CHAPTER IV

.

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF NORMANDY DURING THE TENTH CENTURY.[188]

The two foreign conquests of England which form the main subject of English history during the eleventh century were the work of nations which came originally of the same stock. First came the Danes themselves; [Sidenote: Normans and English originally kinsmen.] then came the Normans, the descendants of Danish or other Scandinavian settlers in Gaul. In mere blood therefore the Normans were allied in different degrees to all the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain, and they were very closely allied to the descendants of the Danish settlers in the North and East of England. And there can be little doubt that this original community of blood really had an important practical effect, and that the speedy fusion of Normans and English was greatly promoted by the fact that conquerors and conquered were in truth kinsmen. [Sidenote: Practical, but unrecognized, effects of this kindred.] But this influence was a purely silent one, and it was in no way acknowledged by those on whom it acted. Neither side thought at all of any kindred as existing between them. And to all appearance, no two nations of Western Europe could have been found which, in speech, feelings, [Sidenote: The Danes in England become Englishmen.] and manners, differed more widely from one another. The Danes who settled in England had been easily turned into Englishmen. Though the likeness of speech and institutions between the two nations has often been exaggerated, it was something not only real but palpable. It needed no historical research to find it out; it was something which men of both nations could feel for themselves. Among the earlier Teutonic settlers in Britain, we can well believe that there were some whose original kindred with the Teutons of Scandinavia was quite as close as their original kindred with some of their fellow Teutons in Britain. Anyhow, the languages of the two nations were closely allied; their institutions were very similar, those of England being doubtless the more advanced and regularly organized of the two. Religion formed the main difference between them; but the Danes in England soon adopted the Christian faith, and they were followed, after no very great interval, by their brethren in Denmark. Thus the Danish settler in England, when once baptized, readily became an Englishman, differing from the Angle or the Saxon only as the Angle and the Saxon differed from one another. This absorption into a kindred nation is less remarkable than the fact that the same people in another land adopted, with not much greater difficulty, a language and culture which was wholly alien to them. [Sidenote: The Danes in Gaul become Frenchmen.] For, as the Danes who settled in England became Englishmen, so the Danes who settled in Gaul equally became Frenchmen. The Normans of the eleventh century were men of Scandinavian descent who had cast away every outward trace of the language, manners, and feelings which made them kindred to Englishmen, and had adopted instead the language, manners, and feelings of Latin France. Before they landed in England, they had become Frenchmen; though still proud of the Norman name, they were content, as speakers of the French tongue, to call themselves Frenchmen in distinction from the Teutonic English.[189] No doubt the old Scandinavian element was still at work within them; it made them Frenchmen on a far nobler and grander scale than other Frenchmen, and it enabled them, when they had once settled in England, unconsciously but surely to become Englishmen. Still, when they followed their Duke to the conquest of England, they were in every outward respect no longer Scandinavians but Frenchmen. In a word, they were no longer _Northmen_ but _Normans_; the change in the form of the name aptly sets forth the change in those who bore it.[190]

§ 1. _General Effects of the Scandinavian Settlements in Gaul._

[Sidenote: Importance of the Norman settlement in Gaul.]

The settlement of the Northmen in Gaul, and their consequent change into Normans, is the great continental event of the first half of the tenth century; it challenges a place alongside of the restoration of the Empire by Otto [Sidenote: Comparison of the settlements of Rolf and Guthrum.] in the second half. Its beginnings indeed might seem small. A band of Scandinavian pirates settled in Northern Gaul, exactly as another band of Scandinavian pirates had, thirty years before, settled in Eastern Britain. In both cases the sovereign of the invaded land found it expedient to secure the safety of the rest of his dominions, by surrendering a portion of them to the invader and by requiring baptism and nominal homage as guaranties for peace and good neighbourhood. The settlement of Rolf in Neustria exactly answers to the settlement of Guthrum in East-Anglia. Charles the Simple and his counsellors may well have justified their act by quoting the example of Ælfred himself. But the results of the two events were widely different. The East-Anglian and Northumbrian Danes were fused into the general mass of Englishmen, and they were soon distinguished from other Englishmen by [Sidenote: Results of the Norman settlement on general history.] nothing more than mere provincial differences. But the settlement of Rolf in Neustria had far wider results. It affected the later history of all Europe. The Scandinavians in Gaul embraced the creed, the language, and the manners of their French neighbours, without losing a whit of their old Scandinavian vigour and love of adventure. The people thus formed became the foremost apostles alike of French chivalry and of Latin Christianity. They were the Saracens of Christendom, spreading themselves over every corner of the world and appearing in almost every [Sidenote: Their prominence in devotion,] character. They were the foremost in devotion, the most fervent votaries of their adopted creed, the most lavish in gifts to holy places at home, the most unwearied in pilgrimages to holy places abroad. And yet none knew better how to hold their own against Pope and prelate; the special children of the Church were as little disposed to unconditional obedience as the most stiffnecked [Sidenote: and in war.] of Ghibelines. And they were no less the foremost in war; they were mercenaries, crusaders, plunderers, conquerors; [Sidenote: Change of their tactics.] but they had changed their element and they had changed their mode of warfare. No Norman fleets now went forth on the errand of the old wikings; the mounted knight and the unerring bowman had taken the place of the elder tactics which made the fortress of shields invincible. North, south, east, the Norman lances were lifted; and they were lifted in the most opposite of causes. [Sidenote: Their exploits in the Eastern Empire,] Norman warriors pressed into the remotest East to guard Eastern Christendom against the first Turkish invader;[191] other Norman warriors were soon found to be the most dangerous enemies of Eastern Christendom in its own [Sidenote: 1071.] home. If the Norman fought by the side of Rômanos at [Sidenote: 1081.] Manzikert, he threatened the Empire of Alexios with overthrow at Dyrrhachion. His conquests brought with [Sidenote: in England,] them the most opposite results in different lands. To free [Sidenote: in Sicily.] England he gave a line of oppressors; to enslaved Sicily he gave a line of beneficent rulers. But to England he gave also a conquering nobility, which in a few generations became as truly English in England as it had become French in Normandy. If he overthrew our Harolds and our Waltheofs, he gave us a Fitzwalter and a Bigod to win back the rights for which Harold and Waltheof had fallen. In the arts of peace, like his Mahometan prototypes, he invented nothing; but he learned, adapted, improved, [Sidenote: Influence of the Normans on art; their welcome of foreigners.] and disseminated everything. He ransacked Europe for scholars, poets, theologians, and artists. At Rouen, at Palermo, and at Winchester, he welcomed merit in men of every race and every language. He guided Lanfranc and Anselm from Lombardy to Bec and from Bec to Canterbury. Art, under his auspices, produced alike the stern grandeur of Caen and Ely and the brilliant gorgeousness of Palermo and Monreale. In a word, the indomitable vigour of the Scandinavian, joined to the buoyant vivacity of the Gaul, produced the conquering [Sidenote: Disappearance of the Norman race,] and ruling race of Europe. And yet that race, as a race, has vanished. It has everywhere been absorbed by the [Sidenote: in Sicily,] races which it has conquered. From both Sicilies the Norman has vanished as though he had never been. And there too have vanished along with him the races which he used as his instruments, and which he alone taught to work in harmony. Greek, Saracen, and Norman have alike disappeared from the realm of good King William. [Sidenote: in Britain.] In our own land the fate of the Norman has been different. He abides in his lineage and in his works, but he is Norman no longer. He has settled in every corner of the British islands; into every corner of those islands he has carried with him the inborn qualities of his own race, but in every corner of those islands he has assumed the outward characteristics of the races among which he settled. The Scottish Bruce or the Irish Geraldine passed from Scandinavia to Gaul, from Gaul to England, from England to his own portion of our islands; but at each migration he ceased to be Scandinavian, French, or English; his patriotism was in each case transferred to his new country, and his historic being belongs wholly to the home which he had last won. In England itself the Norman has vanished from sight no less than from Apulia and insular Sicily. He has sunk beneath the silent and passive influence of a race less brilliant but more enduring than his own. The Norman has vanished from the world, but he has indeed left a name [Sidenote: Famous men of Norman descent.] behind him. Of him came Richard the Fearless and William the Bastard; of him came that Robert whose foot was first placed upon the ransomed battlements of the [Sidenote: 1099.] Holy City, and that mightier Robert who in one year [Sidenote: 1086.] beheld the Cæsars of East and West flee before him.[192] [Sidenote: Frederick the Second.] And of his stock, far more truly than of the stock of Imperial Swabia, came the Wonder of his own and of all succeeding ages,[193]—poet, scholar, warrior, legislator—the terror and the marvel of Christendom and of Islam—the foe alike of Roman Pontiffs and of Moslem Sultans—who won alike the golden crown of Rome and the thorny crown of Salem—dreaded in one world as the foremost champion of Christ, cursed in another as the apostate votary of Mahomet—the gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless, and the godless Frederick.

[Sidenote: Effects of the Norman settlement on French history.]

But on no country was the effect of the Scandinavian settlement in Gaul so deep as it was on Gaul itself. It may sound like a strange paradox, but there can be little doubt that it was the settlement of the Northern pirates which finally made Gaul French in the modern sense. Their settlement was made during the transitional period of West-Frankish history. The modern French nation and language were just beginning to appear. Paris, not yet the capital, had been found to be the most important military post in the kingdom, and the lords of Paris had shown themselves to be its most vigorous defenders. [Sidenote: Period of struggle in West-France. 887–987.] The tenth century was a period of struggle between the Teutonic and the Romance tongues, between Laon and Paris, between the descendants of Charles the Great and the descendants of Robert the Strong.[194] The Norman stepped into the scene of confusion, and he finally decided the quarrel in favour of the French dynasty of [Sidenote: Origin of modern France.] Paris against the Frankish dynasty of Laon. Modern France, we must ever remember, has no part or lot in either of the two dynasties whose associations she so persistently usurps, the Karlings and their predecessors the Merwings. Till the ninth century there was no geographical division which at all answered to modern France.[195] Charles the Great more than once contemplated a division of his Empire; but not one of his proposed divisions coincided even in the roughest way with the limits of the [Sidenote: First glimpse of modern France.] kingdom of the Valois and the Bourbons. Modern France makes its first indistinct appearance in the division which was made on the death of Lewis the Pious. Then, for the [Sidenote: 839.] first time, Northern and Southern Gaul, Neustria and Aquitaine, were united to make the kingdom of Charles the Bald. The kingdom thus formed was the first germ of modern France. It roughly answers to its geographical extent, and, what is still more to the purpose, we see that a new nation, with a new language, was springing up [Sidenote: 843.] within it. The final settlement of Verdun confirmed the existence of the new kingdom. The Empire was then divided into three kingdoms, the Western, the Eastern, and the narrow debateable ground between them, known as Lotharingia. This last kingdom fell to pieces, while the kingdoms on each side of it grew, flourished, and contended for its fragments. These are the two kingdoms of the East and the West-Franks, which we are already sorely tempted to call by the familiar names of Germany and France.

[Illustration: GAUL IN THE TENTH CENTURY.]

FOR THE DELEGATES OF THE CLARENDON PRESS.

Neustria and Aquitaine were never again formally separated [Sidenote: 1360.] till the Peace of Bretigny in the fourteenth century.[196] [Sidenote: Union under Charles the Third. 885–887.] Neustria and Austrasia, the kingdoms of the Western and the Eastern Franks, were never again united except during the ephemeral reign of Charles the Third or the Fat. That Emperor, the last who reigned over both the Eastern and the Western Franks,[197] was deposed by common consent [Sidenote: Division of the Empire. 888.] of his various Kingdoms. Four kingdoms now appeared, answering to those of Germany, Italy, France, and Burgundy. And now a more important step still was taken [Sidenote: Kingdoms of East and West-Franks.] in the direction of modern France. The Western Franks took to themselves a new dynasty and a new capital. Since the death of the great Charles, the city on the [Sidenote: Growing importance of Paris.] Seine, the old home of Julian, had been gradually rising in consequence. It plays an important part during the reign of his son Lewis the Pious. Characteristically [Sidenote: 830.] enough, Paris first appears in Carolingian history as the scene of a conspiracy against her Teutonic master. There it was that the rebels assembled who seized and imprisoned, [Sidenote: Paris the chief bulwark against the Northmen.] and at last deposed, the pious Emperor.[198] Later in the ninth century Paris won for herself a more honourable renown; she became the bulwark of Gaul against the inroads of the Northmen. The pirates soon found out the importance of the position of the city in any attack or defence of Gaul on her northern side. The Seine, and Paris upon the Seine, now became the great objects of Scandinavian attack. Thrice in the reign of Charles the Bald did the [Sidenote: Formation of the March of Paris. 861.] invaders enter the city. At last a new power was formed, chiefly with the object of defending Gaul from their attack. A large district was granted in fief by Charles the Bald to Robert the Strong, as a march or border territory, to be defended against the invading Northman and the rebellious Breton. And of this march, under Robert’s son Odo, Paris became the head. The power thus formed was destined to a career which seems not unusual for such frontier districts. Rome herself, then still the home of Empire, had begun her own career as a march of the Latin against the Etruscan. So, in later times, the Mark of Brandenburg, the outlying defence of Germany against the Slave, and the Eastern Mark, her outlying defence against the Magyar, have, under the names of Prussia and Austria, eclipsed the older names of Saxony, Swabia, Bavaria, and Eastern Francia. So it was with this outlying march granted to Count Robert by Charles the Bald. Paris now became a centre, a capital; if not a royal, at least a ducal, city. The fief of Robert grew into the duchy of France, and the duchy of France grew into the kingdom. Robert himself became the forefather of the first Capets, of the Valois, and of the Bourbons. [Sidenote: Paris defended by Odo. 885–886.] The great siege of Paris by the Northmen, and its gallant defence by Count Odo, or Eudes, the son of Robert, greatly raised the position alike of the city and of its lord. On the deposition of Charles the Third ineffectual attempts were indeed made on behalf of other candidates, but, in the [Sidenote: Odo elected King. 888.] end, Count Odo was elected and consecrated to what now begins to be called the Kingdom of France, a kingdom over [Sidenote: 1848.] which his descendants were still reigning thirty years ago.[199]

Odo of Paris then became “Rex Francorum,” in a sense which, as applied to his family, we cannot better represent than by the title of “King of the French.” His own family was of German descent;[200] but, throughout the following century, his dynasty represents, perhaps quite unconsciously, the growing French nationality, just as the dynasty of Laon represents the decaying Teutonic element. The Dukes and Kings of Paris spoke French long before the end of the tenth century, while the Karlings of Laon still spoke their ancestral Frankish.[201] The hundred years’ struggle between the Carolingian house at Laon and the Capetian[202] house at Paris now begins. This period falls naturally into two stages. In the first stage, the lords of Paris directly disputed the crown with the heirs of Charles; in the second, they preferred the position of kingmakers to that of Kings. Odo was elected as the hero of the siege of Paris, the true champion of Gaul and of [Sidenote: Charles the Simple and Robert.] Christendom. But he soon found a rival in Charles the Simple, whose only claim was the doubtful belief that the blood of his great namesake flowed in his veins. It was in the course of his troubled reign that the Scandinavian invaders made that settlement in Gaul which grew into the Norman duchy. It was at his hands that the first Norman Duke received the investiture of his dominions. But the settlement was made at the immediate cost, not of the Carolingian King at Laon, but of the Capetian Duke at Paris. It was from France, in the strictest sense, that Normandy was cut off. The lord of Rouen now stepped in as a kind of umpire between the two rival powers, and throughout the whole struggle of the century no question was of greater importance than whether the power of Normandy should be arrayed on the side of Paris or on the side of Laon. We have now to record the history of the Norman settlement itself, and the history of the Normans in Gaul during the period of struggle, and to show how important an element they were in determining the controversy in favour of the competitor most foreign to their own ancient blood and speech.

§ 2. _Settlement and Reign of Rolf._ 911–927.

[Sidenote: Comparison of the Danish ravages in England and within the Empire.]

The history of the ravages of the Northmen within the Empire, and of their final settlement in Northern Gaul, reads like the tale of their ravages and settlements in our own island told again. Their incursions into the two countries were often closely connected. The same armies and the same leaders are often heard of in Britain and in Gaul, and each country drew a certain advantage from the sufferings of the other. Each often enjoyed a season of comparative rest while the other was undergoing some unusually fearful devastation. The two stories are nearly the same, except that the Gaulish part of the tale especially reads, so to speak, like one long reign of Æthelred from the very beginning. There is nothing at all answering to our long succession of great and victorious Kings from Ælfred onwards. That such was the case was not wholly the fault of the princes who reigned in any part of the Empire. The power of the great Charles had kept the heathen in awe, but it is not granted to every man to [Sidenote: The progress of the Danes favoured by the divisions in the Empire,] be a Charles or even an Æthelstan. When the great Emperor was gone, when the terror of his name was forgotten, ceaseless internal divisions made his Empire an easy prey. Those divisions were themselves inevitable, but they brought with them their inevitable consequences; the land lay open, almost defenceless, before the enemy. Indeed the divisions were actually more fatal because they [Sidenote: and by the partial unity which it retained.] were not complete; the very amount of unity which the Empire still kept proved a further source of weakness. The Empire did not at once split up into national kingdoms, divided by ascertained boundaries, each of them actuated by a national feeling and capable of national resistance to an invader. The state of things was not unlike the elder state of things in the days of the tyrants or provincial Emperors. In those days each ambitious general gave himself out as Cæsar and Augustus; he aspired to the whole Empire, and he held such portions of it as he could win and keep. So now every King was a King of the Franks, ready to hold so much of the common Frankish realm as he could win and keep. Between potentates of this kind there could hardly be either the same formal alliances, or the same sort of international good understanding, which may exist between really distinct nations, each of which is assured of its own position. None of the rival Kings could feel sure that any other King would help him against the common enemy. None of them could feel sure that some other King might not seize the opportunity of a Danish inroad to deprive him of his kingdom, or even that he might not league himself with the heathen invaders against him. It followed therefore that the invaders never encountered the whole strength of the Empire, that they seldom encountered the whole strength even of any one of its component kingdoms. The Carolingian princes, as far as mere vigour and ability goes, have been grossly and unfairly depreciated.[203] The truth is that most of them were men of by no means contemptible natural gifts, but that they were, partly by their own fault, partly by force of circumstances, placed in a position in which they could not use their real vigour and ability to any good purpose. Thus the whole second half of the ninth century is taken up with almost uninterrupted incursions of the Scandinavian pirates on the whole coast of both the Eastern [Sidenote: Position of Germany,] and the Western kingdoms. Germany indeed, owing to the inland position of the greater part of her territory, remained comparatively unscathed. She suffered far more from the Magyars than she suffered from the Northmen. Still the whole Saxon and Frisian coast was as cruelly ravaged as any other part of Europe, and the great rivers afforded the heathens the means of making their way far [Sidenote: Gaul,] into the interior of the country. The Western Kingdom, with its far greater extent of sea-board, suffered far more [Sidenote: and Italy.] severely than the Eastern. Even the Mediterranean coasts of Burgundy and Italy were not wholly spared,[204] though in those seas the Northman was less to be dreaded than the Saracen. In all these countries we find the same kind of devastations which we find in England. In the course of the history, we come across many noble examples of [Sidenote: Instances of resistance to the invaders.] local resistance to the invaders, and several examples of considerable victories gained over them. But we nowhere find any such steady check put to their progress as marks the first half of the tenth century in England. That is to say, no Carolingian prince had the means, even if he had the ability, to carry out the vigorous policy of Eadward the Elder. Yet it would be unjust to withhold their due share of honour from several kings and princes who at [Sidenote: Victory of Arnulf, 891;] least did what they could. The Emperor Arnulf in the [Sidenote: of Lewis, 881.] East,[205] the young King Lewis in the West,[206] gained glorious and, for the moment, important victories over the invaders, and the triumph of Lewis is commemorated in one of the earliest surviving efforts of High-German poetry.[207] The great siege of Paris and its defence by Odo have already been spoken of as among the determining causes which led in the end to the change of dynasty. But such victories were, after all, mere momentary checks; they delivered one part of the country at the expense of another, and the evil went on till it was gradually cured by various indirect [Sidenote: The ravages cease as the Northmen settle and become French.] means. As in England, the Northmen gradually changed from mere plunderers into conquerors and settlers. Instead of ravaging the whole country, they occupied portions of it. Thus they gradually changed, not only into members of the general commonwealth of Christendom but into Frenchmen, distinguished from other Frenchmen only by the large share of their inborn Scandinavian vigour which [Sidenote: No attempt at political conquest, as in England.] they still kept. As the North became more settled and Christianized, as it began to form a political system of its own, the mere piratical incursions gradually ceased, but the attempt at a complete conquest of the whole country, which was successfully tried in England, was never attempted in Gaul. No King of all Denmark or of all Norway ever tried to displace a King of the West-Franks and to reign in his stead over his kingdom. The insular position of Britain, the original kindred between Danes and Englishmen, the actual occupation of so large a portion of the country by earlier Danish settlers, all helped to make such a design possible in England, while even the powers of Swegen or Cnut could hardly have succeeded in carrying out such a scheme in Gaul.

