PRINCE ROBERT'S REBELLION.
A.D. 1076-1077
William's oldest son.--His character.--William's conflicts with his
son Robert.--William Rufus.--William's son Henry.--Robert nicknamed
Short Boots.--Robert's betrothment.--William's motives.--Death
of Margaret.--More trouble.--Robert's political power.--His
ambition.--Robert claims Normandy.--William refuses it.--Castle at
L'Aigle.--Quarrel between Robert and William Rufus.--The combatants
parted.--Robert's rage.--Robert's rebellion.--Anxiety and distress of
Matilda.--Measures of Matilda.--Advantages of William.--Robert lays
down his arms.--Interview with his father.--Recriminations.--The
interview fruitless.--Robert goes to Flanders.--His treasonable
correspondence.--Action of Philip.--He sides with Robert.--Robert's
dissipation.--Matilda sends him supplies.--Matilda's secret
supplies.--She is discovered.--Matilda's messenger seized.--William's
reproaches.--Matilda's reply.--William's anger.--Sampson's
escape.--Things grow worse.--Preparations for war.--Matilda's
distress.--William wounded by his son.--The battle goes against
him.--Matilda's anguish.--The reconciliation.
Ambitious men, who devote their time and attention, through all the
early years of life, to their personal and political aggrandizement,
have little time to appropriate to the government and education of their
children, and their later years are often embittered by the dissipation
and vice, or by the unreasonable exactions of their sons. At least it
was so in William's case. By the time that his public enemies were
subdued, and he found himself undisputed master both of his kingdom and
his duchy, his peace and happiness were destroyed, and the tranquillity
of his whole realm was disturbed by a terrible family quarrel.
The name of his oldest son was Robert. He was fourteen years old when
his father set off on his invasion of England. At that time he was a
sort of spoiled child, having been his mother's favorite, and, as such,
always greatly indulged by her. When William went away, it will be
recollected that he appointed Matilda regent, to govern Normandy during
his absence. This boy was also named in the regency, so that he was
nominally associated with his mother, and he considered himself,
doubtless, as the more important personage of the two. In a word, while
William was engaged in England, prosecuting his conquests there, Robert
was growing up in Normandy a vain, self-conceited, and ungovernable
young man.
His father, in going back and forth between England and Normandy, often
came into conflict with his son, as usual in such cases. In these
contests Matilda took sides with the son. William's second son, whose
name was William Rufus, was jealous of his older brother, and was often
provoked by the overbearing and imperious spirit which Robert displayed.
William Rufus thus naturally adhered to the father's part in the family
feud. William Rufus was as rough and turbulent in spirit as Robert, but
he had not been so indulged. He possessed, therefore, more self-control;
he knew very well how to suppress his propensities, and conceal the
unfavorable aspects of his character when in the presence of his father.
There was a third brother, named Henry. He was of a more quiet and
inoffensive character, and avoided taking an active part in the
quarrel, except so far as William Rufus led him on. He was William
Rufus's friend and companion, and, as such, Robert considered him as his
enemy. All, in fact, except Matilda, were against Robert, who looked
down, in a haughty and domineering manner--as the oldest son and heir
is very apt to do in rich and powerful families--upon the comparative
insignificance of his younger brethren. The king, instead of restraining
this imperious spirit in his son, as he might, perhaps, have done by a
considerate and kind, and, at the same time, decisive exercise of
authority, teased and tormented him by sarcasms and petty vexations.
Among other instances of this, he gave him the nickname of _Short
Boots_, because he was of inferior stature. As Robert was, however,
at this time of full age, he was stung to the quick at having such a
stigma attached to him by his father, and his bosom burned with secret
sentiments of resentment and revenge.
He had, besides, other causes of complaint against his father, more
serious still. When he was a very young child, his father, according to
the custom of the times, had espoused him to the daughter and heiress of
a neighboring earl, a child like himself. Her name was Margaret. The
earldom which this little Margaret was to inherit was Maine. It was on
the frontiers of Normandy, and it was a rich and valuable possession. It
was a part of the stipulation of the marriage contract that the young
bride's domain was to be delivered to the father of the bridegroom, to
be held by him until the bridegroom should become of age, and the
marriage should be fully consummated. In fact, the getting possession of
this rich inheritance, with a prospect of holding it so many years, was
very probably the principal end which William had in view in contracting
for a matrimonial union so very premature.
