lewis defeats the heathens and occupies

Rouen.] the Christian party.[319] Meanwhile the King marched to Rouen,

he gathered what forces he could, seemingly both from among his own

subjects and from among the Christian Normans; he fought a battle, he

utterly defeated the heathens, he killed Thurmod with his own hand, he

recovered the young Duke, and left Herlwin of Montreuil as his

representative at Rouen.[320] On a later visit to Rouen, he received the

cession of Evreux from Hugh.[321] Herlwin now waged war against Arnulf

with some success, for he slew Balzo, the actual murderer of William,

and sent his hands as a trophy to the Norman capital.[322] But in the

course of the year Hugh contrived to reconcile Arnulf to the King,[323]

and the King reconciled Arnulf and Herlwin.

Such is the account given by the French writers; the Normans fill up the

story with many further details.[324] [Sidenote: Norman version.] They

leave out—thereby throwing the greatest doubt upon the trustworthiness

of their own story—all about the homage of Richard and the other

Normans, all about Sihtric and Thurmod and the deliverance of Normandy

by Lewis himself. Lewis, according to them, came of his own accord to

Rouen after the death of William, and was received with joy, as he was

supposed to have come in order to plan an expedition against the common

enemy Arnulf.[325] Still from this point it is just possible to patch

the two narratives together, though I confess that I receive every

detail which comes clothed in the rhetoric of Dudo with very great

suspicion. Lewis then, according to this account, remains at Rouen, and

a suspicion gets afloat that he is keeping the young Duke a prisoner,

and that he means to seize on Normandy for himself. A popular

insurrection follows, which is only quelled by the King producing

Richard in public and solemnly investing him [Sidenote: Richard’s

detention at Laon.] with the duchy.[326] After this, strange to say, the

Norman regents, Bernard the Dane, Oslac, and Rudolf surnamed Torta, are

won over by the craft of Lewis to allow him to take Richard to Laon and

bring him up with his own children. The King is then persuaded by the

bribes of Arnulf to treat Richard as a prisoner, and even to threaten

[Sidenote: Richard’s escape.] him with a cruel mutilation.[327] By a

clever stratagem of his faithful guardian Osmund, the same by which

Lewis himself had been rescued in his childhood from Herbert of

Vermandois,[328] Richard is saved from captivity, and carried to the

safe-keeping of his great-uncle, Bernard of Senlis. A mass of perfidious

and unintelligible diplomacy now follows in the Norman accounts, of

which, if it ever happened at all, we get only the results in the French

version. The French writers know nothing of the captivity of [Sidenote:

Norman invasion of Britanny. 944.] young Richard, and they connect the

invasion of Normandy which undoubtedly took place in the next year with

certain transactions in Britanny. The Breton princes, Berengar and Alan,

were at variance between themselves, a state of things which gave

opportunity for a desolating invasion of the Normans, seemingly the

heathen or apostate [Sidenote: Lewis invades Normandy in concert with

Hugh. 944.] Normans.[329] Lewis now invaded Normandy in concert with

Hugh. The Duke had already made peace with the Normans,[330] but he was

seduced by the offer of all Normandy beyond the Seine,[331] or at any

rate of the district of Bayeux.[332] Lewis accordingly, with Arnulf and

Herlwin, and several Bishops of France and Burgundy, entered Normandy

and occupied Rouen. We again find a division of parties in the country,

some receiving the King and others withstanding him.[333] Hugh meanwhile

occupied Bayeux, but Lewis required his confederate to surrender the

city to him. The Duke obeyed, but he at once began again to plot against

[Sidenote: Dissension between Lewis and Hugh.] his sovereign.[334] He

now stirred up several smaller enemies against Lewis, such as Bernard of

Senlis, Theobald, Count of Tours, Blois, and Chartres—of whom we shall

hear again—the Vermandois princes, and Hugh, his own Archbishop

[Sidenote: War at Rheims and elsewhere. 945.] of Rheims. Lewis meanwhile

felt himself so safe in Normandy that he employed Norman troops against

these various enemies;[335] and when he had made a truce with Hugh and

had raised the siege of Rheims, he returned to Rouen, almost as if he

intended to make that city his capital and his permanent residence.[336]

[Sidenote: Lewis at Rouen.]

Lewis had first appeared in Normandy as a deliverer. But according to

the Norman writers, he now changed into a conqueror, and began to dream

of exercising the extremest rights of conquest. The lands and the

[Sidenote: His growing unpopularity and probable designs on Normandy.]

women of Normandy were to be distributed among his followers; above all,

the estates of the aged Bernard and his beautiful young wife were to be

given to an impudent knight who asked for them.[337] It is worth

noticing that, both in this case and in the former one, the evil deeds

attributed to Lewis are all in intention; in the earlier tale he was

going to make Richard a prisoner, he was going to mutilate him; so he is

now going to give Bernard’s wife to his follower; but it does not appear

that he actually did any one of these things. Still we can well believe

that the Normans were tired of Lewis’s prolonged sojourn at Rouen.

Foreign dominion in any shape would soon become hateful to the Norman

nation, and all creeds and parties would gladly unite in an effort to

get rid of it. That Lewis fully intended to keep Normandy can hardly be

doubted. That great duchy, with its seven bishoprics, its flourishing

capital, its fields and towns and harbours all springing into new life

after their recovery from Scandinavian havoc, must indeed have been a

tempting prize to the King of Laon and Compiègne. If he could not hold

both Rouen and Laon, he might be well pleased to make the exchange, and

to transfer the seat of his kingship to the banks of the Seine. How far

any part of the Norman people was really prepared for such a transfer,

how far Lewis was deceived by the false representations of men who only

pretended to wish for it, it is impossible to determine. But we can well

believe that all Normandy was soon united in hostility to the foreign

King. And either by invitation or by accident, a most powerful and

faithful ally was ready at hand to help the Normans in [Sidenote: Harold

King of the Danes, [935–985.]] their struggle for independence. Denmark,

like Sweden and Norway, had, in this age, out of an union of small

principalities, become a single powerful kingdom. Gorm [Sidenote: son of

Gorm, [840–935?]] the Old, the founder of the Danish monarchy, had died

after a reign said to have been of extraordinary length,[338] and had

passed on his dominion to his son Harold, surnamed _Blaatand_,

Blue-tooth or Black-tooth. Harold was [Sidenote: 974.] still a heathen;

in later times he became a compulsory convert to Christianity; but when

he had once embraced [Sidenote: 985.] the faith, he clave stedfastly to

it, and lost his crown and life in defence of his new creed.[339] And if

we can at all trust the account of Harold’s conduct in Norman affairs,

as given by the Norman writers, it is easy to see that, in his case at

least, the seed of the Gospel was sown in the [Sidenote: Harold’s

disinterested conduct in Normandy. 945.] fruitful field of an honest and

good heart.[340] The heathen wiking, utterly unlike most of his tribe,

set an example of straightforward, honest, and unselfish dealing, which

shines all the brighter from its contrast with the endless aggressions

and backslidings of the selfish and faithless princes of Gaul. Whatever

brought Harold into Normandy, he acted there as a disinterested friend

of the [Sidenote: He occupies the Côtentin,] Norman Duke and his

subjects. He first appeared in the Côtentin, which was most probably

already occupied by recent settlers from the North,[341] and he made his

head-quarters [Sidenote: and Bayeux.] at Cherbourg—the borough of

Cæsar.[342] He was next received at Bayeux,[343] and now all Normandy

rose in the cause of the deliverer. That Harold defeated Lewis in

[Sidenote: Battle by the Dive.] a battle on the banks of the Dive is

allowed on both sides; that the battle was preceded by a conference is

allowed on both sides. But the French writers represent the battle as a

treacherous attack made by the Danes on a prince who had come in all

confidence to a peaceful meeting.[344] The Normans, on the other hand,

say that the fight was brought about by the imprudence or insolence of

Herlwin of Montreuil.[345] He who had caused, however innocently, the

death of William, he who had ruled in Rouen as the deputy of Lewis, now

appeared prominently among the royal troops, and stirred up the wrath of

Danes and Normans by his presence. This certainly seems a very lame

story, and we may well believe that Harold, however faithful to his

allies, might see no crime in practising a little of the usual Danish

treachery towards an enemy. But the result of the battle is certain; the

armies met, on or near ground to be afterwards made immortal by one of

the chiefest exploits of the great William;[346] and, as a [Sidenote:

Lewis defeated and taken prisoner.] fitting forerunner of the day of

Varaville, the King’s army was defeated and Lewis taken prisoner.[347]

The Normans add that Harold and Lewis met, man to man and King to King,

and that the Dane led away the Frank as the prize of his own personal

prowess. Lewis however escaped; he was accompanied, perhaps betrayed, by

a Norman in whom he trusted, and, on reaching Rouen, he was imprisoned

by [Sidenote: Harold settles the affairs of the Duchy and returns to

Denmark.] other Normans in whom he trusted also. The Danish King, if we

can trust a tale of such unparalleled generosity, had now done his work.

