Chapter XII · THE LATER REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY.[159] 1051–1066. (continued 2)

King Henry retires.

The Count of Ponthieu was thus slain fighting valiantly.^[359] His overlord King Henry escaped the ambush, and pressed on towards the hill of Arques, in the hope of relieving the besieged. But he found Duke William’s wooden castle too strong, and the courage of its defenders too determined, for his attacks upon it to prevail.^[360] He accordingly 137returned home, having done nothing towards the immediate object of his journey, the relief of the besieged Count of Arques.^[361] He had however gained some partizans in Normandy, and one Norman fortress at least was betrayed into his hands. Its position shows that the rebellion must have spread far beyond the immediate neighbourhood of |Moulins betrayed to the King by Wimund.| Arques. One Wimund, who commanded the fortress of Moulins, surrendered it to the King.^[362] The fortress thus gained by Henry lay on the other side of the Seine, in the County of Hiesmes and Diocese of Seez, on the very frontier of the debateable land of the House of Belesme.^[363] |It is garrisoned under Guy of Poitiers or Gascony.| The post was therefore an important one. It received a French garrison, and its command was entrusted to a man of princely rank from a distant quarter of Gaul, whose presence in the royal host is not the least perplexing thing about the story. This was Guy-Geoffrey, Count of Gascony,^[364] son of that William of Aquitaine who bore the title of the Great. He was therefore brother of the prince who had suffered so hardly at the hands of Geoffrey of Anjou; he was brother of the reigning Duke, who, from 138Peter, had changed his name to William,^[365] and brother too of Agnes, the wife of the reigning Emperor, whose name was soon to become famous during the minority of her son.^[366] Guy-Geoffrey himself, on his accession to his brother’s dominions a few years later, also changed his baptismal name |1058–1087.| for that so familiar to his family, and reigned as William |Return of Duke William.| the Eighth of Aquitaine and Sixth of Poitiers.^[367] By this time Duke William had returned to the siege; he had no longer to fear the commission of any feudal offence by |The besieged hard pressed.| fighting personally against his lord. The defenders of Arques were now sorely pressed by hunger. They contrived to send messages to King Henry; but all was in vain; no help came from their royal ally.^[368] At last the sure but slow means to which the Duke had trusted had |The castle surrenders; wretched state of the besieged.| thoroughly done its work; Count William and his garrison surrendered, on the sole condition that the horrors of Alençon were not to be repeated. Safety for life and limb was promised; the gates were opened, and a company came forth in whose sad condition the Norman panegyrist sees at least as much matter for scorn as for pity. Knights of renown throughout France and Normandy came forth with marks of hunger on their faces, and with their necks bowed down alike by hunger and by shame. Some rode on famished horses, whose feeble feet could hardly raise the dust or give forth an audible sound as they crept 139along. Others came forth on foot, booted and spurred, bearing saddles on their backs, seemingly ready for that last symbolical rite of humiliation in which the vanquished offered himself for the victor to mount upon his back.^[369] And, if the proud gentlemen of France and Normandy were brought so low as this, it is not wonderful if the aspect of their more lowly followers, the light-armed troops |Guy of Poitiers surrenders Moulins.| of the garrison, was equally sad.^[370] The news soon reached the fortress of Moulins, which was still held by the French troops under Guy of Aquitaine. The Poitevin prince, the brother-in-law of Cæsar, had no mind to tempt the strength of the Norman. He and his garrison, and the garrisons of such other posts as had been occupied by the royal forces, fled |The Duke’s clemency to his uncle.| out of the land without waiting to be attacked.^[371] Towards his own subjects the Duke more than kept the terms of his capitulation. Count William was not even required to leave Normandy. He was offered licence to remain in the land and to retain possession of a considerable estate, of which however it need hardly be said that his own famous hill-fortress was not to form a part.^[372] But life in his native |Count William of Arques retires to Boulogne.| country had no longer any charms for him. The dispossessed Count and his wife, the sister of the slain Count of Ponthieu, retired to the court of Count Eustace of 140Boulogne.^[373] The fall of one William of Arques led the way to the advancement of the other. The Viscount had had no share in the treasons of the Count. He was not indeed raised to fill a place which the Duke had learned to be |The castle intrusted to William the Viscount.| too dangerous an elevation for any subject. The County of Talou was abolished; the castle of Arques became a ducal possession; but the care of the fortress reared by the William of Arques who figures in Norman history was entrusted to that other William of Arques whose name is written in Domesday.^[374]

Marriage of Duke William. 1053.

Duke William was now allowed a few months of peace, and, having brought one troublesome matter to a happy end, he seems to have thought it a fitting time to bring another matter of no less moment in his eyes to an end no less happy. It was in this year, therefore probably in the short interval between the French invasion which we have thus far followed and the second invasion which followed it in the next year, that William at last won his long-wished-for bride. Count Baldwin now brought his daughter to the frontier castle of Eu, and William led her thence to his palace at Rouen.^[375] I have already discussed the puzzling circumstances of this marriage; I have already spoken of the indignation which it called forth among men so unlike one another as Malger and Lanfranc.^[376] Malger, it must not be forgotten, was a brother of the fallen Count of Arques; he may have been concerned in his treason; his deposition may have been his punishment. But the clemency which William showed towards the uncle who had been actually in arms may make us doubt whether he would have taken this kind of revenge on a kinsman who was at least not more guilty.^[377]

141King Henry had failed to give any help to the defenders of Arques in their last extremity; but hatred towards Normandy was far from being lulled to rest in the breasts |Hatred of the French towards Normandy.| either of the French King or of the French people. We seem to be carried back a hundred years, to the wars waged by Lewis and Hugh and Arnulf against the defenceless childhood of William Longsword. Through the whole extent of the King’s domains, and through the domains of his chief vassals, the feeling of jealousy against Normandy was bitter indeed. The King complained that Normandy, a land which had been part of the immediate possessions of his forefathers, even before they wore a Crown,^[378] had now itself become almost a Kingdom.^[379] He, a crowned King, the overlord of so many Princes, the ally of the Roman Emperor himself,^[380] looked with an evil eye on the one corner of his realm whose master paid him no obedience.^[381] We may doubt whether the vassalage of Flanders or Aquitaine, to say nothing of Barcelona, involved more of practical submission than the vassalage of Normandy; but, as I have explained more than once, there was no other among the great vassals of the Crown whose greatness seemed so directly stolen from that of the Crown itself, no other whose fief, by its very position, seemed |Jealousy of the other Princes against William.| so literally to hold its royal overlord in fetters.^[382] And jealousy of William and his Duchy was by no means confined to the King and his immediate subjects; nearly all 142the Princes of Gaul seem to have been for once ready to abet their suzerain against one whom they all equally |Geoffrey Martel;| dreaded and envied. That the Hammer of Anjou was eagerly waiting for the fitting moment to deal another |Theobald of Blois and Champagne;| blow need hardly be said. And the old hereditary grudge may have rankled in the breast of Theobald of Blois, now rejoicing in the higher dignity of Count of Champagne. He had won that County by driving out his nephew Odo,^[383] and the favourable reception which the dispossessed prince found at the court of William, his marriage with a near kinswoman of the Duke,^[384] may have been either the cause or |William [Peter] of Aquitaine.| the result of his uncle’s enmity. But it is hard to see how the power of Normandy could be threatening to a prince so distant as the Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine. Nor had William given his southern namesake any offence, unless indeed the Duke of Aquitaine thought it his duty to avenge the ignominious escape of his brother from the dominions of the Duke of the Normans. Yet all these princes, we are told, were eager, in an unusual fit of loyalty, to avenge the wrongs of the King whom they all so faithfully served, but to whom the upstart Bastard at Rouen refused all obedience.^[385] And all, King and Princes, were specially stirred up by certain members of the royal family, whom it is not easy to identify, but who are said to have thought that Normandy, or some part of it, might 143form convenient appanages for themselves.^[386] A joint expedition against Normandy, on a scale which should surpass all former expeditions, was agreed upon.