[Sidenote: Scattered settlements of the Northmen in Gaul.]

The Northmen settled largely in Gaul, but they nowhere occupied any such large unbroken sweep of territory as that which became the _Denalagu_ in England. No such large extent of coast lay so invitingly open to them, and it does not appear that there was any one Danish invasion of Gaul on so great a scale as the great Danish invasion of England under Ingwar and Hubba. The Danish settlements in Gaul were therefore scattered, while in England they were continuous. The Danes in England therefore, though they gradually became Englishmen, still kept on a distinct local existence and local feelings, and they continued to form a distinct and important element in the country. But the Danish settlers in Gaul, holding a district here and a district there, sank much more completely into the general mass of the inhabitants. Some of these settlements were a good way inland, like Hasting’s settlement at Chartres.[208] Ragnald too occupied, at least for a while, the country at the mouth of the Loire.[209] But these settlements led to no permanent results. One alone among the Scandinavian settlements in Gaul was destined to play a real

## part in history. This was the settlement of Rolf or Rollo at Rouen.

[Sidenote: The Rouen settlement; its exceptional importance.]

This settlement, the kernel of the great Norman Duchy, had, I need hardly say, results of its own and an importance of its own which distinguish it from every other Danish colony in Gaul. But it is well to bear in mind that it was only one colony among several, and that, when the grant was made, it was probably not expected to be more lasting or more important than the others. But, while the others soon lost any distinctive character, the Rouen settlement lasted; it grew, it became a power in Europe, and in Gaul it became even a determining power. It is perhaps the unexpected developement of the Rouen settlement, together with the peculiar turn which Norman policy soon took, which accounts for the bitterness of hatred with which the Northmen of Rouen are spoken of by the French writers down to at least the end of the tenth century. By that time they had long been Christian in faith and French in speech, and yet the most truly French writer of the age can never bring himself to speak of them by any other name than that of the _Pirates_.[210] To this feeling we see nothing at all analogous in English history. We see traces of strong local diversities, sometimes rising into local jealousies, between the Danes in England and their Anglian and Saxon neighbours; but there is nothing to compare with the full bitterness of hatred which breathes alike in the hostile rhetoric of Richer and in the ominous silence of the discreet Flodoard.

[Sidenote: Rolf or Rollo the founder of the settlement.]

The lasting character of his work at once proves that the founder of the Rouen colony was a great man; but he is a great man who must be content to be judged in the main by the results of his actions. The authentic history of Rolf, Rollo, or Rou,[211] may be summed up in a very short space. We have no really contemporary narrative of his actions, unless a few meagre and uncertain entries in some of the Frankish annals may be thought to deserve that name. I cannot look on the narrative of our one Norman writer, put together, from tradition and under courtly influence, a hundred years after the settlement, as at all entitled to implicit belief. Even less faith is due to Northern Sagas put together at a still later time. The French authors again are themselves not contemporary,[212] and their notices are exceedingly brief. I therefore do not feel myself at all called upon to narrate in detail the exploits which are attributed to Rolf in the time before his final settlement. He is described as having been [Sidenote: Earlier exploits of Rolf. 876–911?] engaged in the calling of a wiking both in Gaul and in Britain for nearly forty years before his final occupation of Rouen,[213] and he is said to have entered into friendly relations with a King Æthelstan in England. This Æthelstan has been confounded, in the teeth of all chronology, with our great Æthelstan, but it is clear that the person intended is Guthrum-Æthelstan of East-Anglia.[214] In all this there is nothing improbable, but we can hardly look upon it as certain. And the exploits attributed to Rolf are spread over so many years,[215] that we cannot help suspecting that the deeds of other chieftains have been attributed to him, perhaps that two leaders of the same name have been confounded. Among countless expeditions in Gaul, Britain, and Germany, we find Rolf charged with an earlier visit to Rouen,[216] with a share in the great siege of Paris,[217] and with an occupation or destruction of Bayeux.[218] But it is not till we have got some way into the reign of Charles the Simple, not till we have gone through several years of the tenth century, that Rolf begins clearly to stand out as a personal historic [Sidenote: Rolf in possession of Rouen. 911.] reality. He now appears in possession of Rouen, or of whatever remains of that city had outlived his former harryings. From that starting-point he attacked Chartres. [Sidenote: Defeat of Rolf at Chartres. 911.] Beneath the walls of that city he underwent a defeat at the hands of the Dukes Rudolf of Burgundy and Robert of Paris, which was attributed to the wonder-working powers of the great local relic, the under-garment of the Virgin.[219] But this victory, like most victories over the Northmen, had no lasting effect. Rolf was not dislodged from Rouen, nor was his career of havoc and conquest at all seriously checked. But, just as in the case of Guthrum in England, his evident disposition to settle in the country suggested an attempt to change him from a wasting enemy into a [Sidenote: Peace of Clair-on-Epte. 912.] peaceable neighbour. The Peace of Clair-on-Epte was the fellow of the Peace of Wedmore, and King Charles and Duke Robert of Paris most likely had the Peace of Wedmore before their eyes. [Sidenote: Comparison with the Peace of Wedmore.] A definite district was granted to Rolf, for which he became the King’s vassal; he was admitted to baptism, and received the King’s natural daughter in marriage. And, just as in the English case, the territory granted was not part of the King’s immediate dominions. No part of Wessex was granted to Guthrum; he was merely confirmed in the possession of the lands which he had already conquered at the expense of the [Sidenote: Advantage of the cession to the Crown.] other English kingdoms. Ælfred, as I have already shown,[220] though he lost as an over-lord, gained as an immediate sovereign by the closer incorporation of a large part of Mercia with his own kingdom. Charles also gained by the settlement of Rolf, though certainly not in the same direct way. His immediate territories were not increased, but they were at least not diminished; the grant to Rolf was made at the cost, not of the Frankish [Sidenote: The cession made at the expense of the Duchy of Paris.] King at Laon but of the French Duke at Paris. The district ceded to Rolf was part of the great Neustrian march or duchy which had been granted to Odo of Paris, and which was now held by his brother Duke Robert. Rouen was thus, from the very beginning, something taken away from Paris, and which cut off Paris from the sea. Still the Parisian duchy was not so utterly broken up as the kingdoms of Northumberland, East-Anglia, and Mercia had been; the King had therefore no opportunity of annexing any part of the dominions of Robert, as Ælfred had of annexing a large part of the dominions of Burhred. Still Charles was strengthened indirectly. Duke Robert had to yield to manifest destiny. He had lost Rouen, and his only way to keep Paris was to enter into friendly relations with the new lord of Rouen. [Sidenote: Prominent agency of Duke Robert.] Robert was therefore the chief mover in the whole business; he was Rolf’s godfather at his baptism and gave him his own Christian name. The Duke thus made the most of his loss; but to the King the transaction was a distinct gain. He got two vassals instead of one, two vassals whose relations to one another were likely to be dangerous, and between whom it might often be easy to play off one against the other. Events soon proved that the King had gained a far more faithful vassal in the new proselyte to Christianity and French culture than he already possessed in the turbulent and dangerous lord of Paris. At a later time we shall find the relations between Laon, Rouen, and Paris altogether changed; but for a while the Northmen of the Seine were the firmest support [Sidenote: The Normans the chief support of Charles the Simple.] of the Carolingian throne. During all the later warfare of the reign of Charles the Simple, Rolf clave steadily to the cause of the lord whose man he had become. The Duke of Rouen had no object in opposing the King of Laon, while, by supporting him, he might easily gain an increase of territory at the expense of his nearer neighbours.

[Sidenote: Tale of Rolf’s homage to Charles.]

The legendary details of Rolf’s homage to Charles are familiar to every one. It is a well-known tale how Rolf was called on to kiss the feet of his benefactor, how he refused with an oath, how he bade one of his followers to perform the degrading ceremony in his stead, how the rude Northman did indeed kiss the King’s foot, but only by lifting it to his own mouth to the imminent danger of the monarch’s seat on his throne.[221] The tale may rest on a true tradition, or it may be a mere invention of Norman vanity; in either case alike it sets forth the original spirit of the men who were to become the noblest representatives of the system within whose pale they were now entering. [Sidenote: Rolf the vassal of Charles.] But whatever was the exact form of the homage, there can be no reasonable doubt that Rolf became, in the full [Sidenote: Exaggerated claims of independence made] sense of the word, the vassal of King Charles.[222] The interested and extravagant Norman writers constantly assert an entire independence on the part of the colonists [Sidenote: by the Norman writers.] and their chief. The land was granted, but it was granted as a pure allodial possession; the Duke of the Normans, though he did not bear the kingly title, nevertheless held, as a King, the monarchy of the Norman land.[223] If anything, it was King Charles who swore fealty to Rolf rather than Rolf who swore fealty to King Charles. All this we may safely put aside,

## partly as the deliberate creation of Norman vanity, partly as the

inflated rhetoric of an author who was writing as the mere laureate of the Norman court. The historian’s own tale of the homage, with its real or mythical incidents, is of itself enough to upset his constitutional theories. That Rolf did homage is plain enough, and, on Rolf’s death, his successor in the duchy [Sidenote: Little practical submission implied in the homage.] renewed the homage. But I must again repeat the caution how little of real subjection is implied in such vassalage at any time, and how purely nominal it became whenever the lord was weak and the vassal strong. Rolf became King Charles’s man and King Charles became Rolf’s lord; but the obligation, after all, amounted to little more than an obligation of mutual defence; all internal sovereignty over the ceded land passed to Rolf without reserve. In the hands of Charles the Great or of Æthelstan such an over-lordship as this was a reality; in the hands of Æthelred or of Charles the Simple it was a mere name. Yet Rolf undoubtedly proved a really faithful vassal to King Charles. No doubt his interest happily coincided with his duty. Still we can well believe that in a new Christian and a new vassal, and a man evidently disposed honestly to do his duty in his new state of life, the sense of right and wrong, in this as in other respects, may well have been far stronger than it was in Dukes of Paris or Burgundy who had long been used to form and to break such engagements with equal ease.

It must not be thought that the district now granted to [Sidenote: Extent of the territory granted to Rolf.] Rolf took in the whole of the later duchy of Normandy. Rouen was the heart of the new state, which took in lands on both sides of the Seine. From the Epte to the sea was its undoubted extent from the south-east to the north. But the western frontier is much less clearly defined. On the one hand, the Normans always claimed a certain not very well defined superiority over Britanny as part of the original grant. On the other hand, it is quite certain that Rolf did not obtain immediate possession of what was afterwards the noblest portion of the heritage of his [Sidenote: The Bessin and the Côtentin later acquisitions.] descendants. The _Bessin_, the district of Bayeux, was not won till several years later, and the _Côtentin_, the peninsula of Coutances, was not won till after the death of Rolf. The district granted to Rolf was doubtless, as in the case of Guthrum, mainly determined by the extent of his actual possessions. If, as is most likely, the Dive was the western boundary, the ceded territory answered to nothing in earlier geography, civil or ecclesiastical. It was larger than the diocese of Rouen; it was very much smaller [Sidenote: No geographical name for the “Terra Northmannorum.”] than the province. As a new division, it had—sharing therein the fate of Germany and France—no recognized geographical name. Its inhabitants were the Northmen, the Northmen of the Seine, the Northmen of Rouen. The land itself was, till near the end of the century, simply the Land of the Northmen,[224] a land capable of indefinite extension. So in Britain the vague description of the _Denalagu_ supplanted the ancient names and boundaries of more than one Old-English kingdom. The title of the chief was as little fixed as the name of his dominions; he is Prince, Duke, Count, Marquess, Patrician,[225] according to the taste of each writer. In the mouths of vigorous and plain-spoken enemies his people are only the Pirates, and himself the leader of the Pirates, down to the end of the century.[226]

[Sidenote: Internal government of Rolf known only from its results.]

Of Rolf’s internal government, of the laws and institutions of the new state, of the details of the settlement of the country, we know absolutely nothing. Norman tradition sets Rolf before us as the mirror of princes, as the type of that class of ruler which that age most valued, the stern, speedy, impartial, minister of justice.[227] But we may judge of the reign of Rolf from its results. What Normandy became shows plainly enough that its first prince must have been a worthy forerunner of our own Cnut. Once settled in the land, he seems to have become as eager for its welfare as he had before been for its devastation. He must have promoted the general adoption, not only of the religion, but of the speech and manners of his neighbours. Otherwise Normandy could never have played the part which it did play even in the next reign, nor could his capital have become so thoroughly French as it was within a short time after his [Sidenote: No records of early Norman history.] death. But of the early institutions and early internal history of Normandy all records have perished, or, more probably, no records ever existed. We have no chronicles, no charters, nothing whatever to guide us but the results. [Sidenote: The settlement probably analogous to the Danish settlement in England.] From such indications as we have we may perhaps infer that the settlement was, on the whole, of much the same kind as the Danish settlement in England.[228] We cannot conceive any systematic extirpation or expulsion of the older inhabitants, such as accompanied the English Conquest of Britain. At the same time we can well believe that, after so many years of systematic havoc at the hands of the wikings, large districts may have stood almost as empty and untilled as if such systematic [Sidenote: Evidence from the peasant revolt. 997.] extirpation or expulsion had taken place. But it is certain that, a hundred years after the conquest, there was a peasantry at once oppressed enough and powerful enough to rise in a well-organized revolt.[229] Though in Normandy, as in England, the condition of the private settlers is likely to have gradually sunk, still we cannot believe that any descendants of the original conquerors could, in so short a time, have been brought down to such utter bondage. These peasants must have been mainly the descendants of the original Gauls, with whatever intermixture of Roman and Teutonic elements the successive conquests of the country had brought with them. [Sidenote: Probable position of the races in the country.] Probably the landowners, great and small, were almost universally of Scandinavian descent, while the remnant of the original population had been brought down to a state of serfdom. It is certain that there is nothing in English history at all answering to this insurrection till we come to the great revolt of the villains of the fourteenth century. This difference seems to point to a wholly different condition of the lower orders in the two countries. [Sidenote: Vestiges of the Danish language.] As regards the language of Normandy, the Danish tongue has utterly vanished out of the land; it had vanished out of the greater part of the land even before we reach any contemporary records; still considerable vestiges, strangely disguised as they are, may to this day be made out in the local nomenclature. In Northern Gaul, just as in Eastern England, many a place lost its name, and took a new name from its new Scandinavian lord. Here and there also we find descriptive names, meaningless in French, but which are, with a slight effort, intelligible in English.[230] These may, according to their geographical position, be either remnants of the Danish speech of Rolf and his followers or remnants of the speech of an earlier Teutonic settlement in part of the country of which I shall presently have to speak. Of the early political condition of the duchy we have absolutely no [Sidenote: Normandy not an absolute monarchy.] account. On the absence of such information one illustrious inquirer[231] has grounded a theory that Normandy had no assembly, no Parliament, no Estates of any kind, but that the Duke, Marquess, Patrician, or whatever he is to be called, ruled without any restraint on his personal will. I confess that I find it impossible to accept a theory so utterly repugnant to the analogy of every other Teutonic people. If there be any truth in Norman tradition, the followers of Rolf, as long as they stayed on ship-board, acknowledged no lord, and professed principles of the most extreme democratic equality.[232] However this may be, it is not likely that, as soon as they were settled on land, they should at once cast away those free institutions which were common to them with all the [Sidenote: Instances of the action of the States.] other branches of the common stock. And there is evidence enough to show that an assembly of some kind was often consulted from the very beginnings of the Norman state, and especially that the transfer of the ducal crown from one prince to another was effected with much the same forms as the same change would have called for in England.[233] At the same time I fully admit that to fix the exact constitution of the Norman assembly at this early time would be still harder than to fix the exact constitution of an English Witenagemót. The little light which we have may perhaps enable us to infer that it put on an aristocratic character almost from the beginning. It has also been supposed that, unlike perhaps every other assembly of the kind, it contained no ecclesiastical members;[234] but if this was the case in the earlier days of the duchy, the rule had clearly been relaxed before the reign of the great William.

[Sidenote: Rolf’s attachment to the Carolingian party.]

