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Makers of History
William the Conqueror
BY
JACOB ABBOTT
WITH ENGRAVINGS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1902
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and forty-nine, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.
Copyright, 1877, by JACOB ABBOTT.
PREFACE.
In selecting the subjects for the successive volumes of this series, it
has been the object of the author to look for the names of those great
personages whose histories constitute useful, and not merely
entertaining, knowledge. There are certain names which are familiar, as
names, to all mankind; and every person who seeks for any degree of
mental cultivation, feels desirous of informing himself of the leading
outlines of their history, that he may know, in brief, what it was in
their characters or their doings which has given them so widely-extended
a fame. This knowledge, which it seems incumbent on every one to obtain
in respect to such personages as Hannibal, Alexander, Caesar, Cleopatra,
Darius, Xerxes, Alfred, William the Conqueror, Queen Elizabeth, and Mary
Queen of Scots, it is the design and object of these volumes to
communicate, in a faithful, and, at the same time, if possible, in an
attractive manner. Consequently, great historical names alone are
selected; and it has been the writer's aim to present the prominent and
leading traits in their characters, and all the important events in
their lives, in a bold and free manner, and yet in the plain and simple
language which is so obviously required in works which aim at permanent
and practical usefulness.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. NORMANDY 13
II. BIRTH OF WILLIAM 31
III. THE ACCESSION 51
IV. WILLIAM'S REIGN IN NORMANDY 72
V. THE MARRIAGE 96
VI. THE LADY EMMA 119
VII. KING HAROLD 142
VIII. PREPARATIONS FOR THE INVASION 164
IX. CROSSING THE CHANNEL 189
X. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS 212
XI. PRINCE ROBERT'S REBELLION 242
XII. THE CONCLUSION 265
ENGRAVINGS.
Page
MAP--THE SITUATION OF NORMANDY 14
WILLIAM AND ARLOTTE 40
WILLIAM'S ESCAPE 77
THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY 102
THE RESCUE 127
HAROLD'S INTERVIEW WITH EDWARD 147
WILLIAM RECEIVING TOSTIG'S TIDINGS 166
MAP--NORMANDY 190
THE NORWEGIANS AT SCARBOROUGH 218
WILLIAM'S HORSE STEPPING ON THE EMBERS 281
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
CHAPTER I.
NORMANDY.
A.D. 870-912
The Norman Conquest.--Claim of William to the throne.--The right of the
strongest.--Map of Normandy.--The English Channel.--Nature of the French
coast.--Nature of the English coast.--Northmen and Danes.--Character
of the Northmen.--Their descendants.--The Dukes of Normandy.--The
first duke, Rollo.--History of Rollo.--His rendezvous on the Scottish
coast.--Expedition of Rollo.--His descent upon Flanders.--Difficulties
encountered.--Rollo passes the Straits of Dover.--Charles the
Simple.--Defeated by Rollo.--Treaty of peace.--Its conditions.--The
three ceremonies.--Rollo's pride.--Kissing the king's foot.--The baptism
and marriage.--Rollo's peaceful and prosperous reign.--Description
of Normandy.--Scenery.--Hamlets.--Chateaux.--Peasantry.--Public
roads.--Rouen.--Its situation.--The port of Rouen.--Its name of Le Havre
de Grace.--Intermingling of races.--Superiority of the Norman stock.
One of those great events in English history, which occur at distant
intervals, and form, respectively, a sort of bound or landmark, to which
all other events, preceding or following them for centuries, are
referred, is what is called the Norman Conquest. The Norman Conquest
was, in fact, the accession of William, duke of Normandy, to the English
throne. This accession was not altogether a matter of military force,
for William claimed a _right_ to the throne, which, if not altogether
perfect, was, as he maintained, at any rate superior to that of the
prince against whom he contended. The rightfulness of his claim was,
however, a matter of little consequence, except so far as the moral
influence of it aided him in gaining possession. The right to rule was,
in those days, rather more openly and nakedly, though not much more
really, than it is now, the right of the strongest.
Normandy, William's native land, is a very rich and beautiful province
in the north of France. The following map shows its situation:
[Illustration: MAP OF ENGLAND AND PART OF FRANCE, SHOWING THE SITUATION
OF NORMANDY.]