The panegyrist of William lavishes all his rhetoric and all his powers of classical allusion to set forth the greatness of the danger by which Normandy was now |Danger of Normandy.| threatened. Cæsar himself, the conqueror of the Gauls, or a general greater than Cæsar, if Rome herself had produced a greater, might have felt fear at the approach of such a host as was now poured from every region of Gaul upon the devoted Duchy.^[387] The whole land was stirred even to its remotest corners. The movement reached to the Ducal Burgundy, the most eastern fief of the Parisian Crown. It aroused the Gascon at the foot of the Pyrenees, and the men who dwelt among the volcanic peaks of less distant Auvergne. All these drew the sword; but France and Britanny, as the nearest of all to the Norman land, were the most eager for its destruction.^[388] Through all Normandy, the men of peaceful callings, the priest, the peasant, the burgher, all trembled for their wives, their children, their goods, their very lives. But they thought what a champion they had in their mighty Duke, and their hearts were comforted. Laying aside flourishes like these, and confessing the extreme difficulty of seeing the warriors of Gascony and Auvergne, or even those of Burgundy, there 144is no doubt that a great and unusual effort was made, both by the King and by those of his great vassals who were |Union of several Princes against Normandy.| most immediately open to his influence. An invasion of Normandy was decreed, which really was planned on a greater scale, and carried out in a more systematic way, than any that had ever gone before it. The whole forces of the royal domain—of France, in the language of the time—together |Guy of Ponthieu and Theobald.| with the forces of Count Theobald and of Count Guy of Ponthieu, were assembled for a combined attack |Seeming absence of Geoffrey of Anjou.| on the Duchy. Guy came, naturally enough, to avenge the death of his brother;^[389] what is most to be remarked is the seeming absence of the Prince whom we should have expected to find first at the muster, the restless Hammer of Anjou. Some of his subjects seem indeed to have shared in the expedition, but there is no certain account of Geoffrey himself till the campaign was over.^[390] His absence is not easily to be accounted for. The chronicles of his own country do not supply us with any records of other undertakings which might explain his failure to share in an enterprise which one would have thought would have had every charm for him. But, even in his |Double invasion of Normandy. 1054.| absence, the muster was a great one. The forces of the King and his vassals were divided into two armies for the invasion of Normandy at two distinct points. Our Latin authorities, glad as ever to fall back on the geography of a past age, tell us how the forces both of Celtic and of 145Belgic Gaul were gathered together in two divisions. The Celtic host was to march under the command of the King in person, the forces of the Belgian lands under that of his brother Odo. With Odo was joined in command the King’s special favourite, Reginald of Clermont, not the more famous Clermont in the distant land of Auvergne, but the lowlier Clermont in the nearer land of Beauvais. With them marched two other leaders of the rank of Count, Ralph of Montdidier and he of whom we have already heard, Guy of Ponthieu.^[391] The vernacular poet more kindly helps us to the real names of the districts which are veiled under the obsolete titles delighted in by the Latin writers. Normandy was to be invaded on each side of the Seine, and the Seine was taken as the limit alike of the lands to be invaded and of the hosts which |Forces of “Belgic Gaul” under Odo.| were severally to invade them.^[392] The Northern, the Belgic, host was to enter the elder Normandy, the first home of Rolf, the French-speaking land of Rouen. They were to enter by way of Beauvais, to advance and ravage the land of Caux, the coast-land to the right of the Seine, the land around the minster of Fécamp and the castle of Lillebonne. They were to harry the whole district and diocese of Rouen, and to carry their ravages up to the metropolis 146itself.^[393] To the muster of Odo came the men of primatial Rheims; the men too of Soissons, once the home of Merovingian royalty, and so soon to become the guerdon of a Norman traitor.^[394] There also were the men of Laôn, where the line of the Teutonic Emperor had so long lingered, and the men of Noyons, the city which had beheld the permanent inauguration of the Parisian Kingdom.^[395] There marched the forces of Vermandois, whose Carolingian Lord appeared as the loyal homager of the upstart dynasty.^[396] The promise of Norman spoil drew the men of Amiens, soon to become the flock of the Prelate whose verse was to hand down to us the minutest contemporary record of Norman victory.^[397] Himself, not yet a father of the Church, may well have followed, among the men of his native Ponthieu, to avenge a slaughtered nephew and a self-banished niece.^[398] Thither men came from Meulan on the Seine and from Beaumont on the Oise,^[399] from the corn-fields of Brie and from the rose-gardens^[400] of 147Provins. By twenties, by hundreds, by thousands, the force of all the lands right of the Seine gathered under the banners of Guy and Odo, to carry slaughter and devastation through those parts of Normandy which lay on their own side of the great Norman river. |Forces of “Celtic Gaul” under the King.| The other muster gathered round the standard of the King himself. Thither came the men of those ancient cities of central Gaul, which, now no less than then, which then no less than in the days of Cæsar and in the old time before him, still sit, each one as a lady for ever,^[401] by the banks of their ancient rivers or on the proud crests of their everlasting hills. If their peaceful calling did not keep them by their thrones and altars, the crosses of three Metropolitans might have been borne to the camp of Henry. The men of Bourges and Berry^[402] came from around the steep of old Avaricum, whence Ambigatus had sent forth his swarming colonists to more southern lands,^[403] and where Vercingetorix had bid defiance to the mightiest of southern invaders.^[404] Thither too came the men of Sens, the countrymen of Brennus and his host, the city whose sons had encamped upon the Roman forum and had wound their way round the steep of the Roman capitol.^[405] And from the banks of the rushing Loire, from around the towers of Saint Martin and Saint Gatian, came the men 148of Tours, the fellow-citizens of so many saints, whose land, now crushed beneath the Hammer of Anjou, had once seen |732.| the Hammer of Christendom break in pieces the hosts of the False Prophet. Thither too came the contingents of the other cities by the great boundary stream, the men of Count Theobald’s Blois and of King Henry’s Orleans. There were the men of the border-land of Perche, and of the King’s own towns of Etampes and Montlhery, towns whose fame, such as it is, was reserved for later days. Thither came the men of the bocage and the men of the plain,^[406] the men of the vast cornland which surrounds the hill of Chartres, the hill where Druids had once held their orgies, but where the rites of the heathen had now given way to the learning and holiness of Prelates like Fulbert and like Ivo. Full no doubt of faith in that revered relic before which Rolf and his pirate-host had quailed,^[407] the land of the old enemy of Richard the Fearless^[408] sent forth its forces to wreak a tardy vengeance on the successor alike of Rolf and of Richard.

The King’s division assembles at Mantes.

The host of Celtic Gaul held its trysting-place at a spot doomed to be memorable and fatal above all other spots in the history of the Conqueror. King Henry’s standard was pitched in the border town of Mantes, the town ruled by a grandson of Æthelred, a nephew of Eadward,^[409] a prince whose death was to bring undeserved reproach upon the Conqueror’s name and whose city was to behold the last |Description of the town.| and the least worthy of his exploits. Mantes, the frontier post of France against Normandy, was a spot whose position had made it a favourite haunt of William’s Wiking 149fathers in the days when Rouen was still a post to be won, and when Paris was still a post to be threatened. No other spot lay as a more convenient centre between the two great cities of the Seine. On the left bank, the higher ground on which the town itself stands slopes gently to the river. A range of loftier hills, as all along this part of the course of the Seine, bounds the valley on the other side. But at this point the stream divides, and two large islands, resorts such as the pirates of the North so dearly loved, at once divide and unite by bridges, old and new, the town itself and its suburb of Limay. The islands of the Seine, like the islands of the Loire, had ofttimes seen Rolf and Hasting moor their barks and tell over their plunder; and now it was around those islands that the host assembled which was at last to take vengeance for those old wrongs, and to bring the sons of the Pirates to an utter, if a tardy, submission. The host that gathered at Mantes, the host under the command of the King himself, was to enter and harry the land of Evreux and the land of Rouen; the King of the French would ride by Lisieux to the sea from which the hated intruders could no longer keep him; he would return by Auge, lord of all those lands within the Norman border where the tongue and life of France had taken root, and whose inhabitants had been his brothers-in-arms on the day of Val-ès-dunes.^[410] The Bastard might perhaps still be allowed to reign over his old enemies; the rough Northern blood of Bayeux and Coutances might have him, if they would, for their ruler; but the old grant, wrung in the days of weakness from King Charles and Duke Robert, should be recovered by a prince who united the claims of Laôn and of Paris, and 150who had made up his mind to be no longer kept out of his own Rouen and cut off from the mouth of his own Seine.

Preparations of William.

The preparations of Duke William were equal to the |He gathers two armies.| great emergency in which he found himself. He called out the whole force of his Duchy. To meet the twofold invasion he gathered a twofold army, each division of which was to defend one side of the Seine against the |His own division is opposed to the King.| approaching enemy. For his own share he took the defence of the lands on the left bank of the river, the lands threatened by the King in person. Had he cast |Question of the feudal scruple.| away the feudal scruple which we have seen acting upon his mind during the siege of Arques? Did he now deem that so many injuries had at last absolved him from every duty of a vassal, and that he might now, without a stain on his honour or his conscience, go forth, and, if need be, meet his lord in battle face to face? Or did he foresee that, as the event proved, no such meeting would be needful? Did he know that the surest way to avoid meeting his lord face to face was to go forth in person to meet him? However this may be, William now took on himself the immediate duty of protecting the lands against which King Henry was marching, the lands between the |William’s muster from Western Normandy.| Seine and the Dive.^[411] For their defence he gathered the forces of the neighbouring districts. The warriors of the hilly land of Auge, where the mouth of the Dive was then a famous haven, came to meet the King who had specially marked out their district as one object of his attack. The men of Falaise and of the whole County of Hiesmes pressed as ever to the standard of the sovereign who was 151more specially their own. Ralph of Tesson, no longer doubtful, no longer hesitating between his loyalty and his plighted oath, came once more to yield that help which had been found so effectual on an earlier day of battle.^[412] All these were men who had fought on William’s side when the French monarch had passed as a deliverer through the lands which he now entered as an enemy. |Loyalty of the Bessin and the Côtentin.| But others came on that day to William’s muster who, at Henry’s former coming, had fought against King and Duke alike. The men of the Bessin were there to atone for the error of the day when they had met their prince in arms. Hamon Dentatus slept in his honoured tomb at Esquay;^[413] Grimbald lay with his fettered limbs in some lowlier grave;^[414] and, since they were gone, no traitor had disturbed the fidelity of the Saxon land. And it is with a special thrill of pride that the island poet tells us how the Barons of the Côtentin^[415] were there too, ready as before to break a lance with the French invader,^[416] but this time to break it not as the rebels but as the loyal subjects of their own prince. And from still more distant corners of his Duchy men pressed to William’s standard. The brother whom he had advanced, Robert the son of Herleva and Herlwin, led the men of his county to |Contingent from Mortain,| the ducal muster. He came from the fortress of which the Duke had deprived, perhaps defrauded, his cousin and namesake, now a wanderer and an adventurer in the most distant field of Norman valour.^[417] The Lord of Mortain had fixed his home in perhaps the most picturesque of all the picturesque sites in which the Norman chiefs seem to have delighted. His castle on the rock has been wantonly destroyed to make way for one of the barbarous official 152buildings of modern France. But the land from which Robert brought his warriors still retains its charm; the cliffs, the winding dells, and, rarest sight of all, the waterfalls, great and small, bounding from one rocky stage to another, are there still; the grand and simple church, of a somewhat later age, still remains, and, yet above town and castle, rise still loftier heights, from which the eye may range as far as the Mount of the Archangel. And, |and Avranches.| more distant still^[418] than the men of Mortain, came the men of the march against the Breton, the men of Avranches, viscounty and city, where the proudest steep in all the Norman land, crowned, alas, no longer by its vanished minster, takes in the Archangel’s Mount as but one point in a landscape where half Normandy and Britanny seem to lie at the beholder’s feet. From the Coesnon to the Dive, from Seez to Cherbourg, all were there, stout of heart and ready of hand, to guard their country and their sovereign against the attacks of their faithless overlord.

