Chapter V: Part 5

It was a retributive justice which left Gibbon to deform, with such revolting obscenities, the pages in which he waged his disingenuous warfare against the one great purifying influence of human society. It may also have been retributive justice which has left the glory of Charlemagne to be overshadowed by the foul and unmerited reproach on which Gibbon dwells with such offensive levity; for the monarch was habitually regardless of that law, at once so strict and so benignant, which has rendered chastity the very bond of domestic love and happiness and peace. In bursting through the restraints of virtue, Charlemagne was probably the willing victim of a transparent sophistry. From a nature so singularly constituted as his, sweet waters or bitter might flow with equal promptitude. That peculiarity of temperament in which his virtues and his vices found their common root probably confounded the distinctions of good and evil in his self-judgments, and induced him to think lightly of the excesses of a disposition so often conducting him to the most noble and magnanimous enterprises; for such was the revelry of his animal life, so inexhaustible his nervous energies, so intense the vibrations of each successive impulse along the chords of his sensitive nature, so insatiable his thirst for activity, and so uncontrollable his impatience of repose, that, whether he was engaged in a frolic or a chase, composed verses or listened to homilies, fought or negotiated, cast down thrones or built them up, studied, conversed, or legislated, it seemed as if he, and he alone, were the one wakeful and really living agent in the midst of an inert, visionary, and somnolent generation.

The rank held by Charlemagne among great commanders was achieved far more by this strange and almost superhuman activity than by any pre-eminent proficiency in the art or science of war. He was seldom engaged in any general action, and never undertook any considerable siege, excepting that of Pavia, which, in fact, was little more than a protracted blockade; but, during forty-six years of almost unintermitted warfare, he swept over the whole surface of Europe, from the Ebro to the Oder, from Bretagne to Hungary, from Denmark to Capua, with such a velocity of movement and such a decision of purpose that no power, civilized or barbarous, ever provoked his resentment without rapidly sinking beneath his prompt and irresistible blows. And though it be true, as Gibbon has observed, that he seldom if ever encountered in the field a really formidable antagonist, it is not less true that, but for his military skill animated by his sleepless energy, the countless assailants by whom he was encompassed must rapidly have become too formidable for resistance; for to Charlemagne is due the introduction into modern warfare of the art by which a general compensates for the numerical inferiority of his own forces to those of his antagonists--the art of moving detached bodies of men along remote but converging lines with such mutual concert as to throw their united forces at the same moment on any meditated point of attack. Neither the Alpine marches of Hannibal nor those of Napoleon were combined with greater foresight or executed with greater precision than the simultaneous passages of Charlemagne and Count Bernard across the same mountain-ranges, and their ultimate union in the vicinity of their Lombard enemies.

But though many generals have eclipsed the fame of Charlemagne as a strategist, no one ever rivaled his inflexible perseverance as a conqueror. The Carlovingian crown may indeed be said to have been worn on the tenure of continual conquests. It was on that condition alone that the family of Pepin of Heristal could vindicate the deposition of the Merovings and the pre-eminence of the Austrasian people; and each member of that family, in his turn, gave an example of obedience to that law, or tradition, of their house. But by none of them was it so well observed as by Charlemagne himself. From his first expedition to his last there intervened forty-six years, no one of which he passed in perfect peace, nor without some military triumph. In six months he reduced into obedience the great province or kingdom of Aquitaine. In less than two years he drove the Lombard king into a monastic exile, placing on his own brows the iron crown, and with it the sovereignty over nearly all the Italian peninsula. During thirty-three successive summers he invaded the great Saxon confederacy, until the deluge of barbarism with which they threaten southern Europe was effectually and forever repressed.