If this was, in reality, William's plan, it resulted, in the end, even
more favorably than he had anticipated; for the little heiress died a
short time after her inheritance was put into the possession of her
father-in-law. There was nobody to demand a restoration of it, and so
William continued to hold it until his son, the bridegroom, became of
age. Robert then demanded it, contending that it was justly his. William
refused to surrender it. He maintained that what had passed between his
son in his infancy, and the little Margaret, was not a marriage, but
only a betrothment--a contract for a future marriage, which was to take
place when the parties were of age--that, since Margaret's death
prevented the consummation of the union, Robert was never her husband,
and could not, consequently, acquire the rights of a husband. The lands,
therefore, ought manifestly, he said, to remain in the hands of her
guardian, and whatever rights any other persons might have, claiming to
succeed Margaret as her natural heirs, it was plain that his son could
have no title whatever.
However satisfactory this reasoning might be to the mind of William,
Robert was only exasperated by it. He looked upon the case as one of
extreme injustice and oppression on the part of his father, who, not
content, he said, with his own enormous possessions, must add to them by
robbing his own son. In this opinion Robert's mother, Matilda, agreed
with him. As for William Rufus and Henry, they paid little attention to
the argument, but were pleased with the result of it, and highly enjoyed
their brother's vexation and chagrin in not being able to get possession
of his earldom.
There was another very serious subject of dispute between Robert and his
father. It has already been stated, that when the duke set out on his
expedition for the invasion of England, he left Matilda and Robert
together in charge of the duchy. At the commencement of the period of
his absence Robert was very young, and the actual power rested mainly in
his mother's hands. As he grew older, however, he began to exercise an
increasing influence and control. In fact, as he was himself ambitious
and aspiring, and his mother indulgent, the power passed very rapidly
into his hands. It was eight years from the time that William left
Normandy before his power was so far settled and established in England
that he could again take the affairs of his original realm into his
hands. He had left Robert, at that time, a mere boy of fourteen, who,
though rude and turbulent in character, was still politically powerless.
He found him, on his return, a man of twenty-two, ruder and more
turbulent than before, and in the full possession of political power.
This power, too, he found him very unwilling to surrender.
In fact, when William came to receive back the province of Normandy
again, Robert almost refused to surrender it. He said that his father
had always promised him the duchy of Normandy as his domain so soon as
he should become of age, and he claimed now the fulfillment of this
promise. Besides, he said that, now that his father was King of England,
his former realm was of no consequence to him. It did not add sensibly
to his influence or his power, and he might, therefore, without
suffering any sensible loss himself, grant it to his son. William, on
his part, did not acknowledge the force of either of these arguments. He
would not admit that he had ever promised Normandy to his son; and as to
voluntarily relinquishing any part of his possessions, he had no faith
in the policy of a man's giving up his power or his property to his
children until they were justly entitled to inherit it by his death; at
any rate, he should not do it. He had no idea, as he expressed it, "of
putting off his clothes before he was going to bed."
The irritation and ill-will which these dissensions produced grew deeper
and more inveterate every day, though the disagreement had been thus far
a private and domestic dispute, confined, in its influence, to the
king's immediate household. An occasion, however, now occurred, on which
the private family feud broke out into an open public quarrel. The
circumstances were these:
King William had a castle in Normandy, at a place called L'Aigle. He was
spending some time there, in the year 1076, with his court and family.
One day William Rufus and Henry were in one of the upper apartments of
the castle, playing with dice, and amusing themselves, in company with
other young men of the court, in various ways. There was a window in the
apartment leading out upon a balcony, from which one might look down
upon the court-yard of the castle below. Robert was in this court-yard
with some of _his_ companions, walking there in an irritated state of
mind, which had been produced by some previous disputes with his
brothers. William Rufus looked down from the balcony and saw him, and by
way, perhaps, of quenching his anger, poured some water down upon him.
The deed changed the suppressed and silent irritation in Robert's heart
to a perfect phrensy of rage and revenge. He drew his sword and sprang
to the stair-case. He uttered loud and terrible imprecations as he went,
declaring that he would kill the author of such an insult, even if he
_was_ his brother. The court-yard was, of course, immediately filled
with shouts and exclamations of alarm, and every body pressed forward
toward the room from which the water had been thrown, some to witness,
and some to prevent the affray.
The king himself, who happened to be in that part of the castle at the
time, was one of the number. He reached the apartment just in time to
interpose between his sons, and prevent the commission of the awful
crime of fratricide. As it was, he found it extremely difficult to part
the ferocious combatants. It required all his paternal authority, and
not a little actual force, to arrest the affray. He succeeded, however,
at length, with the help of the by-standers, in parting his sons, and
Robert, out of breath, and pale with impotent rage, was led away.
