[6]Guizot.
Go to Illus. ListCONFERRING KNIGHTHOOD ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.
Go to Illus. List
CONFERRING KNIGHTHOOD ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.
In the middle of this eleventh century, the time of William the Conqueror's youth, the opposing elements of Christian knighthood, and the fighting spirit of the viking blood, were each to find a champion in the same leader. The young duke's early years were a hard training, and from his loveless babyhood to his unwept death, he had the bitter sorrows that belong to the life of a cruel man and much-feared tyrant. It may seem to be a strange claim to make for William the Conqueror—that he represented Christian knighthood—but we must remember that fighting was almost the first duty of[Pg167]man in those days, and that this greatest of the Norman dukes, with all his brutality and apparent heartlessness and selfishness, believed in his church, and kept many of her laws which most of his comrades broke as a matter of course. We cannot remind ourselves too often that he was a man of[Pg168]pure life in a most unbridled and immoral age, if we judge by our present standards of either purity or immorality. There is always a temptation in reading or writing about people who lived in earlier times, to rank them according to our own laws of morality and etiquette, but the first thing to be done is to get a clear idea of the time in question. The hero of Charlemagne's time or the Conqueror's may prove any thing but a hero in our eyes, but we must take him in relation to his own surroundings. The great laws of truth and justice and kindness remain, while the years come and go; the promises of God endure, but while there is, as one may say, a common law of heavenly ordering, there are also the various statute laws that vary with time and place, and these forever change as men change, and the light of civilization burns brighter and clearer.
In William the Conqueror's lifetime, every landed gentleman fortified his house against his neighbors, and even made a secure and loathsome prison in his cellar for their frequent accommodation. This seems inhospitable, to say the least, and gives a tinge of falseness to such tender admonitions as prevailed in regard to charity and treatment of wayfarers. Yet every rich man was ambitious to go down to fame as a benefactor of the church; all over Normandy and Brittany there was a new growth of religious houses, and those of an earlier date, which had lain in ruins since the Northmen's time, were rebuilt with pious care. There appears to have been a new awakening of religious interest in the year 1000, which lasted late into the century. There was a[Pg169]surprising fear and anticipation of the end of the world, which led to a vast number of penitential deeds of devotion, and it was the same during the two or three years after 1030, at the close of the life of King Robert of France.
Normandy and all the neighboring countries were scourged by even worse plagues than the feudal wars. The drought was terrible, and the famine which followed desolated the land everywhere. The trees and fields were scorched and shrivelled, and the poor peasants fought with the wild beasts for dead bodies that had fallen by the roadside and in the forests. Sometimes men killed their comrades for very hunger, like wolves. There was no commerce which could supply the failure of one country's crops with the overflow of another's at the other side of the world, but at last the rain fell in France, and the misery was ended. A thousand votive offerings were made for very thankfulness, for again the people had expected the end of the world, and it had seemed most probable that such an arid earth should be near its final burning and desolation.
In the towns, under ordinary circumstances, there was a style of living that was almost luxurious. The Normans were skilful architects, and not only their minsters and monasteries, but their houses too, were fit for such proud inhabitants, and rich with hangings and comfortable furnishings. The women were more famous than ever for needlework, some of it most skilful in design, and the great tapestries are yet in existence that were hung, partly for warmth's sake, about the stone walls of the castles.[Pg170]Sometimes the noble ladies who sat at home while their lords went out to the wars, worked great pictures on these tapestries of various events of family history, and these family records of battles and gallant bravery by land and sea are most interesting now for their costume and color, beside their corroboration of historical traditions.
We have drifted away, in this chapter, from William the Conqueror himself, but I believe that we know more about the Normandy which he was to govern, and can better understand his ambitions, his difficulties, and his successes. A country of priests and soldiers, of beautiful women and gallant men; a social atmosphere already alive with light, gayety, and brightness, but swayed with pride and superstition, with worldliness and austerity; loyal to Rome, greedy for new territory, the feudal lords imperious masters of complaining yet valiant serfs; racked everywhere by civil feuds and petty wars and instinctive jealousies of French and foreign blood—this was Normandy. The Englishmen come and go and learn good manners and the customs of chivalry, England herself is growing rich and stupid, for Harthacnut had introduced a damaging custom of eating four great meals a day, and his subjects had followed the fashion, though that king himself had died of it and of his other habit of drinking all night long with merry companions.[Pg171]
"——————One decreeSpake laws to them, and said that, by the soulOnly, the nations should be great and free."—Wordsworth.
TOC,INDXIt is time to take a closer look at England and at the shameful degradations of Æthelred's time. The inroads of the Danes read like the early history of Normandy, and we must take a step backward in the condition of civilization when we cross to the other side of the Channel. There had been great changes since Ælfred's wise and prosperous reign, or even since the time of Æthelred's predecessor, Eadgar, who was rowed in his royal-barge at Chester by eight of his vassal kings—Kenneth of Scots, Malcolm of Cumberland, Maccus of the Isles, and five Welsh monarchs. The lord of Britain was gracious enough to do the steering for so noble a company of oarsmen, and it was considered the proudest day that ever had shone upon an English king.
We must remind ourselves of the successive waves of humanity which had overspread England in past ages, leaving traces of each like less evident geologic[Pg172]strata. From the stone and bronze age people, through the Celts with their Pictish and Scottish remnant, through the Roman invasion, and the Saxon, more powerful and enduring than any from our point of view, we may trace a kinship to our Normans across the water. But the English descendants of Celts, Danes, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes needed to feel a new influence and refreshing of their better instincts by way of Normandy.
Perhaps each one of the later rulers of Britain thought he had fallen upon as hard and stormy times and had as much responsibility as anybody who ever wielded a sceptre, but in the reign of the second Æthelred, there are much greater dramas being played, and we feel, directly we get a hint of it, as children do who have been loitering among petty side-shows on their way to a great play. Here come the Danes again, the kings of Denmark and the whole population of Norway one would think, to read the records, and this time they attack England with such force and determination that within less than forty years a Danish king is master of Britain.
If Æthelred had been a better man this might never have happened, but among all the Saxon kings he seems to have been the worst—thoroughly bad, weak, cowardly, and cruel. He was sure to do things he had better have left alone, and to neglect his plain duty. Other kings had fallen on as hard, perplexing times as he, but they had been strong enough to keep some sort of control of themselves at any rate. Dunstan the archbishop warned the[Pg173]people, when Æthelred was crowned, that they had no idea of the trouble that was coming, and through the whole reign things went from bad to worse. Dreadful things happened which we can hardly blame the silly king for—like a plague among cattle, and the burning of London in 982; and a few years afterward there was a terrible invasion of the Norwegians, and we have seen that aid and comfort were ready for them over in Bayeux and the pirate cities of Normandy.