He passed through the land, confirming the authority of the young Duke,

and [Sidenote: The renewal of “Rolf’s law.”] restoring the laws of

Rolf.[348] This last phrase is one which meets us constantly in our own

history. After the Norman Conquest, the demand for the laws of King

Eadward is familiar to every one, and in earlier times we read of

demands for the laws of Eadgar or of Cnut, or whoever was the last King

who was looked back to with any love.[349] What is really meant in all

such cases is not so much any actual enactments as good administration

instead of bad, often native administration instead of foreign. The

renewal of Rolf’s law meant the wiping out of all traces of the dominion

of the King of Laon. Harold then sailed away to his own islands; twenty

years afterwards, unless the one story is a repetition of the other, he

was equally able and willing to come again on the same errand.[350]

[Sidenote: Lewis kept in prison by Hugh. 945–6.]

King Lewis was thus a prisoner, as his father had been before him. After

a certain amount of the usual treacherous diplomacy,[351] he was

transferred from the hands of the Normans to those of their ally the

Duke of the French. His wrongs called forth the wrath of his kinsmen in

other lands. Queen Gerberga sought help alike from her own Old-Saxon

brother and from her husband’s West-Saxon uncle. Æthelstan the Glorious

was no more, but he had handed on his sceptre to a [Sidenote:

Intervention of Eadmund. 946.] worthy successor in Eadmund the

Magnificent. An English embassy haughtily demanded the release of the

King, and received from Hugh as haughty a refusal. The Duke of the

French would do nothing for fear of the threats of the English.[352] How

Eadmund would have followed up this beginning it is hard to say; but the

next year saw him cut off by the assassin’s dagger, and his successor

Eadred had enough to do in the renewed and final struggle [Sidenote:

Intervention of Otto. 945.] with the Northumbrian Danes. The application

to Otto was more effectual. The King of the East-Franks at once

determined to invade the Western Kingdom the next year.[353] He refused

a personal conference with Hugh, and the conference which he allowed him

to have with Conrad of Lotharingia was fruitless.[354] At last, when the

German army was actually assembling, Hugh found it necessary to

[Sidenote: Lewis obtains his liberty in exchange for the] come to terms

with his royal prisoner.[355] Hugh’s terms were simple—freedom in

exchange for Laon. After a while, Lewis brought himself to surrender his

single [Sidenote: cession of Laon. 946] stronghold, his own royal city,

which was still held for him by his faithful and stout-hearted Queen.

The Duke of the French took possession of the city of the rock, and the

King of the West-Franks was reduced to be little more than King of

Compiègne. Most likely he hoped, through German and English help, soon

to be again King, not only of Laon, but of Paris and Rouen as well. And

as far as forms and words and outward homage went, his authority was

presently restored over the whole kingdom. [Sidenote: Lewis’s kingship

renewed.] Duke Hugh did not scruple to deprive his sovereign of liberty

and dominion; but he would never be a King [Sidenote: Hugh and the other

Princes do homage. 946.] himself, and he would always have a King over

him. The royal dignity—held, it would seem, to have fallen into abeyance

through the King’s imprisonment—was solemnly renewed, and Hugh the Great

once more became the faithful liegeman and homager of the King whom he

had just before held in bonds.[356] The other princes of the kingdom

followed his example; but, if the Norman writers are to [Sidenote: The

absolute independence of Normandy asserted by the Norman writers.] be

believed, there was one marked exception. On the banks of the Epte,

where the founder of the Norman state had first done homage, the Duke of

the Normans was formally set free from all superiority on the part of

the Frankish King.[357] Richard still bore no higher title than that of

Duke; but he was a King, as far as complete authority within his own

land, and absolute independence of all authority beyond its borders,

could make him a King. The prince who was thus acknowledged as perfectly

independent was presently persuaded, like other [Sidenote: Richard’s

Commendation to Hugh.] allodial owners, to seek a lord, and Richard Duke

of the Normans forthwith commended himself and his dominions to his

neighbour and benefactor Hugh Duke of the French.[358] Now the absolute

independence of Normandy, the renunciation of all homage and all

superiority on the part of the crown, is an assertion for which we need

some better authority than the declamation of Dudo. In his pages indeed

Richard appears as a King, holding the Norman monarchy in fee of no

earthly power. But in those pages he also appears as one who far more

than forestalled the work of his descendant, as one who held all Gaul

and all Britain, with seemingly Germany and Denmark to boot, as

dependencies of his Norman monarchy.[359] By the accuracy of the one

description we may perhaps judge of the accuracy of the other.

[Sidenote: Practical character of the commendation of Richard to Hugh.]

But the commendation of Normandy to the Duchy of France rests on much

better authority. Norman vanity was less inclined to dwell on it than on

the alleged independence of Normandy on the kingdom, but it is

incomparably the better ascertained fact of the two. In the days of

Richard we get our first glimpses of documentary evidence for Norman

history in the form of charters, and in an extant charter Richard

distinctly speaks of the Duke of the French as his lord.[360] And it is

clear that homage to the Duke carried with it a much more practical

relation than homage to the King. Throughout this whole period we find

Normandy constantly acting as a subsidiary ally of France. Hugh is

followed in his campaigns by Norman troops, seemingly as a matter of

course.[361]

[Sidenote: Double alliance, between Normandy and France and between the

Eastern and Western Kings.]

A double alliance was thus formed, between Normandy and France on the

one hand, between the Eastern and Western Kings on the other. And the

alliance of Normandy and France sealed the fate of the Carolingian

kingship. That kingship lasted forty years longer, but its doom was

sealed when Richard commended himself to Hugh. It did not fall when its

fortunes seemed lowest. At that moment it had still a powerful protector

in the Eastern King. Nor did its utter extinction suit the peculiar

policy of the powerful vassal, who, as far as internal politics were

concerned, held its destiny in his hands. But even the German

protectorate could hardly have much longer sustained the German throne

of Laon against the growing power of the new French nationality. When

that protectorate was forfeited, as we shall soon see it, there was no

longer any hope for the last traces of [Sidenote: The alliance between

Normandy and France determines the fall of the Carolingian dynasty.

945–987.] Teutonic sway in the West. Again, had Normandy remained

isolated and Teutonic, things might have taken a different course. Had

Rouen been hostile or even doubtful, Paris might not have triumphed over

Laon. Charles the Simple had been able to raise up a powerful Norman

division against the rival King, which staved off his fate for a while.

So, had Richard been other than Hugh Capet’s faithful vassal and loving

brother, a similar Norman diversion might, for a while at least, have

preserved the crown to the house of Charles. But Normandy was now the

firm ally of France, and that alliance of Rouen and Paris fixed the

extinction, slow, it might be, but sure, of the royalty of Laon. It was

a question of time. All depended on the policy of the successive Dukes

of the French. And we shall presently have to study the policy of Hugh

Capet, widely different from that of his father, but quite as remarkable

in its own way.