It has been alleged, indeed, that the Saxon wars were waged in the spirit of fanaticism, and that the vicar of Christ placed the sword of Mohammed in the hands of the sovereign of the Franks. It is, I think, an unfounded charge, though sanctioned by Gibbon and by Warburton, and by names of perhaps even greater authority than theirs. That the alternative, “believe or die,” was sometimes proposed by Charlemagne to the Saxons, I shall not, indeed, dispute. But it is not less true that, before these terms were tendered to them, they had again and again rejected his less formidable proposal, “be quiet and live.” In form and in terms, indeed, their election lay between the Gospel and the sword. In substance and in reality, they had to make their choice between submission and destruction. A long and deplorable experience had already shown that the Frankish people had neither peace nor security to expect for a single year, so long as their Saxon neighbors retained their heathen rites and the ferocious barbarism inseparable from them. Fearful as may be the dilemma, “submit or perish,” it is that to which every nation, even in our own

times, endeavors to reduce a host of invading and desolating foes; nor, if we ourselves were now exposed to similar inroads, should we offer to our assailants conditions more gentle or less peremptory.

ALFRED THE GREAT, OF ENGLAND.

BY DAVID HUME.

[Hereditary King of the West Saxons, and Over-king of all England,
born in 849 A.D., died 901. Alfred was the true founder of the
English monarchy, and one of the greatest monarchs in English
history. In his reign the English became essentially one people,
and the Danish invaders then settled in England were incorporated
with the Saxons. Alfred was not only a great soldier and statesman,
but was distinguished for intellectual greatness in the pursuit of
arts and letters. Under his patronage the Saxon court became the
source of civilizing influences that extended over all Northern and
Western Europe.]

The merit of this prince both in private and public life may with advantage be set in opposition to that of any monarch or citizen which the annals of any age or nation can present to us. He seems, indeed, to be the model of that perfect character which, under the denomination of sage or wise man, philosophers have been fond of delineating rather as a fiction of their own imagination than in hopes of seeing it existing, so happily were all his virtues tempered together, so justly were they blended, and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its proper boundaries. He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit with the coolest moderation, the most obstinate perseverance with the easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity; the greatest vigor in commanding with the most perfect affability of deportment; the highest capacity and inclination for science with the most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are almost equally the objects of our admiration, excepting only that the former being more rare among princes as well as more useful seem chiefly to challenge our applause.

Nature, also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him every bodily accomplishment--vigor of limbs, dignity of air and shape, with a pleasant, engaging, and open countenance. Fortune alone by throwing him into that barbarous age deprived him of historians worthy to transmit his fame to posterity; and we wish to see him delineated in more lively colors, and with more peculiar strokes, that we may at least perceive some of those specks and blemishes from which as a man it is impossible he could be entirely exempted.

The better to guide the magistrates in the administration of justice, Alfred framed a body of laws, which, though now lost, served long as the basis of English jurisprudence, and is generally deemed the origin of what is denominated the Common Law. The similarity of these institutions to the customs of the ancient Germans, to the practice of the other Northern conquerors, and to the Saxon laws during the heptarchy, prevents us from regarding Alfred as the sole author of this plan of government, and leads us rather to think that, like a wise man, he contented himself with reforming, extending, and executing the institutions which he found previously established.

But on the whole such success attended his legislation that everything bore suddenly a new face in England. Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of criminals; and so exact was the general police that Alfred, it is said, hung up by way of bravado golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared touch them. Yet, amid these rigors of justice, this great prince preserved the most sacred regard to the liberties of the people; and it is a memorable sentiment preserved in his will that it was just the English should ever remain as free as their own thoughts.

As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though not in every individual, the care of Alfred for the encouragement of learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former dissolute and ferocious manners. But the king was guided in this pursuit less by political views than by his natural bent and propensity toward letters.

When he came to the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the government and from the ravages of the Danes. The monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burned, and thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted. Alfred himself complains that on his accession he knew not one person south of the Thames who could so much as interpret the Latin service, and very few in the northern parts who had reached even that pitch of erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars from all parts of Europe; he established schools everywhere for the instruction of his people; he founded--at least repaired--the University of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and immunities. He gave preferment both in Church and state to such only as made some proficiency in knowledge.

But the most effectual expedient adopted by Alfred for the encouragement of learning was his own example, and the constant assiduity with which, notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he employed himself in the pursuit of knowledge. He usually divided his time into three equal portions--one was employed in sleep, and the refection of his body by diet and exercise; another, in the dispatch of business; a third, in study and devotion. And that he might more exactly measure the hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in lanterns--an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of dialing and the mechanism of clocks and watches were entirely unknown. And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often labored under great bodily infirmities, this martial hero who fought in person fifty-six battles by sea and land, was able, during a life of no extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose more books, than most studious men, though blessed with greatest leisure and application, have in more fortunate ages made the object of their uninterrupted industry. And he deemed it no wise derogatory from his other great characters of sovereign, legislator, warrior, and politician thus to lead the way to his people in the pursuit of literature.