Now we first hear of the Danegelt, great sums of money, always doubling and increasing, that were paid the Northmen as bribes to go away and leave England in peace. The paying of this Danegelt became a greater load than the nation could carry, for the pirates liked nothing better than to gather a great fleet of ships every few months and come to anchor off the coast, sending a messenger to make the highwayman's favorite request, your money or your life! One of the first sums boldly demanded of Æthelred's aldermen was ten thousand pounds. We can see how rapidly the wealth of England had increased, for in Ælfred's time the fine for killing a king was a hundred and twenty shillings, and this was considered a great sum of money; the penalty for taking a peasant's life was only five shillings, which makes us understand, without any doubt, the scarceness and value of money. Here are some extracts from the English chronicle, which had been kept since Bede's time and for many years after this, which will show how miserably every thing was going on:[Pg174]
1001. "The army [the Danes of course] went over the land and did as was their wont. Slew and burned ... it was sad in every way for they never ceased from their evil."
1002. "In this year the king and his witan resolved, that tribute would be paid and peace made with them, on condition that they should cease from their evil." This they accepted and were paid, £24,000.
1006. "At midwinter the Winchester folk might see an insolent and fearless army as they went by their gate to the sea, and fetched them food and treasure over fifty miles from the sea. Then was there so great awe of the army that no one could think or devise how they should be driven from the country. Every shire in Wessex had they cruelly marked with burning and with harrying. The king began then with his witan earnestly to consider what might seem most advisable to them all, so that the country might be protected ere it were at last undone." This time the tribute was £36,000, and another time the ships put to sea with a Danegelt of £48,000.
England grew more and more miserable and shamefully unable to defend herself, the captains of her fleet were incapable or treacherous, and at last, when some of the ships had been wrecked and there had been some sad disasters at sea, the chronicle has a more despairing tone than ever. "It was as if all counsel had come to an end," the writer says, "and the king and aldermen and all the high witan went home, and let the toil of all the nation lightly perish."[Pg175]
Æthelred the Unready won for himself, in his reign of thirty-eight years, the hearty contempt and distrust of all his people. There is a temptation to blame him for the misery of England, and to attribute it all to his faults and to the low aims and standards of his character, to his worthless ambitions. But, in a general way, the great men, or notorious men of history, who stand out before a dim and half-forgotten background, are only typical of their time and representative of it. One very good man, or bad man, cannot be absolutely a single specimen of his kind; there must be others who rank with him, and who have been his upholders and influencers. So while the story of any nation is in its early chapters, and seems to be merely an account of one ruler or statesman after another, we must not forget that each symbolized his day and generation,—a brave leader of a brave race, or a dull or placid or serene representative of a secure, inactive age.
Although there was blundering enough and treachery in Æthelred's reign, there was a splendid exception in the victories and steadfastness of the city of London, which was unsuccessfully attacked again and again by the Danes. The heathen, as the English called their enemies, were lucky in their two leaders, the king of Norway, and the king of Denmark. Olaf, the first-named, was converted after a while, and going from the islands of Orkney to England, he was baptized there, and the English bishops were very kind to him, and Æthelred gave him some presents, and made him promise that he would not come plundering to England any more.[Pg176]We are quite surprised to hear that the promise was kept. Swegen the Dane promised too, but he appeared again after a while, and Æthelred thought he would improve upon the fashion of paying Danegelt by ordering a general massacre of all the Danes instead. Afterward somebody tried to excuse such a piece of barbarianism by saying that the Danes had plotted against the king, but even if they had, Æthelred showed a wretched spirit. It was a time of peace, but he sent secret messengers all through the country, and as the English were only too glad to carry out such orders, there was a terrible slaughter of men, women, and children.
Next year Swegen came back to avenge the wrong, all the more readily because his own sister and her husband and son were among the murdered, and the poor woman had made a prophecy, as she fell, dying, that misery and vengeance should fall upon the English for their sins. For a long time afterward the Danes were very fierce and kept England in fear and disorder. Once they laid siege to Canterbury, and when it had fallen into their hands they demanded Danegelt from the Archbishop, a very good old man. He had a heart full of pity for his poor people already so abominably taxed and oppressed in every way, and was brave enough to squarely refuse, so the Danes slew him with horrible torture; one might tell many such stories of the cruelty and boldness of the invaders. Æthelred was perfectly helpless or else cowardly and indifferent, and presently Swegen, who had gone back to the North returned with a great fleet and a swarm of followers,[Pg177]and not long afterward he conquered every sort of opposition, even that of the brave Londoners, and was proclaimed king of England. Here was a change indeed! the silly Saxon king and his wife and children fled across the sea to Normandy, and Swegen sat upon the throne. He began to reign in splendid state; he had the handsomest ships afloat, all decked out with figures of men and birds and beasts wrought in silver and amber and gold, and fine decorations of every sort. No doubt he had made fine plans and meant to do great deeds, but he died suddenly within a very short time, and the people believed he was frightened to death by a vision.
Æthelred was in Normandy at the court of Richard the Fearless. You remember that Richard's sister Emma went over to England to marry the unready king. Æthelred had one older son, Eadmund Ironside, beside the two boys who were Emma's children, and the hearts of the English turned to their old king, and at last they sent for him to come back, in spite of his faults. He made many fine promises, and seems to have done a great deal better most of the time during the last two years that he lived. Perhaps he had taken some good lessons from the Norman court. But Cnut, Swegen's son, came back to England, just before he died, as fearless as a hawk, and led his men from one victory to another, and Æthelred faded out of life to everybody's relief. When he was dead at last, the witan chose Cnut for king in his stead, but the Londoners, who were rich and strong, and who hated the Danes bitterly—the Londoners would have none of the pirates to[Pg178]reign over them, and elected young Eadmund Ironside, a valiant soldier and loyal-hearted fellow who feared nothing and was ready to dare every thing. The two young kings were well matched and fought six great battles, in most of which Ironside gained the advantage, but at last the Danes beat him back—and though everybody was ready for a seventh battle, the witan showed their wisdom for once and forbade any more fighting, and somehow managed to proclaim peace. The young kings treated each other most generously, and called each other brother, and were very cordial and good-natured. They agreed to divide the kingdom, so that Eadmund Ironside had all England south of the Thames—East Anglia and Essex and London. Cnut took all the northern country and owned Eadmund for his over-lord, but within the year Cnut reigned alone. Eadmund died suddenly—some say that he was murdered, and some that he had worn himself out with his tremendous activity and anxiety. It is a great temptation to follow out the story of such a man, and especially because he lived in such an important time, but we must hurry now to the point where Norman and English history can be told together, and only stop to explain such things as will make us able to understand and take sides in the alliance of the two vigorous, growing nations.
Go to Illus. ListKING CNUT.(From the Register of Hyde Abbey.)
Go to Illus. List
KING CNUT.(From the Register of Hyde Abbey.)
(From the Register of Hyde Abbey.)
Cnut's life, too, is endlessly interesting. He began by behaving like a pirate, and the latter part of his reign was a great reform and a very comfortable time for England, so scarred and spoiled by war. In the beginning there was a great question about[Pg179]the kingship. In those days it was a matter of great importance that the king should be able to rule and able to fight, and the best and most powerful member of the royal family was the proper one to choose. The English for a long time had elected their kings, and Cnut, though he held half the country, was very careful not to seize the rest by force. We[Pg180]watch with great interest his wielding of rude politics before the witan; he called them into council and laid his claim before them.