This double alliance was not slow in bearing fruit. The [Sidenote: War

of the two Kings against the two Dukes. 946.] threats of Otto, unlike

the threats of Eadmund, were carried into action. Lewis had indeed been

set free; but he was set free on terms which his royal colleague and

brother must have felt to be dishonouring to himself as well as to his

ally. A war shortly followed, in which the two Kings appear as the

common enemies of the two Dukes. But it is a war about which it is very

difficult [Sidenote: Comparison of the French, German, and Norman

accounts.] to get at the exact truth. In the part which relates to

Normandy the French writers are, evidently of set purpose, meagre beyond

expression. Our chief German authority, though he enlarges on one or two

trifling points,[362] is, on the point which most immediately concerns

us, hardly fuller than his Western fellows. The Norman legend, on the

other hand, overwhelms us with details, half of which we instinctively

suspect to be mythical. There is no doubt that the issue of the campaign

in a military point of view was inglorious, to say the least, for the

two Kings of the Franks. This was quite reason enough for the French and

German writers to slur over the subject, and for the Normans to pick it

out as a [Sidenote: Objects of Lewis and Otto; supposed intrigues of

Arnulf.] subject for special rhetoric and exaggeration. In their story

Arnulf, as usual, appears as the villain of the piece. He stirs up the

whole strife; his scheme is for Lewis to yield to Otto all claims on

Lotharingia, and to receive Normandy instead, as soon as the duchy

should be conquered for him by the arms of the German King.[363] But the

French and German writers know nothing of these machinations of Arnulf,

and in their eyes, or at least in their writings, Normandy never assumes

any such primary importance. The interference of Otto, in connexion with

what went before and what followed, is intelligible enough, and it

hardly needs the introduction of Arnulf to explain it. Yet it is likely

enough that the scheme said to have been suggested by the wily Fleming

really did form an element in the reckonings of the two Kings. It was

most important to settle the endless Lotharingian question, which had

formed a subject of discord between [Sidenote: 944.] them even in the

very year of Lewis’s occupation of [Sidenote: Probable designs of Lewis

on Normandy.] Rouen.[364] And after Lewis’s defeat and imprisonment, we

may be sure that the conquest or humiliation of Normandy [Sidenote:

March of Otto; meeting of the three Kings, Otto, Lewis, and Conrad.] was

an object very dear to his heart. At all events, with whatever objects,

the King of the East-Franks[365] entered the Western Kingdom, and was

joyfully welcomed by its King, who joined him with all his forces. A

third King joined the muster, Conrad of Burgundy,[366] who followed in

the wake of Otto. Of the four Carolingian kingdoms three were thus

united against the upstart powers of Paris and Rouen. And among them the

German King, not yet Emperor in formal rank, takes a distinct and

recognized Imperial precedence. Burgundy and the Western Kingdom do not

indeed seem to owe him any formal homage; but their sovereigns were far

more truly his vassals, in any practical sense of the word, than the

Dukes against whom they were marching were vassals of the King of

[Sidenote: The three Kings fail before Laon, but] Compiègne. The three

Kings began by an attempt to extend the despoiled monarch’s possessions

by the recovery of his lost fortress of Laon.[367] This attempt failed;

but they [Sidenote: take Rheims. 946.] took Rheims, whence they drove

out Hugh, the Duke’s Archbishop, and brought back Artald, the faithful

servant [Sidenote: They ravage France and Normandy, but fail to take

either Paris or Rouen.] of King Lewis.[368] They then entered France;

they ravaged the whole land, but they shrank from or failed in an attack

on Paris.[369] They then harried Normandy, but they failed in an attempt

on Rouen.[370] Thus much is certain; the confederate Kings were driven

back from the Norman capital. The picturesque, but probably to a great

extent legendary, details form a brilliant picture, for which I must

refer to the Norman writers and their English interpreter.[371]

[Sidenote: Effects of the German intervention.]

The discomfiture of three Kings, the repulse of the great Otto himself,

could not fail to become a favourite subject of Norman boasting. But it

is by no means clear that the German intervention was altogether

fruitless. We have seen the fortunes of Lewis at their [Sidenote:

Lewis’s fortunes begin to improve. 947.] lowest ebb. We now see them

very distinctly begin to rise, while those of Hugh the Great suffer a

temporary depression. The Duke failed in several expeditions, while the

King went on gaining both in territorial dominion [Sidenote: Friendship

of Lewis and Otto.] and in the opinion of men.[372] The close connexion

between the two Frankish Kings continued, and both Lewis and his Queen

shared the hospitality of their [Sidenote: 947, 949.] brother, and took

a part in the paschal splendours of [Sidenote: Series of Synods.]

Aachen.[373] Not the least striking feature of this period is the series

of synods, synods of bishops from both the Frankish kingdoms, but to

which the Eastern realm [Sidenote: Meeting by the Cher. 947.] naturally

contributed by far the greater share. The first of the series, held on

the banks of the Cher, was held along with a secular conference, and

with armies at no [Sidenote: Synods of Verdun, (947); Mouzon, and

Engelheim, (948).] great distance.[374] The later meetings, at

Verdun,[375] at Mouzon,[376] and the last and most solemn, held at

Engelheim[377] under the presidency of a papal legate, seem to have been

essentially ecclesiastical assemblies. But the Kings were [Sidenote:

Action of the Kings.] present, acting as royal colleagues, the Eastern

King keeping his distinct superiority.[378] Otto may well have dreamed

of himself as a new Constantine presiding in a new [Sidenote:

Controversy about the see of Rheims; its political importance.] Nicene

Council. The strictly ecclesiastical object of these assemblies was to

decide the controversy between the rival Archbishops who disputed, and

alternately occupied, the metropolitan see of Rheims. But such a point

could not be dealt with as a mere matter of canon law. The real question

was not whether Hugh or Artald was the more regularly elected Primate,

but whether the great city of Rheims should be held by a prince devoted

to the Duke or by a prince devoted to the King. The affairs of the

Western Kingdom were fully discussed in an assembly of prelates, most of

whom were subjects of the Eastern King. Lewis set forth the whole story

of his wrongs before his brother King and the bishops, and prayed both

of them to use their several arms, temporal and spiritual, against

[Sidenote: Final Synod of Trier; Hugh the Great excommunicated. 948.]

his enemy. The result was, not only that Rheims was restored to the

royalist Archbishop, but that, after due notice, the Duke of the French

was solemnly excommunicated in a final synod at Trier,[379] which, oddly

enough, consisted mainly of Western bishops. Hugh however cared little

for the excommunication; the war continued, and various places were

attacked with varying success on both sides. The Normans appeared as the

allies of Hugh;[380] Otto, engaged in distant affairs, entrusted the

support of [Sidenote: Laon recovered by Lewis. 949.] Lewis to Conrad of

Lotharingia.[381] By a stratagem of Rudolf, the father of the historian,

Laon was recovered to the King, except the tower, which still held out

for [Sidenote: Hugh excommunicated by Pope Agapetus. 949.] Hugh.[382] At

last an excommunication pronounced by Pope Agapetus in person[383] seems

to have made some impression on the stubborn mind of the Duke. Through

the mediation [Sidenote: Hugh does homage again. 950.] of Otto, peace

was made once more; Hugh again did homage in the fullest terms,[384] and

restored to the King the tower of Laon, which he still held. After this,

though smaller wars and bickerings still went on in Lotharingia,

[Sidenote: His last revolt and submission. 953.] Vermandois, and

elsewhere, there was for four years only one revolt of Hugh, and that

one after which the great Duke found it expedient to beg for peace

through the intercession of Queen Gerberga.[385] During all this time

[Sidenote: Lewis’s progress in Aquitaine and in Burgundy. 951.] the

power of Lewis was steadily growing. Whether by force or persuasion, he

gained over to his side the princes of Aquitaine, who no doubt welcomed

the King as a convenient rival to their nearer neighbour the Duke.[386]

Lewis even passed the boundaries of his own kingdom; he visited

Besançon, and received the homage of at least one prince of the royal

Burgundy, Charles-Constantine of Vienne.[387] All things seemed

prospering for the Carolingian King, [Sidenote: His death. 954.] when

his strange and unexpected death cut short the hopes of his house.[388]

After all his long and chequered career, he was only thirty-three years

of age.

[Sidenote: Reign of Lothar. 954–986.]

The long reign of Lothar, the son and successor of Lewis, answers to

only a part of the much longer reign of [Sidenote: The old generation of

princes dies off.] Richard the Fearless. In the course of a few years

most of the principalities of Gaul changed masters. Long before the

reign of Lothar was over, almost before he had personally entered on his

government, Richard, so lately a child, the youngest of princes, became

the eldest ruler within his own world. King Lewis was dead already;

[Sidenote: Hugh the Great. 956.] [Sidenote: Arnulf born 873, died 965.]

Hugh the Great died two years later; Arnulf of Flanders, at an almost

incredible old age, died nine years later still.[389] [Sidenote: Otto

the Great. 973.] Otto, King and Emperor, outlived all these princes, but

[Sidenote: Otto the Second. 983.] Richard outlived both him and his son.