He invited from all quarters industrious foreigners to repeople his country, which had been desolated by the ravages of the Danes. He introduced and encouraged manufactures of all kinds, and no inventor or improver of any ingenious art did he suffer to go unrewarded. He prompted men of activity to betake themselves to navigation, to push commerce into the most remote countries, and to acquire riches by propagating industry among their fellow-citizens. He set apart a seventh portion of his own revenue for maintaining a number of workmen, whom he constantly employed in rebuilding the ruined cities, castles, palaces, and monasteries. Even the elegancies of life were brought to him from the Mediterranean and the Indies; and his subjects, by seeing those productions of the peaceful arts, were taught to respect the virtues of justice and industry, from which alone they could rise. Both living and dead Alfred was regarded by foreigners, no less than by his own subjects, as the greatest prince after Charlemagne that appeared in Europe during several ages, and as one of the wisest and best that had ever adorned the annals of any nation.

OLAF TRYGGVESON, KING OF NORWAY.

BY THOMAS CARLYLE.

[Earliest of the Norwegian kings who succeeded in implanting
Christianity in the soil of Norse paganism. Exact date of birth
unknown; died 1000 A.D. Son of Tryggve, a former under-king, or
jarl, of Norway, slain by Hakon Jarl, who had usurped the supreme
power about 975. Olaf spent his early years as a sea-rover, and
became the most celebrated viking of his age. He conquered and slew
Hakon in 995, and became king. During his reign of five years he
revolutionized his kingdom. He lost his life in a great sea-battle
with the combined fleets of Denmark and Norway. The facts of his
career are mostly drawn from the saga of Snorro Sturleson.]

Tryggveson made a stout and, in effect, victorious and glorious struggle for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant to do so, often enough by soft and even merry methods--for he was a witty, jocund man, and had a fine ringing laugh in him, and clear, pregnant words ever ready--or, if soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway, was especially busy against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites); this, indeed, may be called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway, and of all the troubles he now had with his people there. For this was a serious, vital, all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a thing not to be tolerated one moment longer than you could by any method help! Olaf’s success was intermittent, of varying complexion, but his effort, swift or slow, was strong and continual, and, on the whole, he did succeed. Take a sample of that wonderful conversion process:

Once, in beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch upon Christianity the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and jingling of arms, which quite drowned the royal voice; declared they had taken arms against King Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from his Christian proposals, and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him (Hakon the Good). The king then said, “He purposed coming to them next Yule to their great sacrificial feast to see for himself what their customs were,” which pacified the Bonders for this time. The appointed place of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done to ruin, chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe; there should Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide all manner of important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed men strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king said: “Since he himself was to become a heathen again and do sacrifice, it was his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of human sacrifice, and this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of the best men in the country!” In which stringent circumstances the eleven seized persons and company at large gave unanimous consent to baptism, straightway received the same, and abjured their idols, but were not permitted to go home till they had left, in sons, brothers, and other precious relatives, sufficient hostages in the king’s hands.

By unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson had trampled down idolatry so far as form went--how far in substance may be greatly doubted. But it is to be remembered withal that always on the back of these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops, priests, and preachers, whereby to the open-minded conviction, to all degrees of it, was attainable, while silence and passivity became the duty or necessity of the unconvinced party. In about two years Norway was all gone over with a rough harrow of conversion. Heathenism, at least, constrained to be silent and outwardly conformable.