Eadmund Ironside had left two little sons, but nobody thought of their being his successors. Indeed Cnut showed a great fear of the royal family, and took care that his rivals should be disposed of; he knew that the witan and everybody else were tired of the everlasting war and bloodshed. He was fierce and downright in his demands, and in the end the heirs of Ironside were all passed over—the Athelings or princes were all set aside, and Cnut the Dane was king of England.
Ironside's brother, Eadwy, of whom the best things are said, was outlawed, and died within a few months under very suspicious circumstances. The two little boys, Ironside's sons, were sent out of the country to Cnut's half-brother, the king of Sweden, with orders that they should be put out of the way. The king felt such pity for the innocent children, that he sent them away to Hungary instead of having them murdered. The Hungarian king, Stephen, was a saint and a hero, and he was very kind to the poor exiles, and brought them up carefully. One died young, but we shall hear again about the other.
Cnut did a very surprising thing next. He sent for Queen Emma to come back again from the Norman court to marry him. She must have been a good deal older than he, but she was still a beautiful woman, and marked with the famous Norman dignity and grace. Cnut promised that if they should ever have a son born, he should be the next[Pg181]king of England. Emma's two elder sons, Ælfred and Eadward, were left in Normandy, and there they grew up quite apart from their mother, and thinking much more of their Norman descent and belonging than of their English heritage.
Cnut now appears in the light of a model sovereign for those days. He had renounced all his pagan ideas, and been christened and received into the Church. We might expect that he would have pushed his own countrymen forward and all the Danish interests, but it was quite the other way. At the beginning of his reign he had executed several powerful English nobles whose influence and antagonism he had reason to fear; but now he favored the English in a marked way, and even ordered his ships and all the pirates and fighting men back to the North. It seems very strange, now, that a king of England ever reigned over Sweden and Denmark, and Norway beside, but it seems as if Cnut were prouder of being king of England than of all his other powers and dignities. He was not only very gracious and friendly with his English subjects at home, but he sent them abroad to be bishops, and displeased the Danish parishes by such arrangements.
We all know the story of the rising tide, and Cnut's reproof to his courtiers on the sea-shore. As we read about him we are reminded a little of Rolf the Ganger, and his growth from pirate fashions to a more gentle and decent humanity. The two men were not so very unlike after all, but I must confess that I think with a good deal of sympathy[Pg182]of Cnut's decision to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. It was expecting a good deal of the young sea-rover that he should stay quietly at home to rule his kingdom. The spirit of adventure stirred in his veins, and we may be sure that he enjoyed his long and perilous overland journey to Italy. He made the road safer for his countrymen who might also have a pious desire to worship at the famous foreign shrines. He complained to the emperor and the priests at Rome about the robber-chiefs who pounced down upon travellers from their castles in the Alps, and they promised to keep better order. The merchants and pilgrims were often laden with rich offerings for the churches, besides goods which they wished to sell, and the robbers kept watch for them. Their ruined fortresses are still perched along the Alpine passes, and one cannot help hoping that Cnut had some exciting disputes with his enemies, and a taste of useful fighting and proper discipline among the bold marauders.
He wrote a famous letter about his pilgrimage, directed to the archbishops, and bishops, the great men, and all the people. He tells whom he saw in Rome—the Pope, and the German Emperor, and other great lords of the earth; and says, with pride, that every one has treated him handsomely, and what fine presents he has had given him to carry home. He had come to Rome for the good of his people, and for the salvation of his own soul, he tells them seriously; and one thing he did for England was to complain of the heavy taxes the church had put upon it, and the Pope promised that such injustice[Pg183]should not happen any more. There is something very touching in the way that he says he had made a great many good resolves about his future life, and that he is not ashamed to own that he has done wrong over and over again, but he means, by God's help, to amend entirely. He vows to Heaven that he will govern his life rightly, and rule his kingdom honestly and piously, and that neither rich nor poor shall be oppressed or hardshipped. There never was a better letter, altogether, and Cnut kept his promises so well that the old Anglo-Saxon chronicle, which aches with stories of war and trouble, grows quite dull now in the later years of his reign. There was nothing to tell any more, the monks thought who kept the record; but we know, for that very reason, that the English farms flourished, and the wheat fields waved in the summer wind, the towns grew rich, and the merchants prosperous; and when the English-Northman king died, it was a sad day for England. Cnut was only forty years old, but that was a long time for a king to live. His son, Harold Harefoot, reigned in his stead, and many of the old troubles of the country sprang up at once, as if they had only been asleep for a little while, and were by no means out-grown or ended.
Harold Harefoot was not in the least pious, and behaved himself with most unreasonable folly, and fortunately died at the close of four years of insult and unworthiness. Then Harthacnut, the younger brother, was made king, and he promptly demanded a Danegelt, the most hateful of taxes, and did[Pg184]a great many things which only reopened the breach between Dane and Englishman, though it had seemed to be smoothed over somewhat in his father's time. Harold had done one brutal thing that towered above all the rest. The two princes who had been living in Normandy thought there might be some chance of their gaining a right to the throne, and the younger one, Ælfred, had come over to England with his knights and gentlemen. Harold seized them and was most cruel; he first blinded his half-brother and then had him put to death. This made a great noise in Normandy, and there is one good thing to be said about Harthacnut, that he was bitterly angry with his brother, and also with Earl Godwine, a famous nobleman, who was the most powerful man in England next the king. He was Cnut's favorite and chief adviser, but Harthacnut suspected that he had a hand in Ælfred's murder. Nobody has ever been quite clear about the matter. Godwine and all his lords swore that he was innocent, and gave the king a magnificent ship with all sorts of splendors belonging to it, besides nearly a hundred men in full armor, and gold bracelets to make them as grand as could be. So the king accepted Godwine's oath in view of such a polite attention, but he asked Eadward to leave the Norman court and come over to live with him. Eadward came, and in two years he was king of England, Harthacnut having died a wretched drunken death.
So again there was a descendant of Ælfred the Great and the house of Cerdic on the throne. Eadward was the last of the line, and in his day began[Pg185]the most exciting and important chapter of English history—the Norman Conquest.
We have come quickly along the line of Danish kings, and now it is time to stop and take a more careful look at the state of manners and customs in England, and make ourselves sure what the English people of that time were like, how they lived in their houses, and what changes had come to the country in general. There were certain hindrances to civilization, and lacks of a fitting progress and true growth. Let us see what these things were, and how the greater refinement of the Normans, their superior gifts and graces, must come into play a little later. There was some deep meaning in the fusion of the two peoples, and more than one reason why they could form a greater nation together than either Normans or Englishmen could alone.