Richard succeeded to his duchy in the time of Eadmund of England; he

outlived Eadmund, Eadred, Eadwig, and Eadgar, and lived far on into the

reign of Æthelred. In France he beheld and furthered the extinction of

the Carolingian dynasty, and he died in the same year as the first King

of [Sidenote: 996.] the permanent Parisian line. But this long period

is, if we contrast it with that which went before it, comparatively

barren of events bearing on the history of the Norman duchy. Richard

wrought great changes within his own dominions, and he had many enemies

to contend against without; still the greater part of his reign was no

longer one incessant struggle, like the reign of his [Sidenote:

954–962.] father and his own early days. For some years wars and

disputes went on almost as vigorously as before; but for [Sidenote:

Comparative quiet of the later years of Richard. 962–996.] many years

before his death Richard seems to have enjoyed a time of comparative

peace, which he devoted to the consolidation of his power within his own

states, and in a great degree to the erection and enrichment of

ecclesiastical foundations.

Young Lothar was chosen King without opposition by the princes of

France, Aquitaine, and ducal Burgundy. Duke Hugh espoused his cause; so

did Archbishop Bruno, who now ruled Lotharingia in the name of his

brother King Otto.[390] But Hugh soon contrived to employ the boy whom

he recognized as his sovereign as the tool of [Sidenote: Hugh embroils

Lothar with the Aquitanian princes, but is defeated before Poitiers.

955.] his own crafty policy. As has been already said, the princes of

Southern Gaul were the natural allies of the King against the Duke who

was so dangerous a neighbour to both. The most powerful, at least the

most prominent, among these princes, William of Poitiers, the

brother-in-law of William of Normandy,[391] seems to have been on the

whole a faithful vassal of Lewis,[392] and he had certainly given no

recent cause of offence. But Hugh procured from Lothar a grant of the

duchy of Aquitaine, in addition to those of France and Burgundy,[393]

and it was doubtless in order to enforce this claim that he involved the

King in a war with the Aquitanian princes. But Hugh was utterly baffled

before Poitiers,[394] and, soon after this defeat, his busy and

faithless life, hitherto in general so [Sidenote: Death of Hugh the

Great.] successful, came to an end.[395] The duchy of France, like the

kingdom and the duchy of Normandy, now passed to [Sidenote: Hugh Capet

succeeds under the guardianship of Richard. 956.] a minor. Hugh,

surnamed Capet, the future King, succeeded his father at the age of

thirteen years. On account of his youth, he was left by his father’s

will under the guardianship of the Duke of the Normans.[396] Besides the

close political connexion between the two princes, Richard [Sidenote:

Richard marries Hugh’s sister Emma. 960.] was betrothed to Emma,

daughter of the elder and sister of the younger Hugh, whom some years

later he married.[397] Whether Richard ever did homage to Lothar is not

clear;[398] but Hugh, on his accession to manhood, did homage to

[Sidenote: The sons of Hugh do homage to Lothar, and Richard does homage

to Hugh. 960.] the King, and was invested with the duchy of France and

county of Poitiers, Burgundy being assigned to his younger brother

Otto.[399] The death of Otto however, before many years had passed,

caused Burgundy also to revert to Hugh.[400] Richard also renewed the

commendation which he had made to the elder Hugh, and became the loyal

vassal of his brother-in-law.[401] Arnulf, the old enemy, was now in his

last days;[402] so the functions of devil or villain are now transferred

in the Norman tale to Theobald, Count [Sidenote: Enmity of Theobald of

Chartres towards Richard.] of Tours, Chartres, and Blois. This prince,

who, like Arnulf, reached an unusual age, was the son of an elder

Theobald, who is said to have bought the county of Chartres of the

famous wiking Hasting.[403] The second Theobald had married Liudgardis,

the widow of William Longsword and step-mother of Richard; he was a

vassal of the Duke of the French,[404] and, in that character, he had

acted for Hugh the Great as the gaoler of King Lewis.[405] But he seems

to have by no means adopted his lord’s policy towards the Normans; on

the contrary he appears as the instigator of Gerberga and Lothar to

every sort of hostility against Richard.[406] The French accounts, which

commonly speak of Theobald with a certain tone of contempt,[407] tell us

just enough to show that there is some [Sidenote: Theobald gains Evreux.

962.] ground of truth in all this. Theobald’s chief object seems to have

been the acquisition of Evreux, which at one time he actually gained by

the help of Lothar.[408] Before this, if [Sidenote: Supposed plot of

Lothar, Bruno, and Theobald against Richard. 960.] we may trust the

Norman tale, Theobald and the King had formed with Bruno, Archbishop and

Duke, a treacherous plot to beguile Richard to a conference at Amiens,

and there to put him to death or imprison him.[409] I confess that this

sounds to me very like a Norman perversion of a fact which is much

better authenticated. King Lothar had summoned to Soissons a general

assembly of the chief men of his realm, an event so common in England

and Germany and so rare in the Western Kingdom. Whether the Duke

[Sidenote: Richard attempts to disperse the Assembly at Soissons. 961.]

of the Normans was summoned or not does not appear; but he came with an

armed force and attempted to disperse the assembly, but was beaten off

by the King’s troops.[410] In the next year we find Theobald at war with

Richard [Sidenote: Theobald defeated by Richard. 962.] and defeated by

him. Being also on ill terms with his own lord Duke Hugh, he took

shelter with Gerberga and [Sidenote: Norman version; defeat of Lothar;

second intervention of Harold.] Lothar, and was kindly received by

them.[411] In the Norman version this grows into a long and striking

story.[412] Just as in the tale of Lewis and Harold Blaatand, a

conference between Lothar and Richard developes into a battle in which

Lothar, like his father, is of course utterly defeated. Yet even while

thus victorious, Richard is neither satisfied nor confident. He sends

again to King Harold in Denmark; Harold at once comes at his call, but

he has no opportunity of renewing his old exploits. For his enemies are

thoroughly afraid of him. Count Theobald at once makes peace, and

restores Evreux. King Lothar begs for peace also, and craves that the

terrible Danes may be sent away. But it is not so easy to send them away

as to bring them in. However Duke Richard does his best; he goes in

person and preaches an eloquent sermon to the pagans, exhorting them to

embrace Christianity and to settle quietly in the country. This a

portion of them are induced to do, while the stiffnecked heathens are

persuaded to sail southwards and to ravage infidel Spain instead of

Catholic Gaul. After this a peace [Sidenote: Peace between Lothar and

Richard.] is made between Lothar and Richard,[413] which seems not to

have been again broken.

It is impossible to say exactly how much of truth lurks [Sidenote:

Comparison of the French and Norman accounts.] in all this. The French

writers help us to little more than the fact that there was some measure

of hostility between Lothar and Richard. Richard tries to disperse

Lothar’s solemn parliament; Lothar kindly entertains Richard’s

vanquished enemy. Where there was as much mutual ill-will as this, it is

likely that there was much more. And while we must always allow for the

inventions and exaggerations of the Norman writers, we must also allow

for the evident unwillingness of the French writers to say one word more

about the Normans than they could help. But the whole Norman story is

strange and unlikely, and many of the events sound most temptingly like

repetitions of earlier events. We seem to be reading the tale of Lewis

and Harold over again with but slight changes. Yet the dates come within

the life, perhaps within the memory, of our one original informant on

the Norman side.[414] I leave the more minute examination and final

decision of the matter to those with whom Norman history is a primary

object. It is enough for my purpose that the few certain facts fall in

with the more elaborate picture in the legend, so far as to bring out

the same general view of Richard’s position as the firm ally of France

and as the enemy of the Carolingian crown.

[Sidenote: Later years of Lothar. 962–986.]

During the latter part of the reign of Lothar things took a different

turn. Hugh Capet now began personally to take the lead in affairs, and

his peculiar policy impressed itself on the period. We have already seen

what the [Sidenote: Policy of Hugh Capet different from that of his

father.] policy of the elder Hugh was; he would reduce the King to the

least possible amount of power and of territory, but he would himself

never be more than Duke. Hugh Capet followed a different policy. He was

ready to be a King as soon as he could become one quietly and with a

decent pretext; but he would not hazard the prize by [Sidenote: General

peace between the Kingdom and the Duchy of France.] clutching at it too

soon. The relations between King and Duke during the last twenty years

of Lothar were very unlike the relations which had existed between the

father of Lothar and the father of Hugh. There was very little of open

enmity, and when there was any, the wily Duke contrived that it should

be the King who was outwardly in the wrong. For a long time Duke Hugh

acted as the vassal and friend of King Lothar, and the friendship of

Duke Hugh of course carried with it the friendship of Duke Richard. On

the whole this was a time of peace, a thing hitherto so unusual, between

Duke and King, so much so that the duchy actually underwent a German

invasion in the royal cause. For it was now that the relations between

the two kingdoms of the Franks again became of paramount importance. It

was now that the folly of Lothar forfeited the German protectorate for

himself and his kingdom.