Robert considered his father as taking sides against him in this
quarrel, and he declared that he could not, and would not, endure such
treatment any longer. He found some sympathy in the conversation of his
mother, to whom he went immediately with bitter complainings. She tried
to soothe and quiet his wounded spirit, but he would not be pacified. He
spent the afternoon and evening in organizing a party of wild and
desperate young men from among the nobles of the court, with a view of
raising a rebellion against his father, and getting possession of
Normandy by force. They kept their designs profoundly secret, but
prepared to leave L'Aigle that night, to go and seize Rouen, the
capital, which they hoped to surprise into a surrender. Accordingly, in
the middle of the night, the desperate troop mounted their horses and
rode away. In the morning the king found that they were gone, and he
sent an armed force after them. Their plan of surprising Rouen failed.
The king's detachment overtook them, and, after a sharp contest,
succeeded in capturing a few of the rebels, though Robert himself,
accompanied by some of the more desperate of his followers, escaped over
the frontier into a neighboring province, where he sought refuge in the
castle of one of his father's enemies.
This result, as might have been expected, filled the mind of Matilda
with anxiety and distress. A civil war between her husband and her son
was now inevitable; and while every consideration of prudence and of
duty required her to espouse the father's cause, her maternal love, a
principle stronger far, in most cases, than prudence and duty combined,
drew her irresistibly toward her son. Robert collected around him all
the discontented and desperate spirits of the realm, and for a long
time continued to make his father infinite trouble. Matilda, while she
forbore to advocate his cause openly in the presence of the king, kept
up a secret communication with him. She sent him information and advice
from time to time, and sometimes supplies, and was thus, technically,
guilty of a great crime--the crime of maintaining a treasonable
correspondence with a rebel. In a moral point of view, however, her
conduct may have been entirely right; at any rate, its influence was
very salutary, for she did all in her power to restrain both the father
and the son; and by the influence which she thus exerted, she doubtless
mitigated very much the fierceness of the struggle.
Of course, the advantage, in such a civil war as this, would be wholly
on the side of the sovereign. William had all the power and resources of
the kingdom in his own hands--the army, the towns, the castles, the
treasures. Robert had a troop of wild, desperate, and unmanageable
outlaws, without authority, without money, without a sense of justice on
their side. He gradually became satisfied that the contest was vain. In
proportion as the activity of the hostilities diminished, Matilda became
more and more open in her efforts to restrain it, and to allay the
animosity on either side. She succeeded, finally, in inducing Robert to
lay down his arms, and then brought about an interview between the
parties, in hopes of a peaceful settlement of the quarrel.
It appeared very soon, however, at this interview, that there was no
hope of any thing like a real and cordial reconciliation. Though both
the father and son had become weary of the unnatural war which they had
waged against each other, yet the ambitious and selfish desires on both
sides, in which the contest had originated, remained unchanged. Robert
began the conference by imperiously demanding of his father the
fulfillment of his promise to give him the government of Normandy. His
father replied by reproaching him with his unnatural and wicked
rebellion, and warned him of the danger he incurred, in imitating the
example of Absalom, of sharing that wretched rebel's fate. Robert
rejoined that he did not come to meet his father for the sake of hearing
a sermon preached. He had had enough of sermons, he said, when he was a
boy, studying grammar. He wanted his father to do him justice, not
preach to him. The king said that he should never divide his dominions,
while he lived, with any one; and added, notwithstanding what Robert had
contemptuously said about sermons, that the Scripture declared that a
house divided against itself could not stand. He then proceeded to
reproach and incriminate the prince in the severest manner for his
disloyalty as a subject, and his undutifulness and ingratitude as a son.
It was intolerable, he said, that a son should become the rival and
bitterest enemy of his father, when it was to him that he owed, not
merely all that he enjoyed, but his very existence itself.
These reproaches were probably uttered in an imperious and angry manner,
and with that spirit of denunciation which only irritates the accused
and arouses his resentment, instead of awakening feelings of penitence
and contrition. At any rate, the thought of his filial ingratitude, as
his father presented it, produced no relenting in Robert's mind. He
abruptly terminated the interview, and went out of his father's presence
in a rage.
In spite of all his mother's exertions and entreaties, he resolved to
leave the country once more. He said he would rather be an exile, and
wander homeless in foreign lands, than to remain in his father's court,
and be treated in so unjust and ignominious a manner, by one who was
bound by the strongest possible obligations to be his best and truest
friend. Matilda could not induce him to change this determination; and,
accordingly, taking with him a few of the most desperate and dissolute
of his companions, he went northward, crossed the frontier, and sought
refuge in Flanders. Flanders, it will be recollected, was Matilda's
native land. Her brother was the Earl of Flanders at this time. The earl
received young Robert very cordially, both for his sister's sake, and
also, probably, in some degree, as a means of petty hostility against
King William, his powerful neighbor, whose glory and good fortune he
envied.