William’s plan of defence.

The plan of the Duke was to stand wholly on the defensive. All provisions of every kind were to be moved out of the King’s line of march; the cattle were to be driven to the woods, and the peasants to be sent to take care of them there.^[419] He would himself with his division follow the King’s steps; he would encamp near him, and be sure to cut off every man who strayed from the royal camp for forage or plunder.^[420] The like policy was enjoined 153|The leaders beyond the Seine.| on the defenders of the lands beyond the Seine. The men of Caux and of the other districts in that quarter were placed under four of the chief men of their own district. Old Hugh of Gournay, at the head of the men of Braye, came from his frontier town by the minster of Saint Hildebert, the town whose name he was to transfer to more than one spot in conquered England.^[421] Count Robert of Eu came from the other frontier town so lately honoured by the marriage rites of his sovereign. William Crespin came from the less famous Bec of the land of Caux,^[422] whose name is eclipsed by that more honoured namesake which was then the light of Normandy. And Walter Giffard, who had so well kept the wooden castle below the steep of Arques,^[423] was now to take his share in warfare of a freer and a wilder kind. Till the whole force of the land could be got together, the Barons of Eastern Normandy were bidden to watch the foe, to skulk in the woods, and to give the invaders no opportunity for an attack.^[424]

Ravages of the French.

The right division of the French army, the division of Belgic Gaul, seems to have entered Normandy somewhere near the frontier town of Aumale. They passed on, committing every sort of ravage as they went. Saracens, we are told, could not have done worse.^[425] Houses great and small were burned, so were churches and monasteries, moveable 154goods were carried off, among which, as in old Greek warfare, human prey seems to have been thought not the least valuable. The peasants whom they fell in with were seized and carried off;^[426] women were everywhere ravished; children and old men seem to have been dispatched at |They reach Mortemer.| once.^[427] In this way they marched on till they reached Mortemer, not Mortemer by the forest of Lions, but a more northern Mortemer, which draws its whole claim to remembrance from the events of this campaign. The country through which they passed may be called hilly; but the hills have no specially marked or picturesque character. The town of Aumale stands on a comparative height, which slopes away by a gradual descent to the west. A bottom, in no way specially marked by nature, divides this hill from another of the same kind, the road over which leads the traveller to the town of Drincourt on the Dieppe, now known as Neufchâtel-in-Braye. From the neighbourhood of this point the river Eaulne flows down to meet the Dieppe and the Varenne |Description of the place.| by the castle of Arques. In the space between the two hills, a little way from the road, and almost hidden by trees, lie the shell of a round tower on its mound, a church of but small attractions, and a few scattered houses and gardens, so far from forming a town that they are hardly |The town destroyed and not rebuilt.| worthy to be called a village. That spot is Mortemer; and the absence of anything remarkable in the Mortemer of the present day is the best witness of the event which made Mortemer famous in the days of William. In those days Mortemer was evidently a town of some size, according to the standard of the eleventh century. There is no sign that the town was fortified; the tower which still 155remains has doubtless supplanted a donjon of the earlier type; but it was the mere private fortress of the lord and not the defence of the town itself. The change in the condition of the place must have been great. Mortemer could now hardly supply entertainment to a passing traveller; but we are told that the French army took up their head-quarters there, on account of the good and plentiful accommodation which the town afforded.^[428] Mortemer became a centre of systematic plunder. The French devoted the day to pillage; the neighbourhood was harried with fire and sword; stores of cattle and wine were brought in to Mortemer; and the night was given to feasting, drinking, and every sort of excess.^[429]

The French at Mortemer surprised by the Normans.

The Norman leaders had been well served by spies, and they had now found exactly the opportunity for which they had been waiting. One vigorous blow might crush one division of the invaders altogether, and the force of all Normandy might then turn against the other. The four leaders, with Hugh of Montfort, and Roger of Mortemer, the lord of the town in which the enemy had fixed themselves, at the head of the whole levies of the country, made a night march upon the unexpecting invaders. The Norman force reached Mortemer at day-break. They found no preparations for defence; most of the French were still asleep. With the true Norman instinct, fire was the first means of attack resorted to. The Frenchmen were awakened by the burning of the houses in which they were quartered. The confusion was frightful; 156men had to arm themselves in the midst of the flames and with the enemy pressing around them. One man would fain mount his horse, but he could not find his bridle; another, still less lucky, could not find the door of the house in which he was lodged.^[430] The most part strove to cut their way out of the burning town, but they found the head of each street guarded by Norman soldiers.^[431] Yet, according to every account, the French, though taken at such a disadvantage, resisted manfully, and kept up the struggle for several hours, from the dawn of a winter’s day, |Utter discomfiture of the French.| till three hours after noon.^[432] The great mass of the French were cut to pieces; a few escaped to skulk in the woods, but the greater number were cut down either in the town itself or in the attempt to escape. The burned and charred ruins, the dunghills, the fields and paths around the town, were covered with dead and wounded men. Only those were spared who were worth sparing for the sake of their ransom. Many a Norman soldier, down to the meanest serving-man in the ranks, carried off his French prisoner; many an one carried off his two or three goodly steeds with their rich harness. In all Normandy there was not 157a prison that was not full of Frenchmen.^[433] As for the leaders |Fate of the leaders. Escape of Odo and Reginald.| of the expedition, Odo the King’s brother was among the first to escape; Reginald of Clermont was equally lucky.^[434] But the princes of Ponthieu were less fortunate. Waleran, |Death of Waleran of Ponthieu.| the Count’s brother, was slain, fighting valiantly.^[435] Count |Imprisonment of Count Guy.| Guy himself was taken prisoner, and was kept as the Duke’s captive at Bayeux for two years. He was at last |He is released on doing homage to William.| released, but only on doing homage and binding himself to the Duke of the Normans for the yearly service of a hundred knights whenever called upon.^[436] Ralph of Montdidier fell into the hands of Roger of Mortemer, whose castle, perhaps |Roger of Mortemer releases Ralph of Montdidier through a feudal scruple.| the only stone building in the town, remained standing among the flames. By one of those strange feudal complications which we so often meet with in those times, the Lord of Mortemer had become the man of the Count of Montdidier.^[437] Roger remembered his duty to his lord, even when that lord appeared in the guise of an enemy. He tended him friendly in his castle for three days, and then took him to his own house in peace.^[438] But this discharge of feudal duty was held by Duke William to be inconsistent 158with his duty as the vassal and the subject of a greater master. All Roger’s services could not plead against this |Roger banished by the Duke, and his castle confiscated,| ill-timed tenderness to a foe. He was banished from Normandy, and, though after a while he was allowed to return and to receive again the rest of his lands, the castle from which he drew his name was withheld from him. |and bestowed on William of Warren.| That castle the Duke granted to a brave and rising knight, William of Warren,^[439] who took his name from a fortress by the northern Varenne which has since exchanged its name for that of Bellencombre.^[440] He, like his predecessor Roger, and so many others, was the Duke’s kinsman through the forester of Caux;^[441] he lived to become the husband of the Duke’s stepdaughter,^[442] to win for himself an Earldom in England, and to be the forefather of one who, two hundred years later, could appeal, like the Bastard himself, to his own sword as the surest tenure by which he held it.^[443]

The news brought to William.