First, the dwellers on English soil had shown a tendency, not yet entirely outgrown, to fall back into a too great indulgence in luxurious living. When the storm and strain of conquest, of colonization, had spent itself, the Englishmen of Eadward's and Cnut's time betook themselves to feasting and lawlessness, of the sort that must undermine the vigor of any people. The fat of the land tempted them in many ways, and they sank under such habits as quickly as they had risen under the necessities that war makes for sacrifices and temperance. They were suffering, too, from their insularity; they were taken up with their own affairs, and had kept apart from the progress of the rest of Europe. There was a new wave and impulse of scholarship, which had not yet reached[Pg186]them. It was ebb-tide in England in more ways than one; and time for those Normans to appear who, to use the words of one of their historians, "borrow every thing and make it their own, and their presence is chiefly felt in increased activity and more rapid development of institutions, literature, and art. Thus ... they perfect, they organize every thing, and everywhere appear to be the master spirits of their age."
The English people had become so impatient of the misrule of Cnut's sons, that the remembrance of Cnut's glories was set aside for the time being, and no more Danish kings were desired. "All folk chose Eadward to king," says the chronicle, and evidently the hearts of the people were turned, full of hope and affection, to the exiled son of Æthelred and Emma, who had been since his childhood at the Norman court. His murdered brother Ælfred had been canonized by the romantic sympathy of his English friends; he was remembered now as a saintly young martyr to English patriotism, and the disreputable reign of Cnut's sons had made the virtues of the ancient race of English kings very bright by comparison. The new king must be of English blood and a link with past prosperity. The son of Eadmund Ironside was an exile also in the distant court of Hungary, but Eadward, a gentle, pious man, was near at hand, and there were a thousand voices ready to shout for him even while Harthacnut lay unburied in the royal robes and trappings.
There was an opposition on the part of the Danes, who were naturally disinclined to any such change,[Pg187]and when the formal election and consecration of the new king took place, some months after this popular vote, all Earl Godwine's power and influence were brought to bear before certain important votes could be won. Indeed, at first Eadward himself was apparently hard to persuade to accept his high office. He seems to have been much more inclined to a religious life than to statesmanship, but between much pushing from behind in Normandy and the eager entreaties of his English friends, he was forced to make his way again across the Channel. There are interesting accounts, which may or may not be true, of his conversations with Godwine; but the stronger man prevailed. The very promise he made to uphold the new king's rights might make Eadward feel assured and hopeful of some stability and quietness in his reign. England was far behind Normandy in social or scholarly progress; to reign over Englishmen did not appear the most rewarding or alluring career to the fastidious, delicate, cloister-man. The rough-heartiness and red-cheeked faces of his subjects must have contrasted poorly with his Norman belongings, so much more refined and thoughtful, not to say adroit and dissembling. England was still divided into four parts, as Cnut had left it. His scheme of the four great earldoms had proved a bad one enough, for it had only made the nation weaker, and kept up continual rivalries and jealousies between the lords of Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex. The northern territory was chiefly Danish in its traditions, and though there was a nominal subjection to the king, Northumbria was[Pg188]almost wholly independent of any over-rule. In Mercia, Lady Godiva and Earl Leofric were spending their lives and their great wealth, chiefly in furthering all sorts of religious houses and good works of the churches.
The greatest earl of all was Godwine of Wessex, the true leader of the English and a most brave and loyal man. Cnut had trusted him, and while there were enough jealous eyes to look at his kingly prosperity, and malicious tongues ready to whisper about his knowledge of young Ælfred's murder, or his favor and unrighteous advancement of his own family to places of power, Godwine still held the confidence of a great faction among the English people. His son Harold was earl of East Anglia, and they were lawful governors, between them, of the whole southern part of the kingdom. It was mainly through Godwine's influence that Eadward was crowned king, and we may look to the same cause for his marriage with the earl's daughter Edith, but the line of English princes, of whom Godwine hoped to be ancestor, never appeared, for the king was childless, and soon made an enemy of his father-in-law. Some people say that Godwine did not treat his royal son with much respect having once put him on the throne. Eadward too never was able to forget the suspicion about Ælfred's murder, so the breach between him and the great earl was widened year by year. Eadward was not the sturdy English monarch for whom his people had hoped; he was Norman at heart, as a man might well be who had learned to speak in the foreign tongue, and had made the friendships of his[Pg189]boyhood and manhood in the duke's court and cloisters. Priestcraft was dearer to him than statecraft, and his name of The Confessor showed what almost saintly renown he had won from those who were his friends and upholders.
It did not suit very well that one Norman gentleman after another came to London to fill some high official position. Eadward appeared to wish to surround himself wholly with Normans, and the whole aspect of the English court was changed little by little. The king proved his own weakness in every way—he was as like Æthelred the Unready as a good man could be like a bad one.
Godwine grew more and more angry, and his determination to show that England could do without the crowds of interlopers who were having every thing their own way worked him disaster for a time. There was a party of the king's friends journeying homeward to Normandy, who stopped overnight in the city of Dover and demanded its hospitality in insolent fashion. The Dover men would not be treated like slaves, and a fight followed in which the Frenchmen were either killed or driven out of the town. Eadward of course sided with his friends, and was very indignant; he sent orders to Earl Godwine, who was governor of the region, to punish the offenders, but Godwine refused squarely unless the men should have been fairly tried and given a chance to speak for themselves. This ended in a serious quarrel, and the king gained a victory without any battle either, for there was a sudden shifting of public feeling in Eadward's favor—Godwine's own men forsook him[Pg190]and were loyal to the crown, and the great earl was banished for conscience sake, he and all his family, for the king even sent away his own wife, though he kept all her lands and treasures, which was not so saint-like and unworldly as one might have expected. One of Godwine's sons had proved himself a very base and treacherous man, and the earl had shielded him; this was one reason why his defence of English liberty was so overlooked by his countrymen, but the Normans had a great triumph over this defeat, and praised the pious king and told long stories of his austere life, his prayers, and holy life. After he was canonized these stories were lengthened still more, but while he was yet without a halo some of his contemporaries charge him with laziness and incapacity. He certainly was lacking in kingly qualities, but he gained the respect and love of many of his subjects, and was no doubt as good as so weak a man could be. After his death Englishmen praised him the more because they liked William the Conqueror the less, and as for the Normans they liked anybody better than Harold, who had been a much more formidable opponent in his claim to the English crown. Mr. Freeman says: "—————— The duties of secular government ... were ... always something which went against the grain. His natural place was not on the throne of England, but at the head of a Norman abbey.... For his virtues were those of a monk; all the real man came out in his zeal for collecting relics, in his visions, in his religious exercises, in his gifts to churches and monasteries, in his desire to mark his[Pg191]reign as its chief result, by the foundation of his great abbey of Saint Peter at Westminster. In a prince of the manly piety of Ælfred things of this sort form only a part, a pleasing and harmonious part, of the general character. In Eadward they formed the whole man."