It lies, as will be seen upon the map, on the coast of France, adjoining
the English Channel. The Channel is here irregular in form, but may be,
perhaps, on the average, one hundred miles wide. The line of coast on
the southern side of the Channel, which forms, of course, the northern
border of Normandy, is a range of cliffs, which are almost perpendicular
toward the sea, and which frown forbiddingly upon every ship that sails
along the shore. Here and there, it is true, a river opens a passage for
itself among these cliffs from the interior, and these river mouths
would form harbors into which ships might enter from the offing, were it
not that the northwestern winds prevail so generally, and drive such a
continual swell of rolling surges in upon the shore, that they choke up
all these estuary openings, as well as every natural indentation of the
land, with shoals and bars of sand and shingle. The reverse is the case
with the northern, or English shore of this famous channel. There the
harbors formed by the mouths of the rivers, or by the sinuosities of the
shore, are open and accessible, and at the same time sheltered from the
winds and the sea. Thus, while the northern or English shore has been,
for many centuries, all the time enticing the seaman in and out over
the calm, deep, and sheltered waters which there penetrate the land, the
southern side has been an almost impassable barrier, consisting of a
long line of frowning cliffs, with every opening through it choked with
shoals and sand-banks, and guarded by the rolling and tumbling of surges
which scarcely ever rest.
It is in a great measure owing to these great physical differences
between the two shores, that the people who live upon the one side,
though of the same stock and origin with those who live upon the other,
have become so vastly superior to them in respect to naval exploits and
power. They are really of the same stock and origin, since both England
and the northern part of France were overrun and settled by what is
called the Scandinavian race, that is, people from Norway, Denmark, and
other countries on the Baltic. These people were called the _Northmen_
in the histories of those times. Those who landed in England are
generally termed _Danes_, though but a small portion of them came really
from Denmark. They were all, however, of the same parent stock, and
possessed the same qualities of courage, energy, and fearless love of
adventure and of danger which distinguish their descendants at the
present day. They came down in those early times in great military
hordes, and in fleets of piratical ships, through the German Ocean and
the various British seas, braving every hardship and every imaginable
danger, to find new regions to dwell in, more genial, and fertile, and
rich than their own native northern climes. In these days they evince
the same energy, and endure equal privations and hardships, in hunting
whales in the Pacific Ocean; in overrunning India, and seizing its
sources of wealth and power; or in sallying forth, whole fleets of
adventurers at a time, to go more than half round the globe, to dig for
gold in California. The times and circumstances have changed, but the
race and spirit are the same.
Normandy takes its name from the Northmen. It was the province of France
which the Northmen made peculiarly their own. They gained access to it
from the sea by the River Seine, which, as will be seen from the map,
flows, as it were, through the heart of the country. The lower part of
this river, and the sea around its mouth, are much choked up with sand
and gravel, which the waves have been for ages washing in. Their
incessant industry would result in closing up the passage entirely,
were it not that the waters of the river must have an outlet; and thus
the current, setting outward, wages perpetual war with the surf and
surges which are continually breaking in. The expeditions of the
Northmen, however, found their way through all these obstructions. They
ascended the river with their ships, and finally gained a permanent
settlement in the country. They had occupied the country for some
centuries at the time when our story begins--the province being governed
by a line of princes--almost, if not quite, independent
sovereigns--called the _Dukes of Normandy_.
The first Duke of Normandy, and the founder of the line--the chieftain
who originally invaded and conquered the country--was a wild and
half-savage hero from the north, named _Rollo_. He is often, in history,
called Rollo the Dane. Norway was his native land. He was a chieftain by
birth there, and, being of a wild and adventurous disposition, he
collected a band of followers, and committed with them so many piracies
and robberies, that at length the king of the country expelled him.
Rollo seems not to have considered this banishment as any very great
calamity, since, far from interrupting his career of piracy and
plunder, it only widened the field on which he was to pursue it. He
accordingly increased the equipment and the force of his fleet, enlisted
more followers, and set sail across the northern part of the German
Ocean toward the British shores.
Off the northwestern coast of Scotland there are some groups of
mountainous and gloomy islands, which have been, in many different
periods of the world, the refuge of fugitives and outlaws. Rollo made
these islands his rendezvous now; and he found collected there many
other similar spirits, who had fled to these lonely retreats, some on
account of political disturbances in which they had become involved, and
some on account of their crimes. Rollo's impetuous, ardent, and
self-confident character inspired them with new energy and zeal. They
gathered around him as their leader. Finding his strength thus
increasing, he formed a scheme of concentrating all the force that he
could command, so as to organize a grand expedition to proceed to the
southward, and endeavor to find some pleasant country which they could
seize and settle upon, and make their own. The desperate adventurers
around him were ready enough to enter into this scheme. The fleet was
refitted, provisioned, and equipped. The expedition was organized, arms
and munitions of war provided, and when all was ready they set sail.
They had no definite plan in respect to the place of their destination,
their intention being to make themselves a home on the first favorable
spot that they should find.
They moved southward, cruising at first along the coast of Scotland, and
then of England. They made several fruitless attempts to land on the
English shores, but were every where repulsed. The time when these
events took place was during the reign of Alfred the Great. Through
Alfred's wise and efficient measures the whole of his frontier had been
put into a perfect state of defense, and Rollo found that there was no
hope for him there. He accordingly moved on toward the Straits of Dover;
but, before passing them, he made a descent upon the coast of Flanders.