The joyful news, we are told, was carried the same night^[444] to the Duke in his quarters on the other side of the Seine. His first impulse was thankfulness to God, who had given him so great a success without any loss, at any rate without any considerable loss, of his own men.^[445] 159His next thought was how to improve the occasion so as to get rid of the other division of the invading army with |His stratagem and message to the King.| even less trouble. He would himself send the news to his royal overlord. We are not told exactly where the two armies were encamped, but it was doubtless somewhere between the Seine and the Dive, and one description places the French army by the side of a river with overhanging cliffs.^[446] The camp of the Duke was not far off. A messenger was at once sent off, to announce in a startling way the loss which had fallen on the royal army on the |Ralph of Toesny.| other side of the Seine. Some make the messenger chosen for his task a man of lofty and famous lineage. He was, we are told, Ralph of Toesny or of Conches, the grandson of the famous Roger, the proud descendant of Malahulc, the man who had sought for a kingdom in Spain, and had been one of the scourges of Normandy in the days of William’s childhood.^[447] Of Ralph we shall hear again at Senlac, how he refused, like Walter Giffard, to discharge any function, however honourable, which kept him back from dealing his blows against the English.^[448] Thus high of birth and of spirit, he and his were connected by marriage with other houses of equal fame. His own wife was of the line of Montfort;^[449] his sister was the wife of the famous William Fitz-Osbern,^[450] and his son, in after 160years, when his house was transferred from Normandy to England, became the husband of one of the daughters |Delivery of the message at midnight.| of our martyred Waltheof.^[451] Ralph of Toesny then, or it may be some lowlier messenger, rode to the French camp; he climbed, some say a tree, some say a lofty rock, which overlooked the tent of the King.^[452] The stillness of the night was broken, the slumbers of the King were disturbed, by a voice, which might seem to come from another world, shouting aloud, “Frenchmen, awake, ye are sleeping too long; go forth and bury your friends who lie dead at Mortemer.” The King and his friends talked together and wondered. But the tidings thus strangely brought to them were soon spread abroad. Some make the Norman Baron reveal himself, and tell in his own person how Odo had fled, how Guy was in bonds, how Waleran was slain.^[453] Others seem to make the news come from some other source, from some fugitive escaped from Mortemer, or from that mere mysterious power of rumour which seems to travel faster than any 161|Panic and retreat of the French army.| post.^[454] At all events we are told that a panic fell on King Henry and his host. Before the sun had well dawned, all was ready for a retreat. Horsemen were mounted, sumpter-horses were loaded, the tents and huts which had formed the royal camp were all burning. All faces were now turned, not towards Rouen or Lisieux, but towards Paris or more distant cities. The retreat was a hasty one; men were glad to get as fast as they could out of so dangerous a land. Their march, or rather their flight, was undisturbed by William; King Henry reached his capital in safety, and his Barons and other followers, the mighty armament of all Celtic Gaul, were scattered every man to his own home.^[455]

The story illustrative of Norman craft.

There is something half romantic, half grotesque, about the details of this campaign. Yet the substance of the tale comes from contemporary writers, and the whole story is eminently characteristic of William, and indeed of his people. No people of warriors were ever more ready than the Normans to exchange, whenever need called for the exchange, the skin of the lion for that of the fox.^[456] Assuredly neither William the Bastard nor Robert Wiscard was at all lacking in any form of courage; but it was, after all, their 162craft rather than their courage which set them so high |Illustration of William’s character.| above the rest of the world. It is quite possible that seven years may have abated somewhat of that impetuous energy of early youth with which William spurred across the plain of Val-ès-dunes to smite the rebel of Bayeux |His policy.| with his own hand.^[457] He may have learned—perhaps from the teaching of King Henry himself^[458]—that it is not always the duty of a general to thrust himself forward wherever danger happens to be keenest. But it is certain that, twelve years later, William was as ready as he had ever been for deeds of the highest personal prowess, whenever personal prowess was the surest way to success. The difference between William and most men of his age was that he had now learned that it was no mark of wisdom or of courage to run risks which might be avoided, or to jeopard his own life and the lives of his followers, when the same object might be gained by easier means. He had, by this time at least, learned to rise above the follies of mere chivalry, above the mere senseless love of giving and taking blows without an object. Nor had he a spark of that impetuous patriotism which led the nobler soul of Harold to deem no shame so great as the shame of leaving a rood of English ground to be harried by the stranger. We may acquit William of all wanton oppression; we may fully believe that the sufferings of his people roused his indignation.^[459] But he could stifle that indignation; he could stand calmly by and behold their sufferings, if he thought that he could gain his object better by biding his time and letting the |Vein of pleasantry in the Norman character.| enemy for a while work his wicked will. And, mingled with all this, there is a certain element of grim merriment, a delight in a joke spoken or acted, which runs through the whole career of the Conqueror. It needed a ready wit to send Roger of Toesny, or any other man, to the top of a tree or of a rock to announce in the dead of the night that the 163French had been cut to pieces at Mortemer. Here again William is only a representative of his people. A touch of pleasantry, however rough, runs through most Norman sayings and doings. We may be sure that the messenger, whoever he was, thoroughly enjoyed his errand and entered into its spirit. And the policy of William in this campaign, whatever we think of it in any other light, had at least, as his policy commonly had, the merit of success. Most princes of his time would have sought eagerly for a pitched battle. Most of the few princes who might have shrunk from a pitched battle would have been unable to form any intelligible military plan of any other kind. William, evidently seconded by men who understood him, knew how to win victories without fighting. His dominions were invaded by two powerful armies at once. He laid his plans; he bode his time. One army was cut to pieces with hardly the loss of a Norman life. The other was hurried out of the land without so much as striking a blow.

William fortifies Breteuil as a check on Tillières.

King Henry seems by this time to have had enough of Norman warfare for a while. We hear vaguely of hostilities still going on,^[460] but there is only one act on either side of which we meet with any distinct mention. This is the fortification by the Duke of a post which was intended to check for the future such incursions as his southern march had just undergone. The time had not yet come for William again to demand that fortress of Tillières of which Henry had so unfairly dispossessed him in the early days of his reign.^[461] But he now raised a counter-fortress within his own dominions, which was expressly designed to act as a check on Tillières itself.^[462] This was 164at Breteuil on the Iton, a tributary of the Eure, near the wood of its own name, in the Diocese of Evreux, not far |It is entrusted to William Fitz-Osbern.| from Ralph of Toesny’s castle and abbey of Conches. The castle was built, and was committed to the trusty care of William Fitz-Osbern.^[463]

Peace concluded. 1055.

At last the King sought for peace. His main object was to bring about the redemption of the many French captives who were still lingering in Norman prison-houses. The knights were at last set free on paying their ransoms, but their harness remained as the prey of the victors.^[464] |William authorized to make conquests at the expense of Anjou.| A more remarkable article of the peace was that by which the King engaged not to interfere with any conquests which William had made, or might make, at the expense of the Count of Anjou. Henry indeed seems to have done more, and to have promised William the regular feudal investiture of any such possible conquests.^[465] This agreement seems to amount almost to proof positive that Geoffrey had not had any share in the late invasion of Normandy. It was seemingly as a punishment for his defection that his possessions were now openly offered to the Norman. Before long we shall again find Henry and Geoffrey allied against William, but just at this moment we must look upon King and Duke as once more allies against the Angevin Count.

Extension of William’s frontier southwards. 1048–1063.

It was in William’s earlier days of good service to his overlord that he had first carried his arms, and extended 165his dominion, beyond the range of hills which seems to form the natural southern frontier of Western Normandy. In his first campaign against the Angevin he had added or restored to his Duchy the Cenomannian fortress of |Domfront.| Domfront,^[466] a prize which was no unworthy instalment of the nobler and more distant prize in the same region which was, before many years, to fall into his hands. That first campaign, William’s first deed of prowess beyond the bounds of his own Duchy, had made him master of a fortress which men deemed impregnable, and of a district which, as his earliest conquest, he no doubt looked on with special affection. That part of the ancient Cenomannian Diocese and County which surrounds the hill of Domfront has remained to this day an integral portion of the Norman land. The southern bulwark of William’s Duchy was now the proud fortress by the Varenne, the town which, still largely girded by its ancient walls, abides to this day perched on its ancient eyrie, and has not, like so many greater cities, descended into the plain below. The shattered donjon,^[467] reared, like that of his own Falaise, on wild and craggy rocks, looks forth on the wilder and heath-crowned rocks of a rival height, whose distorted strata bear witness to the struggles and revolutions of days before man had yet appeared on earth. The fortress won by the terror of his name, once an outpost threatening the Norman border, was now the surest guard of the Norman heights to the north, the most threatening menace to that boundless plain, broken by gentler hills, which stretched away over the disputed land of Maine towards the home of the hostile Angevin. Around the hill lay the thickly wooded land, rich in the silvan sports so dear to William’s heart, the land which 166the Hammer of Anjou had yielded without a stroke to the youthful lord of Normandy. Lower down the stream stood what was now his furthest outpost, his own creation |Ambrières.| of Ambrières, another donjon on a height, hard by the point where the Varenne joins the greater stream of the Mayenne. The shattered walls of that donjon still bear the impress of William’s age, though the district in which it stands is no longer entitled to the honours of the Norman name.