The chronicler who writes most flatteringly of him acknowledges that he sometimes had shocking fits of bad temper, but that he was never betrayed into unbecoming language. On some occasions he was hardly held back by Godwine or Harold from civil war and massacre; though he was conscientious within the limit of his intelligence, and had the art of giving a gracious refusal and the habit of affability and good manners. William of Malmesbury, the chronicler, tells us that he kept his royal dignity, but that he took no pleasure in wearing his robes of state, even though they were worked for him by his affectionate queen. Like his father, he was ever under the dominion of favorites, and this was quickly enough discovered and played upon by Norman ecclesiastics and Norman and Breton gentlemen in search of adventure and aggrandizement. It makes a great difference whether we read the story of this time in English or in French records. Often the stories are directly opposite to each other, and only the most careful steps along the path keep one from wandering off one way or the other into unjust partisanship. Especially is this true of Godwine, the confessor's great contemporary. He seems, at any rate, to have been a man much ahead of his time in knowledge of affairs and foresight of the probable effects[Pg192]from the causes of his own day. His brother earls were jealous of him; the Church complained of his lack of generosity; even his acknowledged eloquence was listened to incredulously; and his good government of his own provinces, praised though it was, did not gain him steady power. His good government made him, perhaps more than any thing else, the foremost Englishman of his time, and presently we shall see how deep a feeling there was for him in England, and how much confidence and affection were shown in his welcome back from exile, though he had been allowed to go away with such sullen disapproval. Godwine's wife, Gytha, was a Danish woman, which was probably a closer link with that faction in the northern earldom than can be clearly understood at this late day. Lord Lytton's novel, called "Harold," makes this famous household seem to live before our eyes, and the brief recital of its fortunes and conditions here cannot be more than a hint of the real romance and picturesqueness of the story.
The absence of Godwine in Flanders—a whole year's absence—had taught his countrymen what it was to be without him. They were sadly annoyed and troubled by the king's continued appointment of Normans to every place of high honor that fell vacant. Bishoprics and waste lands alike were pounced upon by the hangers-on at court, and castles were lifting their ugly walls within sight of each other almost, here and there in the quiet English fields. Even in London itself the great White Tower was already setting its strong foundations;[Pg193]a citadel for the town, a fort to keep the borderers and Danes at bay were necessary enough to a country, but England was being turned into another Normandy and Brittany, with these new houses that were built for war, as if every man's neighbor were his enemy. The square high towers were no fit places for men to live in who tilled the soil and tended their flocks and herds. There were too many dark dungeons provided among the foundation stones beside, and the English farmers whispered together about their new townsfolk and petty lords, and feared the evil days that were to come.
The ruined Roman houses and strange tall stones of the Druid temples were alike thrown down and used to build these new castles. Men who had strayed as far as the Norman coasts had stories enough to tell; what landmarks of oppression these same castles were in their own country, and how the young Duke William had levelled many of them to the ground in quarrelsome Normandy. There was no English word for this awesome new word—castles!The free and open halls of the English thanes were a strange contrast to the new order of dwelling-places. Robert of Jumièges had been made Archbishop of Canterbury, and a host of his countrymen surrounded the king more and more closely and threatened to deprive the English of their just rights. It was this monk Robert who had "beat into the king's head" that his brother Ælfred had come to his death through Earl Godwine.
It is very easy to tell the story of the Normans from the English side. Let us cross the Channel again[Pg194]to Rouen and see what effect the condition of English affairs was having upon the young duke. It would not be strange if his imagination were busy with some idea of enlarging his horizon by a look at his neighbors. Eadward had no heir, they had talked together oftentimes, perhaps, about the possibility of making one noble great kingdom by the joining of England and Normandy. Every day more stories reached his ears of the wealth and fruitfulness of the Confessor's kingdom.
[Pg195]
"Who stood with head erect and shining eyes,As if the beacon of some promised landCaught his strong vision, and entranced it there."—A. F.
TOC,INDXThe Viking's grandchildren had by no means lost their love for journeying by land or sea. As in old Norway one may still find bits of coral and rudely shaped precious stones set in the quaintly wrought silver ornaments made by the peasants, so in Normandy there are pieces of Spanish leather and treasures from the east and from the south, relics of the plundering of a later generation. Roger de Toesny, one of William's fiercest enemies, does not become well-known to us until we trace out something of his history as a wanderer before he came to join Talvas in a well-planned rebellion.
In Duke Richard the Good's time there was a restless spirit of adventure stirring in Norman hearts, and the foundations were laid of the Southern kingdoms which made such a change in Europe. A Norman invasion of Spain came to nothing in comparison with those more important settlements, but in 1018 Roger de Toesny carried the Norman[Pg196]arms into the Spanish peninsula. A long time before this Richard the Fearless had persuaded a large company of his Scandinavian subjects to wander that way, being pagan to the heart's-core and hopelessly inharmonious. Roger followed them on a grand crusade against the infidel Saracen, and also hoped to gain a kingdom for himself. He was of the noblest blood in Normandy, of Rolf the Ganger's own family, and well upheld the warlike honor of his house in his daring fights with the infidel. Almost unbelievable stories are told of his cannibal-like savagery with his captives, but the very same stories are told of another man, so we will not stop to moralize upon Roger's wickedness. He married the Spanish countess of Barcelona, who did homage to the king of France, and every thing looked prosperous at one time for his dominion, but it never really took root after all, and de Toesny went back again to Normandy, and blazed out instantly with tremendous wrath at the pretentions of William the Bastard. He could not believe that the proud Norman barons and knights would ever submit to such a degradation. De Talvas was only too glad to greet so sympathetic an ally, and the opposition to the young duke took a more formidable shape than ever before.
All through William's earliest years the feudal lords spent most of their strength in quarrelling with each other, but de Toesny's appearance gave the signal for a league against the ruler whom they despised. William was no longer a child, and rumors of his premature sagacity, and his uncommon strength and quickness in war, were flying about from town[Pg197]to town and warned his enemies that they had no time to lose if they meant to crush him down. He was a noble-looking lad and had shown a natural preference for a soldier's life; at fifteen he had demanded to be made a knight of the old Norman tradition in which lurked a memory of Scandinavian ceremonies. None save Duke William could bend Duke William's bow, and while these glowing accounts of him were written from a later standpoint, and his story might easily be read backward, as a fulfilment of prophecy, we can be sure, at least, that his power asserted itself in a marked way, and that he soon gained importance and mustered a respectable company of followers as the beginning of a brilliant and almost irresistible court and army. Even King Henry of France was jealous of his vassal's rising fame and popularity, and felt obliged to pay William a deference that his years did not merit. All through the first twelve years men felt that the boy William's life was in danger, and that, whatever respect Henry paid him, was likely to be changed to open animosity and disdain the moment that there was a good excuse. We have a glimpse now and then of the lonely lad at his sport in the forest about Falaise and Valognes, where he set apart preserves for hunting. We follow him from Alan of Brittany's wardship, to the guardian he chose himself, who held the place of tutor with that of captain-general of the Norman army, but, guardian or no guardian, he pushed forward single-handed, and mastered others, beside himself, in a way that the world never will cease to wonder at.[Pg198]
Roger de Toesny refused allegiance to begin with, and with loud expressions of his scorn of the Bastard, began to lay waste his neighbors' lands as if they, too, had been Saracens and merited any sort of punishment. We first hear the name of De Beaumont, famous enough ever since, in an account of a battle which some of Roger's outraged victims waged against him. Grantmesnil, too, is a name that we shall know very well by and by, when William has gone over to England with his Norman lords. Normandy never got over its excitement and apparent astonishment at William's presence and claims; but even in his boyhood he was the leader of a party. "So lively and spirited was he, that it seemed to all a marvel," says one of the old chroniclers, with enthusiasm. When he began to take deep interest in his affairs, the news of revolts and disorderliness in the country moved him to violent fits of irritation, but he soon learned to hide these instinctively, and the chronicle goes on to say that he "had welling up in his child's heart all the vigor of a man to teach the Normans to forbear from all acts of irregularity." In this outbreak against de Toesny he found an irresistible temptation to assert his mastery, and boy as he was, he really made himself felt; De Toesny was killed in the fierce little battle, and his death gave a temporary relief from such uprisings; but William comes more and more to the front, and all Normandy takes sides either for or against him. This was no insignificant pretender, but one to be feared; his guardians and faithful men who had held to him for good or bad reasons, were mostly put out of the way[Pg199]by their enemies, and there was nobody at last who could lead the Bastard's men to battle better than he could himself.