We must remember that we are now in the very thick of the struggle between the two dynasties of Laon and Paris. The Norman stepped in as if sent to be the fated arbiter between the two. When Rolf made his settlement, Charles the Simple was the acknowledged King of the West-Franks; from him he received his grant; with him he entered into the mutual engagements of lord and vassal. With him and his dynasty Rolf sided, and he probably saved the Carolingian crown from utter overthrow, just as a change of policy in his successors finally decided the [Sidenote: End of the Karlings in Germany. 912.] same controversy the other way. It must be remembered that, in the year of Rolf’s settlement, the Carolingian line came to an end in the Eastern Kingdom. The East-Frankish Duke Conrad was now raised to the Teutonic throne, and was presently followed by Henry of Saxony. But Lotharingia refused to acknowledge either of the Kings so chosen. The border land appears throughout our history as ever fluctuating between the Eastern and Western kingdoms. But Lotharingian policy was dictated by one intelligible rule, that of unswerving loyalty to the Carolingian house, wherever its representative might be [Sidenote: Lotharingia attaches itself to Charles the Simple.] found. So now Lotharingia transferred its allegiance to the single Karling who still kept the royal title, and acknowledged the King of Laon as its lord. The power of Charles was thus directly strengthened to the East, while it was indirectly strengthened by the grant to the Northmen in the West. This increase of power on the part of Charles probably led to the conspiracy which soon broke out against [Sidenote: Robert of Paris chosen King. 922.] him, and which issued in the election of Robert of Paris as an opposition King. In the wars which followed, Charles [Sidenote: Rolf sides with Charles.] rested to a great extent on the arms of the Northmen, both Rolf’s settled Northmen of the Seine and the Northmen of the Loire, the followers of Ragnald, who had not [Sidenote: Robert killed at Soissons. 923.] yet won so distinct a local habitation.[235] When Robert was killed at Soissons, his son Hugh the Great refused the crown for himself. He was known as Duke of the French, [Sidenote: Rudolf of Burgundy chosen.] and, satisfied with that title, he bestowed the kingly name on his brother-in-law Rudolf, Duke of French Burgundy.[236] [Sidenote: Imprisonment of Charles at Peronne. 923.] Charles was afterwards treacherously seized and imprisoned by Rudolf’s fellow-conspirator Herbert Count of Vermandois, in the same fortress in which in after days a King [Sidenote: 1468.] of France was imprisoned by a Duke of Burgundy.[237] Rolf’s combined policy and loyalty led him to refuse all allegiance [Sidenote: War between Normandy and France. 923–927.] to the usurpers. A war of several years followed between him and the French of Paris under Duke Hugh. The horrors of warfare were not felt on one side only. The Norman land was twice invaded, and Rolf’s fortress of Eu, its chief defence on its north-eastern border, was taken by storm.[238] But these incursions were more than repaid in kind; a large _Danegeld_ was more than once paid to Rolf, and was levied throughout France and Burgundy,[239] and the [Sidenote: Acquisition of Maine and Bayeux. 924.] general results of the war left Rolf in possession of a most important increase of territory. He obtained the district of Bayeux; he obtained also a more fully recognized superiority over Britanny, and it is also distinctly asserted that [Sidenote: Abdication [927?] and death [932?] of Rolf.] he obtained a grant of the land of Maine.[240] Rolf did not long survive these successes; the year of his death is uncertain; but it seems most likely that, by the consent—perhaps at the demand—of the estates of his principality, he resigned [Sidenote: William Longsword succeeds, and does homage to Charles. 927.] the government in favour of his son William, surnamed Longsword.[241] A change in the policy of Herbert of Vermandois had restored Charles to freedom and to some nominal measure of authority. The new prince of the Northmen therefore paid to the true Carolingian King the homage which his father had paid before him, but which he had steadily refused to the Parisian and Burgundian pretenders.

[Sidenote: Value of Rolf’s last acquisition.]

The acquisition of the territory which this last war added to the dominions of Rolf was inferior in importance only to the original acquisition of Rouen. And it is only on the ground of its being the original acquisition, the beginning and starting-point of the whole settlement, that the possession of Rouen itself can be looked on as more important than the possession of the noble region which [Sidenote: Maine.] was now added to the Land of the Northmen. Maine indeed was the most precarious of all possessions. The struggles for its retention and recovery, the adventures of its gallant Counts and of its no less gallant citizens, form no small part of the later history of the Norman [Sidenote: The _Bessin_.] duchy. But the acquisition of Bayeux and its territory gave Normandy all that created and preserved the genuine and Norman character; it gave her the cities which are adorned with the noblest works of the days of her independence; it gave her the spot which was to be the earliest home of her mightiest son. Caen, around whose castle and whose abbeys so much of Norman and French history was to centre—Bayeux itself, the see of the mighty Odo, where the tale of the Conquest of England still lives in the pictured history which forms its most authentic record—Cerisy, with its stern and solemn minster, the characteristic work of the Conqueror’s father—Falaise, immortal as the birthplace of the Conqueror himself—all these historic spots lie within the region which the last warfare of the reclaimed wiking had added to the Norman land. [Sidenote: The Saxon colony at Bayeux;] Bayeux itself is a city whose history has an especial claim on the attention of Englishmen. Nowhere, out of the Old-Saxon and Frisian lands, can we find another district of continental Europe which is so truly a brother-land of our own. The district of Bayeux, occupied by a Saxon colony in the latest days of the old Roman Empire,[242] occupied again by a Scandinavian colony as the result of its conquest by Rolf, has retained to this day a character which distinguishes it from every other Romance-speaking [Sidenote: its lasting influence on the district.] portion of the continent. The Saxons of Bayeux kept their name and their distinct being under the Frankish dominion;[243] we can hardly doubt that the Scandinavian settlers found some parts at least of the district still Teutonic, and that nearness of blood and speech exercised over them the same influence which the same causes exercised over the Scandinavian settlers in England. Danes and Saxons were welded together into one Teutonic people, and they kept their Teutonic language and character long after Rouen had become, in speech at least, no less French than Paris. With their old Teutonic speech, the second body of settlers seem to have largely kept their old Teutonic faith. We shall presently find Bayeux the centre of a heathen and Danish party in the duchy, in opposition to Rouen, the centre of the new speech and the new creed. The blood of the inhabitants of the Bessin must be composed of nearly the same elements, mingled in nearly the same proportions, as the blood of the inhabitants of the Danish districts of England.[244] To this day there is no Romance-speaking region of the continent in which an Englishman feels himself so thoroughly at home as in this old Saxon and Danish land. In every part of Normandy, as compared with France or Aquitaine,[245] the Englishman feels himself at home; but in the district of Bayeux he seems hardly to have left his own island. The kindred speech indeed is gone; but everything else remains. The land is decidedly not French; men, beasts, everything, are distinctively of a grander and better type than their fellows in the mere French districts; the general aspect of the land, its fields, its hedges, all have an English look. And no contrast can be greater than that which may be often seen between the tall, vigorous, English-looking, Norman yeoman, out of whose mouth we instinctively feel that the common mother-tongue ought to come, and the French soldier, whose stature, whose colour, whose every feature, proclaims him to be a man of another race, and whose presence proclaims no less unmistakeably that the glory of Normandy has passed away.

§ 3. _Reign of William Longsword._ 927–943.

Rolf, the converted pirate, died, according to his Norman [Sidenote: Religion of Rolf.] admirers, in the odour of sanctity.[246] According to the wild reports of his enemies, he mingled the two religions, and, while making gifts to the Christian churches, offered Christian captives in sacrifice to his Scandinavian idols. Such a strange confusion is possible at some earlier stage of his career; but we need much better evidence than we have to convince us that he was guilty of any such doings just before his death.[247] But, whatever traces of heathendom may have cloven to Rolf himself, it is certain that his son [Sidenote: Birth and education of William Longsword.] William Longsword, half a Frenchman by birth, was almost wholly a Frenchman in feeling. His mother was French; but he did not spring from the union of the converted Northman with the royal blood of the West-Franks. Gisla bore no children to her already aged husband, and William was the son of a consort who both preceded and followed her in his affections. She was known as Popa, whether that designation was really a baptismal name or, as some hint, a mere name of endearment. She was the daughter of a certain Count Berengar, and was carried off as a captive by Rolf when he took Bayeux in his pirate days.[248] Her brother, Bernard Count of Senlis, plays an important part in the reigns of his nephew and great-nephew. Popa and her son seem to have stood in a doubtful position which they share with more than one [Sidenote: Norman and Frankish laxity as to marriage.] other Norman Duke and his mother. Rolf and Popa were most likely married, as the phrase was, “Danish fashion,”[249] which, in the eyes of the Church, was the same as not being married at all. A woman in such a position might, almost at pleasure, be called either wife or concubine, and might be treated as either the one or the other. Her children might, as happened to be convenient, be either branded as bastards or held entitled to every right of legitimate birth. Rolf put away Popa when he married King Charles’s daughter, and when King Charles’s daughter died, he took Popa back again.[250] So William, Popa’s son, put away Sprota, the mother of his son Richard, when he married Liudgardis of Vermandois.[251] This strange laxity with regard to marriage, though spoken of as something specially Danish, was in truth hardly more Danish than Frankish. The private history of the Frankish Kings, Merwings and Karlings alike, is one long record of the strangest conjugal relations. Ordinary concubinage is not amazing anywhere; what stands out specially conspicuous in the history of these Kings—nowhere more conspicuous than in the history of the great Charles—is the liberty which they assumed of divorcing their Queens at pleasure, and sometimes of having several acknowledged Queens at once. [Sidenote: William Longsword French rather than Danish.] William, born of a doubtful union of this kind, was far more French than Danish in feeling. His tutor was Botho, a Danish companion of Rolf, but one who threw himself thoroughly into the French and Christian interest. Such an education made William familiar with the language and feelings of both classes of his subjects; but his own sympathies lay with the speech, as well as with the creed, of his mother; he was more at home in Romanized Rouen than in Teutonic Bayeux. In the existing state of things, divided as the duchy was between the Danish or heathen and the French or Christian party, the personal sympathies of the prince were of the highest importance, and there can be no doubt that the French feelings and Christian convictions of William had a most decisive effect on the history of the Norman state.[252]

The first great event in the internal history of the duchy [Sidenote: Breton revolt. 931.] during the reign of William is a general revolt of its Breton dependencies. This event was probably not unconnected with the general course of affairs in Gaul. At William’s accession, two Kings, Charles the Simple and Rudolf of Burgundy, disputed the crown of the West-Franks. William, as we have seen, became the vassal of [Sidenote: William’s attachment to the cause of Charles. His peace with Hugh and Herbert. 928.] Charles, and refused all submission to Rudolf. Even in finally making peace with his great French neighbours, Hugh of Paris and Herbert of Vermandois, William made it a condition that Herbert should do homage to Charles as he himself had done. Herbert, it should be remembered, was himself of Carolingian descent, and might have further designs of his own. It was only on these terms that William restored Herbert’s son, who had been given to his father Rolf as a hostage.[253] Charles remained for some while a puppet in the hands of Herbert, brought forth as a sovereign or confined as a prisoner, as suited the ever-shifting [Sidenote: Death of Charles the Simple. 929.] relations of Herbert, Hugh, and Rudolf. At last the unhappy descendant and namesake of the great Emperor died in bonds at Peronne, whether actually murdered by Herbert, or simply worn out by sorrow and captivity, it matters little.[254] Rudolf was now the only acknowledged King, and he soon showed himself to be, in one respect at least, fully worthy of his crown. The independent and unsettled Northmen of the Loire had committed [Sidenote: King Rudolf defeats the Northmen of the Loire at Limoges. 930.] great devastations in Aquitaine. King Rudolf overcame them in a great battle at Limoges, where he utterly broke their power, and procured the acknowledgement of his own supremacy over Aquitaine.[255] It was probably this great defeat of one Norman army by a King to whom no [Sidenote: The Bretons rise.] Norman had hitherto done homage which encouraged the Bretons to make an attempt to throw off the Norman yoke altogether. That yoke was of a twofold kind; there was the more regular and endurable supremacy of the Norman Duke at Rouen, and there was also the constant annoyance of small bands or colonies of independent adventurers within their frontiers or upon their borders. Under their princes, [Sidenote: Massacre of the Normans, Michaelmas 931.] Juhel Berengar and Alan, the Bretons rose; they made a massacre of the Normans in their own country, which may have given a precedent for the later massacre of the Danes in England.[256] The feast of Saint Michael in the one case was what the feast of Saint Brice was in the other. [Sidenote: The Bretons attack Bayeux.] Flushed with success, they entered the Norman duchy, and attacked Rolf’s latest and most precious acquisition, Teutonic Bayeux.[257] Alike under Saxon and under Norman occupation, the Teutonic colony was a thorn in the side of the Celts, which they were always eager to get rid of. [Sidenote: The revolt crushed.] But William completely crushed the revolt, and its only result was to bring all Britanny more completely under Norman control, and to extend the immediate boundaries [Sidenote: Normandy gains the Côtentin peninsula.] of his duchy. The districts of Avranches and Coutances, with the noble peninsula to which the latter city gives its name, were now added to the immediate Norman dominion.[258]

[Sidenote: High position of England under Æthelstan.]

At this point comes the first of many signs which we shall meet with in the course of our story, all of which show the high position which England held at this time, and the important influence exercised on foreign politics by the renowned prince who now filled the West-Saxon throne. In this, as in every other respect, all depended on the personal character of the King. It was now exactly as it was ages later. England under Æthelstan differed from England under Æthelred, just as England under Elizabeth or Cromwell differed from England under the first or the second pair of Stewarts. Through the whole of this period, the King of the English, the common friend and kinsman of most of the contending princes, appears as a dignified mediator among them. Through the marriages of his sisters, some contracted before, some after his election to the crown, Æthelstan was the brother-in-law of most of the chief princes of Western Europe. [Sidenote: His connexion with most of the Western Princes.] He stood in this relation to King Otto, to King Charles, to King Lewis of Arles, to Duke Hugh of Paris, and to a nameless prince near the Alps.[259] On the imprisonment [Sidenote: Eadgifu and Lewis take refuge in England.] of Charles, his Queen Eadgifu,[260] with her young son Lewis, had taken refuge in England,[261] and the future King of the West-Franks was now learning lessons of war and statesmanship at the hands of his glorious uncle. So [Sidenote: Alan of Britanny does the like.] now, on the extinction of the Breton insurrection, while Berenger submitted to the Normans, Alan took shelter with Æthelstan,[262] as his father before him is said to have taken shelter with Eadward. England might in either case seem a strange place of refuge for a banished Armorican prince and his following. The descendants of those who had originally fled before the English conquerors now sought for safety in the very land from which their forefathers had been driven. And at this particular moment such a refuge might seem stranger than ever. The Breton exiles sought shelter in England at the hands of the very King by whom the last footsteps of Celtic independence in Southern Britain were trampled out. Æthelstan and William of Rouen might well seem to be carrying out [Sidenote: Relations of England with Normandy less friendly than with the other states.] the same work on opposite sides of the sea. But a nearer tie of common hostility might well at that moment unite the Breton and the Englishman. Each was engaged in a struggle with Scandinavian intruders in his own land. Between the Danes in England and the Danes in Normandy communications never wholly ceased, and, long after this time, we shall find the connexion between Denmark and Normandy directly affecting the course of English events. The Normans and their Duke seem always to have been on less intimate terms with England than most of the neighbouring states; William stands almost alone among princes of equal rank in not being honoured with the hand of a sister of glorious Æthelstan. The Norman historian even puts forth a claim on the part of his Duke to a dominion over England,[263] which is among the most ridiculous outpourings of his lying vanity. Still such a boast speaks something as to the feelings which existed between the Danes in Gaul and the great destroyer of the Danish power in Britain. With Æthelstan then, the common champion of Christian and civilized Europe, at the court which was the common shelter of the oppressed, the common school of every princely virtue, did the Breton prince, fleeing from his conqueror, [Sidenote: Restoration of Alan. 936.] seek the safest and the most honourable refuge. At a later date, when the influence of Æthelstan on the affairs of Gaul was specially great, Alan and his companions were allowed to return.[264] He received a large part of Britanny as a vassal of the Norman Duke; he appears to have remained steady in his allegiance, and he is henceforth constantly mentioned among the chief peers of the Norman [Sidenote: His struggles with the Northmen of the Loire.] state.[265] But he could win back the actual possession of his dominions only by hard fighting against the independent Normans of the Loire. These pirates, even after Rudolf’s victory at Limoges, held many points of the country, and they were hardly more inclined to submit to the Norman Duke at Rouen than to the Breton Count at Vannes.[266] Alan restored the ruined city of Nantes, and did much for his recovered dominions in various ways. The relations between Normandy and Britanny were now definitely settled, as far as anything could ever be said to be settled in that age. The boundary between the dominions of the vassal and his lord was fixed by the Norman acquisition [Sidenote: The Côtentin becomes thoroughly Norman.] of the Côtentin and Avranchin. These lands, the last won part of Normandy, form one of the districts which became most thoroughly Norman. They stood open for Norman colonization; and we shall presently see that colonization was allowed, perhaps invited, not only from the settled parts of Normandy, but even directly from the heathen North itself.

Along with the peninsula of Coutances the Norman Dukes obtained a possession which was afterwards to form a bond of connexion of a singular kind between Normandy and England.[267] In comparing the extent of the West-Frankish kingdom at this age with that of modern France in our own day,[268] while mentioning many [Sidenote: Normandy acquires the Channel Islands.] points in which the French frontier has advanced, I had to mention three points where it has fallen back. The extent of the land whose princes acknowledged a nominal superior in the West-Frankish King took in Flanders, Barcelona, and the Channel Islands. Those islands, a natural appendage to the Constantine peninsula, now became Norman. When continental Normandy was lost by John, the insular part of the duchy was still retained, and it has ever since remained a possession of the English crown. As long as the English Kings kept the title either of Duke of Normandy or of King of France, here was a portion of the duchy or of the kingdom whose actual possession might be said to make good their claim to the rest. This insular Normandy remains to this day French in speech, but deeply attached, and with good reason, to the [Sidenote: Peculiar relation of the islands to England.] English connexion. The islands form distinct commonwealths, dependent on the British crown, but not incorporated with the United Kingdom. This condition of a dependency is perhaps that which best suits a community which has a distinct existence of its own, but which could not possibly maintain its independence as a distinct and sovereign state. Keeping their ancient constitutions, and enjoying the protection of the power of England, the Norman islands unite the safety of a great kingdom with the local independence of a small commonwealth. How much they would lose by becoming a French department I need not stop to point out. But they would also lose, not nearly so much, but still not a little, by becoming an English county. The right of sending one or two members to the British Parliament, where, among so many greater interests, their voice could hardly be heard, would be a poor exchange for their present legislative independence. Parliament can indeed, on any emergency which may call for its interference, legislate for the Norman islands. But it must legislate specially for them, after special consideration of the circumstances of the case. The islands cannot find themselves unexpectedly bound by some piece of general legislation, passed without their knowledge and possibly contrary to their interests. Thus the dependent condition of the islands secures a greater consideration of their interests than they could receive if they formed an integral portion of the kingdom. We occasionally hear of internal abuses in the Channel Islands which are held to need the intervention of Parliament, but we never hear of external grievances laid to the charge of Parliament itself. The Norman islands seem to be far [Sidenote: Comparison with Orkney.] more contented as dependencies than those Norwegian islands which, having been formed into a Scottish county, have become an integral part of the United Kingdom. The ancient earldom of Orkney, represented in Parliament by a single member, has its wrongs, or at least its grievances; of the wrongs or grievances of Jersey or Guernsey no one ever heard. And this singular and beneficial relation in which these interesting little communities stand at this day to the English crown is connected by a direct chain of cause and effect with the revolt of the Bretons against Norman supremacy nine hundred and forty years ago.