Domfront then had passed irrevocably into William’s hands, but Ambrières was still, in some way or other, a |Its former occupation by William, [1049];| subject of contention. There seems no doubt that William had occupied and fortified the post in the earlier campaign.^[468] Possibly it had been since that time taken and dismantled by Geoffrey; possibly the post was to be made stronger and more extensive, with a view to further conquests in the same direction. At all events, works of some kind at |its present rebuilding or strengthening.| Ambrières, whether works of mere strengthening or of construction from the ground, were just now an object on which William’s mind was eagerly set. His first act after the conclusion of the peace with France, at the very meeting—was it a meeting with the King in person?—at which the peace was signed, was to summon all the chief military tenants of Normandy to appear within forty days to help in carrying on the needful works at Ambrières.^[469] A message to the same effect was sent to Count Geoffrey. |William’s challenge to Geoffrey Martel.| The Duke of the Normans would, on the fortieth day, appear at Ambrières with his force and take possession of his fortress.^[470] The prospect of so terrible a neighbour 167struck dread into the heart of the nearest vassal of Anjou, |Geoffrey of Mayenne;| Geoffrey, Lord of Mayenne, a town on the lower course of the river from which it takes its name, and which was, a few years later, to be the scene of one of William’s |his counsel to Geoffrey Martel.| boldest exploits.^[471] The Lord of Mayenne poured his forebodings into the ears of his own lord at Angers. If the Normans were allowed to take possession of Ambrières, nothing but ravage and utter destruction would be the fate of the Angevin lands. The heart of Count Geoffrey was lifted up, and he bade his namesake of Mayenne cast him aside as a base and shameful lord, if he allowed the threats of the Norman to be carried |William at Ambrières.| out in act.^[472] The appointed day came; the Duke appeared at Ambrières; the works, of whatever nature, were begun.^[473] News came that Geoffrey Martel was |Geoffrey’s delay.| on his march. William waited a while, but the enemy came not, and provisions began to fail. Great and small began to complain of the lack of food; and no doubt, in Normandy as well as in England, men were much more ready to fight than to remain under arms without fighting.^[474] |William garrisons the castle, and goes away.| The Duke therefore left a garrison in Ambrières, and retired with the remainder of his army, bidding them hold themselves in readiness to assemble again at a moment’s notice.^[475] It would have been foolhardiness indeed 168to have shut himself up without any adequate cause |Geoffrey and his allies come to Ambrières.| within the walls of a border fortress. But, if the Norman historian is to be believed, the Norman Duke’s back was no sooner turned^[476] than the Angevin Count and his allies came hastening to the siege of the stronghold of Ambrières. |William of Aquitaine.| With Count Geoffrey came his lord, as he is called^[477]—at all events his step-son—Peter, now William, Count of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine.^[478] He came perhaps to avenge the ignominious flight of his brother from Moulins;^[479] but with him came another chief in whose heart many an old enmity must have been choked, many a bitter remembrance must have been handed over to forgetfulness, before he could consent to take service in the same host as Geoffrey. |Odo of Britanny.| Yet so it was; a Breton prince, Odo, the uncle of the reigning Count Conan,^[480] came to fight under the Angevin banner |They besiege Ambrières.| against the common enemy at Rouen. The three princes attacked the castle of Ambrières with all the resources known to the military art of the time. An attempt at a storm was beaten back by the defenders. The archers shot their arrows, the petraria hurled its stones, the ram was dashed against the wall, but all was in vain.^[481] Meanwhile the news of the siege, and of the gallant resistance of the |Return of William.| garrison, was borne to Duke William. He collected his troops with all speed, and hastened, with such haste as he knew how to use when haste was needed,^[482] to the relief of 169|Flight of the besiegers.| Ambrières. At his mere approach, we are told, the three allied Counts took to flight.^[483] The Lord of Mayenne was less lucky; he was carried off as a prisoner into the |Homage of Geoffrey of Mayenne.| furthest parts of Normandy, and he was not released till he had acknowledged himself the man of Duke William.^[484]

Increase of William’s power.

The fame of William was no doubt widely spread by this series of successful exploits and stratagems, and his direct influence was distinctly increased by his receiving the homage of the Count of Ponthieu in one direction and |Extension of his frontier towards Anjou.| of the Lord of Mayenne in another. It would seem also that this was the time when William made, in conformity with the licence granted him by King Henry,^[485] a further acquisition of Cenomannian territory at the cost of the Count of Anjou. It was not unimportant to him to extend his power as far as might be in the district through |1049.| which he had, six years before, made his famous night-march from Domfront to Alençon.^[486] At a short distance west of Alençon, and south-west of the episcopal town of Seez, the Sarthon, a small tributary of the Sarthe, was the boundary between Normandy and Maine. The Duke now took possession of a point beyond the frontier stream; a castle and town arose, which were entrusted to the care of Roger of Montgomery. It lay in the near neighbourhood of the hereditary possessions of his wife, and from her the new bulwark of Normandy was honoured or disgraced by the name of the Rock of Mabel.^[487]

Three years’ peace. 1055–1058.

170The strength of William’s enemies seems to have been nearly exhausted by their late efforts, or else their courage was chilled by the ill success of their arms. For three years Normandy saw neither rebellion nor foreign war. William thus had time to devote himself either to the prosecution of his vengeance, or to the vindication of ecclesiastical discipline, in the deposition of his uncle the |1055.| Primate Malger.^[488] This took place in the same year as the campaign of Ambrières. After that date, besides the Duke’s quarrel and reconciliation with Lanfranc,^[489] there is nothing to recount till, three years later, we come to another, and the last, invasion of Normandy by the combined |Last French and Angevin invasion. August, 1058.| forces of France and Anjou. Geoffrey, the old enemy, was, we are told, ever ready to strike a blow at Normandy,^[490] and no doubt the memory of his late losses rankled in his mind. Another great expedition was planned and carried out. In August, when the corn was on the ground,^[491] the King and the Count entered Normandy in the quarter most convenient for a junction of French and Angevin forces, in William’s own County of Hiesmes.^[492] Their design was a systematic plundering expedition through all Normandy west of the Seine. They were to pass through the district of Hiesmes into the land of Bayeux and Caen; then they were to cross the Dive and, after harrying Auge and the district of Lisieux, to return 171home with their plunder.^[493] Above all things, they were to reach the sea in the districts both west and east of the Dive, and to show that the upstart Duke of the Pirates could no |William’s scheme of defence. He waits at Falaise till the enemy reach the Dive.| longer keep his liege lord barred up in an inland prison. The scheme was laid, and one half of it was carried out. William determined not to attack the invaders on their entrance into his Duchy. His plan was to wait for a favourable moment when he might smite them on their return, gorged with the plunder of his subjects, and no doubt with their discipline and their energy not a little relaxed. He gathered his knights, not indeed for immediate action; he gave orders for the strengthening of castles and the cleansing of their fosses; and then, leaving the open country exposed to the ravages of the enemy, he waited in his own stronghold of Falaise for the moment which |Advance and ravages of the French.| he knew would not fail soon to come.^[494] The French and Angevin host entered Normandy, and passed through the land burning and plundering in the usual fashion. They took the town of Hiesmes, which gave its name to the County. They then marched on to Saint Peter on the Dive; they occupied the whole town, and the King was lodged at the great Abbey, then in all the freshness of its new foundation by the pious Lescelina of Eu.^[495] They then struck westward, ravaging the whole Bessin; but the city itself, as well as the various castles of the district, seems to have remained untouched. The sea-coast especially, the 172land of William’s faithful Hubert, was harried as far as the mouth of the Seule. The enemy then marched in a |Caen as yet unfortified.| south-easterly direction to Caen. That town was growing in importance, but as yet it neither contained anything which could withstand the attacks of an enemy nor anything which was likely to remain to later days as a memorial of his visit. Caen was as yet undefended by walls or castle;^[496] the foundations of the two great Abbeys which are its chief glory were as yet not laid. Whatever Caen then consisted of, it was certainly sacked, most likely burned. King Henry and Count Geoffrey had now successfully carried out one half of their scheme of ravage. They had now to cross the Dive, and to carry fire and sword into the other half of the doomed region.

The moment for which William had so long been waiting had at last come. His policy had been in some sort a cruel policy for his Duchy; but it now enabled him to strike a vigorous and decisive blow at the retreating enemy. French warfare in Normandy was destined to be successful only when the banners of King and Duke floated side by side. King Henry had shared in the triumph of Val-ès-dunes; his men had been smitten by William’s men in the ambush of Saint Aubin and in the surprise of Mortemer; he had now himself to feel the might of William’s own |They reach the Dive at Varaville.| hand in the second surprise of Varaville. In their march eastward the French had reached the village of that name, the point which had been chosen for their passage across the Dive into the land of Auge. Varaville, now, and probably then, only a small village, lies north-east of Caen, a little way from the left bank of the old frontier stream. It was an old battle-ground of France and Normandy. On that spot, or at least in that neighbourhood, it was that King Harold 173of Denmark and King Lewis of France had met face to face; |945.| it was there that the Karling had found his master in the valiant heathen who came to defend the last planted outpost of his race.^[497] And now another King of the French, of another line, of another speech, and another royal city, came to undergo an overthrow yet more ignominious at the hands of a Norman Duke who could now hold his own independently alike of French and of Danish help. Varaville was seemingly an usual point for crossing into the lands on the right bank |Description of the spot.| of the river. The contrast between the two sides of the Dive is here very striking. On the left, the side of Varaville, the land is flat, and it was in those days doubtless a mere marsh. A causeway, which still exists, and which is maintained as a modern road, leads from the village to a point where the stream has for many ages been crossed by a bridge, but which, in the eleventh century, seems to have been known only as a ford.^[498] Here the French army was to pass over to the opposite side, the land of Auge. There, within the original settlement of Rolf, the country is of quite a different character. The right bank of the Dive is backed at a short distance by a range of hills of height considerable enough to form a very marked 174object in any country not strictly mountainous. They form in fact a bold and picturesque range, stretching right away to the seashore. Over these hills the army had to make its way into the rich land of Lisieux. |The French vanguard crosses the river.| The vanguard, under the command of the King, had already begun to climb the heights, when unexpected sounds from the rearward smote on their ears. From the high ground of Bastebourg,^[499] commanding a view of the whole valley, King Henry turned round only to behold the |William’s march.| utter discomfiture of his host. The Duke of the Normans had laid his plan with all the subtlety of his wily brain, and he was now carrying it out with all the might of his irresistible arm. He had watched the spot, he had watched the hour, which the enemy seem not to have watched, and he came upon them at the very moment when he was able to strike a deadly blow with most effect, and at the same time once more to avoid the necessity of meeting his lord face to face in battle. William knew every movement of the enemy; when the right time was come, he marched forth from Falaise with such troops as he had kept around him, and summoned all the peasantry of the district to join them. They came, armed as they were able to arm themselves, with clubs, darts, anything; no sort of warrior, no sort of weapon, was unfit to bear a part in the enterprise |Battle of Varaville. August, 1058.| which William now designed. He marched in stealth up the valley by Bavent, and reached Varaville in the very nick of time.^[500] The King and his vanguard were, as we 175have seen, far ahead; the long baggage train, rich with Norman spoil, and the whole rear-guard of the army, were still on the left bank. The tide was flowing in, and it soon became impossible to cross. The French stood in perplexity, one half of the army finding itself utterly cut off from the other half.^[501] In a moment Duke William was upon them. Every weapon known to Norman warfare was at once in its fullest activity; the lance and the sword of the knight on his destrier, the club and dart of the peasant on foot, |First mention of the Norman archers.| were all alike plied against the unlucky Frenchmen. And along with these older arms, we now hear for the first time of another weapon, destined to be, above all others, terrible and deadly upon a more awful field. For the first time in our story, the thunder-shower of the Norman arrows^[502] is heard of as carrying dismay and slaughter among the ranks of the enemy. And no enemy could well be more helpless than those on whom knights, archers, clubmen, were now called on to display their prowess. Encumbered as they were with their baggage train, huddled together on the long, narrow, neglected^[503] causeway, resistance |The French rear-guard cut to pieces.| was almost impossible. A desperate effort carried the foremost among them to the banks of the river; but, except to skilful swimmers, the ford was impassable because of the tide. Multitudes fell into the water and were drowned; the surface of the Dive was soon covered 176with floating bodies and harness.^[504] Others strove to escape how they might among the ditches and paths of the marshy shore. They cast away their weapons, and blundered on hopelessly through the unknown and treacherous country. The Normans, knowing the ground, followed, and cut them down without mercy. Of the whole rear-guard of the French army not a man is said to have escaped. All were slain, or taken captive, or swept away by the waters.