Olaf Tryggveson, though his kingdom was the smallest of the Norse three, had risen to a renown over all the Norse world, which neither he of Denmark nor he of Sweden could pretend to rival. A magnificent, far-shining man, more expert in all “bodily exercises,” as the Norse called them, than any man had ever been before him or after was. Could keep five daggers in the air, always catching the proper fifth by its handle, and sending it aloft again; could shoot supremely, throw a javelin with either hand; and, in fact, in battle usually threw two together. These, with swimming, climbing, leaping, were the then admirable fine arts of the North, in all which Tryggveson appears to have been the Raphael and the Michael Angelo at once. Essentially definable, too, if we look well into him, as a wild bit of real heroism in such rude guise and environment--a high, true, and great human soul. A jovial burst of laughter in him withal; a bright, airy, wise way of speech; dressed beautifully and with care; a man admired and loved exceedingly by those he liked; dreaded as death by those he did not like. “Hardly any king,” says Snorro, “was ever so well obeyed; by one class out of zeal and love, by the rest out of dread.” His glorious course, however, was not to last long.

Tryggveson had already ships and navies that were the wonder of the North. Especially in building war-ships--the Crane, the Serpent, last of all, the Long Serpent--he had, for size, for outward beauty, and inward perfection of equipment, transcended all example.

A new sea expedition undertaken by Olaf became an object of attention to all neighbors; especially Queen Sigrid the Proud and Svein Double-Beard,[20] her now king, were attentive to it.

“This insolent Tryggveson,” Queen Sigrid would often say, and had long been saying, to her Svein, “to marry thy sister without leave had or asked of thee; and now flaunting forth his war navies as if he, king only of paltry Norway, were the big hero of the North! Why do you suffer it, you kings really great?”

By such persuasions and reiterations King Svein of Denmark, King Olaf of Sweden, and Jarl Eric, now a great man there, grown rich by prosperous sea-robbery and other good management, were brought to take the matter up, and combine strenuously for destruction of King Olaf Tryggveson on this grand Wendland expedition of his.

King Olaf Tryggveson, unacquainted with all this, sailed away in summer with his splendid fleet, went through the belts with prosperous winds, under bright skies, to the admiration of both shores. Such a fleet, with its shining Serpents, long and short, and perfection of equipment and appearance, the Baltic never saw before.

Olaf’s chief captains, seeing the enemy’s fleet come out and how the matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke of treachery, and with all sail hold on his course, fight being now on so unequal terms. Snorro says the king, high on the quarter-deck where he stood, replied: “Strike the sails! never shall men of mine think of flight. I never fled from battle. Let God dispose of my life; but flight I will never take!” And so the battle arrangements immediately began, and the battle with all fury went loose, and lasted hour after hour till almost sunset, if I well recollect. “Olaf stood on the Serpent’s quarter-deck,” says Snorro, “high over the others. He had a gilt shield and a helmet inlaid with gold; over his armor he had a short red coat, and was easily distinguished from other men.”

The Danish fleet, the Swedish fleet, were both of them quickly dealt with, and successively withdrew out of shotrange. And then Jarl Eric came up and fiercely grappled with the Long Serpent, or rather with her surrounding comrades, and gradually, as they were beaten empty of men, with the Long Serpent herself. The fight grew ever fiercer, more furious. Eric was supplied with new men from the Swedes and Danes; Olaf had no such resource, except from the crews of his own beaten ships; and at length this also failed him, all his ships, except the Long Serpent, being beaten and emptied. Olaf fought on unyielding. Eric twice boarded him, was twice repulsed. Olaf kept his quarter-deck, unconquerable, though left now more and more hopeless, fatally short of help. A tall young man, called Einar Tamberskelver, very celebrated and important afterward in Norway, and already the best archer known, kept busy with his bow. Twice he nearly shot Jarl Eric in his ship. “Shoot me that man!” said Jarl Eric to a bowman near him; and, just as Tamberskelver was drawing his bow the third time, an arrow hit it in the middle and broke it in two. “What is this that has broken?” asked King Olaf. “Norway from thy hand, king,” answered Tamberskelver. Tryggveson’s men, he observed with surprise, were striking violently on Eric’s, but to no purpose; nobody fell. “How is this?” asked Tryggveson. “Our swords are notched and blunted, king; they do not cut.” Olaf stepped down to his arm-chest, delivered out new swords, and it was observed, as he did it, blood ran trickling from his wrist, but none knew where the wound was. Eric boarded a third time. Olaf, left with hardly more than one man, sprang overboard (one sees that red coat of his still glancing in the evening sun), and sank in the deep waters to his long rest.