William, thus become the conqueror of the Bretons, ruled for the present as a French prince. As such, his French speech, French connexions, and French religion, caused him to be hated and dreaded by a large portion of his subjects. A strong Danish and heathen party still survived within the older limits of the duchy, and the newly won lands probably contained some of those independent Danish settlements by which Britanny in general was so [Sidenote: Revolt of the Danish party in Normandy, 932.] infested. Out of these two elements a Danish and heathen revolt was organized. Its leader was Riulf, seemingly an independent Danish chief settled in the Constantine [Sidenote: Legendary details of the revolt and its suppression.] peninsula. The story, as we have it,[269] reads like a romance. The rebels rise in arms; they demand one concession after another; the panic-stricken Duke is ready to yield everything; he even proposes to resign his duchy and to flee to his French uncle at Senlis. But he is recalled to a better mind by his veteran counsellor, the Danish-born Bernard. He then wins an almost miraculous victory over the rebels, and, for the time at least, crushes all signs of revolt. These details cannot be accepted as historical; but one or two points in the story are instructive. The rebels are made to demand the cession of all the country west of the river Risle. The land which would have been left to the Duke after such a cession nearly answers to the original grant to Rolf, excluding the later acquisitions of [Sidenote: Geographical character of the two parties.] Bayeux and Coutances. This demand, like everything else in the history, shows how thoroughly the Norman parties were geographical parties. The Christian and French-speaking Duke might keep Christian and French-speaking Rouen and Evreux; but the heathen and Danish land to the west must be independent of a prince who had cast [Sidenote: Christianity and French manners supported by a party among the native Danes.] away the creed and speech of his forefathers. On the other hand, we see that there were men of Danish birth, old companions of Rolf, men who retained a strong national feeling, who still distinctly threw in their lot with the French party. They wished Normandy to remain an united and independent state; they had not the slightest wish to merge Normandy in France in any political sense; but they wished the Norman duchy to be a member of the general French commonwealth, French in religion, language, and civilization. Such a man was Botho, the old tutor of William and afterwards tutor to William’s son; such were Oslac, bearing a name famous in our own Northumbrian history, and Bernard the Dane, who plays an important part in Norman affairs for many years to [Sidenote: William’s French and Christian government.] come. Through the overthrow of the rebellion this party was now dominant, and William reigned as a Christian prince, as a French prince, aiming at an influence in French affairs proportioned to the extent of his dominion on Gaulish soil. Through his whole life he was subject to strong religious impulses, and, according to a legend which may well contain some groundwork of truth, he was with difficulty hindered from becoming a monk in his own foundation of Jumièges.[270] Yet he was by no means lavish in grants to the Church, and the ecclesiastical foundations, which had suffered so cruelly during the Scandinavian incursions, still remained weak and impoverished, and, in many cases, altogether desolate. His general government is described as just and vigorous, and he seems to have [Sidenote: He does not wholly break with the Danish element.] deservedly won the general love of his subjects. And it is certain that, though he laboured to bring his dominions within the pale of Christian and French civilization, he did not wholly cast away the national speech and national feelings of his fathers. It is not unlikely that his policy towards the Danish element in the duchy varied at different periods of his reign. He may have found that the transformation of a nation must needs be a work of time, that too much haste might hinder the object which he had at heart, that a certain measure of toleration, in language, in manners, and even in religion, might be needful in order to bring about a final change in [Sidenote: Towards the end of his reign he makes further advances to the Danes.] any of those points. In his later days he may even have gone further than this. After all his efforts to identify himself with the French, and to act as a French prince among other French princes, he still found himself scorned and hated, still looked on as Duke only of the Pirates. Under the influence of such feelings, he may to some extent have thrown himself into the hands of the Danish party. According to a story which cannot be received as it stands, but which probably contains some germs of truth, he admitted a fresh Danish colony, direct from Denmark, into the newly-acquired peninsula of Coutances.[271] It is certain that he entrusted his son Richard to the care, not of any French clerk or Bishop, but to his own old [Sidenote: Danish education of his son Richard.] tutor, the Danish-born Botho. The boy was purposely taken to Bayeux, the Teutonic city which Botho himself, in his pirate days, had helped to harry. He was sent thither expressly to become familiar with the ancestral tongue, which was already forgotten at Rouen,[272] but which was still spoken by the mixed Saxon and Danish population of the Bessin. The boy was to be brought up in a Danish city, but by a native Dane who had accepted Christianity and French manners. We may be sure that no religious apostasy was dreamed of; but William now saw that the sovereign of Normandy must be neither pure Dane nor pure Frenchman, but, as far as might be, Dane and Frenchman at once.

[Sidenote: Part played by William Longsword in general history.]

For the purposes of the present sketch, the internal developement of the Norman duchy, the distinction between its Danish and its French elements, its relations to its Celtic neighbours and vassals, are points of more importance than the part played by its second Duke in the general politics of Gaul. Yet the history of Normandy would be hardly intelligible without some understanding of the general position of the duchy as one of the great [Sidenote: Utter confusion of this period.] fiefs of the West-Frankish crown. The reign of William Longsword forms the most confused part even of the confused Gaulish history of the tenth century. It is a period utterly without principles, almost without definite parties; even the strife between Laon and Paris, between the Karling and the house of Robert, between the Frank and the Frenchman, is in a manner lulled as long as Rudolf of Burgundy fills the Western throne. Every vassal of the Western crown sought little beyond his own gain and aggrandizement, and all of them freely changed sides as often as it suited their interest so to do. And William himself added as much to the confusion as any man, by changing sides perhaps oftener [Sidenote: Comparison between William and the French Princes.] than anybody else. And hardly any practical difference was made by the fact that William seems to have been several degrees less selfish and unprincipled than his neighbours. He was evidently a creature of impulse, and his impulses, if they often led him astray, often led him to righteous and generous actions. Though we cannot set him down, with his panegyrist, as a saint and a martyr, we can at least see in him far nobler qualities than any that can be seen in the contemporary princes of Vermandois, of Flanders, or even of ducal France. Still the practical difference was slight. William was doubtless morally a better man than his neighbours; but politically he was as untrustworthy as the worst of them. His plighted faith went for as little as the plighted faith of a deliberate perjurer. Impulse led him to one course one day, and impulse led him to an opposite course the next day. He probably never was intentionally treacherous, but he did as many of what were in effect treacherous actions as the basest traitor among them all.

[Sidenote: Condition of Gaul.]

Northern Gaul was at this time divided in very unequal proportions between the King and several vassal princes more powerful than himself. Of Southern Gaul [Sidenote: Practical independence of Aquitaine.] it is hardly needful to speak; of Aquitaine we hear just enough to show that the lands north and south of the Loire were aware of each other’s existence, and that a nominal connexion was held to exist between them. The Aquitanian princes now and then stooped to pay a nominal homage to the King of the West-Franks; otherwise the South moved in a world of its own, a world which was very slightly touched by the revolutions of Laon, Rouen, or Paris. It must always be remembered that the royal city was Laon, a city close upon the Lotharingian frontier, in a district where the Teutonic speech still lingered.[273] [Sidenote: The King’s domain.] The royal domain took in only Laon, Compiègne, and a small territory about those towns. Through the election of Rudolf, ducal Burgundy was brought into a temporary connexion with the crown, but that connexion lasted no longer than the reign of Rudolf himself. To [Sidenote: Lotharingia; explanation of its continual revolutions.] the east and north-east of the royal dominions lay Lotharingia, the border land, ever fluctuating in its allegiance between the Eastern and Western kingdoms. But all its fluctuations follow one unvarying principle, namely that its inhabitants preferred the rule of a Karling to that of any one else, but that, when no Karling was to be had, they preferred the rule of a [Sidenote: Germany.] German to that of a Frenchman. Beyond Lotharingia lay the Eastern _Francia_, the Teutonic Kingdom, now rapidly rising into greatness under the vigorous Kings [Sidenote: The Saxon Kings.] of the Saxon house. Deeming themselves the true successors of Charles, speaking his tongue and crowned in his royal city, the Saxon Kings already aspired to reunite the scattered fragments of his Empire. Within the Western [Sidenote: Arnulf of Flanders.] Kingdom we find three chief princes, Arnulf of Flanders, Herbert of Vermandois, and Hugh of Paris. The Flanders of those days, it should be remembered, reached far to the south of any border which Flanders has had for some centuries past. Calais, Boulogne, and Arras were all Flemish, and in those days Flemish still meant Low-Dutch. Ponthieu was a frontier district, with a Count of its own, whose homage was disputed between Flanders and Normandy. Of the present sovereign of Flanders it is enough to say that his actions show him to have been [Sidenote: Herbert of Vermandois.] capable of any crime. To the south of Flanders lay Vermandois, governed by the faithless, unprincipled Herbert, himself of Carolingian descent, but the greatest of all sinners against Carolingian royalty; the gaoler, most likely the murderer, of Charles the Simple. His one object was to extend by any means his comparatively narrow territories. More powerful than any other Western prince, far more powerful than his nominal King, was the lord of the Western _Francia_, the Duke of the French, [Sidenote: The Duchy of France.] Hugh the Great of Paris. His dominions took in the greater part of central Gaul north of the Loire, but, since the establishment of the Norman duchy, they nowhere [Sidenote: Ducal Burgundy.] reached to the sea. Ducal Burgundy need hardly be mentioned; on the death of Rudolf, Duke and King, the duchy was split into several parts, a large share [Sidenote: Archbishopric of Rheims.] falling to the lot of Hugh himself. Along with these temporal principalities we might almost reckon the metropolitan see of Rheims, whose Primate, alone among Western bishops, made some faint approach to the position of the princely prelates of Germany. This great and wealthy church constantly formed an apple of discord among the temporal powers which surrounded it. The rival princes were always striving, sometimes to thrust their nominees into the archbishopric, sometimes to appropriate to themselves the estates of the see. A large share of the history of the times is taken up with disputes about the succession to the archbishopric, which sometimes take the form of ecclesiastical synods, sometimes that of temporal campaigns and sieges. In the end the temporal importance of the see was greatly lessened through the loss of several of its most valuable possessions, [Sidenote: Hugh the Great.] among them the famous lordship of Coucy. Among all these princes Hugh of France stands out the foremost, alike from the extent of his dominions and from the peculiarity of his personal position. The nephew of King Odo, the son of King Robert, the father of King Hugh, the brother-in-law of King Rudolf, King Æthelstan, and King Otto himself, the Duke of the French never would be himself a King. He had no scruple against making [Sidenote: His Policy.] war on the King, none against robbing him of his dominions, none against assuming a complete control over his actions and even keeping him in personal bondage. He had no scruple even against transferring his allegiance from one King to another, against becoming a vassal of the Eastern instead of the Western crown. But if he went thus far, he would go no further; he would always have a King over him, if only to show how much greater he was than any King; but a King he himself never would be. Three times at least he might easily have mounted the throne; but he always declined the glittering bauble that lay within his grasp. In all this there seems something like a guiding principle; and even in other respects, faithless and ambitious as Hugh was, he was distinctly better than some of his fellows. It is some slight comfort to find that a man who was honoured with the hand of a sister of Æthelstan was at least not stained with any such frightful crimes as those which have handed down the names of Arnulf and Herbert to everlasting shame.[274]

[Sidenote: William’s relation to the Kingdom, (927); his fidelity to Charles.]

When William succeeded his father, Normandy was at war with France; that is, it was at war with Herbert of Vermandois and Hugh of Paris, and with Rudolf of Burgundy, their King of the West-Franks. But Rolf, and after him William, acknowledged no King but the imprisoned Charles. From him Rolf had received his lands; to him Rolf had done homage; to him William repeated that homage on the earliest opportunity, and he never did homage to Rudolf till the death of Charles left the Burgundian Duke without a competitor for the [Sidenote: 926–928.] kingly title. Peace was made and peace was again confirmed, without any acknowledgement of the usurper’s claim. It was not till three years later, when Charles [Sidenote: After Charles’s death William does homage to Rudolf. 933.] was dead, and when Rudolf, by his victory at Limoges, had shown himself worthy to reign, that William, seemingly of his own act and deed and without any special circumstances calling for such a course, did homage to Rudolf,[275] and received from him a grant of the maritime Britanny. [Sidenote: Rudolf’s grant of Britanny.] This grant most likely carried with it both a general confirmation of the superiority of Normandy over Britanny and a special confirmation of the transfer of Avranches and Coutances to the immediate dominion of the Norman Duke. Meanwhile Hugh and Herbert were running their usual course; it is hardly the duty of an English, or even of a Norman, historian to reckon up the number of times that they transferred their allegiance from Charles to [Sidenote: Herbert does homage to Henry. 931.] Rudolf and from Rudolf to Charles. It is of more importance to mark that Herbert, at a moment when Rudolf and Hugh were both at war with him, did not scruple to transfer his allegiance to the Eastern King [Sidenote: Rudolf dies. 936.] Henry.[276] At last Rudolf died, and now a most important change took place. It might not be very clear what was the use of a King, if his vassals, several of them more powerful than himself, might rebel against him and make war on him at pleasure. Still, though all the princes were agreed in allowing to the King the smallest possible amount of territory and power, none of the princes was [Sidenote: Diet of election for the new King.] prepared to do without a King altogether. A Diet of election was held, of which some most remarkable details are preserved.[277] The prime mover in the whole matter was Hugh the Great. He might himself have become a candidate; all central and southern Gaul, his own duchy [Sidenote: Central and Southern Gaul favours Hugh; the Eastern part favours Lewis.] and the lands beyond the Loire, sought to confer the crown upon him. But the Eastern part of the kingdom, where there still lingered some traces of Teutonic blood and speech, some feelings of reverence for the blood of the great Emperor, favoured the election of Lewis the son of Charles, who was now living under the protection of his [Sidenote: Hugh declines the crown and procures the election of Lewis.] English uncle. Hugh, according to his invariable policy, declined the crown for himself. He already enjoyed the reality of kingship, and he shrank with a superstitious dread from a title which had brought little gain to his uncle and his brother-in-law and still less to his own father. It was on the motion of the Duke of the French that the assembly agreed to elect Lewis as King of the [Sidenote: Embassy to Æthelstan. 936.] West-Franks, and to send an embassy to Æthelstan to ask for the restoration of his nephew to the throne of his fathers. The embassy passed over into England, and found the King at York.[278] It was the year before Brunanburh, when the presence of Æthelstan was doubtless specially called for in his northern dominions. The ambassadors spoke in the name of Duke Hugh and of all the chief men of the Gauls, and prayed for Lewis to be their [Sidenote: Negotiations between Æthelstan and Hugh.] King. Æthelstan, somewhat doubtful of their good faith,[279] demanded oaths and proposed a further conference. The King of the English hastened to the coast of Kent, and the Duke of the French to the coast of Flanders, not far from Boulogne. Fire signals were exchanged on each side, the materials being found in the wooden houses which lined the shores.[280] Let us hope that, whatever Hugh or Arnulf may have done, Æthelstan at least made good the loss to his subjects. Several English Bishops and Thegns passed over, having at their head Oda, Bishop of the Wilsætas or of Ramsbury, afterwards the famous Primate.[281] Before Æthelstan would trust his nephew across the sea, he demanded satisfactory oaths from the assembled princes; otherwise he would give Lewis one of his own kingdoms, where he might reign safely and prosperously.[282] This was no empty boast; the Emperor of Britain had kingdoms to bestow, lower indeed in rank, but safer and more powerful, than the nominal royalty of Laon. The princes of Gaul swore as they were bidden; but it was agreed that the Duke of the French should be the chief adviser, or rather the protector and guardian, of the new King.[283] Lewis crossed the sea; he landed in the realm which was now his, he sprang on his horse,[284] and rode on amid the cheers of [Sidenote: Lewis crowned King. 936.] his new subjects. He went to his royal city of Laon, where he was consecrated King by Artald Archbishop of Rheims; he then went with his guardian on an expedition into Burgundy, more to his guardian’s profit than to his own.[285] He then visited his powerful vassal at Paris; but in the next year, safe on the rock of Laon, he threw off [Sidenote: He declares his independence of Hugh. 937.] the yoke; he declared his independence of Duke Hugh, and sent for his mother Eadgifu, seemingly to take Hugh’s place as his chief counsellor.[286]

[Sidenote: Character of King Lewis; his vigorous and active reign.]

The reign of Lewis—Lewis from beyond Sea—is of itself enough to confute the common mistake of believing that the line of Charles the Great ended in a race of imbecile _fainéants_, like those whom Pippin had set aside.[287] Lewis may be called ambitious, turbulent, and perfidious, but no man was ever less of a _fainéant_. His life was in truth one of preternatural activity. Early adversity, combined with an education at the hands of glorious Æthelstan, had brought out some very vigorous qualities in his young nephew. If Lewis was ambitious, turbulent, and perfidious, he was but paying off Hugh of Paris and William of Rouen in their own coin. In truth no two positions can well be more unlike one another than the position of [Sidenote: Contrast between the late Karlings and the late Merwings.] the later Karlings and that of the later Merwings. The Duke of the French might now and then put on something of the guise of a Mayor of the Palace, but Pippin and Hugh had very different masters to deal with. The nominal ruler of a vast realm, led about as an occasional pageant and leaving the government of his dominions to an all-powerful minister, is the exact opposite to a King whose domains have shrunk up to the territory of a single city, and who has to spend his life in hard blows to keep that last remnant of his heritage from the ambition of vassals whose territories are far wider than his own. Lewis had to strive in turn against France, Normandy, and Vermandois, and now and then he was able to give each of them nearly as good as they brought. And, small as was the extent of the King’s actual domains, there was still an abiding reverence for the royal name, which breathes in every page of the chroniclers, and which was not without influence even on the minds of the men who fought against him. Still Lewis had constantly to fight for the small remnant of dominion which was left to him. The restless Herbert had to be [Sidenote: 938.] driven from a fortress built on the very slope of the King’s [Sidenote: 939.] own rock of Laon.[288] The next year we find both William and Hugh in arms against the King in a quarrel arising out of the border disputes of Normandy and Flanders.[289] William was at war with Arnulf, the quarrel between these two great potentates being, if not caused in the first [Sidenote: Affairs of Montreuil. 939.] instance, at any rate aggravated by their differences as to the affairs of a smaller neighbour. This was Herlwin, Count of Montreuil or Ponthieu, whose dominions lay between Normandy and Flanders. Properly he seems to have been a vassal of the Duke of the French,[290] but when his dominions were seized by Arnulf, he got no help from Hugh, while he got very effective help from William. [Sidenote: Montreuil taken by Arnulf and recovered by Herlwin.] By the aid of a Norman force, headed, according to one account, by the Norman Duke himself, Montreuil was recovered, and Herlwin reinstated.[291] But greater powers than any of these were soon to come on the stage. One of them indeed figures in a rather unlooked-for way in the story of Herlwin. When Montreuil was taken by Arnulf, [Sidenote: Herlwin’s wife and children sent to Æthelstan.] the wife and children of the dispossessed Count were sent, of all the people in the world, to King Æthelstan in England. That they should have taken refuge at his court would have been only the natural course of things; but it sounds strange at first that the prisoners should be sent to the King of the English, if not actually as captives in bonds, yet at least as persons over whom some degree of watch was to be kept.[292] The explanation is most likely to be found in the close alliance between Æthelstan and Lewis, possibly also in the kindred between Æthelstan and Arnulf, who was, like Æthelstan, a grandson of Ælfred. Just now Arnulf was the friend, and William [Sidenote: William excommunicated. 939.] the enemy, of Lewis, and William was actually excommunicated by the Bishops in the King’s interest for his harryings of the Flemish territory. That a similar fate fell on Herbert for his aggressions on the lands of the archbishopric of Rheims is less wonderful.[293] Æthelstan soon afterwards again appears as the ally of his nephew, even when ties equally strong might have drawn him towards [Sidenote: Otto the Great, King of the East-Franks. 936.] his nephew’s enemies. King Henry of Germany was now dead, and his son, the great Otto, the brother-in-law of Æthelstan, had succeeded to the throne of the Eastern Franks in the same year in which their common nephew had succeeded to the royalty of the West. After some opposition at the hands of his own brothers, the future restorer of the Empire had received the Frankish diadem in the great Emperor’s minster at Aachen. But the men of border Lotharingia refused to acknowledge another Saxon; there was now again a Karling who was a crowned King; none but that Karling could be their lawful sovereign; the Saxon Duke had been chosen King of Saxony only, because a chief was needed to defend the land against the Slaves, and because the true Carolingian King was at that [Sidenote: The Lotharingians transfer their allegiance from Otto to Lewis. 939.] moment disqualified.[294] The Lotharingians therefore transferred their allegiance from Otto to Lewis. Their first application was rejected; a second, made by the temporal princes of the country—the Bishops clave to Otto—was accepted.[295] A war naturally followed between Lewis and Otto, in which Lotharingia was ravaged by the German King. Lewis was however not without allies. The West-Saxon King stepped in as the champion of his Frankish [Sidenote: The English fleet in the Channel.] nephew against his Old-Saxon brother-in-law; an English fleet appeared in the channel; but in an inland war this naval help could be of little avail, and nothing came of the English intervention beyond the ravage of some parts of the opposite coast.[296] A series of intrigues and backslidings now follow which fairly baffle the chronicler. While Lewis was gaining new subjects to the East, his vassals within his own kingdom almost unanimously forsook [Sidenote: The Western princes do homage to Otto.] him. Not only his old enemies Hugh and Herbert, but the fickle Duke of the Normans, and Arnulf, in whose cause he had himself been so lately warring, all met Otto and transferred their homage from Lewis to him.[297] The motive for this course is not very clear. Otto was indeed a more distant, but he was a far more powerful, over-lord, one far more likely to exercise effective authority over his [Sidenote:

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

friends in Lotharingia; he went into Elsass to a conference with [Sidenote: Lotharingia won and lost.] Hugh of Provence;[298] he drove the partisans of Otto out of Lotharingia, and returned to Laon to chastise a Bishop suspected of treason. These successes were only momentary; Lotharingia was soon recovered by Otto.[299] But the conspiracy of the Western princes against their King was no [Sidenote: William does homage and makes special promises to Lewis. 940.] less transitory. In the year following the general defection William of Normandy changed sides; he met Lewis in the neighbourhood of Amiens; he did homage, and received from the King a fresh grant of his dominions.[300] And he seems to have made something more than the usual promises of allegiance. He is said to have pledged himself either to die in the King’s cause or to restore him to the full exercise of his royal authority.[301] Yet before the year was out William was again in arms, helping Hugh [Sidenote: The princes, William among them, besiege Rheims, and depose Archbishop Artald. 940.] and Herbert in a siege of Rheims.[302] The metropolitan see was disputed between Hugh, a son of Herbert, and Artald, a vigorous champion of the King, who had performed the ceremony of his coronation. Artald was now in possession of the bishopric, and had been endowed by the King with great temporal privileges and with the title of Count.[303] War against the Primate was in every sense war against the King. The city surrendered; Herbert’s Archbishop was admitted; and the conspirators then went a step further in rebellion by besieging the King’s [Sidenote: Hugh and Herbert again do homage to Otto at Attigny. 940.] own city of Laon. Hugh and Herbert presently took a still more daring step by inviting Otto to Attigny, within the acknowledged West-Frankish border, and there renewing their homage to him.[304] With this last transaction William [Sidenote: William renews his homage to Lewis.] had nothing to do; before long we find him again the faithful homager of King Lewis, receiving him with all kingly-state at Rouen, and seemingly bringing with him to their due allegiance, not only his own Breton vassals, but his brother-in-law William of Aquitaine.[305]

We are now drawing near to the end of the troubled career of William Longsword. We here find ourselves involved in such a mass of contradictory statements that I reserve their special examination for another place.[306] [Sidenote: William Longsword murdered by Arnulf. 943.] That William was lured by Arnulf of Flanders to a conference on the island of Picquigny in the Somme, and that he was there murdered by the contrivance of the Flemish prince, there seems no reason to doubt. But as to the motives and circumstances which led to the act, whether Arnulf acted alone or in concert with any of the other Western princes, whether King Otto himself was in any way the unwitting cause of a crime at which his noble heart would have revolted, are questions which I shall [Sidenote: Council of Attigny, held by the two Kings of the Franks as colleagues.] discuss elsewhere. But I cannot, even here, wholly pass by the Council of Attigny, a council at which events took place which one version closely connects with the death of William. Otto was reconciled to Lewis, who had now become his brother-in-law by a marriage with his widowed sister Gerberga, and by Otto’s means the Duke of the French was reconciled to the King. The two Kings then, as colleagues in the administration of one Frankish realm, held a solemn council, at which the great vassals of the Western Kingdom attended. The kings sat side by side; but though the Western King was on his own ground, his Eastern colleague, the truer successor of Charles, the King crowned at Aachen and already no doubt looking to be the Emperor crowned at Rome, took the seat of honour, which, if one tale be true, the Norman alone was found bold enough to challenge for his own immediate lord.

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

[Sidenote: Richard the Fearless succeeds. 943.]

William Longsword left one son, Richard, surnamed the Fearless, born of a Breton mother Sprota, who stood, as we have seen, to Duke William in that doubtful position in which she might, in different mouths, be called an honourable matron, a concubine, or a harlot.[307] Her son had been taught both the languages of his country, and he was equally at home in Romance Rouen and in Scandinavian Bayeux.[308] Whether his birth were strictly legitimate or not was a matter of very little moment either in [Sidenote: His doubtful legitimacy little thought of.] Norman or in Frankish eyes. If a man was of princely birth and showed a spirit worthy of his forefathers, few cared to pry over minutely into the legal or canonical condition of his mother. The young Richard had been already, without any difficulty, acknowledged by the Norman and Breton chiefs as his father’s future successor in the duchy,[309] [Sidenote: He is invested with the Duchy by Lewis.] and he now found as little difficulty in obtaining a formal investiture of the fief from his lord King Lewis.[310] In England his minority, for he was only about ten years old, would have been a far greater hindrance to his succession than his doubtful birth. But even in England, within the same century, minors reigned when no better qualified member of the kingly house was forthcoming, and young [Sidenote: Reign of Richard. 943–996.] Richard was the only male descendant of Rolf. The long reign of Richard, reaching over more than fifty years, is one of the most important in the history of Normandy and of France, and it is in his time that we hear of the first direct collision between Normandy and England. And the early part of Richard’s reign is perhaps more crowded with picturesque incidents than any other portion of time [Sidenote: Romantic interest of his early life.] of equal length. The early life of the orphan child, his dangers, his captivity, his escape, his bitter enemies and his faithful friends, the mighty powers which strove for the possession of his person or for influence over his counsels—the tale has all the interest of a complicated romance. Many of the details are doubtless due to the invention of Norman legend-makers; but there is enough in the soberer French and German writers to show that the main outline of the story is trustworthy. But for the purpose of the present sketch, I must set forth the romantic tale of Richard’s childhood only in a greatly abridged shape, and content myself with pointing out those parts of the story which are of political importance.[311]

The year in which William Longsword was murdered was an important year in many ways for the whole of Gaul. It marks in some sort the beginning of a new [Sidenote: Events of the year 943;] epoch. Besides the death of William and the important events which followed upon it, this year was marked by a birth and a death which had no small influence on the [Sidenote: death of Herbert of Vermandois; birth of Hugh Capet.] course of affairs. Herbert of Vermandois, the regicide, the tyrant as he is called, died this year, and died, according to some accounts, in a mysterious and horrible fashion.[312] His dominions were divided among his sons, except some portions which passed into the hands of Hugh of Paris. The royal power thus lost one of its most formidable enemies, while another enemy yet more formidable was still further strengthened. And this year, for the first time, Hugh had a son to be the heir of his greatness. His English wife Eadhild had died childless; but her successor, Hugh’s third wife, Hadwisa, daughter of King Henry and sister of King Otto and Queen Gerberga, now bore him a son, Hugh surnamed Capet, the future King. [Sidenote: Effect of Hugh’s birth on Hugh the Great’s policy.] One can hardly doubt that the birth of his son had an effect on Hugh the Great’s policy. He would not be a King himself, but he would put no hindrance in the way of his son being a King. From this time onwards the contrast between the two dynasties, between the old and the new, between the Frank and the Frenchman, between Laon and Paris, becomes even more sharply marked than before.

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

From this time onwards also we must remark another tendency which was doubtless closely connected with the one just mentioned, and of which we have already seen the beginning. I mean the continued and constantly strengthening influence of Germany, the Eastern Kingdom, in the affairs of the West. The Council of Attigny, with the two Kings of the Franks sitting and acting as colleagues, was but the first of a long series of assemblies of the like kind. It is to Otto that all parties in the Western Kingdom appeal as their natural mediator; the King appeals to him as his natural protector. If the Eastern King receives no formal homage as over-lord, still he is clearly looked on both by Lewis and by Hugh as something more than a mere neighbour and brother. Towards Lewis Otto appears as the senior colleague in a common office; in the language of the elder days of the Empire, the Saxon acts as the Augustus, while the Frank is only the Cæsar.[313] While Otto is absent on distant expeditions, his vice-gerent in Lotharingia, Duke Conrad[314] or Archbishop Bruno, is competent to [Sidenote: From 942 [Attigny] to 973 [death of Otto].] act in his name as moderator of the Western realm. This kind of relation between the two kingdoms lasted during the whole remainder of the reign of Otto the Great, that is, during the rest of the reign of Lewis and during the minority and early reign of his son Lothar. The changed state of things in the days of the two cousins, Otto the Second and Lothar, was undoubtedly one determining cause of the fall of the dynasty of Laon. But there was another determining cause of its fall with which we have more immediately to do. Under Rolf Normandy had stuck faithfully to the King; under William it had fluctuated backwards and [Sidenote: Normandy under Richard attached to France.] forwards between King and Duke. Under Richard, Normandy, becoming every day more French and more feudal, became, both in its policy and through actual feudal ties, permanently attached to the Duke and therefore commonly hostile to the King.

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

Great disturbances in Normandy followed on the unlooked-for death of William Longsword. A new invasion [Sidenote: New Danish settlement under Sihtric.] or settlement direct from the North seems to have happened nearly at the same time as the Duke’s murder; it may even possibly have happened with the Duke’s consent.[315] At any rate the heathen King Sihtric now [Sidenote: The Danes joined by the heathen party in Normandy.] sailed up the Seine with a fleet, and he was at once welcomed by the Danish and heathen party in the country. Large numbers of the Normans, under a chief named Thurmod, fell away from Christianity, and it appears that [Sidenote: Apostasy of young Richard.] the young Duke himself was persuaded or constrained to join in their heathen worship.[316] In such a state of things [Sidenote: The Christian party in Normandy seek French help.] we can neither wonder at nor blame the Christian party in Normandy if they drew as close as they could to their Christian neighbours, even at some risk to the independence of the duchy. To become subjects either of the King of Laon or of the Duke of Paris was better than to be eaten up by heathen wikings. Nor are we entitled to be unduly hard on either King or Duke for trying to make the most of such an opportunity for recovering [Sidenote: Position of Lewis and Hugh] the ground which they had lost. The Land of the Normans had been given up to Rolf by the joint act of [Sidenote: towards Normandy.] its immediate ruler, the father of the present Duke, and of its over-lord, the father of the present King. The grant had been made on the express condition that the Normans should become members of a Christian and Frankish commonwealth. If heathen invasions were to begin again, and to be powerfully helped by men settled on Gaulish soil, the Norman duchy was serving an object exactly opposite to that for which it was founded. In such a case both Duke and King might well feel themselves justified in getting rid of the nuisance altogether. Feudal ideas also were fast developing, and King Lewis may have already begun to entertain some dim notion that wardship over the fief of a minor vassal was a right [Sidenote: The Christians commend themselves, some to Hugh, some to Lewis.] which of necessity belonged to the lord. In any case, neither Hugh nor Lewis was unwilling to extend his dominions, and at first a large party in the duchy seemed ready to welcome either of them. The Christian Normans were divided between the rival attractions of the King and the Duke. The Duke, nearer and more powerful, could give the most effectual aid at the moment; the King, more distant, would be less dangerous as a permanent protector, and the kingly title still commanded a feeling of deep, if vague and unreasoning, veneration. Some of the Norman chiefs therefore commended themselves to King Lewis and others to Duke Hugh. This choice of different protectors seems to mark a difference of feeling among the Normans themselves;[317] but the relations of King and Duke were just now unusually friendly, and no immediate dissension seems to have arisen between them on this account. It was in this same year, though later than these Norman transactions, that Hugh not only acted as godfather to a daughter of the King, but was confirmed by his new spiritual brother in the possession of the duchies of France [Sidenote: Lewis and Hugh both enter Normandy.] and Burgundy.[318] Hugh entered Normandy; he fought several battles with the heathens and apostates, and was willingly received at Evreux, where the citizens were of [Sidenote: Lewis defeats the heathens and occupies Rouen.] the Christian party.[319] Meanwhile the King marched to Rouen, he gathered what forces he could, seemingly both from among his own subjects and from among the Christian Normans; he fought a battle, he utterly defeated the heathens, he killed Thurmod with his own hand, he recovered the young Duke, and left Herlwin of Montreuil as his representative at Rouen.[320] On a later visit to Rouen, he received the cession of Evreux from Hugh.[321] Herlwin now waged war against Arnulf with some success, for he slew Balzo, the actual murderer of William, and sent his hands as a trophy to the Norman capital.[322] But in the course of the year Hugh contrived to reconcile Arnulf to the King,[323] and the King reconciled Arnulf and Herlwin.

Such is the account given by the French writers; the Normans fill up the story with many further details.[324] [Sidenote: Norman version.] They leave out—thereby throwing the greatest doubt upon the trustworthiness of their own story—all about the homage of Richard and the other Normans, all about Sihtric and Thurmod and the deliverance of Normandy by Lewis himself. Lewis, according to them, came of his own accord to Rouen after the death of William, and was received with joy, as he was supposed to have come in order to plan an expedition against the common enemy Arnulf.[325] Still from this point it is just possible to patch the two narratives together, though I confess that I receive every detail which comes clothed in the rhetoric of Dudo with very great suspicion. Lewis then, according to this account, remains at Rouen, and a suspicion gets afloat that he is keeping the young Duke a prisoner, and that he means to seize on Normandy for himself. A popular insurrection follows, which is only quelled by the King producing Richard in public and solemnly investing him [Sidenote: Richard’s detention at Laon.] with the duchy.[326] After this, strange to say, the Norman regents, Bernard the Dane, Oslac, and Rudolf surnamed Torta, are won over by the craft of Lewis to allow him to take Richard to Laon and bring him up with his own children. The King is then persuaded by the bribes of Arnulf to treat Richard as a prisoner, and even to threaten [Sidenote: Richard’s escape.] him with a cruel mutilation.[327] By a clever stratagem of his faithful guardian Osmund, the same by which Lewis himself had been rescued in his childhood from Herbert of Vermandois,[328] Richard is saved from captivity, and carried to the safe-keeping of his great-uncle, Bernard of Senlis. A mass of perfidious and unintelligible diplomacy now follows in the Norman accounts, of which, if it ever happened at all, we get only the results in the French version. The French writers know nothing of the captivity of [Sidenote: Norman invasion of Britanny. 944.] young Richard, and they connect the invasion of Normandy which undoubtedly took place in the next year with certain transactions in Britanny. The Breton princes, Berengar and Alan, were at variance between themselves, a state of things which gave opportunity for a desolating invasion of the Normans, seemingly the heathen or apostate [Sidenote: Lewis invades Normandy in concert with Hugh. 944.] Normans.[329] Lewis now invaded Normandy in concert with Hugh. The Duke had already made peace with the Normans,[330] but he was seduced by the offer of all Normandy beyond the Seine,[331] or at any rate of the district of Bayeux.[332] Lewis accordingly, with Arnulf and Herlwin, and several Bishops of France and Burgundy, entered Normandy and occupied Rouen. We again find a division of parties in the country, some receiving the King and others withstanding him.[333] Hugh meanwhile occupied Bayeux, but Lewis required his confederate to surrender the city to him. The Duke obeyed, but he at once began again to plot against [Sidenote: Dissension between Lewis and Hugh.] his sovereign.[334] He now stirred up several smaller enemies against Lewis, such as Bernard of Senlis, Theobald, Count of Tours, Blois, and Chartres—of whom we shall hear again—the Vermandois princes, and Hugh, his own Archbishop [Sidenote: War at Rheims and elsewhere. 945.] of Rheims. Lewis meanwhile felt himself so safe in Normandy that he employed Norman troops against these various enemies;[335] and when he had made a truce with Hugh and had raised the siege of Rheims, he returned to Rouen, almost as if he intended to make that city his capital and his permanent residence.[336]

[Sidenote: Lewis at Rouen.]