King Henry sees the slaughter from the hills.

It must not be forgotten that all this went on under the eye of the King of the French—and doubtless of his Angevin ally also—who was looking down from the high ground which the vanguard had already reached. Beneath him in full view lay the plain, the causeway, the stream, the marshes, where the work of death was going on. Like Xerxes, Henry beheld his subjects cut in pieces before his eyes; but unlike Xerxes, he was at least eager to go to their help. The Norman poet tells us how the King saw his men speared and shot down, some struggling in the waters, some bound and borne off as captives.^[505] His limbs trembled, his face was hot with rage, he was eager and yet unable to strike a blow or take any step for the rescue of his unfortunate soldiers. In a moment of desperation he proposed to descend the hill, and to seek for some other 177spot where he might cross the river, and do something at least to avenge, if not to rescue, his rear-guard.^[506] But he had men around him who knew the hopelessness of |His retreat.| such an attempt. Their counsels persuaded him to submit to a fate which he could not resist, and to march with all speed out of the Norman land with the half of his army which was still left to him.

Peace with France; Tillières restored to Normandy.

The battle, or rather massacre, of Varaville was the last act of the wars between William and Henry. The King was now growing old, and he might well think that he had had enough of Norman warfare. He presently brought himself to ask for peace, and to offer as its price the restoration of the famous fortress of which he had deprived William in his childhood. The terms were accepted; peace was made, and Tillières, so long lost to Normandy, became |Death of Henry. 1060.| once more a bulwark of the Norman frontier.^[507] Henry did not long survive this happy ending of this long struggle. Two years afterwards he died. His death was attributed to poison, seemingly accidentally administered.^[508] He left his Crown to an heir still under age. The mother of the new |His Russian marriage.| King had been brought from a distant land. Henry saw the difficulty of finding any wife among the princely houses of Western Europe who was not related to him within the forbidden degrees; he was specially warned by the troubles 178which his father had undergone through his first uncanonical marriage.^[509] He therefore sought for a bride in a land among whose princes there was little fear of any kindred or affinity with a King of the French. He married Anne, the daughter of the Russian Duke Yaroslaf.^[510] The princes of Russia boasted of a connexion with the Emperors of the East;^[511] and the happy ambiguity of the Macedonian name^[512] had led the great dynasty which was founded by a Slavonian groom to identify itself with the ancient Kings of Pella and Edessa. The Russian princess brought with her into France the ancient Macedonian name of Philip, and her son became the first of a long line of Kings, princes, and nobles, through whom a name hitherto unknown to Western Europe became one of |Coronation and accession of Philip the First. 1059–60.| the most renowned in French history. In the last year of his father’s lifetime, the young Philip was, according to several precedents, crowned at Rheims, and the ceremony was attended by most of the great vassals of his Kingdom.^[513] We do not however hear whether the Duke of the Normans so far honoured his youthful overlord as to make one of the illustrious assemblage. But the ties between Normandy and France were now for a time drawn much more closely than before. Henry had chosen the nearest ally of William as the guardian of his son and as the 179|Baldwin of Flanders Regent of France.| Regent of his Kingdom. During the minority of the young King, the government of the royal domain was placed in the hands of William’s father-in-law, the “mighty Marquess”^[514] of Flanders. Baldwin honourably fulfilled his trust towards France, and we need not say that he kept the peace towards Normandy.^[515]

The same year which beheld the death of King Henry beheld also the death of the most inveterate enemy of Normandy among his great vassals. The Angevin chroniclers significantly cut short the Norman warfare of Geoffrey Martel, a sure sign that, however much Norman vanity may have exaggerated in detail, the general result of the struggle cannot have been greatly misrepresented. |Last days and death of Geoffrey Martel. 1060.| Geoffrey’s last days seem to have been clouded over by ill-success in other quarters. He indeed recovered the city of Nantes from Hoel of Britanny.^[516] But we also read of his 180being besieged by his step-son, Peter or William of Poitiers, in the castle of Saumur, on the steep which looks down, not on the Varenne or on the Mayenne, but on the mighty Loire itself.^[517] The siege was raised through the sudden death of the Aquitanian prince,^[518] and we hear of no further |His dominions divided between his nephews, Geoffrey and Fulk Rechin.| exploit on the part of Geoffrey of the Hammer. On the day before his death he assumed the monastic habit,^[519] and, as he left no sons, he divided his dominions between the two sons of his sister Hermengarde, the wife of Alberic, Count of the Gatinois. To his namesake Geoffrey, surnamed the Bearded, he left Anjou and Saintogne, while Fulk Rechin, already known to us as one of our authorities for Angevin history, received the city and county of Tours.^[520] Normandy was thus delivered from both her enemies. In her next warfare we shall find her seeking, not merely to defend her borders, but to extend them.

Coincidence of the Battle of Varaville with Harold’s journey. 1058.

It may be worth notice that the great invasion of Normandy which ended, so disastrously for the French, in the rout of Varaville, happened in the very year in which there is every reason to believe that Earl Harold made his remarkable journey to examine into the political state of Gaul.^[521] His inquiries might perhaps lead him to different conclusions, according as his visit happened before or after the utter discomfiture of Henry and Geoffrey. Yet the 181campaign of Varaville could do little more than add one more to the many proofs that William was a foe whom no |Harold’s possible negotiations.| enemy could afford to neglect. I have already hinted that the mysterious words of Eadward’s Biographer^[522] might perhaps be taken as implying that Harold sought the friendship, if not the actual alliance, of the King or of some of his great vassals, as a support in case of any hostile movements on the part of Normandy. If this be so, we may see in the almost contemporary deaths of so many French princes a reason why such negotiations bore |Changes in the aspect of Gaul by the deaths of Geoffrey Martel and King Henry.| no fruit. King Henry, Geoffrey Martel, William of Aquitaine, all died within two years after Harold’s journey. By their deaths the political state of Gaul was altogether changed, and changed in a direction altogether favourable to William of Normandy. William of Aquitaine was the only one of the three who had a successor at all likely to act as a check upon any designs of his Norman namesake. Guy, Geoffrey, or William, whichever we are to call the prince who made so hasty a flight from Moulins,^[523] was not likely to cherish much love for William of Normandy, but he seems to have been mainly occupied by wars with Anjou, and by an expedition into Spain, in which last, by some means or other, he was followed by Norman warriors.^[524] In any case his solitary help could be of little service. If Harold hoped to meet any attack on England on the part of William by a diversion in his rear in the form of a joint attack of his continental neighbours, the chance of organizing such a confederacy died with King Henry and Geoffrey Martel. Under the Regency of Baldwin the Court of Paris became the closest ally of Normandy, and the new Count of Anjou 182seems to have been fully occupied at home. We hear of him chiefly as engaged in asserting certain novel claims over the Abbey of Marmoutiers,^[525] and as having, at the very crisis of the fate of England, to defend his dominions against his brother Fulk.^[526] He was therefore by no means likely to bear a part in any schemes of policy which reached |England’s lack of continental allies.| as far as Britain.^[527] The death of the Emperor Henry a few years earlier had deprived England of another friend. She had in short no continental ally left except Swend of Denmark. I merely throw out these remarks as vague hints on a very obscure subject; but it certainly is striking that the intentionally mystified language of the Biographer should admit of an interpretation which falls in so well with the state of things at the particular moment of Harold’s journey.

§ 3. The War of Maine. 1060–1064.

The main interest of this period of William’s reign gathers round his great conquest of the Cenomannian County and City. But before we enter on the narrative of that campaign, a few events in the internal history of his Duchy may be usefully cleared out of the way.