Rumor ran among his people that he still was not dead; grounding on some movement by the ships of that traitorous Sigwald, they fancied Olaf had dived beneath the keels of his enemies, and got away with Sigwald, as Sigwald himself evidently did. “Much was hoped, supposed, spoken,” says one old mourning Skald; “but the truth was, Olaf Tryggveson was never seen in Norseland more.” Strangely he remains still a shining figure to us--the wildly beautifulest man in body and in soul that one has ever heard of in the North.

CNUT OR CANUTE OF ENGLAND, ALSO KING OF DENMARK.

BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.

[Date of birth uncertain, died 1035 or 1036. He succeeded to the
command of the Danish invaders of England on the death of his
father Svein, and on the death of Eadmund Ironsides, the Saxon
king, he became the acknowledged King of England in 1017. His
exercise of power was marked by great qualities of justice,
ability, and devotion to the interests of his acquired kingdom; and
his name has been transmitted in history as a worthy successor of
the Great Alfred.]

The first of our foreign masters was the Dane. The countries of Scandinavia which had so long been the mere starting points of the pirate bands who had ravaged England and Ireland had now settled down into comparative order. It was the aim of Svein to unite them in a great Scandinavian Empire, of which England should be the head; and this project, interrupted for a time by his death, was resumed with yet greater vigor by his son Cnut. Fear of the Dane was still great in the land, and Cnut had no sooner appeared off the English coast than Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland joined in owning him for their lord, and in discarding again the rule of Æthelred, who had returned on the death of Svein. When Æthelred’s death in 1016 raised his son Eadmund Ironside to the throne, the loyalty of London enabled him to struggle bravely for a few months against the Danes; but a decisive victory at Assandun and the death of his rival left Cnut master of the realm. Conqueror as he was, the Dane was no foreigner in the sense that the Norman was a foreigner after him. His language differed little from the English tongue. He brought in no new system of tenure or government. Cnut ruled, in fact, not as a foreign conqueror but as a native king. The good-will and tranquillity of England were necessary for the success of his larger schemes in the north, where the arms of his English subjects aided him in later years in uniting Denmark and Norway beneath his sway.

Dismissing, therefore, his Danish “host,” and retaining only a trained body of household troops or hus-carls to serve in sudden emergencies, Cnut boldly relied for support within his realm on the justice and good government he secured it. His aim during twenty years seems to have been to obliterate from men’s minds the foreign character of his rule, and the bloodshed in which it had begun. The change in himself was as startling as the change in his policy. When he first appears in England, it is as the mere northman, passionate, revengeful, uniting the guile of the savage with his thirst for blood. His first acts of government were a series of murders. Eadric of Mercia, whose aid had given him the crown, was felled by an axe-blow at the king’s signal; a murder removed Eadwig, the brother of Eadmund Ironside, while the children of Eadmund were hunted even into Hungary by his ruthless hate. But from a savage such as this Cnut rose suddenly into a wise and temperate king. Stranger as he was, he fell back on “Eadgar’s law,” on the old constitution of the realm, and owned no difference between conqueror and conquered, between Dane and Englishman. By the creation of four earldoms--those of Mercia, Northumberland, Wessex, and East Anglia--he recognized provincial independence, but he drew closer than of old the ties which bound the rulers of these great dependencies to the Crown. He even identified himself with the patriotism which had withstood the stranger. The Church had been the center of national resistance to the Dane, but Cnut sought above all its friendship. He paid homage to the cause for which Ælfheah had died, by his translation of the archbishop’s body to Canterbury. He atoned for his father’s ravages by costly gifts to the religious houses. He protected English pilgrims against the robber-lords of the Alps. His love for monks broke out in the song which he composed as he listened to their chant at Ely: “Merrily sang the monks in Ely when Cnut King rowed by” across the vast fen-waters that surrounded their abbey. “Row, boatmen, near the land, and hear we these monks sing.”

Cnut’s letter from Rome to his English subjects marks the grandeur of his character and the noble conception he had formed of kingship. “I have vowed to God to lead a right life in all things,” wrote the king, “to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just judgment to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what was just, through headiness or negligence of youth, I am ready with God’s help to amend it utterly.” No royal officer, either for fear of the king or for favor of any, is to consent to injustice, none is to do wrong to rich or poor “as they would value my friendship and their own well-being.” He especially denounces unfair exactions: “I have no need that money be heaped together for me by unjust demands.” “I have sent this letter before me,” Cnut ends, “that all the people of my realm may rejoice in my well-doing; for, as you yourselves know, never have I spared nor will I spare to spend myself and my toil in what is needful and good for my people.”