Henry of France had been biding his time, and now Guy of Burgundy, the son of William's cousin, whom he had welcomed kindly at his feudal court, puts in a claim to the dukedom of Normandy. He helped forward a conspiracy, and one night, while William was living in his favorite castle at Valognes, the jester came knocking with his bauble, and crying at the chamber door, begging him to fly for his life: "They are already armed; they are getting ready; to delay is death!" cried poor Golet the fool; and his master leaped out of bed, seized his clothes, and ran to the stables for his horse. Presently he was galloping away toward Falaise for dear life, and to this day the road he took is called the Duke's road. This was in 1044, and William was nineteen years old. He was not slow to understand that the rebels had again risen, and that the conspiracy was more than a conspiracy; it was a determined insurrection. All the night long, as he rode across the country in the bright moonlight, he was thinking about his plans, no doubt, and great energies and determinations were suddenly waked in his heart. This was more than a dislike of himself and the tan-yard inheritance; it was the old rivalry of the Frenchmen and Northmen. The old question of supremacy and race prejudice was to be fought over once more and for the last time with any sort of distinctness. This was not the petty animosity of one baron or another; it was almost the whole nobility of Normandy against their duke.[Pg200]
There was one episode of the duke's journey which is worth telling: He had ridden for dear life, and had forded many a stream, and one, more dangerous, tide inlet where the rivers Oune and Vire flowed out to sea; and when he got safe across, he went into the Church of St. Clement, in the Bayeux district, to kneel down and say his prayers.
As the sun rose, he came close to the church and castle of Rye, and the Lord of Rye was standing at the castle gate in the clear morning air. William spurred his horse, and was for hurrying by, but this faithful vassal, whose name was Hubert, knew him, and stopped him, and begged to be told the reason of such a headlong journey. The Lord of Rye was very hospitable, and the tired duke dismounted, and was made welcome in the house; and presently a fresh horse was brought out for him, and the three brave sons of the loyal house were mounted also to ride by his side to Falaise. This hospitality was not forgotten. Later, in England, their grateful guest set them in high places, and favored them in princely fashion. Guy, of Burgundy had been brought up with William as a friend and kinsman, and had been treated with great generosity. He was master of some great estates, and one of these was a powerful border fortress between Normandy and France. His friends were many, and he found listeners enough to his propositions. Born of the princely houses of Burgundy and Normandy, he claimed the duchy as his inherited right; and while so many in court and camp were ashamed of their lawful leader, and ready to deny his authority, came Guy's opportunity.[Pg201]
William was cautious, and not without experience. When he was only a baby he had caught at the straw on which he lay, and would not let go his hold, and this sign of his future power and persistence had been proved a true one. The quarrelsome, lawless lords felt that their days of liberty for themselves, and oppression of everybody else, would soon be over if they did not strike quickly. They dreaded so strong and stern a master, and rallied to the standard of the Bastard's rival, Guy of Burgundy.
There were some of the first nobles of the Côtentin who forsook their young duke for this rival who was hardly Norman at all, as they usually decided such points. His Norman descent was on the spindle side rather than the sword, to use the old distinction, and his mother's ancestors would not have prevented him in other days from being called almost a Frenchman. There is a tradition that Guy promised to divide the lands of Normandy with his allies, keeping only the old French grant to Rolf for himself, and this must have been the cause of the treason of the descendants of Rolf's and William Longsword's loyal colonists. It would amaze us to see the change in the life and surroundings of the feudal lords even in the years of William's minority. The leader of the barons in the revolt was the Viscount of Coutances, the son of that chief who had defeated Æthelred of England and his host nearly half a century before. He lived in a castle on the river Oune, near which he afterward built his great St. Saviour's Abbey. This was the central point of the insurrection, and from his tower Neal of St.[Pg202]Saviour could take a wide survey of his beautiful Côtentin country with its plough-land and pastures and forests, the great minster of Lessay, and the cliffs and marshes; the sturdy castles of his feudal lords scattered far and wide. There came to Saint Saviour's also Randolf of Bayeux, and Hamon of Thorigny and of Creuilly, and Grimbald of Plessis, and each of them made his fortress ready for a siege, and swore to defend Guy of Burgundy and to use every art of war and even treachery to subdue and disgrace William. I say "even treachery," but that was the first resort of these insurgents rather than the last. They had laid the deep plot to seize and murder him at Valognes, and Grimbald was to have struck the blow.