William was already beginning to show himself, in the words of the English Chronicler, beyond measure stark to all who withstood his will.^[528] The unrestrained exercise 183|Banishment of various Norman nobles.| of power seems to have wrought its usual bad effect. We now begin to find a prince who had hitherto been distinguished for clemency to rebellious enemies meting out, to say the least, somewhat hasty sentences against some of the chief men of his dominions. We presently find him giving ground for suspicions, unfounded as they doubtless were, that he had learned to stoop to the base trade of the poisoner.^[529] Several of his nobles were banished about this time, and every account seems to describe them as banished without just cause, through the false accusations of envious persons. Among these false accusers Roger of Montgomery and his wicked wife Mabel stand pre-eminent.^[530] The first recorded victim was Ralph of Toesny, whom we have seen as, according to one account, the bearer of the news of the defeat of Mortemer to the French King.^[531] He was banished; but he must have returned within a few years, and he had his share in the Conquest of England. We may say the same of Hugh of Grantmesnil, one of the joint founders of Saint Evroul.^[532] The banishment of Arnold of Escalfoy is not wonderful, as both he and his uncle Robert seem to have ventured on open rebellion. They seem even to have taken the Angevin side against their country, either in the wars which have been already described, or in some of the border skirmishes which no doubt still continued. Robert defended his castle against 184|Mysterious death of Robert the son of Geroy. 1060.| the Duke, and he died by a strange and suspicious death in the year which carried off King Henry and Count Geoffrey. He sat one day in a merry mood by his winter fire with his wife Adelaide, a kinswoman of the Duke. She had four apples in her hand; he snatched two from her in jest; he |Adventures and death of Arnold of Escalfoy. 1063.| ate of them and died.^[533] His nephew Arnold succeeded him, and for three years he carried on a devastating warfare in the neighbourhood of Lisieux.^[534] He then made peace with the Duke, on condition of going to the wars in Apulia.^[535] After a while he returned, but only to die by poison administered to him through the plots of the ruthless daughter of William Talvas.^[536]

Banishment of Abbot Robert of Saint Evroul. 1063.

Another person who now fell under the Duke’s displeasure was Robert of Grantmesnil, brother of Hugh, and co-founder, and now himself Abbot, of Saint Evroul. He was now deposed and banished by William. I forbear to enter on the interminable details of the negotiations for his restoration, from which I shrank at an earlier stage of my Norman history.^[537] But two points are of importance. It is made a distinct charge against William that he ventured to depose a churchman without the sentence of 185any ecclesiastical Synod, and seemingly without any form of trial at all.^[538] One account also distinctly says that the Duke’s motive was hostility to Robert’s family.^[539] It is hard to judge on such slight evidence; but it is to be noticed, on the one hand, that William’s special panegyrist is silent on the whole subject of these banishments, and on the other that William’s ecclesiastical government is the part of his character in which we should least readily look for an unworthy motive.

Synod of Caen. 1061. Ordinance of the Curfew.

The fortunes of an Abbot bring us once more within the ecclesiastical circle. In the year after King Henry’s death, in a Synod held at Caen by the Duke’s authority, and attended by Bishops, Abbots, and Barons, it was ordered that a bell should be rung every evening, at hearing of which prayer should be offered, and all people should get within their houses and shut their doors.^[540] This odd mixture of piety and police seems to be the origin of the famous and misrepresented curfew. Whatever was its object, it was at least not ordained as any special hardship on William’s English subjects.

The Conquest of Maine. 1063.

We now come to that great acquisition of William’s arms and policy which ranks in the annals of his reign next to the Conquest of England itself. The various fortunes, the takings and the retakings, of the city of Le Mans and its County, form a constantly recurring subject throughout the remaining history of William and 186of his sons. And the object struggled for was worthy of the |Old Norman claims over Maine.| struggle. The land and city over which William was now about to extend his long dormant claims was a prize which became one of the proudest jewels in his continental coronet. The Duke of the Normans, even the King of the English, thought it no scorn to add to those loftier titles a third which dated from this earlier conquest. |Beginning of Norman aggrandizement on the Continent.| As Prince or Count of the Cenomannians, William began the first of those stages of continental aggrandizement, which, before another century had passed, extended the sway of the sovereign of England and Normandy from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees, and made him master of the mouths of the Loire and the Garonne no less than of those of the Seine and the Thames. The work had been begun by the conquest of Domfront and Ambrières; it was now to be extended over the whole of the land which lies between |History of Maine.| Normandy and Anjou. A long history, princely, municipal, and episcopal, forms the annals of the Cenomannian |The ancient Cenomanni in Gaul and Italy.| state and city. The Cenomannian tribe^[541] was illustrious in the earliest legendary history of Gaul; it shares with the Senones the credit of that ancient colonization in Italy which brought Rome so near to her downfall.^[542] But it had no part in the actual beleaguering of Rome by the Senonian |Their close connexion with Rome.| Brennus. The Cenomanni beyond the Alps were ever found among the faithful allies of Rome, just as their mother state remains to this day proud of the relics of Roman dominion. Even during the storm of the Hannibalian War, the Cenomanni remained faithful to the Republic.^[543] Their metropolis is perhaps less prominent in the pages of Cæsar than we might have looked for; still the name 187|The Cenomanni of Gaul support Vercingetorix.| of the tribe occurs among those who sent their contingents to the host of Vercingetorix.^[544] Under the Roman domination, we are told that Cenomannia was among the first parts of Gaul to receive the Christian faith, and the local |Early preaching of Christianity.| legend traces that line of Bishops which became so famous in after days up to the very days of the Apostles. |Succession of Bishops of Le Mans.| In the days of Nerva and Trajan the Cenomannian Church was founded by Saint Julian, whose name still lives as the patron of the cathedral of Le Mans. Unlike most of his |Legend of Saint Julian.| apostolic brethren, the crown of martyrdom was not destined for him. He died in peace, having fully organized the local Church, and having been aided in all things by his convert the local Prince Defensor.^[545] In this last mythical personage we of course see a personification of the Defensores Civitatis, the local Tribunes, under the later |Special ecclesiastical and popular elements in the history of Maine.| Roman and early Frankish rulers.^[546] This early friendship between the Bishop and the local magistrate not inaptly prefigures a state of things with which William himself had to contend. The vast power of the local Church sometimes combined with the popular element of the city to 188|Maine under the Frankish Kings; a march against Bretons and Northmen.| withstand the more distant sovereign.^[547] I pass lightly over the days of the Merwings and the early Karlings. In those times the name of Cenomannia, city and district, appears over and over again, as a post of importance, an outpost against Breton enemies and afterwards against Scandinavian invaders.^[548] It was not uncommonly placed in the hands of members of the royal house.^[549] But these intermediate times do less to illustrate the events with which we are immediately concerned than the history or legends of the earliest days. These last, mythical as they may be, are at least happily invented to adorn the beginnings of a state which so long remained at once so intensely Roman and so intensely ecclesiastical.

Maine in the tenth century.