Here there was a country named Hainault. It was governed by a potentate
called the Count of Hainault. Rollo made war upon him, defeated him in
battle, took him prisoner, and then compelled the countess his wife to
raise and pay him an immense sum for his ransom. Thus he replenished
his treasury by an exploit which was considered in those days very
great and glorious. To perpetrate such a deed now, unless it were on a
_very_ great scale, would be to incur the universal reprobation of
mankind; but Rollo, by doing it then, not only enriched his coffers, but
acquired a very extended and honorable fame.
For some reason or other, Rollo did not attempt to take permanent
possession of Hainault, but, after receiving his ransom money, and
replenishing his ammunition and stores, he sailed away with his fleet,
and, turning westward, he passed through the Straits of Dover, and
cruised along the coast of France. He found that the country on the
French side of the channel, though equally rich and beautiful with the
opposite shore, was in a very different state of defense. He entered the
mouth of the Seine. He was embarrassed at first by the difficulties of
the navigation in entering the river; but as there was no efficient
enemy to oppose him, he soon triumphed over these difficulties, and,
once fairly in the river, he found no difficulty in ascending to
Rouen.[A]
[Footnote A: See the map at the commencement of this chapter.]
In the mean time, the King of France, whose name was Charles, and who
is generally designated in history as Charles the Simple, began to
collect an army to meet the invader. Rollo, however, had made himself
master of Rouen before Charles was able to offer him any effectual
opposition. Rouen was already a strong place, but Rollo made it
stronger. He enlarged and repaired the fortifications, built
store-houses, established a garrison, and, in a word, made all the
arrangements requisite for securing an impregnable position for himself
and his army.
A long and obstinate war followed between Rollo and Charles, Rollo being
almost uniformly victorious in the combats that took place. Rollo became
more and more proud and imperious in proportion to his success. He drove
the French king from port to port, and from field to field, until he
made himself master of a large part of the north of France, over which
he gradually established a regular government of his own. Charles
struggled in vain to resist these encroachments. Rollo continually
defeated him; and finally he shut him up and besieged him in Paris
itself. At length Charles was compelled to enter into negotiations for
peace. Rollo demanded that the large and rich tract on both sides of the
Seine, next the sea--the same, in fact, that now constitutes
Normandy--should be ceded to him and his followers for their permanent
possession. Charles was extremely unwilling thus to alienate a part of
his kingdom. He would not consent to cede it absolutely and entirely, so
as to make it an independent realm. It should be a _dukedom_, and not a
separate _kingdom_, so that it might continue still a part of his own
royal domains--Rollo to reign over it as a duke, and to acknowledge a
general allegiance to the French king. Rollo agreed to this. The war had
been now protracted so long that he began himself to desire repose. It
was more than thirty years since the time of his landing.
Charles had a daughter named Giselle, and it was a part of the treaty of
peace that she should become Rollo's wife. He also agreed to become a
Christian. Thus there were, in the execution of the treaty, three
ceremonies to be performed. First, Rollo was to _do homage_, as it was
called, for his duchy; for it was the custom in those days for
subordinate princes, who held their possessions of some higher and more
strictly sovereign power, to perform certain ceremonies in the presence
of their superior lord, which was called doing homage. These ceremonies
were of various kinds in different countries, though they were all
intended to express the submission of the dependent prince to the
superior authority and power of the higher potentate of whom he held his
lands. This act of homage was therefore to be performed, and next to the
homage was to come the baptism, and after the baptism, the marriage.
When, however, the time came for the performance of the first of these
ceremonies, and all the great chieftains and potentates of the
respective armies were assembled to witness it, Rollo, it was found,
would not submit to what the customs of the French monarchy required. He
ought to kneel before the king, and put his hands, clasped together,
between the king's hands, in token of submission, and then to kiss his
foot, which was covered with an elegantly fashioned slipper on such
occasions. Rollo would do all except the last; but that, no
remonstrances, urgencies, or persuasions would induce him to consent to.
And yet it was not a very unusual sign or token of political
subordination to sovereign power in those days. The pope had exacted it
even of an emperor a hundred years before; and it is continued by that
dignitary to the present day, on certain state occasions; though in the
case of the pope, there is embroidered on the slipper which the kneeling
suppliant kisses, a _cross_, so that he who humbles himself to this
ceremony may consider, if he pleases, that it is that sacred symbol of
the divine Redeemer's sufferings and death that he so reverently kisses,
and not the human foot by which it is covered.