[Sidenote: Change in the relations between the two Frankish kingdoms on

the death of Otto the Great. 973.]

On the death of Otto the Great the relations between the Eastern and the

Western Kingdoms were wholly changed.[415] Otto the uncle had been a

protector; Otto the cousin was a rival. This breach of the old friendly

relations with the Eastern Kingdom was undoubtedly one main cause of the

fall of the Carolingian house in the Western Kingdom. The royalty of

Laon was an outpost of the Teutonic interest in the West, which could

hardly maintain itself without the support of the Teutonic powers to the

east of it. Lothar, with a high spirit, had none of his father’s

prudence. The old disputes about Lotharingia [Sidenote: War between Otto

and Lothar.] began again;[416] war broke out, a war which, on Lothar’s

side, had the approval of Duke Hugh and the other princes, an approval

so cordially expressed as to suggest the suspicion [Sidenote: Lothar’s

raid on Aachen and Otto’s invasion of France. 978.] that it was given

only as a snare.[417] At any rate Lothar went on a wild and sudden raid

against Aachen, which could win for him no lasting gain, but which gave

him the opportunity of occupying the city of his great forefather, and

of turning the eagle on his palace the wrong way.[418] But the insulted

Emperor retaliated by a far more terrible invasion of the Western

Kingdom, in which not only the royal domains, but those of the Duke were

occupied and ravaged, and Paris itself was threatened.[419] This

campaign of Otto the Second, like that of his greater father, [Sidenote:

Peace between Otto and Lothar. 980.] was not exactly rich in military

glory, but it was politically successful. Lothar, without consulting

Hugh, sought for peace,[420] and gave up his claims on Lotharingia.[421]

Hugh, who had hitherto stuck so faithfully by the King, was alarmed at

his sudden and secret reconciliation with the [Sidenote: Alliance

between Otto and Hugh; reconciliation of Lothar and Hugh.] Emperor. He

held a council of his own vassals, and, by their advice, he determined

to win over Otto to himself, which he succeeded in doing, though greatly

against the will of the King.[422] Hugh and Lothar were however at last

[Sidenote: Lewis son of Lothar elected King; his marriage and divorce.

981.] reconciled again.[423] Lewis the son of Lothar was, with the

consent of Hugh and the other princes, associated in the kingdom with

his father.[424] A ludicrous and unsuccessful attempt was then made to

establish him at once as King in Aquitaine by marrying him to a princess

of that country.[425] The notion was in itself a return to a rational

policy with regard to Southern Gaul, if it had only been set about in a

wiser [Sidenote: Death of Otto the Second. 983.] way. On the death of

Otto the Second, Lothar, notwithstanding his former cession of his

rights over Lotharingia, [Sidenote: Lothar’s further attempts on

Lotharingia. 986.] took advantage of the minority of Otto the Third and

the consequent anarchy in Germany again to assert his claims. He was

pressing them with some success by force of arms, when his career was

cut short by an early death.[426]

During all this time the narrative of our French authority tells us

absolutely nothing about Normandy. Yet we may well believe that Richard

took the first place in the assembly of Hugh’s vassals, and that Norman

troops duly accompanied those of France in every expedition. The policy

of Hugh, we may be sure, was always the policy of Richard. [Sidenote:

Richard’s mediation in Flanders. 965.] The only thing about him which

even his garrulous panegyrist has to tell us is that, after the death of

the old Arnulf, when his grandson and successor the younger Arnulf

refused his homage to the King, Richard stepped in as mediator. Lothar

invaded Flanders, but Richard pacified King and Marquess; Arnulf

rendered the homage, and his dominions were restored to him.[427]

[Sidenote: The accession of the Parisian or Capetian dynasty.]

And now we have at last reached that great revolution which extinguished

the last remnants of Carolingian royalty, which decided the long strife

between the German Frank and the half Celtic, half Roman, Frenchman,

which raised Paris to that rank among the cities of Gaul which it has

since never lost, which raised the lords of Paris to that rank which

they lost within our [Sidenote: Reign of Lewis the Fifth. 986–987.] own

day. Lothar was succeeded by his son Lewis, already his colleague in the

kingdom, but his reign was short and troubled. His counsellors were

divided whether he should assert his independence or should put himself

under the protection of Duke Hugh.[428] He chose the safer course, and

in the one act of his reign he had [Sidenote: He besieges Rheims and

dies. 987.] Hugh to his helper. He attacked and besieged Rheims in a

quarrel with the Archbishop Adalbero, whom he charged with having nine

years before aided the Emperor Otto in his invasion.[429] But an

accommodation was hardly brought about between the King and the Primate,

when [Sidenote: Diet of election at Senlis. 987.] Lewis died.[430] The

princes met at Senlis to elect a successor. Our French writers take care

not to mention the name, but we can hardly doubt that Richard of

Normandy, the most faithful and the most powerful vassal of Duke Hugh,

was there ready to support the cause of his lord and brother. The choice

lay between the Duke of the French and the last remaining Karling,

Charles, uncle of the late King and brother of Lothar. This prince was

unlucky and unpopular, and he had given special offence by accepting

Lotharingia, or a part of it, as a fief of the Empire.[431] [Sidenote:

The doctrine of elective monarchy set forth by Archbishop Adalbero.] A

speech from the Primate, setting forth the merits of Hugh and the

lawfulness and necessity of elective monarchy,[432] settled the minds of

the waverers, if any waverers there were. Hugh was chosen King and was

crowned at Noyon. [Sidenote: Hugh elected and crowned. 987.] Thus did an

assertion of the right of election which would not have been out of

place in an English Witenagemót or even in a Polish Diet become the

foundation of a dynasty which was to become, more than any other in

Europe, the [Sidenote: Permanence of his dynasty.] representative of

strict hereditary succession. Adalbero raised to the throne a race in

which, by a fate unparalleled in any other kingly house, the crown

passed on for three hundred and fifty years from father to son, a race

which, down to our own day, has never been without a [Sidenote:

987–1328.] male heir, and in which the right of the male heir has

[Sidenote: 1338–1420.] never been disputed, save once through the

ambition of a [Sidenote: 1589.] foreign prince and once through the

frenzy of religious partizanship. The crown of England and the crown of

Spain have been repeatedly, by revolution or by female succession,

carried away from the direct male heir to distant [Sidenote: Position of

Rheims as the crowning-place.] kinsmen or to utter strangers. But every

King of the French crowned at Rheims has been at once a Frenchman by

birth and the undisputed heir of the founder of the dynasty. Hugh and

his son Robert, neither of them born to royalty, were crowned, the one

at Noyon the other at [Sidenote: 1594.] Orleans. Henry the Fourth, the

one King whose right was disputed, was crowned at Chartres. Rheims alone

kept her proud prerogative as the crowning-place of Kings whose right

was never so much as called in question. Paris, the seat of temporal

dominion, has never become the ecclesiastical home of the nation, the

crowning-place of lawful Kings. None but strangers and usurpers have

ever taken the diadem of France in the capital of France. While Rheims

has beheld the crowning of so many generations [Sidenote: 1431.] of

native Frenchmen, Paris has beheld only the [Sidenote: 1804.] crowning

of a single English King and a single Corsican tyrant.

[Sidenote: Struggle between Hugh and Charles. 987–991.]