The history of Maine and Le Mans with which we are immediately concerned begins in the tenth century. We have |Alleged grants to Rolf, 924; to Hugh the Great, 924; and to Geoffrey Grisegonelle, 978?| seen^[550] that the Norman Dukes put forward some shadow of a claim to Maine by virtue of a grant in the days of King Rudolf, at the same time that Rolf obtained his second grant, that of the district of Bayeux.^[551] But the chronicler who records this fact records also a grant of earlier date, but within the same year, to Hugh the Great of Paris.^[552] A grant to Geoffrey Grisegonelle of Anjou is also, on no less 189authority than that of Count Fulk Nerra himself, attributed, by some strange confusion of chronology, to King |Maine part of the Duchy of France.| Robert.^[553] On the whole, there can be little doubt that Maine formed a part of the great Duchy of France, and there is still less doubt as to the rivalry and hatred which reigned between the Angevin Counts and the dynasty which we find established in Maine towards the end of |Rivalry of the Counts and Bishops.| the tenth century. There is as little doubt as to the position of the local Bishops, always at variance, sometimes at war, with the local Counts, but keeping up a close connexion both with the King and with the |Count David. 922–970?| Counts of Anjou. I do not presume to decide whether the Hugh, the David, and the Hugh-David, whom we |955–1015?| hear of as reigning in Maine in the course of the tenth century, and as claiming a descent from Charles the Great, were really one prince, or two, or three.^[554] But there is no doubt that a Hugh, whether surnamed after the Hebrew King or not, was reigning late in the tenth and early in the eleventh century, and that he was the father of |Sainfred Bishop of Le Mans. 960–994.| the better known Count Herbert. He had great disputes with Bishop Sainfred of the house of Belesme, a Prelate 190of whom the chronicler of the Cenomanniam Bishops draws |Fulk Nerra overruns Maine. 987–994?| no favourable picture.^[555] He is charged with wasting the revenues of his see in grants to Fulk of Anjou and to Burchard Count of Vendôme, in order to gain their help against the nearer enemy.^[556] It was perhaps through the instigation of the Prelate that Fulk invaded Maine, and brought the land and its ruler into vassalage, if not into |Hugh escapes from Tillières. 996–1015.| actual subjection.^[557] Hugh appears also as an enemy of Normandy, as an ally of Odo of Chartres in an attempt on Tillières, and as escaping only by a mean disguise from the pursuit of its valiant defenders.^[558] This must have been towards the end of his days, as the foundation of Tillières |Herbert Wake-Dog Count 1015–1036.| comes within the reign of Richard the Good. The enmity between the temporal and spiritual chiefs of Maine went on during the reign of Hugh’s famous son Herbert, and |Avesgaud Bishop 994–1036.| during the long episcopate of Avesgaud, the nephew and successor of Sainfred, and like him a member of the border |Herbert wars with the House of Belesme.| house of Belesme.^[559] With that house, a house loyal to neither of its lords and terrible to all its neighbours, Count Herbert had much warfare, and we have come across more than one incidental mention of those wars, 191as affording scope for the valour and faithfulness of the house of Geroy.^[560] The impression given by these stories is that the mighty Lords Marchers found the Cenomannian |He disputes with Bishop Avesgaud.| Count at least their match. The ecclesiastical historian implies that this warfare began by William of Belesme coming to the help of his brother the Bishop. It is certain that Avesgaud had constantly to contend against Count Herbert both by temporal and by spiritual arms, and that he called in against him the help both of spiritual and of temporal allies. At one time we find him defending the stronghold of La Fertè Bernard^[561] against the Count, who could dislodge him only by the help of a Breton |Fulbert of Chartres excommunicates Herbert.| force obtained from Count Alan.^[562] At another time he called in the help of the holy Bishop Fulbert of Chartres, the great letter-writer of the age, who, on what principle of ecclesiastical law it is not easy to see, addressed an epistle of excommunication to the Count of Maine, which brought about a temporary peace.^[563] But Herbert was not afraid to measure himself against a much more dangerous enemy. It was in warfare against Fulk of Anjou, whose authority he cast aside, that he won his surname of 192|His name of Wake-Dog, from his nightly raids against Anjou.| Wake-Dog.^[564] So constant were the nightly raids of Count Herbert that, not only in the open country, in the flat land of Anjou, but in the fortified towns of the province, nay in the city itself, in Black Angers on its steep by the Mayenne, men and dogs were ever on the alert, and ventured not to slumber.^[565] These exploits must belong to the later years of his reign; for, at its beginning, |His share in the battle of Pontlevois. 1016.| we find him acting as an ally or vassal of Anjou at the battle of Pontlevois against Odo of Chartres.^[566] Indeed the Angevin writers allow that the victory on their side was in a great measure owing to the courage and conduct of |Fulk imprisons Herbert at Saintes. 1026–1028.| Herbert and his followers.^[567] Ten years later, we find Fulk, according to the approved custom of his house, dealing with Herbert much as his son dealt with Theobald of Chartres and with William of Aquitaine.^[568] He beguiled him into a visit at Saintes, and there kept him in ward two years till he agreed to the hard conditions on which liberty was offered.^[569] After an active reign of twenty-one 193years, Herbert died. His daughter Biota became the wife of Walter of Mantes, the elder son of Drogo and |Hugh. (1035–1051).| Godgifu, and nephew of King Eadward of England.^[570] His young son Hugh succeeded him in the County of Maine, |Regency of Herbert Bacco.| seemingly under the guardianship of a great uncle, Herbert Bacco.^[571] Bishop Avesgaud died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and was succeeded in the almost hereditary Bishoprick |Gervase Bishop. 1036–1058.| by his nephew Gervase.^[572] This Prelate was the godfather of the young Count, and he is described as his defender against his faithless uncle as well as the defender |He commends the Bishoprick to Geoffrey of Anjou.| of the rights of his own see.^[573] He took one step however than which none could be more fatal, and one which illustrates the peculiar position of the Bishoprick. It would seem that, after all the grants that had been made of the temporal sovereignty of Maine, the royal rights over the Church of Le Mans were still in the hands of the King. Whether he held them strictly as King, or as Duke of the French, was now no longer a practical question.^[574] In either case the Bishop still held, not of the local Count but of his overlord at Paris. In short, throughout the territories which 194had formed part of the Duchy of France, the surrender of the royal rights, especially in ecclesiastical matters, was by no means so complete as it was in the great Duchies north and south of the royal dominions.^[575] The Count of Anjou or of Maine did not, after all, possess the same undivided and uninterrupted sovereignty within his own states which belonged to the Duke of the Normans. Bishop Gervase, a vassal of the King, unable to defend himself against his neighbour the Count or the Count’s guardian, receiving no help from his own lord, petitioned the King to grant the royal rights over the see, the rights of advocacy and |Herbert Bacco driven out and Hugh restored.| patronage, to the Count of Anjou for life.^[576] The grant was made; greater strife than before arose between the Bishop and the guardian uncle; a popular movement, headed by the Prelate, expelled Herbert Bacco, and restored the young Count Hugh to his lawful rights.^[577] The Prelate’s next business was to seek, like Jehoiada of old, a wife for the prince whom he had taken under his |Marriage of Hugh.| guardianship. He found one in the sister of Count Theobald,^[578] the widow of that Count Alan of Britanny whom we have seen die of poison while besieging a Norman castle.^[579] The marriage was supposed to be in 195some way dangerous to the interests of the Count of Anjou, and Martel now poured forth his whole wrath upon the |Bishop Gervase imprisoned by Geoffrey Martel. 1044–1051.| Bishop who had advised it. By some of his usual tricks, he gained possession of the Bishop’s person, and kept him in prison for seven years. As was usual with the prisoners of an Angevin Count, he had the option of obtaining his liberty by the surrender of some part of his possessions. The ransom demanded by Geoffrey was the surrender of a strong castle which was valiantly defended by the |His liberation demanded by the Council of Rheims. 1049.| Bishop’s soldiers.^[580] A demand of the Council of Rheims for the liberation of the Prelate had no effect on the obdurate mind of Geoffrey.^[581] Gervase seems all this while to have looked forward to deliverance through his godson, we can hardly say his sovereign, the Count of Maine. But at last he heard that Hugh was dead, |Geoffrey Martel occupies Le Mans. 1051–1061.| that Geoffrey had taken possession of Le Mans, that the citizens had received him joyfully, and had driven out the widow and children of Hugh.^[582] Gervase now thought it was time to yield; he gave up his castle, |Release of Gervase; he takes refuge in Normandy. 1061.| but even now he only obtained his freedom on condition of never setting foot in his own city during Geoffrey’s life-time.^[583] Banished in this way, he sought for shelter at the court of the Duke of the Normans.^[584] It does not seem 196that William actively interfered on his behalf, but he gave him an honourable reception, and retained him as his guest, till a prospect was opened to the homeless Prelate of obtaining at once a higher and a more peaceful position |Gervase Archbishop of Rheims.| among the Prelates of Gaul. While Gervase tarried in Normandy, the primatial see of Rheims became vacant by the death of its Archbishop Guy. Gervase now obtained the first place among the Prelates and Princes of the Parisian Kingdom, and it fell to his lot to pour the oil of Remigius and Hlodwig on the head of the youthful Philip.^[585]

Death of Geoffrey. 1060. Herbert’s hopes revive.

The affairs of Normandy and Maine have now become directly connected, and the connexion between the two countries becomes closer at every moment. The death of Geoffrey seemed to open to Herbert a chance of recovering the dominions which he had never possessed.^[586] The years during which Le Mans was occupied by Geoffrey had been spent by the widow and children of Hugh in some part of |Herbert’s three sisters.| Germany.^[587] Besides Herbert, Hugh had three daughters, whose marriages and betrothals are of no small moment in the history. One, Gersendis, was first married to Theobald of Chartres.^[588] By him she was divorced, and this divorce 197|Gersendis, married, 1st, to Theobald of Chartres; 2nd, to Azo of Liguria.| was one of the many irregularities in that way which called down the censures of Pope Leo and the Fathers of Rheims.^[589] She then made a more splendid alliance beyond the Alps. She became the second wife of the famous Azo, Marquess of Este and Liguria, renowned in his own day for his wealth, his good fortune, and for attaining, though not till long after the marriage and the death of Gersendis, the age of a hundred years.^[590] By his first wife Cunegund he became the ancestor of the House of Brunswick, and the children of Gersendis of Maine produced the long line of Lords, Marquesses, and Dukes of Ferrara and Modena. How this marriage affected the history of Maine, of Normandy, and of England, we shall Another sister mother of Helias of La Flèche. |Another sister mother of Helias of La Flèche.| see at a later stage. Another sister married John of La Flèche, and by him became the mother of three sons. One of them bore the familiar Teutonic name of Gilbert; the two others were honoured with the patriarchal appellations of Enoch and Elijah, and the bearer of the last name, under the modified form of Helias or Helie, plays an important |Margaret.| part in the history of the next generation.^[591] Margaret, the other daughter, who must have been many years younger than Gersendis, and of whose beauty and virtues we read rapturous descriptions, was still unmarried.^[592] Herbert now 198|Herbert applies to Duke William. 1061.| addressed himself to the Duke of the Normans. William’s own days of trial and persecution were now over; he had come forth honourably out of all his difficulties; he had smitten all his enemies at home and abroad; he was now well fitted to appear either as a protector or as a conqueror. Moreover he was actually in possession of part of the Cenomannian County; all his conquests up to this time, Domfront, Ambrières, and the Rock of Mabel,^[593] had been made at what might be called the expense of Herbert himself. There was no great chance of recovering them from the prince who had so vigorously clutched the straw at the moment of his birth,^[594] and who in his later days as firmly refused to take off his clothes before he went to bed. But, at any rate, more might be gained by way of submission |He commends himself to William.| than by way of aggression. Herbert therefore commended^[595] himself to William; he became his man; he engaged to hold Maine as a fief of Normandy, according to the ancient grant which Rolf had received from King Rudolf.^[596] Special terms, all favourable to the lord, were attached to the |Terms of the homage; William to have Maine, if Herbert died childless, and Margaret to marry Robert.| homage. If Herbert died childless, Duke William’s lordship was to be converted into immediate sovereignty; the Duke of the Normans was to become the Count of 199the Cenomannians.^[597] But, in order that the principality might still remain to the descendants of its ancient lords, Herbert’s sister Margaret was to be given in marriage to William’s young son Robert.^[598] William himself would thus be the only interloper; Robert would reign in right of his wife, and in the next generation, a descendant, if only in the female line, of Herbert Wake-Dog would again rule upon the steep of Le Mans.^[599]