Robert had not the means or the resources necessary for renewing an open
war with his father, but his disposition to do this was as strong as
ever, and he began immediately to open secret communications and
correspondence with all the nobles and barons in Normandy whom he
thought disposed to espouse his cause. He succeeded in inducing them to
make secret contributions of funds to supply his pecuniary wants, of
course promising to repay them with ample grants and rewards so soon as
he should obtain his rights. He maintained similar communications, too,
with Matilda, though she kept them very profoundly secret from her
husband.
Robert had other friends besides those whom he found thus furtively in
Normandy. The King of France himself was much pleased at the breaking
out of this terrible feud in the family of his neighbor, who, from being
his dependent and vassal, had become, by his conquest of England, his
great competitor and rival in the estimation of mankind. Philip was
disposed to rejoice at any occurrences which tended to tarnish William's
glory, or which threatened a division and diminution of his power. He
directed his agents, therefore, both in Normandy and in Flanders, to
encourage and promote the dissension by every means in their power. He
took great care not to commit himself by any open and positive promises
of aid, and yet still he contrived, by a thousand indirect means, to
encourage Robert to expect it. Thus the mischief was widened and
extended, while yet nothing effectual was done toward organizing an
insurrection. In fact, Robert had neither the means nor the mental
capacity necessary for maturing and carrying into effect any actual
plan of rebellion. In the mean time, months passed away, and as nothing
effectual was done, Robert's adherents in Normandy became gradually
discouraged. They ceased their contributions, and gradually forgot their
absent and incompetent leader. Robert spent his time in dissipation and
vice, squandering in feasts and in the company of abandoned men and
women the means which his followers sent him to enable him to prepare
for the war; and when, at last, these supplies failed him, he would have
been reduced gradually to great distress and destitution, were it not
that one faithful and devoted friend still adhered to him. That friend
was his mother.
Matilda knew very well that whatever she did for her absent son must be
done in the most clandestine manner, and this required much stratagem
and contrivance on her part. She was aided, however, in her efforts at
concealment by her husband's absence. He was now for a time in England,
having been called there by some pressing demands of public duty. He
left a great minister of state in charge of Normandy, whose vigilance
Matilda thought it would be comparatively easy to elude. She sent to
Robert, in Flanders, first her own private funds. Then she employed for
this purpose a portion of such public funds as came into her hands. The
more she sent, however, the more frequent and imperious were Robert's
demands for fresh supplies. The resources of a mother, whether great or
small, are always soon exhausted by the insatiable requirements of a
dissolute and profligate son. When Matilda's money was gone, she sold
her jewels, then her more expensive clothes, and, finally, such objects
of value, belonging to herself or to her husband, as could be most
easily and privately disposed of. The minister, who was very faithful
and watchful in the discharge of his duties, observed indications that
something mysterious was going on. His suspicions were aroused. He
watched Matilda's movements, and soon discovered the truth. He sent
information to William. William could not believe it possible that his
minister's surmises could be true; for William was simply a statesman
and a soldier, and had very inadequate ideas of the absorbing and
uncontrollable power which is exercised by the principle of maternal
love.
He, however, determined immediately to take most efficient measures to
ascertain the truth. He returned to Normandy, and there he succeeded in
intercepting one of Matilda's messengers on his way to Flanders, with
communications and money for Robert. The name of this messenger was
Sampson. William seized the money and the letters, and sent the
messenger to one of his castles, to be shut up in a dungeon. Then, with
the proofs of guilt which he had thus obtained, he went, full of
astonishment and anger, to find Matilda, and to upbraid her, as he
thought she deserved, for her base and ungrateful betrayal of her
husband.
The reproaches which he addressed to her were bitter and stern, though
they seem to have been spoken in a tone of sorrow rather than of anger.
"I am sure," he said, "I have ever been to you a faithful and devoted
husband. I do not know what more you could have desired than I have
done. I have loved you with a sincere and true affection. I have honored
you. I have placed you in the highest positions, intrusting you
repeatedly with large shares of my own sovereign power. I have confided
in you--committing my most essential and vital interests to your charge.
And now this is the return. You employ the very position, and power, and
means which your confiding husband has put into your hands, to betray
him in the most cruel way, and to aid and encourage his worst and most
dangerous enemy."