Hugh of Paris was thus chosen King, as his great-uncle Odo of Paris had

been chosen King before him. But the hundred years’ rivalry between the

two dynasties was not yet over. As Odo had to struggle with Charles the

Simple, so Hugh had to struggle with his grandson Charles of

Lotharingia. Hugh’s election and coronation did not at once invest him

with any territories beyond the limits of his own duchy. Laon, the royal

city, would not at once consent either to forsake the line of its

ancient princes or calmly to sink into a dependency of Paris. [Sidenote:

Robert crowned. 987.] Hugh, after some difficulty, procured the election

and coronation of his son Robert as his colleague in the kingdom,[433]

and the two Kings, as they are always called, carried on a war of

several years against Charles and his party.[434] The last Karling has

now sunk to the position of a tyrant—a name which once was the

description of Hugh’s father when he was a rebel against the father of

Charles.[435] The struggle was at last ended by Charles being betrayed

to the Kings by the treachery of Adalbero Bishop of Laon. The revolution

was now complete, but its immediate results were [Sidenote: The Parisian

dynasty now becomes permanent.] not very marked. The Duke of the French

became the King of the French, and the same prince reigned at Paris and

at Laon. King Hugh was undoubtedly considerably more powerful than King

Lewis or King Lothar; but in the greater part of Gaul the change from

the Carolingian [Sidenote: Import of the change.] to the Capetian line

was hardly felt. To Hugh’s own subjects it made little practical

difference whether their prince were called Duke or King. Beyond the

Loire, men cared little who might reign either at Paris or at Laon. But

though the immediate change was slight, the election of Hugh was a real

revolution; it was the completion of the change which had been preparing

for a century and a half; it was the true beginning of a new period. The

Duchy of France had successfully played in Gaul the part which in

Britain had been played by Wessex, which in Spain has been played by

Castile, which in Scandinavia has been less thoroughly played by Sweden,

which Prussia before our own eyes has played in Germany. The

Carolingian, the Frankish, kingdom now comes to an end; the French duchy

of Paris has taken the great step towards [Sidenote: Modern France now

definitively begins.] the gradual absorption of all Gaul. The modern

kingdom of France dates its definite existence from the election of

Hugh; the successive partitions showed in what way the stream of events

was running, but the election of Hugh was the full establishment of the

thing itself. There now was, what till quite lately there has been ever

since, a French King reigning at Paris. The Gallo-Roman land now finally

shook off the last relics of that Teutonic domination under which it had

been more or less completely held ever [Sidenote: Connexion between

France and Germany ceases.] since the days of Hlodwig. The Western

Kingdom now broke off all traces of its old connexion with the Eastern.

Up to this time the tradition of the former unity of the whole Frankish

dominion had still lingered on.[436] No such feeling remains after the

final establishment of the Parisian dynasty; the German Cæsar now

becomes as alien to Capetian France as his brother at Byzantium. And

another [Sidenote: Lotharingia, hitherto] result took place.

Lotharingia, the border land, the seat of loyalty to the Carolingian

house, still, after the Capetian [Sidenote: fluctuating between Gaul and

Germany, now becomes German.] revolution, kept its love for the old

Imperial line. But its position was now necessarily changed. Lotharingia

kept its Carolingian princes, but it kept them only by definitively

becoming a fief of the Teutonic Kingdom. [Sidenote: Charles taken and

imprisoned. 991.] Charles died in prison, but his children continued to

reign in Lotharingia as vassals of the Empire. Lotharingia was thus

wholly lost to France; that part of it which was kept by the descendants

of Charles in the female line still preserves its freedom as part of the

independent kingdom of Belgium. But the revolution was now fully

accomplished; the struggle of a hundred years was over; the race and the

tongue of the great Charles were finally wiped [Sidenote: Modern France

definitively begins.] out from the Kingdom of the Western Franks.

Modern, Celtic, Romance, Parisian, France was now definitively called

into being. A kingdom and nation was founded, in the face of which it

was for many ages the main work of every other European state to

maintain its freedom, its language, and its national being, against the

never-ceasing assaults, sometimes of open and high-handed violence,

sometimes of plausible falsehood and gilded treachery.

§ 5. _Comparison between France, England, and Normandy._

[Sidenote: Influence of the Normans on the Capetian revolution.]

The influence which the Norman Duke exercised on this great change is

carefully kept out of sight by the French historians; yet we cannot

doubt that the Norman writers are, this time at least, fully justified

in attributing to their sovereign a most important share in the

work.[437] Everything leads us to believe that Richard took a leading

[Sidenote: Personal share of Richard.] personal share in the revolution,

and it is quite certain that, but for the policy which Richard followed,

that revolution never could have taken place. It was the alliance

between Normandy and France which determined the fate of the Carolingian

dynasty.[438] And thus we are led back to the proposition with which I

started at an earlier stage [Sidenote: The Norman settlement made Gaul

French.] of this Chapter,[439] that it was the settlement of the

Scandinavians in Gaul which definitively made Gaul French. They settled

just at the point of transition, when the old German state of things was

beginning to give way to the new French state of things. The influence

of the new comers, notwithstanding their own Teutonic blood and speech,

was thrown altogether into the French scale. The Normans became French,

because a variety of circumstances brought them more within the range of

French influences than of any other. The connexion between Rolf and the

Carolingian dynasty was something purely political, or rather personal;

Rolf had done homage and sworn oaths to King Charles, and to King

Charles he stuck against all pretenders. But the main object of his

successors was to bring Normandy within the pale of Christianity and

civilization, in such shapes as Christianity and civilization bore

immediately before their eyes. This object they naturally sought by

establishing a connexion with their nearest neighbours; their standard

of language and manners was set by the French court of Paris, not by the

German court of Laon or by the more distant, the more purely Latin,

courts of Poitiers and Toulouse. The Normans thus became Frenchmen, and,

with the zeal of new proselytes, they became first and foremost in

everything that is characteristically French. The earliest and best

productions of the new-born French [Sidenote: French ideas take root in

Normandy.] language were the work of Norman poets. All the ideas which

were then growing up in France, ideas which it is hard to express

otherwise than by the vague and misleading names of feudalism and

chivalry, took firm root in Normandy, and there brought forth their most

abundant fruit. Had Normandy remained Danish, the Scandinavian

settlement would have been a most important diversion on behalf of the

Teutonic element; Romance Paris would have been in a manner hemmed in

between two Teutonic lands. And if the Scandinavian settlement had never

taken place at all, the French developement would at least have lost the

decisive support which it gained from the enlistment of such fresh and

vigorous disciples. It was the Normans, I repeat, who made Gaul French;

it was the Normans who made French Paris the capital of Gaul, and who

gave [Sidenote: The position of Normandy established by the Capetian

revolution.] Gaul the French lord of Paris for her King. On the other

hand, it was the Capetian revolution which gave Normandy her definite

position in Gaul and in Europe. Hitherto, in the minds and mouths of

good Frenchmen, and most likely of good Germans also, the Normans were

still simply the _Pirates_, and their sovereign the _Duke of the

Pirates_. Their presence was endured, because they were too strong to be

got rid of; but the half-heathen Danish intruders were still hateful to

the princes and people of Latin and Christian Gaul. With the election of

Hugh Capet all was changed. The firmest ally and supporter of the new

dynasty could no longer be looked on as an outcast or as an enemy. The

old question as to the relation between Normandy and the Kings of Laon

was buried for ever. Whatever relations had hitherto existed between the

Duke of the Normans and the King of the West-Franks, there was no doubt

that the Duke of the Normans was the vassal, the most powerful and the

most loyal vassal, of the Duke of the French, and the Duke of the French

and the King of the West-Franks were now one and the same person.

Normandy was now thoroughly naturalized; the doubtful position which it

had held in Carolingian times passed altogether away; it became the

mightiest and noblest among the fiefs of [Sidenote: Comparatively

friendly relations between the duchy and the crown.] the Capetian crown.

And for a long while the relations between the duchy and the crown

remained, on the whole, friendly. It was not till later days, till

Normandy was under the sway of her greatest Duke, that the old hostility

broke out afresh, and that King Henry of Paris showed himself as eager

as King Lewis of Laon to dispossess the prince and people who cut off

himself and his city from the mouth of the Seine. Up to the days of

Henry and William the good understanding between France and Normandy was

seldom broken. And, even counting the wars of Henry and William, we

shall find that, considering the power of the vassal and his close

neighbourhood to his lord, hostilities between Rouen and Paris were not

specially frequent. The rebellions of Hugh the Great alone against the

Kings whom he had set up and put down would probably be found to be more

in number than the wars between France and Normandy, from the

commendation of Richard to Hugh to the day when England and Normandy

alike were merged in the vast dominions of the princes of Anjou.

[Sidenote: Connexion of French history with the general subject.]