Lewis had first appeared in Normandy as a deliverer. But according to the Norman writers, he now changed into a conqueror, and began to dream of exercising the extremest rights of conquest. The lands and the [Sidenote: His growing unpopularity and probable designs on Normandy.] women of Normandy were to be distributed among his followers; above all, the estates of the aged Bernard and his beautiful young wife were to be given to an impudent knight who asked for them.[337] It is worth noticing that, both in this case and in the former one, the evil deeds attributed to Lewis are all in intention; in the earlier tale he was going to make Richard a prisoner, he was going to mutilate him; so he is now going to give Bernard’s wife to his follower; but it does not appear that he actually did any one of these things. Still we can well believe that the Normans were tired of Lewis’s prolonged sojourn at Rouen. Foreign dominion in any shape would soon become hateful to the Norman nation, and all creeds and parties would gladly unite in an effort to get rid of it. That Lewis fully intended to keep Normandy can hardly be doubted. That great duchy, with its seven bishoprics, its flourishing capital, its fields and towns and harbours all springing into new life after their recovery from Scandinavian havoc, must indeed have been a tempting prize to the King of Laon and Compiègne. If he could not hold both Rouen and Laon, he might be well pleased to make the exchange, and to transfer the seat of his kingship to the banks of the Seine. How far any part of the Norman people was really prepared for such a transfer, how far Lewis was deceived by the false representations of men who only pretended to wish for it, it is impossible to determine. But we can well believe that all Normandy was soon united in hostility to the foreign King. And either by invitation or by accident, a most powerful and faithful ally was ready at hand to help the Normans in [Sidenote: Harold King of the Danes, [935–985.]] their struggle for independence. Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, had, in this age, out of an union of small principalities, become a single powerful kingdom. Gorm [Sidenote: son of Gorm, [840–935?]] the Old, the founder of the Danish monarchy, had died after a reign said to have been of extraordinary length,[338] and had passed on his dominion to his son Harold, surnamed _Blaatand_, Blue-tooth or Black-tooth. Harold was [Sidenote: 974.] still a heathen; in later times he became a compulsory convert to Christianity; but when he had once embraced [Sidenote: 985.] the faith, he clave stedfastly to it, and lost his crown and life in defence of his new creed.[339] And if we can at all trust the account of Harold’s conduct in Norman affairs, as given by the Norman writers, it is easy to see that, in his case at least, the seed of the Gospel was sown in the [Sidenote: Harold’s disinterested conduct in Normandy. 945.] fruitful field of an honest and good heart.[340] The heathen wiking, utterly unlike most of his tribe, set an example of straightforward, honest, and unselfish dealing, which shines all the brighter from its contrast with the endless aggressions and backslidings of the selfish and faithless princes of Gaul. Whatever brought Harold into Normandy, he acted there as a disinterested friend of the [Sidenote: He occupies the Côtentin,] Norman Duke and his subjects. He first appeared in the Côtentin, which was most probably already occupied by recent settlers from the North,[341] and he made his head-quarters [Sidenote: and Bayeux.] at Cherbourg—the borough of Cæsar.[342] He was next received at Bayeux,[343] and now all Normandy rose in the cause of the deliverer. That Harold defeated Lewis in [Sidenote: Battle by the Dive.] a battle on the banks of the Dive is allowed on both sides; that the battle was preceded by a conference is allowed on both sides. But the French writers represent the battle as a treacherous attack made by the Danes on a prince who had come in all confidence to a peaceful meeting.[344] The Normans, on the other hand, say that the fight was brought about by the imprudence or insolence of Herlwin of Montreuil.[345] He who had caused, however innocently, the death of William, he who had ruled in Rouen as the deputy of Lewis, now appeared prominently among the royal troops, and stirred up the wrath of Danes and Normans by his presence. This certainly seems a very lame story, and we may well believe that Harold, however faithful to his allies, might see no crime in practising a little of the usual Danish treachery towards an enemy. But the result of the battle is certain; the armies met, on or near ground to be afterwards made immortal by one of the chiefest exploits of the great William;[346] and, as a [Sidenote: Lewis defeated and taken prisoner.] fitting forerunner of the day of Varaville, the King’s army was defeated and Lewis taken prisoner.[347] The Normans add that Harold and Lewis met, man to man and King to King, and that the Dane led away the Frank as the prize of his own personal prowess. Lewis however escaped; he was accompanied, perhaps betrayed, by a Norman in whom he trusted, and, on reaching Rouen, he was imprisoned by [Sidenote: Harold settles the affairs of the Duchy and returns to Denmark.] other Normans in whom he trusted also. The Danish King, if we can trust a tale of such unparalleled generosity, had now done his work. He passed through the land, confirming the authority of the young Duke, and [Sidenote: The renewal of “Rolf’s law.”] restoring the laws of Rolf.[348] This last phrase is one which meets us constantly in our own history. After the Norman Conquest, the demand for the laws of King Eadward is familiar to every one, and in earlier times we read of demands for the laws of Eadgar or of Cnut, or whoever was the last King who was looked back to with any love.[349] What is really meant in all such cases is not so much any actual enactments as good administration instead of bad, often native administration instead of foreign. The renewal of Rolf’s law meant the wiping out of all traces of the dominion of the King of Laon. Harold then sailed away to his own islands; twenty years afterwards, unless the one story is a repetition of the other, he was equally able and willing to come again on the same errand.[350]

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

King Lewis was thus a prisoner, as his father had been before him. After a certain amount of the usual treacherous diplomacy,[351] he was transferred from the hands of the Normans to those of their ally the Duke of the French. His wrongs called forth the wrath of his kinsmen in other lands. Queen Gerberga sought help alike from her own Old-Saxon brother and from her husband’s West-Saxon uncle. Æthelstan the Glorious was no more, but he had handed on his sceptre to a [Sidenote: Intervention of Eadmund. 946.] worthy successor in Eadmund the Magnificent. An English embassy haughtily demanded the release of the King, and received from Hugh as haughty a refusal. The Duke of the French would do nothing for fear of the threats of the English.[352] How Eadmund would have followed up this beginning it is hard to say; but the next year saw him cut off by the assassin’s dagger, and his successor Eadred had enough to do in the renewed and final struggle [Sidenote: Intervention of Otto. 945.] with the Northumbrian Danes. The application to Otto was more effectual. The King of the East-Franks at once determined to invade the Western Kingdom the next year.[353] He refused a personal conference with Hugh, and the conference which he allowed him to have with Conrad of Lotharingia was fruitless.[354] At last, when the German army was actually assembling, Hugh found it necessary to [Sidenote: Lewis obtains his liberty in exchange for the] come to terms with his royal prisoner.[355] Hugh’s terms were simple—freedom in exchange for Laon. After a while, Lewis brought himself to surrender his single [Sidenote: cession of Laon. 946] stronghold, his own royal city, which was still held for him by his faithful and stout-hearted Queen. The Duke of the French took possession of the city of the rock, and the King of the West-Franks was reduced to be little more than King of Compiègne. Most likely he hoped, through German and English help, soon to be again King, not only of Laon, but of Paris and Rouen as well. And as far as forms and words and outward homage went, his authority was presently restored over the whole kingdom. [Sidenote: Lewis’s kingship renewed.] Duke Hugh did not scruple to deprive his sovereign of liberty and dominion; but he would never be a King [Sidenote: Hugh and the other Princes do homage. 946.] himself, and he would always have a King over him. The royal dignity—held, it would seem, to have fallen into abeyance through the King’s imprisonment—was solemnly renewed, and Hugh the Great once more became the faithful liegeman and homager of the King whom he had just before held in bonds.[356] The other princes of the kingdom followed his example; but, if the Norman writers are to [Sidenote: The absolute independence of Normandy asserted by the Norman writers.] be believed, there was one marked exception. On the banks of the Epte, where the founder of the Norman state had first done homage, the Duke of the Normans was formally set free from all superiority on the part of the Frankish King.[357] Richard still bore no higher title than that of Duke; but he was a King, as far as complete authority within his own land, and absolute independence of all authority beyond its borders, could make him a King. The prince who was thus acknowledged as perfectly independent was presently persuaded, like other [Sidenote: Richard’s Commendation to Hugh.] allodial owners, to seek a lord, and Richard Duke of the Normans forthwith commended himself and his dominions to his neighbour and benefactor Hugh Duke of the French.[358] Now the absolute independence of Normandy, the renunciation of all homage and all superiority on the part of the crown, is an assertion for which we need some better authority than the declamation of Dudo. In his pages indeed Richard appears as a King, holding the Norman monarchy in fee of no earthly power. But in those pages he also appears as one who far more than forestalled the work of his descendant, as one who held all Gaul and all Britain, with seemingly Germany and Denmark to boot, as dependencies of his Norman monarchy.[359] By the accuracy of the one description we may perhaps judge of the accuracy of the other.

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

But the commendation of Normandy to the Duchy of France rests on much better authority. Norman vanity was less inclined to dwell on it than on the alleged independence of Normandy on the kingdom, but it is incomparably the better ascertained fact of the two. In the days of Richard we get our first glimpses of documentary evidence for Norman history in the form of charters, and in an extant charter Richard distinctly speaks of the Duke of the French as his lord.[360] And it is clear that homage to the Duke carried with it a much more practical relation than homage to the King. Throughout this whole period we find Normandy constantly acting as a subsidiary ally of France. Hugh is followed in his campaigns by Norman troops, seemingly as a matter of course.[361]

[Sidenote: Double alliance, between Normandy and France and between the Eastern and Western Kings.]

A double alliance was thus formed, between Normandy and France on the one hand, between the Eastern and Western Kings on the other. And the alliance of Normandy and France sealed the fate of the Carolingian kingship. That kingship lasted forty years longer, but its doom was sealed when Richard commended himself to Hugh. It did not fall when its fortunes seemed lowest. At that moment it had still a powerful protector in the Eastern King. Nor did its utter extinction suit the peculiar policy of the powerful vassal, who, as far as internal politics were concerned, held its destiny in his hands. But even the German protectorate could hardly have much longer sustained the German throne of Laon against the growing power of the new French nationality. When that protectorate was forfeited, as we shall soon see it, there was no longer any hope for the last traces of [Sidenote: The alliance between Normandy and France determines the fall of the Carolingian dynasty. 945–987.] Teutonic sway in the West. Again, had Normandy remained isolated and Teutonic, things might have taken a different course. Had Rouen been hostile or even doubtful, Paris might not have triumphed over Laon. Charles the Simple had been able to raise up a powerful Norman division against the rival King, which staved off his fate for a while. So, had Richard been other than Hugh Capet’s faithful vassal and loving brother, a similar Norman diversion might, for a while at least, have preserved the crown to the house of Charles. But Normandy was now the firm ally of France, and that alliance of Rouen and Paris fixed the extinction, slow, it might be, but sure, of the royalty of Laon. It was a question of time. All depended on the policy of the successive Dukes of the French. And we shall presently have to study the policy of Hugh Capet, widely different from that of his father, but quite as remarkable in its own way.

This double alliance was not slow in bearing fruit. The [Sidenote: War of the two Kings against the two Dukes. 946.] threats of Otto, unlike the threats of Eadmund, were carried into action. Lewis had indeed been set free; but he was set free on terms which his royal colleague and brother must have felt to be dishonouring to himself as well as to his ally. A war shortly followed, in which the two Kings appear as the common enemies of the two Dukes. But it is a war about which it is very difficult [Sidenote: Comparison of the French, German, and Norman accounts.] to get at the exact truth. In the part which relates to Normandy the French writers are, evidently of set purpose, meagre beyond expression. Our chief German authority, though he enlarges on one or two trifling points,[362] is, on the point which most immediately concerns us, hardly fuller than his Western fellows. The Norman legend, on the other hand, overwhelms us with details, half of which we instinctively suspect to be mythical. There is no doubt that the issue of the campaign in a military point of view was inglorious, to say the least, for the two Kings of the Franks. This was quite reason enough for the French and German writers to slur over the subject, and for the Normans to pick it out as a [Sidenote: Objects of Lewis and Otto; supposed intrigues of Arnulf.] subject for special rhetoric and exaggeration. In their story Arnulf, as usual, appears as the villain of the piece. He stirs up the whole strife; his scheme is for Lewis to yield to Otto all claims on Lotharingia, and to receive Normandy instead, as soon as the duchy should be conquered for him by the arms of the German King.[363] But the French and German writers know nothing of these machinations of Arnulf, and in their eyes, or at least in their writings, Normandy never assumes any such primary importance. The interference of Otto, in connexion with what went before and what followed, is intelligible enough, and it hardly needs the introduction of Arnulf to explain it. Yet it is likely enough that the scheme said to have been suggested by the wily Fleming really did form an element in the reckonings of the two Kings. It was most important to settle the endless Lotharingian question, which had formed a subject of discord between [Sidenote: 944.] them even in the very year of Lewis’s occupation of [Sidenote: Probable designs of Lewis on Normandy.] Rouen.[364] And after Lewis’s defeat and imprisonment, we may be sure that the conquest or humiliation of Normandy [Sidenote: March of Otto; meeting of the three Kings, Otto, Lewis, and Conrad.] was an object very dear to his heart. At all events, with whatever objects, the King of the East-Franks[365] entered the Western Kingdom, and was joyfully welcomed by its King, who joined him with all his forces. A third King joined the muster, Conrad of Burgundy,[366] who followed in the wake of Otto. Of the four Carolingian kingdoms three were thus united against the upstart powers of Paris and Rouen. And among them the German King, not yet Emperor in formal rank, takes a distinct and recognized Imperial precedence. Burgundy and the Western Kingdom do not indeed seem to owe him any formal homage; but their sovereigns were far more truly his vassals, in any practical sense of the word, than the Dukes against whom they were marching were vassals of the King of [Sidenote: The three Kings fail before Laon, but] Compiègne. The three Kings began by an attempt to extend the despoiled monarch’s possessions by the recovery of his lost fortress of Laon.[367] This attempt failed; but they [Sidenote: take Rheims. 946.] took Rheims, whence they drove out Hugh, the Duke’s Archbishop, and brought back Artald, the faithful servant [Sidenote: They ravage France and Normandy, but fail to take either Paris or Rouen.] of King Lewis.[368] They then entered France; they ravaged the whole land, but they shrank from or failed in an attack on Paris.[369] They then harried Normandy, but they failed in an attempt on Rouen.[370] Thus much is certain; the confederate Kings were driven back from the Norman capital. The picturesque, but probably to a great extent legendary, details form a brilliant picture, for which I must refer to the Norman writers and their English interpreter.[371]

[Sidenote: Effects of the German intervention.]

The discomfiture of three Kings, the repulse of the great Otto himself, could not fail to become a favourite subject of Norman boasting. But it is by no means clear that the German intervention was altogether fruitless. We have seen the fortunes of Lewis at their [Sidenote: Lewis’s fortunes begin to improve. 947.] lowest ebb. We now see them very distinctly begin to rise, while those of Hugh the Great suffer a temporary depression. The Duke failed in several expeditions, while the King went on gaining both in territorial dominion [Sidenote: Friendship of Lewis and Otto.] and in the opinion of men.[372] The close connexion between the two Frankish Kings continued, and both Lewis and his Queen shared the hospitality of their [Sidenote: 947, 949.] brother, and took a part in the paschal splendours of [Sidenote: Series of Synods.] Aachen.[373] Not the least striking feature of this period is the series of synods, synods of bishops from both the Frankish kingdoms, but to which the Eastern realm [Sidenote: Meeting by the Cher. 947.] naturally contributed by far the greater share. The first of the series, held on the banks of the Cher, was held along with a secular conference, and with armies at no [Sidenote: Synods of Verdun, (947); Mouzon, and Engelheim, (948).] great distance.[374] The later meetings, at Verdun,[375] at Mouzon,[376] and the last and most solemn, held at Engelheim[377] under the presidency of a papal legate, seem to have been essentially ecclesiastical assemblies. But the Kings were [Sidenote:

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

King keeping his distinct superiority.[378] Otto may well have dreamed of himself as a new Constantine presiding in a new [Sidenote: Controversy about the see of Rheims; its political importance.] Nicene Council. The strictly ecclesiastical object of these assemblies was to decide the controversy between the rival Archbishops who disputed, and alternately occupied, the metropolitan see of Rheims. But such a point could not be dealt with as a mere matter of canon law. The real question was not whether Hugh or Artald was the more regularly elected Primate, but whether the great city of Rheims should be held by a prince devoted to the Duke or by a prince devoted to the King. The affairs of the Western Kingdom were fully discussed in an assembly of prelates, most of whom were subjects of the Eastern King. Lewis set forth the whole story of his wrongs before his brother King and the bishops, and prayed both of them to use their several arms, temporal and spiritual, against [Sidenote: Final Synod of Trier; Hugh the Great excommunicated. 948.] his enemy. The result was, not only that Rheims was restored to the royalist Archbishop, but that, after due notice, the Duke of the French was solemnly excommunicated in a final synod at Trier,[379] which, oddly enough, consisted mainly of Western bishops. Hugh however cared little for the excommunication; the war continued, and various places were attacked with varying success on both sides. The Normans appeared as the allies of Hugh;[380] Otto, engaged in distant affairs, entrusted the support of [Sidenote: Laon recovered by Lewis. 949.] Lewis to Conrad of Lotharingia.[381] By a stratagem of Rudolf, the father of the historian, Laon was recovered to the King, except the tower, which still held out for [Sidenote: Hugh excommunicated by Pope Agapetus. 949.] Hugh.[382] At last an excommunication pronounced by Pope Agapetus in person[383] seems to have made some impression on the stubborn mind of the Duke. Through the mediation [Sidenote: Hugh does homage again. 950.] of Otto, peace was made once more; Hugh again did homage in the fullest terms,[384] and restored to the King the tower of Laon, which he still held. After this, though smaller wars and bickerings still went on in Lotharingia, [Sidenote: His last revolt and submission. 953.] Vermandois, and elsewhere, there was for four years only one revolt of Hugh, and that one after which the great Duke found it expedient to beg for peace through the intercession of Queen Gerberga.[385] During all this time [Sidenote: Lewis’s progress in Aquitaine and in Burgundy. 951.] the power of Lewis was steadily growing. Whether by force or persuasion, he gained over to his side the princes of Aquitaine, who no doubt welcomed the King as a convenient rival to their nearer neighbour the Duke.[386] Lewis even passed the boundaries of his own kingdom; he visited Besançon, and received the homage of at least one prince of the royal Burgundy, Charles-Constantine of Vienne.[387] All things seemed prospering for the Carolingian King, [Sidenote: His death. 954.] when his strange and unexpected death cut short the hopes of his house.[388] After all his long and chequered career, he was only thirty-three years of age.

[Sidenote: Reign of Lothar. 954–986.]

The long reign of Lothar, the son and successor of Lewis, answers to only a part of the much longer reign of [Sidenote: The old generation of princes dies off.] Richard the Fearless. In the course of a few years most of the principalities of Gaul changed masters. Long before the reign of Lothar was over, almost before he had personally entered on his government, Richard, so lately a child, the youngest of princes, became the eldest ruler within his own world. King Lewis was dead already; [Sidenote: Hugh the Great. 956.] [Sidenote: Arnulf born 873, died 965.] Hugh the Great died two years later; Arnulf of Flanders, at an almost incredible old age, died nine years later still.[389] [Sidenote: Otto the Great. 973.] Otto, King and Emperor, outlived all these princes, but [Sidenote: Otto the Second. 983.] Richard outlived both him and his son. Richard succeeded to his duchy in the time of Eadmund of England; he outlived Eadmund, Eadred, Eadwig, and Eadgar, and lived far on into the reign of Æthelred. In France he beheld and furthered the extinction of the Carolingian dynasty, and he died in the same year as the first King of [Sidenote: 996.] the permanent Parisian line. But this long period is, if we contrast it with that which went before it, comparatively barren of events bearing on the history of the Norman duchy. Richard wrought great changes within his own dominions, and he had many enemies to contend against without; still the greater part of his reign was no longer one incessant struggle, like the reign of his [Sidenote: 954–962.] father and his own early days. For some years wars and disputes went on almost as vigorously as before; but for [Sidenote: Comparative quiet of the later years of Richard. 962–996.] many years before his death Richard seems to have enjoyed a time of comparative peace, which he devoted to the consolidation of his power within his own states, and in a great degree to the erection and enrichment of ecclesiastical foundations.