King Henry of France was another enemy at heart. It is difficult at first to understand his course toward his young neighbor. He never had fairly acknowledged him, and William on his part had never put his hands into the king's and announced with the loyal homage of his ancestors that he was Henry's man. While Normandy was masterless in William's youth, there was a good chance, never likely to come again in one man's lifetime, for the king to assert his authority and to seize at least part of the Norman territory. The discontent with the base-born heir to the dukedom might not have been enough by itself to warrant such usurpation, but then, while the feudal lords were in such turmoil and so taken up with, for the most part, merely neighborhood quarrels; while they had so little national and such fierce sectional feeling, would have[Pg203]been the time for an outsider to enrich himself at their expense. It was not yet time for Normandy to be provoked into a closer unification by any outside danger. The French and Scandinavian factions were still distinct and suspicious of each other, but it was already too late when King Henry at last, without note or warning, poured his soldiers across the Norman boundary and invaded the Evreçin; too late indeed in view of what followed, and in spite of the temporary blazing up of new jealousies and the revival of old grievances and hatreds. Henry won a victory and triumph for the time being; he demanded the famous border castle of Tillières and insisted that it should be destroyed, and though the brave commander held out for some time even against William's orders, he finally surrendered. Henry placed a strong garrison there at once, and after getting an apparently strong hold on Normandy there followed a time of peace. The king seemed to be satisfied, but no doubt the young duke's mind was busy enough with a forced survey of his enemies, already declared or still masked by hypocrisy, and of his own possible and probable resources. A readiness to do the things that must be done was making a true man of Duke William even in his boyhood. For many years he had seen revolt and violence grow more easy and more frequent in his dukedom; the noise of quarrels and fighting grew louder and louder. In his first great battle at Val-ès-dunes the rule of the Côtentin lords and Guy of Burgundy, or the rule of William the Bastard, struggled for the mastery.[Pg204]
It was a great battle in importance rather than in numbers. William called to his loyal provinces for help, and the knights came riding to court from the romance-side of Normandy, while from the Bessin and the Côtentin the rebels came down to meet them. It seems strange that, when William represents to us the ideal descendant of the Northmen, the Scandinavian element in his dukedom was the first to oppose him. For once King Henry stood by his vassal, and when William asked for help in that most critical time, it was not withheld. Henry had not been ashamed to take part with the Norman traitors in past times, and now that there was a chance of breaking the ducal government in pieces and adding a great district to France, we are more than ever puzzled to know why he did not make the most of the occasion. Perhaps he felt that the rule of the dukes was better than the rule of the mutinous barons of the Côtentin, and likely, on the whole, to prove less dangerous. So when William claimed protection, it was readily granted, and the king came to his aid at the head of a body of troops, and helped to win the victory.
We hear nothing of the Norman archers yet in the chronicler's story of the fight. They were famous enough afterward, but this battle was between mounted knights, a true battle of chivalry. The place was near the river Orne, and the long slopes of the low hills stretched far and wide, covered with soft turf, like the English downs across the Channel, lying pleasantly toward the sun. Master Wace writes the story of the day in the "Roman de Rou,"[Pg205]and sketches the battle-field with vivid touches of his pen. Mr. Freeman says, in a note beneath his own description, that he went over the ground with Mr. Green, his fellow-historian, for company, and Master Wace's book in hand for guide. In the "Roman de Rou" there is a hint that not only the peasantry, but the poorer gentlemen as well, were secretly on William's side, that the prejudice and distrust toward the feudal lords was very great, and that there was more confidence in a sovereign than in the irksome tyranny of less powerful lords.
The barons of Saxon Bayeux and Danish Coutances were matched against the loyal burghers of Falaise, Romanized Rouen, and the men of the bishop's cities of Liseux and Evreux. King Henry stopped at the little village of Valmeray to hear mass, as he came up from the south with his followers, and presently the duke joined them in the great plain beyond. The rebels are there too; the horses will not stand in place together, they have caught the spirit of the encounter, and the bright bosses of the shields; the lances, tied with gay ribbons, glitter and shine, as the long line of knights bends and lifts and wavers like some fluttering gay decoration,—some many-colored huge silken splendor all along the green grass. The birds fly over swiftly, and return as quickly, puzzled by the strange appearance of their country-side. Their nests in the grass are trampled under foot—the world is alive with men in armor, who laugh loudly and swear roundly, and are there for something strange, to kill each other if they can, rather than live, for the sake of[Pg206]Normandy. Far away the green fields stretch into the haze, the cottages look like toys, and the sheep and cattle feed without fear in the pastures. Church towers rise gray and straight-walled into the blue sky. It is a great day for Normandy, and her best knights and gentlemen finger their sword-hilts, or buckle their saddle-girths, and wait impatiently for the battle to begin on that day of Val-ès-dunes.
Among the Côtentin lords was Ralph of Tesson, lord of the forest of Cinquelais and the castle of Harcourt-Thury. Behind him rode a hundred and twenty knights, well armed and gallant, who would follow him to the death. He had sworn on the holy relics of the saints at Bayeux to smite William wherever he met him, yet he had no ground for complaint against him. His heart fell when he saw his rightful lord face to face. A tanner's grandson, indeed, and a man whose father and mother had done him wrong; all that was true, yet this young Duke William was good to look upon, and as brave a gentleman as any son of Rolf's, or the fearless Richard's. Ralph Tesson (the Badger they called him), a man both shrewd and powerful, stood apart, and would not rank himself and his men with either faction, and his knights crowded round him, to remind him that he had done homage once to William, and would fight against his natural lord. The Côtentin lords were dismayed and angry, they promised him great rewards, but nothing touched him, and he stood silent, a little way from the armies. The young duke and the king noticed him, and the six-score-and-six brave knights in his troop, all with their[Pg207]lances raised and trimmed with their ladies' silk tokens. William said that they would come to his aid; neither Tesson nor his men had any grudge against him.
Suddenly Tesson put spurs to his horse, and came dashing across the open field, and all the lords and gentlemen held their breath as they watched him. "Thury! Thury!" he shouted as he came, and "Thury! Thury!" the cry echoed back again from the distance. He rode straight to the duke; there was a murmur from the Côtentin men; he struck the duke gently with his glove. It was but a playful mockery of his vow to the saints at Bayeux; he had struck William, but he and his knights were William's men again; the young duke said, "Thanks to thee!" and the fight began, all the hotter for the anger of the deserted barons and their desire for revenge. The day had begun with a bad omen for their success. "Dexaide!" the old Norman war-cry, rang out, and those who had followed the lilies of France cried "Montjoie Saint Denis!" as they fought.
Nowadays, a soldier is a soldier, and men who choose other professions can keep to them, unless in their country's extremity of danger, but in that day every man must go to the wars, if there were need of him, and be surgeon or lawyer, and soldier too; yes, even the priests and bishops put on their swords and went out to fight. It would be interesting to know more names on the roll-call that day at Val-ès-dunes, but we can almost hear the shouts to the patron saints, and the clash of the armor. King[Pg208]Henry fought like a brave man, and the storm of the battle raged fiercest round him. The knights broke their lances, and fought sword to sword. There was no play of army tactics and manœuvring, but a hand-to-hand fight, with the sheer strength of horse and man. Once King Henry was overthrown by the thrust of a Côtentin lance, and sprang up quickly to show himself to his men. Again he was in the thickest of the encounter, and was met by one of the three great rebel chiefs and thrown upon the ground, but this Lord of Thorigny was struck, in his turn, by a loyal French knight, and presently his lamenting followers carried him away dead on his shield like any Spartan of old. And the king honored his valor and commanded that he should be buried with splendid ceremonies in a church not far from the battlefield. Long afterward the Norman men and women loved to sing and to tell stories about the young Duke William's bravery and noble deeds of arms in that first great fight that made him duke from one end of Normandy to the other. He slew with his own hand the noblest and most daring warrior of Bayeux. Master Wace, the chronicler, tells us how William drove the sharp steel straight through his hardy foe, and how the body fell beneath his stroke and its soul departed. Wace was a Bayeux man himself, and though he was a loyal songster and true to his great duke, he cannot help a sigh of pride and sorrow over Hardrez' fate.