The close connexion between Norman and French history, the way in which

we may say that Normandy created France and that France created

Normandy, must be my excuse for dwelling at an apparently

disproportionate length on some subjects which are only indirectly

connected with English history. In order thoroughly to understand the

Norman Conquest of England, it is almost as needful to have a clear view

of the condition and earlier history of Normandy as it is to have a

clear view of the condition and earlier history of England. And such a

clear view of Norman affairs cannot be had without constant references

to French, and occasional references to German, history. And the notices

of French history which are needed for this end may serve to illustrate

English history [Sidenote: Contrast between the political condition of

England and of Gaul.] in another way. The contrast between the political

condition of England and that of the Western Kingdom is most striking,

even at this early time. Looked at superficially, there is a certain

likeness between the two. In both cases, a King of narrow limited power

stands at the head of a body of princes, some of whom, in extent of

dominion, might almost—on the mainland not only almost but

altogether—rank as his peers. But when we come to look more narrowly

into the matter, we shall see that the likeness is only superficial. In

truth there is very little real likeness at all; and if we admitted a

stronger likeness than there is, if we admitted that the two countries

had accidentally met at the same point, still their meeting would have

been wholly accidental, because the two countries were [Sidenote:

England tending to unity, Gaul to division.] moving in exactly opposite

directions. England was directly tending to unity; Gaul was directly

tending to division. In the long run indeed the division to which Gaul

was tending paved the way for a closer unity than England has ever

reached; but, at the moment, it was [Sidenote: In England Princes had

sunk into Governors;] to division that Gaul was directly tending. The

English kingdom was formed by the gradual union of many distinct states;

to independent Kings had succeeded dependent Kings, and to dependent

Kings had succeeded Ealdormen appointed by the King and his Witan. Great

and powerful as was an English Ealdorman, he still was not a sovereign,

not even a dependent or vassal sovereign; he ruled only with a delegated

authority; the King was supreme, and the Ealdorman was only a governor

sent by [Sidenote: in Gaul governors had grown into princes.] him. In

Gaul the process was directly opposite. Local governors who, under the

first Carolingian Kings and Emperors, had been simple lieutenants of the

sovereign, had gradually grown into hereditary princes, who at most went

through the decent ceremony of receiving their dominions as a grant from

a King who could not withhold them. The Dukes, Counts, and Marquesses of

France, of Flanders, of Aquitaine, of Septimania, of Barcelona, had in

this way grown into sovereigns. Starting from the position of an English

Ealdorman, they had won the formal position, and more than the practical

independence, of a vassal King of Wales or Scotland. Normandy was a real

fief from the beginning; the grant to Rolf was the exact parallel of the

grant to Guthrum; but during the second half of the tenth century the

dominions of Rolf were ruled by a native sovereign of his own blood,

while the dominions of Guthrum were administered by [Sidenote:

Difference of the limitations on the power of the King in England and in

Gaul.] Ealdormen appointed by the English King. Again, the power of the

King was narrowly limited in both kingdoms, but it was limited in

altogether different ways. The power of the King of the English was

limited, because he could do no important act without the consent of his

Witan. The power of the King of the West-Franks was limited, because he

was shorn of all direct authority beyond the narrow limits of Laon and

Compiègne. The King of the English, in the exercise of such authority as

the law gave him, was obeyed in every corner of his kingdom. The King of

the West-Franks did as he chose in his own city of Laon; at Paris and

Rouen, at Poitiers and Toulouse, he received only such measures of

obedience as the sovereigns of those capitals chose to yield to him.

[Sidenote: No regular National Assembly in Gaul.] No regular assembly

constantly meeting, like our Witenagemót, had authority over the whole

land, and kept the whole land bound together. We read of conferences of

princes; but they are rarely held, except for some great and

extraordinary occasion like the election of a King. An assembly, meeting

yearly or oftener, to sanction the ordinary acts of the King and to pass

laws binding on the whole kingdom, was something utterly unknown.

[Sidenote: Amount of real power retained by the later Karlings.]

And yet, when we see how narrow was the immediate dominion, how small

were the available resources, of the later Karlings, it strikes us with

wonder throughout the whole history to see how much influence, how much

real power, they still kept. The King, however many enemies may be in

arms against him, is always an important person, and he commonly finds

an army to bring against the rebel army. We wonder where he got his

army, and where he got the resources to set his army in motion. In days

when war maintained itself an army was doubtless less costly than it is

now, and a victorious army might even enrich its leader. But whence did

the armies come? Surely not wholly from the narrow limits of the King’s

immediate territory. Nor were they likely to be formed by the

spontaneous loyalty of volunteers. The influence of the royal name, the

reverence attaching to the blood of the great Emperor, might do a good

deal to paralyse the efforts of enemies, but they would hardly of

themselves bring distant followers to the royal standard. But the King,

if he had few subjects, was not wholly without [Sidenote: The Kings drew

support from various quarters.] friends. We find hints that the lesser

vassals often found it their interest to support the King against the

encroachments of the great Dukes. We find that in a war with one

rebellious potentate he was often supported by the rivals of that

potentate, and that his more distant vassals helped him against those

who were more formidable to them than he was. We find also that he could

especially rely on the help of those Bishops who, holding directly of

the crown, were clothed with the character of ecclesiastical

princes.[440] And in the later and more peaceful [Sidenote: Increase of

the royal power under Lothar.] times of Lothar and Hugh Capet, the King

appears far more clearly than before in the character of an effective

head of the kingdom. We read more commonly of consultations with the

other princes, and we see the King, by common consent, wielding the

forces of all his vassals, including those of the Duke of the French

himself. The wily Hugh no doubt saw that it was his interest to

strengthen in every way the power and reputation of the crown which he

meant one day to place on his own brow. Altogether we may doubt whether

the practical power of the later Carolingian Kings was not really quite

as great [Sidenote: Power of the crown not immediately increased by the

change of dynasty.] as that of the early Capetians. The power of the

crown rested mainly on influence and prescription, and influence and

prescription were not on the side of the Parisian dynasty. The immediate

territorial dominion of the Parisian Kings was no doubt much larger than

that of the later Karlings; Paris and Laon together were far greater

than Laon by itself. But the connexion between the crown and the great

vassals seems to have been distinctly weakened by the change of dynasty.

The descendants of Robert and Hugh did not command the hereditary

respect which attached to princes sprung from the blood of Charles and

Pippin. Some disputed and outlying fiefs were altogether lost to the

kingdom, and the King’s sphere of action was far more strictly confined

than before to the lands north of the Loire. Lotharingia and the Spanish

March fell away; the connexion with Flanders gradually weakened;

Aquitaine scarcely acknowledged even a nominal dependence. Assemblies

and conferences of the whole kingdom, rare before, seem now to go wholly

out of use. Even the vassals north of the Loire, even the former vassals

of the Parisian duchy, seem to have less connexion with the crown than

heretofore. In fact the French Duke lost by becoming King, just as the

German King lost by becoming Emperor. As Duke he had been a less

dignified, but he had been a more effectual, over-lord. The Parisian

Dukes themselves had done more than all the rest of the world to set

forth and strengthen the doctrine that the immediate vassals of a King

were entitled to practical sovereignty. Thus, while England was getting

more and more united, Gaul was getting more and more divided. Under

other circumstances, the Western realm might very easily have changed,

step by step, from a kingdom into [Sidenote: Isolation in France led to

closer union.] a confederation, just as Germany did.[441] But as it was,

the very isolation into which the several parts of the kingdom now fell

proved in the end the path to an unity such as England never has seen,

such as we trust England never may see. Utter isolation paved the way

for utter centralization. In England, as the different parts of the

realm became more closely united, all shared in a common national

freedom, without any complete sacrifice of local and municipal

independence. In Gaul the crown annexed, one by one, all the dominions

of its own vassals[442] and such of the dominions of its neighbours as

came within its reach. Thus the whole kingdom knew no will but that of

the King. Widely as a modern English Parliament differs from an ancient

Witenagemót, the one has grown out of the other by gradual developement,

without any sudden change. In France and throughout Gaul the ancient

Teutonic assemblies died out altogether, [Sidenote: 1302.] and the

comparatively modern States General came into being as an original

device of Philip the Fair.