Young Lothar was chosen King without opposition by the princes of France, Aquitaine, and ducal Burgundy. Duke Hugh espoused his cause; so did Archbishop Bruno, who now ruled Lotharingia in the name of his brother King Otto.[390] But Hugh soon contrived to employ the boy whom he recognized as his sovereign as the tool of [Sidenote: Hugh embroils Lothar with the Aquitanian princes, but is defeated before Poitiers. 955.] his own crafty policy. As has been already said, the princes of Southern Gaul were the natural allies of the King against the Duke who was so dangerous a neighbour to both. The most powerful, at least the most prominent, among these princes, William of Poitiers, the brother-in-law of William of Normandy,[391] seems to have been on the whole a faithful vassal of Lewis,[392] and he had certainly given no recent cause of offence. But Hugh procured from Lothar a grant of the duchy of Aquitaine, in addition to those of France and Burgundy,[393] and it was doubtless in order to enforce this claim that he involved the King in a war with the Aquitanian princes. But Hugh was utterly baffled before Poitiers,[394] and, soon after this defeat, his busy and faithless life, hitherto in general so [Sidenote: Death of Hugh the Great.] successful, came to an end.[395] The duchy of France, like the kingdom and the duchy of Normandy, now passed to [Sidenote: Hugh Capet succeeds under the guardianship of Richard. 956.] a minor. Hugh, surnamed Capet, the future King, succeeded his father at the age of thirteen years. On account of his youth, he was left by his father’s will under the guardianship of the Duke of the Normans.[396] Besides the close political connexion between the two princes, Richard [Sidenote: Richard marries Hugh’s sister Emma. 960.] was betrothed to Emma, daughter of the elder and sister of the younger Hugh, whom some years later he married.[397] Whether Richard ever did homage to Lothar is not clear;[398] but Hugh, on his accession to manhood, did homage to [Sidenote: The sons of Hugh do homage to Lothar, and Richard does homage to Hugh. 960.] the King, and was invested with the duchy of France and county of Poitiers, Burgundy being assigned to his younger brother Otto.[399] The death of Otto however, before many years had passed, caused Burgundy also to revert to Hugh.[400] Richard also renewed the commendation which he had made to the elder Hugh, and became the loyal vassal of his brother-in-law.[401] Arnulf, the old enemy, was now in his last days;[402] so the functions of devil or villain are now transferred in the Norman tale to Theobald, Count [Sidenote: Enmity of Theobald of Chartres towards Richard.] of Tours, Chartres, and Blois. This prince, who, like Arnulf, reached an unusual age, was the son of an elder Theobald, who is said to have bought the county of Chartres of the famous wiking Hasting.[403] The second Theobald had married Liudgardis, the widow of William Longsword and step-mother of Richard; he was a vassal of the Duke of the French,[404] and, in that character, he had acted for Hugh the Great as the gaoler of King Lewis.[405] But he seems to have by no means adopted his lord’s policy towards the Normans; on the contrary he appears as the instigator of Gerberga and Lothar to every sort of hostility against Richard.[406] The French accounts, which commonly speak of Theobald with a certain tone of contempt,[407] tell us just enough to show that there is some [Sidenote: Theobald gains Evreux. 962.] ground of truth in all this. Theobald’s chief object seems to have been the acquisition of Evreux, which at one time he actually gained by the help of Lothar.[408] Before this, if [Sidenote: Supposed plot of Lothar, Bruno, and Theobald against Richard. 960.] we may trust the Norman tale, Theobald and the King had formed with Bruno, Archbishop and Duke, a treacherous plot to beguile Richard to a conference at Amiens, and there to put him to death or imprison him.[409] I confess that this sounds to me very like a Norman perversion of a fact which is much better authenticated. King Lothar had summoned to Soissons a general assembly of the chief men of his realm, an event so common in England and Germany and so rare in the Western Kingdom. Whether the Duke [Sidenote: Richard attempts to disperse the Assembly at Soissons. 961.] of the Normans was summoned or not does not appear; but he came with an armed force and attempted to disperse the assembly, but was beaten off by the King’s troops.[410] In the next year we find Theobald at war with Richard [Sidenote: Theobald defeated by Richard. 962.] and defeated by him. Being also on ill terms with his own lord Duke Hugh, he took shelter with Gerberga and [Sidenote: Norman version; defeat of Lothar; second intervention of Harold.] Lothar, and was kindly received by them.[411] In the Norman version this grows into a long and striking story.[412] Just as in the tale of Lewis and Harold Blaatand, a conference between Lothar and Richard developes into a battle in which Lothar, like his father, is of course utterly defeated. Yet even while thus victorious, Richard is neither satisfied nor confident. He sends again to King Harold in Denmark; Harold at once comes at his call, but he has no opportunity of renewing his old exploits. For his enemies are thoroughly afraid of him. Count Theobald at once makes peace, and restores Evreux. King Lothar begs for peace also, and craves that the terrible Danes may be sent away. But it is not so easy to send them away as to bring them in. However Duke Richard does his best; he goes in person and preaches an eloquent sermon to the pagans, exhorting them to embrace Christianity and to settle quietly in the country. This a portion of them are induced to do, while the stiffnecked heathens are persuaded to sail southwards and to ravage infidel Spain instead of Catholic Gaul. After this a peace [Sidenote: Peace between Lothar and Richard.] is made between Lothar and Richard,[413] which seems not to have been again broken.

It is impossible to say exactly how much of truth lurks [Sidenote: Comparison of the French and Norman accounts.] in all this. The French writers help us to little more than the fact that there was some measure of hostility between Lothar and Richard. Richard tries to disperse Lothar’s solemn parliament; Lothar kindly entertains Richard’s vanquished enemy. Where there was as much mutual ill-will as this, it is likely that there was much more. And while we must always allow for the inventions and exaggerations of the Norman writers, we must also allow for the evident unwillingness of the French writers to say one word more about the Normans than they could help. But the whole Norman story is strange and unlikely, and many of the events sound most temptingly like repetitions of earlier events. We seem to be reading the tale of Lewis and Harold over again with but slight changes. Yet the dates come within the life, perhaps within the memory, of our one original informant on the Norman side.[414] I leave the more minute examination and final decision of the matter to those with whom Norman history is a primary object. It is enough for my purpose that the few certain facts fall in with the more elaborate picture in the legend, so far as to bring out the same general view of Richard’s position as the firm ally of France and as the enemy of the Carolingian crown.

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

During the latter part of the reign of Lothar things took a different turn. Hugh Capet now began personally to take the lead in affairs, and his peculiar policy impressed itself on the period. We have already seen what the [Sidenote: Policy of Hugh Capet different from that of his father.] policy of the elder Hugh was; he would reduce the King to the least possible amount of power and of territory, but he would himself never be more than Duke. Hugh Capet followed a different policy. He was ready to be a King as soon as he could become one quietly and with a decent pretext; but he would not hazard the prize by [Sidenote: General peace between the Kingdom and the Duchy of France.] clutching at it too soon. The relations between King and Duke during the last twenty years of Lothar were very unlike the relations which had existed between the father of Lothar and the father of Hugh. There was very little of open enmity, and when there was any, the wily Duke contrived that it should be the King who was outwardly in the wrong. For a long time Duke Hugh acted as the vassal and friend of King Lothar, and the friendship of Duke Hugh of course carried with it the friendship of Duke Richard. On the whole this was a time of peace, a thing hitherto so unusual, between Duke and King, so much so that the duchy actually underwent a German invasion in the royal cause. For it was now that the relations between the two kingdoms of the Franks again became of paramount importance. It was now that the folly of Lothar forfeited the German protectorate for himself and his kingdom.

[Sidenote: Change in the relations between the two Frankish kingdoms on the death of Otto the Great. 973.]

On the death of Otto the Great the relations between the Eastern and the Western Kingdoms were wholly changed.[415] Otto the uncle had been a protector; Otto the cousin was a rival. This breach of the old friendly relations with the Eastern Kingdom was undoubtedly one main cause of the fall of the Carolingian house in the Western Kingdom. The royalty of Laon was an outpost of the Teutonic interest in the West, which could hardly maintain itself without the support of the Teutonic powers to the east of it. Lothar, with a high spirit, had none of his father’s prudence. The old disputes about Lotharingia [Sidenote: War between Otto and Lothar.] began again;[416] war broke out, a war which, on Lothar’s side, had the approval of Duke Hugh and the other princes, an approval so cordially expressed as to suggest the suspicion [Sidenote: Lothar’s raid on Aachen and Otto’s invasion of France. 978.] that it was given only as a snare.[417] At any rate Lothar went on a wild and sudden raid against Aachen, which could win for him no lasting gain, but which gave him the opportunity of occupying the city of his great forefather, and of turning the eagle on his palace the wrong way.[418] But the insulted Emperor retaliated by a far more terrible invasion of the Western Kingdom, in which not only the royal domains, but those of the Duke were occupied and ravaged, and Paris itself was threatened.[419] This campaign of Otto the Second, like that of his greater father, [Sidenote: Peace between Otto and Lothar. 980.] was not exactly rich in military glory, but it was politically successful. Lothar, without consulting Hugh, sought for peace,[420] and gave up his claims on Lotharingia.[421] Hugh, who had hitherto stuck so faithfully by the King, was alarmed at his sudden and secret reconciliation with the [Sidenote: Alliance between Otto and Hugh; reconciliation of Lothar and Hugh.] Emperor. He held a council of his own vassals, and, by their advice, he determined to win over Otto to himself, which he succeeded in doing, though greatly against the will of the King.[422] Hugh and Lothar were however at last [Sidenote: Lewis son of Lothar elected King; his marriage and divorce. 981.] reconciled again.[423] Lewis the son of Lothar was, with the consent of Hugh and the other princes, associated in the kingdom with his father.[424] A ludicrous and unsuccessful attempt was then made to establish him at once as King in Aquitaine by marrying him to a princess of that country.[425] The notion was in itself a return to a rational policy with regard to Southern Gaul, if it had only been set about in a wiser [Sidenote: Death of Otto the Second. 983.] way. On the death of Otto the Second, Lothar, notwithstanding his former cession of his rights over Lotharingia, [Sidenote: Lothar’s further attempts on Lotharingia. 986.] took advantage of the minority of Otto the Third and the consequent anarchy in Germany again to assert his claims. He was pressing them with some success by force of arms, when his career was cut short by an early death.[426]

During all this time the narrative of our French authority tells us absolutely nothing about Normandy. Yet we may well believe that Richard took the first place in the assembly of Hugh’s vassals, and that Norman troops duly accompanied those of France in every expedition. The policy of Hugh, we may be sure, was always the policy of Richard. [Sidenote: Richard’s mediation in Flanders. 965.] The only thing about him which even his garrulous panegyrist has to tell us is that, after the death of the old Arnulf, when his grandson and successor the younger Arnulf refused his homage to the King, Richard stepped in as mediator. Lothar invaded Flanders, but Richard pacified King and Marquess; Arnulf rendered the homage, and his dominions were restored to him.[427]

[Sidenote: The accession of the Parisian or Capetian dynasty.]

And now we have at last reached that great revolution which extinguished the last remnants of Carolingian royalty, which decided the long strife between the German Frank and the half Celtic, half Roman, Frenchman, which raised Paris to that rank among the cities of Gaul which it has since never lost, which raised the lords of Paris to that rank which they lost within our [Sidenote: Reign of Lewis the Fifth. 986–987.] own day. Lothar was succeeded by his son Lewis, already his colleague in the kingdom, but his reign was short and troubled. His counsellors were divided whether he should assert his independence or should put himself under the protection of Duke Hugh.[428] He chose the safer course, and in the one act of his reign he had [Sidenote: He besieges Rheims and dies. 987.] Hugh to his helper. He attacked and besieged Rheims in a quarrel with the Archbishop Adalbero, whom he charged with having nine years before aided the Emperor Otto in his invasion.[429] But an accommodation was hardly brought about between the King and the Primate, when [Sidenote: Diet of election at Senlis. 987.] Lewis died.[430] The princes met at Senlis to elect a successor. Our French writers take care not to mention the name, but we can hardly doubt that Richard of Normandy, the most faithful and the most powerful vassal of Duke Hugh, was there ready to support the cause of his lord and brother. The choice lay between the Duke of the French and the last remaining Karling, Charles, uncle of the late King and brother of Lothar. This prince was unlucky and unpopular, and he had given special offence by accepting Lotharingia, or a part of it, as a fief of the Empire.[431] [Sidenote: The doctrine of elective monarchy set forth by Archbishop Adalbero.] A speech from the Primate, setting forth the merits of Hugh and the lawfulness and necessity of elective monarchy,[432] settled the minds of the waverers, if any waverers there were. Hugh was chosen King and was crowned at Noyon. [Sidenote: Hugh elected and crowned. 987.] Thus did an assertion of the right of election which would not have been out of place in an English Witenagemót or even in a Polish Diet become the foundation of a dynasty which was to become, more than any other in Europe, the [Sidenote: Permanence of his dynasty.] representative of strict hereditary succession. Adalbero raised to the throne a race in which, by a fate unparalleled in any other kingly house, the crown passed on for three hundred and fifty years from father to son, a race which, down to our own day, has never been without a [Sidenote: 987–1328.] male heir, and in which the right of the male heir has [Sidenote: 1338–1420.] never been disputed, save once through the ambition of a [Sidenote: 1589.] foreign prince and once through the frenzy of religious partizanship. The crown of England and the crown of Spain have been repeatedly, by revolution or by female succession, carried away from the direct male heir to distant [Sidenote: Position of Rheims as the crowning-place.] kinsmen or to utter strangers. But every King of the French crowned at Rheims has been at once a Frenchman by birth and the undisputed heir of the founder of the dynasty. Hugh and his son Robert, neither of them born to royalty, were crowned, the one at Noyon the other at [Sidenote: 1594.] Orleans. Henry the Fourth, the one King whose right was disputed, was crowned at Chartres. Rheims alone kept her proud prerogative as the crowning-place of Kings whose right was never so much as called in question. Paris, the seat of temporal dominion, has never become the ecclesiastical home of the nation, the crowning-place of lawful Kings. None but strangers and usurpers have ever taken the diadem of France in the capital of France. While Rheims has beheld the crowning of so many generations [Sidenote: 1431.] of native Frenchmen, Paris has beheld only the [Sidenote: 1804.] crowning of a single English King and a single Corsican tyrant.

[Sidenote: Struggle between Hugh and Charles. 987–991.]

Hugh of Paris was thus chosen King, as his great-uncle Odo of Paris had been chosen King before him. But the hundred years’ rivalry between the two dynasties was not yet over. As Odo had to struggle with Charles the Simple, so Hugh had to struggle with his grandson Charles of Lotharingia. Hugh’s election and coronation did not at once invest him with any territories beyond the limits of his own duchy. Laon, the royal city, would not at once consent either to forsake the line of its ancient princes or calmly to sink into a dependency of Paris. [Sidenote: Robert crowned. 987.] Hugh, after some difficulty, procured the election and coronation of his son Robert as his colleague in the kingdom,[433] and the two Kings, as they are always called, carried on a war of several years against Charles and his party.[434] The last Karling has now sunk to the position of a tyrant—a name which once was the description of Hugh’s father when he was a rebel against the father of Charles.[435] The struggle was at last ended by Charles being betrayed to the Kings by the treachery of Adalbero Bishop of Laon. The revolution was now complete, but its immediate results were [Sidenote: The Parisian dynasty now becomes permanent.] not very marked. The Duke of the French became the King of the French, and the same prince reigned at Paris and at Laon. King Hugh was undoubtedly considerably more powerful than King Lewis or King Lothar; but in the greater part of Gaul the change from the Carolingian [Sidenote: Import of the change.] to the Capetian line was hardly felt. To Hugh’s own subjects it made little practical difference whether their prince were called Duke or King. Beyond the Loire, men cared little who might reign either at Paris or at Laon. But though the immediate change was slight, the election of Hugh was a real revolution; it was the completion of the change which had been preparing for a century and a half; it was the true beginning of a new period. The Duchy of France had successfully played in Gaul the part which in Britain had been played by Wessex, which in Spain has been played by Castile, which in Scandinavia has been less thoroughly played by Sweden, which Prussia before our own eyes has played in Germany. The Carolingian, the Frankish, kingdom now comes to an end; the French duchy of Paris has taken the great step towards [Sidenote: Modern France now definitively begins.] the gradual absorption of all Gaul. The modern kingdom of France dates its definite existence from the election of Hugh; the successive partitions showed in what way the stream of events was running, but the election of Hugh was the full establishment of the thing itself. There now was, what till quite lately there has been ever since, a French King reigning at Paris. The Gallo-Roman land now finally shook off the last relics of that Teutonic domination under which it had been more or less completely held ever [Sidenote: Connexion between France and Germany ceases.] since the days of Hlodwig. The Western Kingdom now broke off all traces of its old connexion with the Eastern. Up to this time the tradition of the former unity of the whole Frankish dominion had still lingered on.[436] No such feeling remains after the final establishment of the Parisian dynasty; the German Cæsar now becomes as alien to Capetian France as his brother at Byzantium. And another [Sidenote: Lotharingia, hitherto] result took place. Lotharingia, the border land, the seat of loyalty to the Carolingian house, still, after the Capetian [Sidenote: fluctuating between Gaul and Germany, now becomes German.] revolution, kept its love for the old Imperial line. But its position was now necessarily changed. Lotharingia kept its Carolingian princes, but it kept them only by definitively becoming a fief of the Teutonic Kingdom. [Sidenote: Charles taken and imprisoned. 991.] Charles died in prison, but his children continued to reign in Lotharingia as vassals of the Empire. Lotharingia was thus wholly lost to France; that part of it which was kept by the descendants of Charles in the female line still preserves its freedom as part of the independent kingdom of Belgium. But the revolution was now fully accomplished; the struggle of a hundred years was over; the race and the tongue of the great Charles were finally wiped [Sidenote: Modern France definitively begins.] out from the Kingdom of the Western Franks. Modern, Celtic, Romance, Parisian, France was now definitively called into being. A kingdom and nation was founded, in the face of which it was for many ages the main work of every other European state to maintain its freedom, its language, and its national being, against the never-ceasing assaults, sometimes of open and high-handed violence, sometimes of plausible falsehood and gilded treachery.

§ 5. _Comparison between France, England, and Normandy._

[Sidenote: Influence of the Normans on the Capetian revolution.]