Rollo could not be made to consent, himself, to kiss King Charles's
foot; and, finally, the difficulty was compromised by his agreeing to do
it by proxy. He ordered one of his courtiers to perform that part of the
ceremony. The courtier obeyed, but when he came to lift the foot, he did
it so rudely and lifted it so high as to turn the monarch over off his
seat. This made a laugh, but Rollo was too powerful for Charles to think
of resenting it.
A few days after this Rollo was baptized in the cathedral church at
Rouen, with great pomp and parade; and then, on the following week, he
was married to Giselle. The din of war in which he had lived for more
than thirty years was now changed into festivities and rejoicings. He
took full and peaceable possession of his dukedom, and governed it for
the remainder of his days with great wisdom, and lived in great
prosperity. He made it, in fact, one of the richest and most prosperous
realms in Europe, and laid the foundations of still higher degrees of
greatness and power, which were gradually developed after his death. And
this was the origin of Normandy.
It appears thus that this part of France was seized by Rollo and his
Northmen partly because it was nearest at hand to them, being accessible
from the English Channel through the River Seine, and partly on account
of its exceeding richness and fertility. It has been famous in every age
as the garden of France, and travelers at the present day gaze upon its
picturesque and beautiful scenery with the highest admiration and
pleasure. And yet the scenes which are there presented to the view are
wholly unlike those which constitute picturesque and beautiful rural
scenery in England and America. In Normandy, the land is not inclosed.
No hedges, fences, or walls break the continuity of the surface, but
vast tracts spread in every direction, divided into plots and squares,
of various sizes and forms, by the varieties of cultivation, like a vast
carpet of an irregular tesselated pattern, and varied in the color by a
thousand hues of brown and green. Here and there vast forests extend,
where countless thousands of trees, though ancient and venerable in
form, stand in rows, mathematically arranged, as they were planted
centuries ago. These are royal demesnes, and hunting grounds, and parks
connected with the country palaces of the kings or the chateaux of the
ancient nobility. The cultivators of the soil live, not, as in America,
in little farm-houses built along the road-sides and dotting the slopes
of the hills, but in compact villages, consisting of ancient dwellings
of brick or stone, densely packed together along a single street, from
which the laborers issue, in picturesque dresses, men and women
together, every morning, to go miles, perhaps, to the scene of their
daily toil. Except these villages, and the occasional appearance of an
ancient chateau, no habitations are seen. The country seems a vast
solitude, teeming everywhere, however, with fertility and beauty. The
roads which traverse these scenes are magnificent avenues, broad,
straight, continuing for many miles an undeviating course over the
undulations of the land, with nothing to separate them from the expanse
of cultivation and fruitfulness on either hand but rows of ancient and
venerable trees. Between these rows of trees the traveler sees an
interminable vista extending both before him and behind him. In England,
the public road winds beautifully between walls overhung with shrubbery,
or hedge-rows, with stiles or gateways here and there, revealing hamlets
or cottages, which appear and disappear in a rapid and endlessly varied
succession, as the road meanders, like a rivulet, between its beautiful
banks. In a word, the public highway in England is beautiful; in France
it is grand.
The greatest city in Normandy in modern times is Rouen, which is
situated, as will be seen by referring to the map at the commencement of
this chapter, on the Seine, half way between Paris and the sea. At the
mouth of the Seine, or, rather, on the northern shore of the estuary
which forms the mouth of the river, is a small inlet, which has been
found to afford, on the whole, the best facilities for a harbor that can
be found on the whole line of the coast. Even this little port, however,
is so filled up with sand, that when the water recedes at low tide it
leaves the shipping all aground. The inlet would, in fact, probably
become filled up entirely were it not for artificial means taken to
prevent it. There are locks and gateways built in such a manner as to
retain a large body of water until the tide is down, and then these
gates are opened, and the water is allowed to rush out all together,
carrying with it the mud and sand which had begun to accumulate. This
haven, being, on the whole, the best and most commodious on the coast,
was called _the_ harbor, or, as the French expressed it in their
language, _le havre_, the word _havre_ meaning harbor. In fact, the name
was in full _le havre de grace_, as if the Normans considered it a
matter of special good luck to have even such a chance of a harbor as
this at the mouth of their river. The English world have, however,
dropped all except the principal word from this long phrase of
designation, and call the port simply Havre.
* * * * *
From Rollo the line of Dukes of Normandy continued in uninterrupted
succession down to the time of William, a period of about a hundred and
fifty years. The country increased all the time in wealth, in
population, and in prosperity. The original inhabitants were not,
however, expelled; they remained as peasants, herdsmen, and
agriculturists, while the Norman chieftains settled over them, holding
severally large estates of land which William granted them. The races
gradually became intermingled, though they continued for many centuries
to evince the superior spirit and energy which was infused into the
population by the Norman stock. In fact, it is thought by many observers
that that superiority continues to the present day.