To these reproaches Matilda attempted no reply, except to plead the
irresistible impetuosity and strength of her maternal love. "I could not
bear," she said, "to leave Robert in distress and suffering while I had
any possible means of relieving him. He is my child. I think of him all
the time. I love him more than my life. I solemnly declare to you, that
if he were now dead, and I could restore him to life by dying for him, I
would most gladly do it. How, then, do you suppose that I could possibly
live here in abundance and luxury, while he was wandering homeless, in
destitution and want, and not try to relieve him? Whether it is right or
wrong for me to feel so, I do not know; but this I know, I _must_ feel
so: I can not help it. He is our first-born son; I can not abandon him."
William went away from the presence of Matilda full of resentment and
anger. Of course he could do nothing in respect to her but reproach her,
but he determined that the unlucky Sampson should suffer severely for
the crime. He sent orders to the castle where he lay immured, requiring
that his eyes should be put out. Matilda, however, discovered the
danger which threatened her messenger in time to send him warning. He
contrived to make his escape, and fled to a certain monastery which was
under Matilda's special patronage and charge. A monastery was, in those
days, a sanctuary into which the arm even of the most despotic authority
scarcely dared to intrude in pursuit of its victim. To make the safety
doubly sure, the abbot proposed that the trembling fugitive should join
their order and become a monk. Sampson was willing to do any thing to
save his life. The operation of putting out the eyes was very generally
fatal, so that he considered his life at stake. He was, accordingly,
shaven and shorn, and clothed in the monastic garb. He assumed the vows
of the order, and entered, with his brother monks, upon the course of
fastings, penances, and prayers which pertained to his new vocation; and
William left him to pursue it in peace.
Things went on worse instead of better after this discovery of the
mother's participation in the councils of the son. Either through the
aid which his mother had rendered, or by other means, there seemed to be
a strong party in and out of Normandy who were inclined to espouse
Robert's cause. His friends, at length, raised a very considerable
army, and putting him at the head of it, they advanced to attack Rouen.
The king, greatly alarmed at this danger, collected all the forces that
he could command, and went to meet his rebel son. William Rufus
accompanied his father, intending to fight by his side; while Matilda,
in an agony of terror and distress, remained, half distracted, within
her castle walls--as a wife and mother might be expected to be, on the
approach of a murderous conflict between her husband and her son. The
thought that one of them might, perhaps, be actually killed by the
other, filled her with dismay.
And, in fact, this dreadful result came very near being realized.
Robert, in the castle at L'Aigle, had barely been prevented from
destroying his brother, and now, on the plain of Archembraye, where this
battle was fought, his father _fell_, and was very near being killed, by
his hand. In the midst of the fight, while the horsemen were impetuously
charging each other in various parts of the field, all so disguised by
their armor that no one could know the individual with whom he was
contending, Robert encountered a large and powerful knight, and drove
his lance through his armor into his arm. Through the shock of the
encounter and the faintness produced by the agony of the wound, the
horseman fell to the ground, and Robert perceived, by the voice with
which his fallen enemy cried out in his pain and terror, that it was his
father that he had thus pierced with his steel. At the same moment, the
wounded father, in looking at his victorious antagonist, recognized
his son. He cursed his unnatural enemy with a bitter and terrible
malediction. Robert was shocked and terrified at what he had done. He
leaped from his horse, knelt down by the side of his father, and called
for aid. The king, distracted by the anguish of his wound, and by the
burning indignation and resentment which raged in his bosom against the
unnatural hostility which inflicted it, turned away from his son, and
refused to receive any succor from him.
Besides the misfortune of being unhorsed and wounded, the battle itself
went that day against the king. Robert's army remained masters of the
field. William Rufus was wounded too, as well as his father. Matilda was
overwhelmed with distress and mental anguish at the result. She could
not endure the idea of allowing so unnatural and dreadful a struggle to
go on. She begged her husband, with the most earnest importunities and
with many tears, to find some way of accommodating the dispute. Her
nights were sleepless, her days were spent in weeping, and her health
and strength were soon found to be wasting very rapidly away. She was
emaciated, wan, and pale, and it was plain that such distress, if long
continued, would soon bring her to the grave.
Matilda's intercessions at length prevailed. The king sent for his son,
and, after various negotiations, some sort of compromise was effected.
The armies were disbanded, peace was restored, and Robert and his father
once more seemed to be friends. Soon after this, William, having a
campaign to make in the north of England, took Robert with him as one of
the generals in his army.