The influence which the Norman Duke exercised on this great change is carefully kept out of sight by the French historians; yet we cannot doubt that the Norman writers are, this time at least, fully justified in attributing to their sovereign a most important share in the work.[437] Everything leads us to believe that Richard took a leading [Sidenote: Personal share of Richard.] personal share in the revolution, and it is quite certain that, but for the policy which Richard followed, that revolution never could have taken place. It was the alliance between Normandy and France which determined the fate of the Carolingian dynasty.[438] And thus we are led back to the proposition with which I started at an earlier stage [Sidenote: The Norman settlement made Gaul French.] of this Chapter,[439] that it was the settlement of the Scandinavians in Gaul which definitively made Gaul French. They settled just at the point of transition, when the old German state of things was beginning to give way to the new French state of things. The influence of the new comers, notwithstanding their own Teutonic blood and speech, was thrown altogether into the French scale. The Normans became French, because a variety of circumstances brought them more within the range of French influences than of any other. The connexion between Rolf and the Carolingian dynasty was something purely political, or rather personal; Rolf had done homage and sworn oaths to King Charles, and to King Charles he stuck against all pretenders. But the main object of his successors was to bring Normandy within the pale of Christianity and civilization, in such shapes as Christianity and civilization bore immediately before their eyes. This object they naturally sought by establishing a connexion with their nearest neighbours; their standard of language and manners was set by the French court of Paris, not by the German court of Laon or by the more distant, the more purely Latin, courts of Poitiers and Toulouse. The Normans thus became Frenchmen, and, with the zeal of new proselytes, they became first and foremost in everything that is characteristically French. The earliest and best productions of the new-born French [Sidenote: French ideas take root in Normandy.] language were the work of Norman poets. All the ideas which were then growing up in France, ideas which it is hard to express otherwise than by the vague and misleading names of feudalism and chivalry, took firm root in Normandy, and there brought forth their most abundant fruit. Had Normandy remained Danish, the Scandinavian settlement would have been a most important diversion on behalf of the Teutonic element; Romance Paris would have been in a manner hemmed in between two Teutonic lands. And if the Scandinavian settlement had never taken place at all, the French developement would at least have lost the decisive support which it gained from the enlistment of such fresh and vigorous disciples. It was the Normans, I repeat, who made Gaul French; it was the Normans who made French Paris the capital of Gaul, and who gave [Sidenote: The position of Normandy established by the Capetian revolution.] Gaul the French lord of Paris for her King. On the other hand, it was the Capetian revolution which gave Normandy her definite position in Gaul and in Europe. Hitherto, in the minds and mouths of good Frenchmen, and most likely of good Germans also, the Normans were still simply the _Pirates_, and their sovereign the _Duke of the Pirates_. Their presence was endured, because they were too strong to be got rid of; but the half-heathen Danish intruders were still hateful to the princes and people of Latin and Christian Gaul. With the election of Hugh Capet all was changed. The firmest ally and supporter of the new dynasty could no longer be looked on as an outcast or as an enemy. The old question as to the relation between Normandy and the Kings of Laon was buried for ever. Whatever relations had hitherto existed between the Duke of the Normans and the King of the West-Franks, there was no doubt that the Duke of the Normans was the vassal, the most powerful and the most loyal vassal, of the Duke of the French, and the Duke of the French and the King of the West-Franks were now one and the same person. Normandy was now thoroughly naturalized; the doubtful position which it had held in Carolingian times passed altogether away; it became the mightiest and noblest among the fiefs of [Sidenote: Comparatively friendly relations between the duchy and the crown.] the Capetian crown. And for a long while the relations between the duchy and the crown remained, on the whole, friendly. It was not till later days, till Normandy was under the sway of her greatest Duke, that the old hostility broke out afresh, and that King Henry of Paris showed himself as eager as King Lewis of Laon to dispossess the prince and people who cut off himself and his city from the mouth of the Seine. Up to the days of Henry and William the good understanding between France and Normandy was seldom broken. And, even counting the wars of Henry and William, we shall find that, considering the power of the vassal and his close neighbourhood to his lord, hostilities between Rouen and Paris were not specially frequent. The rebellions of Hugh the Great alone against the Kings whom he had set up and put down would probably be found to be more in number than the wars between France and Normandy, from the commendation of Richard to Hugh to the day when England and Normandy alike were merged in the vast dominions of the princes of Anjou.

[Sidenote: Connexion of French history with the general subject.]

The close connexion between Norman and French history, the way in which we may say that Normandy created France and that France created Normandy, must be my excuse for dwelling at an apparently disproportionate length on some subjects which are only indirectly connected with English history. In order thoroughly to understand the Norman Conquest of England, it is almost as needful to have a clear view of the condition and earlier history of Normandy as it is to have a clear view of the condition and earlier history of England. And such a clear view of Norman affairs cannot be had without constant references to French, and occasional references to German, history. And the notices of French history which are needed for this end may serve to illustrate English history [Sidenote: Contrast between the political condition of England and of Gaul.] in another way. The contrast between the political condition of England and that of the Western Kingdom is most striking, even at this early time. Looked at superficially, there is a certain likeness between the two. In both cases, a King of narrow limited power stands at the head of a body of princes, some of whom, in extent of dominion, might almost—on the mainland not only almost but altogether—rank as his peers. But when we come to look more narrowly into the matter, we shall see that the likeness is only superficial. In truth there is very little real likeness at all; and if we admitted a stronger likeness than there is, if we admitted that the two countries had accidentally met at the same point, still their meeting would have been wholly accidental, because the two countries were [Sidenote: England tending to unity, Gaul to division.] moving in exactly opposite directions. England was directly tending to unity; Gaul was directly tending to division. In the long run indeed the division to which Gaul was tending paved the way for a closer unity than England has ever reached; but, at the moment, it was [Sidenote: In England Princes had sunk into Governors;] to division that Gaul was directly tending. The English kingdom was formed by the gradual union of many distinct states; to independent Kings had succeeded dependent Kings, and to dependent Kings had succeeded Ealdormen appointed by the King and his Witan. Great and powerful as was an English Ealdorman, he still was not a sovereign, not even a dependent or vassal sovereign; he ruled only with a delegated authority; the King was supreme, and the Ealdorman was only a governor sent by [Sidenote: in Gaul governors had grown into princes.] him. In Gaul the process was directly opposite. Local governors who, under the first Carolingian Kings and Emperors, had been simple lieutenants of the sovereign, had gradually grown into hereditary princes, who at most went through the decent ceremony of receiving their dominions as a grant from a King who could not withhold them. The Dukes, Counts, and Marquesses of France, of Flanders, of Aquitaine, of Septimania, of Barcelona, had in this way grown into sovereigns. Starting from the position of an English Ealdorman, they had won the formal position, and more than the practical independence, of a vassal King of Wales or Scotland. Normandy was a real fief from the beginning; the grant to Rolf was the exact parallel of the grant to Guthrum; but during the second half of the tenth century the dominions of Rolf were ruled by a native sovereign of his own blood, while the dominions of Guthrum were administered by [Sidenote: Difference of the limitations on the power of the King in England and in Gaul.] Ealdormen appointed by the English King. Again, the power of the King was narrowly limited in both kingdoms, but it was limited in altogether different ways. The power of the King of the English was limited, because he could do no important act without the consent of his Witan. The power of the King of the West-Franks was limited, because he was shorn of all direct authority beyond the narrow limits of Laon and Compiègne. The King of the English, in the exercise of such authority as the law gave him, was obeyed in every corner of his kingdom. The King of the West-Franks did as he chose in his own city of Laon; at Paris and Rouen, at Poitiers and Toulouse, he received only such measures of obedience as the sovereigns of those capitals chose to yield to him. [Sidenote: No regular National Assembly in Gaul.] No regular assembly constantly meeting, like our Witenagemót, had authority over the whole land, and kept the whole land bound together. We read of conferences of princes; but they are rarely held, except for some great and extraordinary occasion like the election of a King. An assembly, meeting yearly or oftener, to sanction the ordinary acts of the King and to pass laws binding on the whole kingdom, was something utterly unknown.

[Sidenote: Amount of real power retained by the later Karlings.]

And yet, when we see how narrow was the immediate dominion, how small were the available resources, of the later Karlings, it strikes us with wonder throughout the whole history to see how much influence, how much real power, they still kept. The King, however many enemies may be in arms against him, is always an important person, and he commonly finds an army to bring against the rebel army. We wonder where he got his army, and where he got the resources to set his army in motion. In days when war maintained itself an army was doubtless less costly than it is now, and a victorious army might even enrich its leader. But whence did the armies come? Surely not wholly from the narrow limits of the King’s immediate territory. Nor were they likely to be formed by the spontaneous loyalty of volunteers. The influence of the royal name, the reverence attaching to the blood of the great Emperor, might do a good deal to paralyse the efforts of enemies, but they would hardly of themselves bring distant followers to the royal standard. But the King, if he had few subjects, was not wholly without [Sidenote: The Kings drew support from various quarters.] friends. We find hints that the lesser vassals often found it their interest to support the King against the encroachments of the great Dukes. We find that in a war with one rebellious potentate he was often supported by the rivals of that potentate, and that his more distant vassals helped him against those who were more formidable to them than he was. We find also that he could especially rely on the help of those Bishops who, holding directly of the crown, were clothed with the character of ecclesiastical princes.[440] And in the later and more peaceful [Sidenote: Increase of the royal power under Lothar.] times of Lothar and Hugh Capet, the King appears far more clearly than before in the character of an effective head of the kingdom. We read more commonly of consultations with the other princes, and we see the King, by common consent, wielding the forces of all his vassals, including those of the Duke of the French himself. The wily Hugh no doubt saw that it was his interest to strengthen in every way the power and reputation of the crown which he meant one day to place on his own brow. Altogether we may doubt whether the practical power of the later Carolingian Kings was not really quite as great [Sidenote: Power of the crown not immediately increased by the change of dynasty.] as that of the early Capetians. The power of the crown rested mainly on influence and prescription, and influence and prescription were not on the side of the Parisian dynasty. The immediate territorial dominion of the Parisian Kings was no doubt much larger than that of the later Karlings; Paris and Laon together were far greater than Laon by itself. But the connexion between the crown and the great vassals seems to have been distinctly weakened by the change of dynasty. The descendants of Robert and Hugh did not command the hereditary respect which attached to princes sprung from the blood of Charles and Pippin. Some disputed and outlying fiefs were altogether lost to the kingdom, and the King’s sphere of action was far more strictly confined than before to the lands north of the Loire. Lotharingia and the Spanish March fell away; the connexion with Flanders gradually weakened; Aquitaine scarcely acknowledged even a nominal dependence. Assemblies and conferences of the whole kingdom, rare before, seem now to go wholly out of use. Even the vassals north of the Loire, even the former vassals of the Parisian duchy, seem to have less connexion with the crown than heretofore. In fact the French Duke lost by becoming King, just as the German King lost by becoming Emperor. As Duke he had been a less dignified, but he had been a more effectual, over-lord. The Parisian Dukes themselves had done more than all the rest of the world to set forth and strengthen the doctrine that the immediate vassals of a King were entitled to practical sovereignty. Thus, while England was getting more and more united, Gaul was getting more and more divided. Under other circumstances, the Western realm might very easily have changed, step by step, from a kingdom into [Sidenote: Isolation in France led to closer union.] a confederation, just as Germany did.[441] But as it was, the very isolation into which the several parts of the kingdom now fell proved in the end the path to an unity such as England never has seen, such as we trust England never may see. Utter isolation paved the way for utter centralization. In England, as the different parts of the realm became more closely united, all shared in a common national freedom, without any complete sacrifice of local and municipal independence. In Gaul the crown annexed, one by one, all the dominions of its own vassals[442] and such of the dominions of its neighbours as came within its reach. Thus the whole kingdom knew no will but that of the King. Widely as a modern English Parliament differs from an ancient Witenagemót, the one has grown out of the other by gradual developement, without any sudden change. In France and throughout Gaul the ancient Teutonic assemblies died out altogether, [Sidenote: 1302.] and the comparatively modern States General came into being as an original device of Philip the Fair.

I must now return to the more immediate affairs of Normandy. There can be no doubt that the various processes of which I have been speaking, the Christianizing, the Gallicizing, and the feudalizing process, all went on vigorously in Normandy during the reign of Richard the [Sidenote: Growth of the doctrine of nobility.] Fearless. The doctrine of nobility was fast growing; it was taking a form quite different from the ancient relations of eorl and ceorl, quite different from the later relations of thegn and ceorl, as they have been at any time understood in England. Hitherto mere lack of illustrious birth [Sidenote: Humble origin of many princely and noble houses.] did not keep a man back from the highest offices. The legend that Hugh Capet himself was the son of a butcher of Paris,[443] utterly fabulous as it is, marks the popular belief as to the origin of many of the princely houses of the time. The legends of Lyderic the Forester[444] and of Torquatius and Tertullus[445] point to no very lofty origin on the part [Sidenote: Origin of the Norman baronage.] of the princely houses of Flanders and Anjou. So it is in the reign of Richard that we find the beginning of the Norman baronage, and the origin of many of its members was certainly not specially illustrious. Some noble families indeed trace their descent up to old companions of Rolf, such as the house of Harcourt, which claims Bernard the Dane as its patriarch. But the larger part of the Norman nobility derived their origin from the amours or doubtful marriages of the Norman Dukes. Not only their own children, but all the kinsfolk of their wives or mistresses, were carefully promoted by ducal grants or [Sidenote: Children and kinsfolk of Richard.] by advantageous marriages. Thus Sprota, the mother of Richard the Fearless, during the troubles of her son’s early reign married one Asperleng, a rich miller. From this marriage sprang Rudolf Count of Ivry, a mighty man in the reign of his nephew, and also several daughters, who were of course well disposed of in marriage.[446] Richard himself, whose marriage with Emma of Paris was childless,[447] was the father of a large illegitimate or doubtful offspring. Besides undoubted bastards,[448] there was a considerable brood, including Richard, the next Duke, and Emma, the future Lady of the English, who were legitimated by Richard’s marriage with their mother. These were the children of Gunnor, a woman of Danish birth, to whom different stories attribute a noble and a plebeian origin.[449] From these children and from the kinsfolk of Gunnor, all of whom were promoted in one way or another, [Sidenote: Progress of feudal doctrines.] sprang a large part of the Norman nobility. Meanwhile the principles of feudalism were making fast progress both in Normandy and in France. Hugh the Great’s doctrine of commendation, practised on so magnificent a scale between the duchies of Normandy and France, was being everywhere carried out with regard to smaller possessions. Such at least is the natural inference from the general course of events; for it must be remembered that Normandy has in this age absolutely nothing to show in the way of written legislation. The wealth of the clergy [Sidenote: Richard’s grants to the Church.] was also largely increasing. Richard, unlike his father, was munificent in his gifts to the Church, especially to [Sidenote: His foundation of Fécamp. 990.] his new, or rather restored, foundation of Fécamp and to the still more famous house of Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea.[450] The original foundation of Fécamp was for secular canons.[451] It was only in the days of the second Richard that the Benedictine rule was introduced.[452] Fécamp, alone among the great monasteries of the Norman mainland, stands in the land north-east of the Seine; all the rest lie either in the valley of the river or in the true Norman districts to the west of it. Fécamp, like Westminster, Holyrood, and the Escurial, contained minster and palace in close neighbourhood; the spot became a favourite dwelling-place of Richard in his later [Sidenote: Dispute with Æthelred. 991.] days, and it was at last the place of his burial. The last years of his reign present only one important event, a dispute, possibly a war, with the English King Æthelred, a discussion of which I reserve for a place in the next Chapter in my more detailed narrative of English affairs. [Sidenote: Death of Richard. 996.] At last, Richard the Fearless, Duke of the Pirates as he is called to the last by the French historians, died of “the lesser apoplexy,” after a reign of fifty-three years.[453] As with several other princes who play a part in the world for an unusual number of years,[454] one is surprised to find that he was not much older in years than he was. Unlike his enemies, Arnulf and Theobald, whose lives were really prolonged beyond the common span of human existence, Richard the Fearless, or Richard the Old, as he was called to distinguish him from his successor, after all that he had done and undergone, after all the changes that he had wrought and beheld, had lived no longer than sixty-three years.

§ 6. _Early years of Richard the Good._ 996–997.

[Sidenote: Reign of Richard the Good. 996–1026.]

Richard the Fearless was succeeded by his son Richard, surnamed the Good, whose reign carries us beyond the limits of the present sketch into the essential and central portion of our history. Richard was a direct actor in the events which were the immediate causes of the Conquest. He was the uncle of Eadward the Confessor, the grandfather of William the Bastard; and he personally played a certain part in English affairs. I will therefore reserve his actions for their proper place in my general narrative, and I will here speak of one event only, which marks the complete developement of the influences which had been at work throughout the reign of his father. Richard succeeded to the government of a state in which the Danish tongue, Danish manners, perhaps even the old Danish religion, still lingered in particular spots, but which was now, in the face of other nations, a French state, a member, and the principal member, of the Capetian [Sidenote: Aristocratic feelings of Richard.] commonwealth. He had imbibed to the full all the new-born aristocratic feelings of feudal and chivalrous France. He would have none but gentlemen about him.[455] This is perhaps the earliest use of a word so familiar both in French and in English, but which bears such different meanings in the two languages. But, whoever was a gentleman in the language of Richard’s court, it is plain that the word took in all who could pretend to any kind of kindred or affinity, legitimate or illegitimate, with the sovereign. The way in which the exclusively aristocratic household of Richard is spoken of seems to show that his conduct in this respect was felt to be something different from that of his father. Taken in connexion with what follows, it may well have been the last pound which broke [Sidenote: Revolt of the peasants. 997.] the camel’s back. Popular discontent broke out in the great peasant revolt to which I had occasion to allude earlier in this chapter.[456] We may suppose that the peasantry were mainly of Celtic, Roman, or Frankish origin; that is, that they sprang from that mixture of those three elements which produced the modern French nation. But we may well believe that many a man of Scandinavian descent, many a small allodial holder who was unwilling to commend himself to a lord, threw in his lot with the insurgents. [Sidenote: Their regular political organization.] What is most remarkable in the story of this revolt is the regular political organization of the revolters. The systematic way in which they set to work is common enough in cities, but is exceedingly rare in rural communities. It is almost enough to place this revolt of the Norman peasantry side by side with the more famous and more fortunate revolt of the Forest Cantons against [Sidenote: They establish a “commune” with a representative assembly.] the encroachments of Austria. We can hardly believe what we read when we find that these rebellious villains established a regular representative parliament.[457] The peasants of each district deputed two of their number to a general assembly, the decisions of which were to be binding on the whole body.[458] The men who could devise such a system in such an age had certainly made further steps in political progress than the masters against whom they rebelled. The constitution which they established is expressly called by a name dear to the inhabitants of the cities of those ages, a name glorious in the eyes of modern political inquirers, but a name which was, beyond all other names, a word of fear to feudal barons and prelates, and to those Kings who were not clear-sighted enough to see that their own interests and the interests of their people were the same. The peasantry of Normandy, like the citizens of Le Mans in after times, “made a _commune_.”[459] Such a constitution could hardly have been devised offhand by mere peasants. We can hardly doubt that it had a groundwork in local institutions which the newly-grown aristocracy were trampling under foot, and that the so-called rebels were simply defending the inheritance of their fathers. We have the tale only from the mouths of enemies; but the long list of popular grievances,[460] and the testimony of enemies to the regular order with which the rebellion was carried on, are enough to show that some very promising germs of freedom were here crushed in the bud. The freedom which these men sought to establish would have been in truth more valuable, because more fairly spread over the whole country, than the liberties [Sidenote: The revolt crushed by Rudolf of Ivry.] won by isolated cities. But the revolt was crushed with horrible cruelty[461] by Rudolf, Count of Ivry, the Duke’s uncle, himself a churl by birth, the son of the miller who married the cast off wife or mistress of Duke William.[462] After this, we hear no more of peasant insurrections in Normandy, but it may well be that the struggle was not [Sidenote: Probable results of the struggle.] wholly fruitless. Villainage in Normandy was lighter, and died out earlier, than in most parts of France; and the most genuine pieces of Norman jurisprudence which abide to this day, the ancient constitutions of the Channel Islands, strange and antiquated as they seem in our eyes, breathe a spirit of freedom worthy of the air of England, of Switzerland, or of Norway.[463]

Such was the country and the people, whose history, from the beginning of the eleventh century, becomes inseparably interwoven with that of England. We will now go back to our own island, and, taking up the thread of our narrative, we will go on with a more detailed account of English affairs from the beginning of those renewed Danish invasions which paved the way for the still more eventful invasion of the Norman.

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