Neal of St. Saviour fought steadily and cheered his men eagerly as the hour went on, but Randolf of Bayeux felt his courage begin to fail him. Hamon[Pg209]was dead. Their great ally, Hardrez, had been the flower of his own knights, and he was lying dead of a cruel sword-thrust there in plain sight. He lost sight of Neal, perhaps, for he was suddenly afraid of betrayal, and grieved that he had ever put his helmet on. There is a touching bit of description in the "Roman de Rou" just now. The battle pleased him no more, is told in the quaint short lines. He thought how sad it was to be a captive, and sadder still to be slain. He gave way feebly at every charge; he wandered to and fro aimlessly, a thing to be stumbled over, we fancy him, now in the front of the fight, now in the rear; at last he dropped his lance and shield. "He stretched forth his neck and rode for his life," says Master Wace, quite ashamed of his countryman. But we can see the poor knight's head drooping low, and his good, tired horse—the better man of the two—mustering all his broken strength to carry his master beyond the reach of danger. All the cowards rode after him pell-mell, but brave Saint Saviour fought to the last and held the field until his right arm failed and he could not strike again. The French pressed him hard, the Norman men looked few and spent, and the mighty lord of the Côtentin knew that all hope was lost. There on the rising ground of Saint Lawrence the last blow was struck.
Away went the rebels in groups of three or four—away for dear life every one of them, riding this way and that, trying to get out of reach of their enemies and into some sort of shelter. The duke chased them like a hound on the track of hares on, on[Pg210]toward Bayeux, past the great Abbey of Fontenay and the Allemagne quarries, until they reached the river Orne with its deep current. Men and horses floundered in the water there, and many hot wounds tinged it with a crimson stain. They were drowned, poor knights, and poor, brave horses too. They went struggling and drifting down stream; the banks were strewn with the dead; and the mill-wheels of Borbillon, a little farther down, were stopped in their slow turning by the strange wreck and floating worthless fragments of those lords and gentlemen who had lost the battle of the Val-ès-dunes.
And William was the conqueror of Normandy. Guy of Burgundy was a traitor to his friends, and won a heritage of shame for his flight from the field. We hear nothing of him while the fight went on, only that he ran away. It appears that he must have been one of the first to start for a place of safety, because they blame him so much; there is nothing said about all the rebels running away together a little later. That was the fortune of war and inevitable; not personal cowardice, they might tell us. Guy of Burgundy was the man who had led the three Côtentin lords out by fair promises and taunts about their bastard duke, and he should have been brave and full of prowess, since he undertook to be the rival of so brave a man. He did not go toward the banks of the fateful river, but in quite another direction to his own castle of Brionne, and a troop of his vassals escaped with him and defended themselves there for a long time, until William fairly starved them out like rats in a hole. They held[Pg211]their own bravely, too, and no man was put to death when they surrendered, while Guy was even allowed to come back to court. Master Wace stoutly maintains that they should have been hung, and says long afterward that some of those high in favor at court were the traitors of the great rebellion.
Strange to say, nobody was put to death. Mr. Freeman says of this something that gives us such a clear look at William's character that I must copy it entire. "In those days, both in Normandy and elsewhere, the legal execution of a state criminal was an event that seldom happened. Men's lives were recklessly wasted in the endless warfare of the times, and there were men, as we have seen, who did not shrink from private murder, even in its basest forms. But the formal hanging or beheading of a noble prisoner, so common in later times, was, in the eleventh century, a most unusual sight. And, strange as it may sound, there was a sense in which William the Conqueror was not a man of blood. He would sacrifice any number of lives to his boundless ambition; he did not scruple to condemn his enemies to cruel personal mutilations; he would keep men for years as a mere measure of security, in the horrible prison-houses of those days; but the extinction of human life in cold blood was something from which he shrank."
At the time of the first great victory, the historian goes on to say, William was of an age when men are commonly disposed to be generous, and the worst points of his character had not begun to show themselves. Later in life, when he had broken the[Pg212]rule, or perhaps we must call it only his prejudice and superstition, we find that the star of his glory is already going down, pale and spent, into the mists of shame and disappointment.
None of the traitors of the Val-ès-dunes were treated harshly, according to the standard of the times. The barons paid fines and gave mortgages, and a great many of them were obliged to tear down their robber castles, which they had built without permission from the duke. This is the reason that there are so few ruins in Normandy of the towers of that date. The Master of St. Saviour's was obliged to take himself off to Brittany, but there was evidently no confiscation of his great estates, for we find him back again at court the very next year, high in the duke's favor and holding an honorable position. He lived forty-four years after this, an uncommon lifetime for a Norman knight, and followed the Conqueror to England, but he got no reward in lands and honor, as so many of his comrades did. Guy of Burgundy stayed at court a little while, and then went back to his native province and devoted himself to making plots against his brother, Count William. Grimbald de Plessis fared the worst of all the conspirators; he was taken to Rouen and put into prison weighted down with chains, and given the poorest of lodgings. He confessed that he had tried to murder William that night at Valognes, when the court jester gave warning, and said that a knight called Salle had been his confederate. Salle denied the charge stoutly and challenged De Plessis to fight a judicial combat, but before the day came the[Pg213]scheming, unlucky baron from the Saxon lands was found dead in his dungeon. The fetters had ground their way into his very bones, and he was buried in his chains, for a warning, while his estates were seized and part of them given to the church of Bayeux.
Now, at last, the Norman priests and knights knew that they had a master. For some time it was surprisingly quiet in Normandy, and the country was unexpectedly prosperous. The great duchy stood in a higher rank among her sister kingdoms than ever before, and though there was another revolt and serious attacks from envious neighbors, yet the Saxons of the Bessin and the Danes of the Côtentin were overthrown, and Normandy was more unitedly Norman-French than ever. There had been a long struggle that had lasted from Richard the Fearless' boyhood until now, but it was ended at last, to all intents and purposes. Even now there is a difference between the two parts of Normandy, though so many years have passed; but the day was not far off after this battle of Val-ès-dunes when the young conqueror could muster a great army and cross the channel into England. "The Count of Rouen," says Freeman, "had overcome Saxons and Danes within his own dominions, and he was about to weld them into his most trusty weapons, wherewith to overcome Saxons and Danes beyond the sea."
Perhaps nothing will show the barbarous cruelty of these times or William's fierce temper better than the story of Alençon and its punishment. William Talvas, the young duke's old enemy, formed a rebellious league with Geoffry of Anjou, and they undertook[Pg214]to hold Alençon against the Normans. When William came within sight of the city, he discovered that they had sufficient self-confidence to mock at him and insult him. They even spread raw skins over the edge of the city walls, and beat them vigorously, yelling that there was plenty of work for the tanner, and giving even plainer hints at what they thought of his mother's ancestry.
William was naturally put into a great rage, and set himself and his army down before the walls his enemies thought so invincible. He swore "by the splendor of God" that he would treat them as a man lops a tree with an axe, and, sure enough, when the siege was over, and Alençon was at the Conqueror's mercy, he demanded thirty-two captives of war, and nose, hands, and feet were chopped off, and presently thrown back over the walls into the town.