I must now return to the more immediate affairs of Normandy. There can

be no doubt that the various processes of which I have been speaking,

the Christianizing, the Gallicizing, and the feudalizing process, all

went on vigorously in Normandy during the reign of Richard the

[Sidenote: Growth of the doctrine of nobility.] Fearless. The doctrine

of nobility was fast growing; it was taking a form quite different from

the ancient relations of eorl and ceorl, quite different from the later

relations of thegn and ceorl, as they have been at any time understood

in England. Hitherto mere lack of illustrious birth [Sidenote: Humble

origin of many princely and noble houses.] did not keep a man back from

the highest offices. The legend that Hugh Capet himself was the son of a

butcher of Paris,[443] utterly fabulous as it is, marks the popular

belief as to the origin of many of the princely houses of the time. The

legends of Lyderic the Forester[444] and of Torquatius and

Tertullus[445] point to no very lofty origin on the part [Sidenote:

Origin of the Norman baronage.] of the princely houses of Flanders and

Anjou. So it is in the reign of Richard that we find the beginning of

the Norman baronage, and the origin of many of its members was certainly

not specially illustrious. Some noble families indeed trace their

descent up to old companions of Rolf, such as the house of Harcourt,

which claims Bernard the Dane as its patriarch. But the larger part of

the Norman nobility derived their origin from the amours or doubtful

marriages of the Norman Dukes. Not only their own children, but all the

kinsfolk of their wives or mistresses, were carefully promoted by ducal

grants or [Sidenote: Children and kinsfolk of Richard.] by advantageous

marriages. Thus Sprota, the mother of Richard the Fearless, during the

troubles of her son’s early reign married one Asperleng, a rich miller.

From this marriage sprang Rudolf Count of Ivry, a mighty man in the

reign of his nephew, and also several daughters, who were of course well

disposed of in marriage.[446] Richard himself, whose marriage with Emma

of Paris was childless,[447] was the father of a large illegitimate or

doubtful offspring. Besides undoubted bastards,[448] there was a

considerable brood, including Richard, the next Duke, and Emma, the

future Lady of the English, who were legitimated by Richard’s marriage

with their mother. These were the children of Gunnor, a woman of Danish

birth, to whom different stories attribute a noble and a plebeian

origin.[449] From these children and from the kinsfolk of Gunnor, all of

whom were promoted in one way or another, [Sidenote: Progress of feudal

doctrines.] sprang a large part of the Norman nobility. Meanwhile the

principles of feudalism were making fast progress both in Normandy and

in France. Hugh the Great’s doctrine of commendation, practised on so

magnificent a scale between the duchies of Normandy and France, was

being everywhere carried out with regard to smaller possessions. Such at

least is the natural inference from the general course of events; for it

must be remembered that Normandy has in this age absolutely nothing to

show in the way of written legislation. The wealth of the clergy

[Sidenote: Richard’s grants to the Church.] was also largely increasing.

Richard, unlike his father, was munificent in his gifts to the Church,

especially to [Sidenote: His foundation of Fécamp. 990.] his new, or

rather restored, foundation of Fécamp and to the still more famous house

of Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea.[450] The original foundation of

Fécamp was for secular canons.[451] It was only in the days of the

second Richard that the Benedictine rule was introduced.[452] Fécamp,

alone among the great monasteries of the Norman mainland, stands in the

land north-east of the Seine; all the rest lie either in the valley of

the river or in the true Norman districts to the west of it. Fécamp,

like Westminster, Holyrood, and the Escurial, contained minster and

palace in close neighbourhood; the spot became a favourite

dwelling-place of Richard in his later [Sidenote: Dispute with Æthelred.

991.] days, and it was at last the place of his burial. The last years

of his reign present only one important event, a dispute, possibly a

war, with the English King Æthelred, a discussion of which I reserve for

a place in the next Chapter in my more detailed narrative of English

affairs. [Sidenote: Death of Richard. 996.] At last, Richard the

Fearless, Duke of the Pirates as he is called to the last by the French

historians, died of “the lesser apoplexy,” after a reign of fifty-three

years.[453] As with several other princes who play a part in the world

for an unusual number of years,[454] one is surprised to find that he

was not much older in years than he was. Unlike his enemies, Arnulf and

Theobald, whose lives were really prolonged beyond the common span of

human existence, Richard the Fearless, or Richard the Old, as he was

called to distinguish him from his successor, after all that he had done

and undergone, after all the changes that he had wrought and beheld, had

lived no longer than sixty-three years.

§ 6. _Early years of Richard the Good._ 996–997.

[Sidenote: Reign of Richard the Good. 996–1026.]

Richard the Fearless was succeeded by his son Richard, surnamed the

Good, whose reign carries us beyond the limits of the present sketch

into the essential and central portion of our history. Richard was a

direct actor in the events which were the immediate causes of the

Conquest. He was the uncle of Eadward the Confessor, the grandfather of

William the Bastard; and he personally played a certain part in English

affairs. I will therefore reserve his actions for their proper place in

my general narrative, and I will here speak of one event only, which

marks the complete developement of the influences which had been at work

throughout the reign of his father. Richard succeeded to the government

of a state in which the Danish tongue, Danish manners, perhaps even the

old Danish religion, still lingered in particular spots, but which was

now, in the face of other nations, a French state, a member, and the

principal member, of the Capetian [Sidenote: Aristocratic feelings of

Richard.] commonwealth. He had imbibed to the full all the new-born

aristocratic feelings of feudal and chivalrous France. He would have

none but gentlemen about him.[455] This is perhaps the earliest use of a

word so familiar both in French and in English, but which bears such

different meanings in the two languages. But, whoever was a gentleman in

the language of Richard’s court, it is plain that the word took in all

who could pretend to any kind of kindred or affinity, legitimate or

illegitimate, with the sovereign. The way in which the exclusively

aristocratic household of Richard is spoken of seems to show that his

conduct in this respect was felt to be something different from that of

his father. Taken in connexion with what follows, it may well have been

the last pound which broke [Sidenote: Revolt of the peasants. 997.] the

camel’s back. Popular discontent broke out in the great peasant revolt

to which I had occasion to allude earlier in this chapter.[456] We may

suppose that the peasantry were mainly of Celtic, Roman, or Frankish

origin; that is, that they sprang from that mixture of those three

elements which produced the modern French nation. But we may well

believe that many a man of Scandinavian descent, many a small allodial

holder who was unwilling to commend himself to a lord, threw in his lot

with the insurgents. [Sidenote: Their regular political organization.]

What is most remarkable in the story of this revolt is the regular

political organization of the revolters. The systematic way in which

they set to work is common enough in cities, but is exceedingly rare in

rural communities. It is almost enough to place this revolt of the

Norman peasantry side by side with the more famous and more fortunate

revolt of the Forest Cantons against [Sidenote: They establish a

“commune” with a representative assembly.] the encroachments of Austria.

We can hardly believe what we read when we find that these rebellious

villains established a regular representative parliament.[457] The

peasants of each district deputed two of their number to a general

assembly, the decisions of which were to be binding on the whole

body.[458] The men who could devise such a system in such an age had

certainly made further steps in political progress than the masters

against whom they rebelled. The constitution which they established is

expressly called by a name dear to the inhabitants of the cities of

those ages, a name glorious in the eyes of modern political inquirers,

but a name which was, beyond all other names, a word of fear to feudal

barons and prelates, and to those Kings who were not clear-sighted

enough to see that their own interests and the interests of their people

were the same. The peasantry of Normandy, like the citizens of Le Mans

in after times, “made a _commune_.”[459] Such a constitution could

hardly have been devised offhand by mere peasants. We can hardly doubt

that it had a groundwork in local institutions which the newly-grown

aristocracy were trampling under foot, and that the so-called rebels

were simply defending the inheritance of their fathers. We have the tale

only from the mouths of enemies; but the long list of popular

grievances,[460] and the testimony of enemies to the regular order with

which the rebellion was carried on, are enough to show that some very

promising germs of freedom were here crushed in the bud. The freedom

which these men sought to establish would have been in truth more

valuable, because more fairly spread over the whole country, than the

liberties [Sidenote: The revolt crushed by Rudolf of Ivry.] won by

isolated cities. But the revolt was crushed with horrible cruelty[461]

by Rudolf, Count of Ivry, the Duke’s uncle, himself a churl by birth,

the son of the miller who married the cast off wife or mistress of Duke

William.[462] After this, we hear no more of peasant insurrections in

Normandy, but it may well be that the struggle was not [Sidenote:

Probable results of the struggle.] wholly fruitless. Villainage in

Normandy was lighter, and died out earlier, than in most parts of

France; and the most genuine pieces of Norman jurisprudence which abide

to this day, the ancient constitutions of the Channel Islands, strange

and antiquated as they seem in our eyes, breathe a spirit of freedom

worthy of the air of England, of Switzerland, or of Norway.[463]

Such was the country and the people, whose history, from the beginning

of the eleventh century, becomes inseparably interwoven with that of

England. We will now go back to our own island, and, taking up the

thread of our narrative, we will go on with a more detailed account of

English affairs from the beginning of those renewed Danish invasions

which paved the way for the still more eventful invasion of the Norman.