Cnut’s greatest gift to his people was that of peace. With him began the long internal tranquillity which was from this time to be the special note of our national history. During two hundred years, with the one terrible interval of the Norman Conquest, and the disturbance under Stephen, England alone among the kingdoms of Europe enjoyed unbroken repose. The wars of her kings lay far from her shores, in France or Normandy, or, as with Cnut, in the more distant lands of the north. The stern justice of their government secured order within. The absence of internal discontent under Cnut--perhaps, too, the exhaustion of the kingdom after the terrible Danish inroads--is proved by its quiet during his periods of absence. Everything witnesses to the growing wealth and prosperity of the country. A great part of English soil was, indeed, still utterly uncultivated.

Wide reaches of land were covered with wood, thicket and scrub, or consisted of heaths and moor. In both the east and the west there were vast tracts of marsh land; fens nearly one hundred miles long severed East Anglia from the midland counties; sites like that of Glastonbury or Athelney were almost inaccessible. The beaver still haunted marshy hollows such as those which lay about Beverley, the London craftsmen chased the wild boar and the wild ox in the woods of Hampstead, while wolves prowled round the homesteads of the north. But peace, and the industry it encouraged, were telling on this waste; stag and wolf were retreating before the face of man, the farmer’s axe was ringing in the forest, and villages were springing up in the clearings. The growth of commerce was seen in the rich trading-ports of the eastern coast. The main trade lay probably in skins and ropes and ship-masts; and, above all, in the iron and steel that the Scandinavian lands so long supplied to Britain. But Dane and Norwegian were traders over a yet wider field than the northern seas; their barks entered the Mediterranean, while the overland route through Russia brought the wares of Constantinople and the East. “What do you bring to us?” the merchant is asked in an old English dialogue. “I bring skins, silks, costly gems, and gold,” he answers, “besides various garments, pigment, wine, oil, and ivory, with brass and copper and tin, silver and gold, and such like.” Men from the Rhineland and from Normandy, too, moored their vessels along the Thames, on whose rude wharves were piled a strange medley of goods--pepper and spices from the far East, crates of gloves and gray cloths (it may be from the Lombard looms), sacks of wool, iron-work from Liége, butts of French wine and vinegar, and with them the rural products of the country itself--cheese, butter, lard, and eggs, with live swine and fowls.

Cnut’s one aim was to win the love of his people, and all tradition shows how wonderful was his success. But the greatness of his rule hung solely on the greatness of his temper, and at his death the empire he had built up at once fell to pieces.

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.

[The illegitimate son of Robert, surnamed Le Diable, duke of
Normandy, and his father’s successor, born 1027; died, 1087.
Claiming right of inheritance under a pretended bequest of Edward
the Confessor, the Saxon king of England, he levied a great army of
adventurers from all Europe, and in the great battle of Senlac, or,
as it is sometimes known, Hastings, he defeated the Saxons and
their King Harold, who had been elected by the voice of the
_Wittenegamotte_, or Great Council of England, on October 14, 1066.
Harold was slain, and the Norman conqueror was crowned. William’s
transcendent abilities as a ruler, though stained by cruelty and
rapacity, made his reign the greatest epoch in early English
history.]

William the Great, as men of his own day styled him, William the Conqueror, as by one event he stamped himself on our history, was now Duke of Normandy. The full grandeur of his indomitable will, his large and patient statesmanship, the loftiness of aim which lifts him out of the petty incidents of his age, were as yet only partly disclosed. But there never was a moment from his boyhood when he was not among the greatest of men. His life was one long mastering of difficulty after difficulty. The shame of his birth remained in his name of “the Bastard.” His father, Duke Robert, had seen Arlotta, the daughter of a tanner of the town, washing her linen in the little brook by

Falaise, and, loving her, had made her the mother of his boy. Robert’s departure on a pilgrimage from which he never returned left William a child-ruler among the most turbulent baronage in Christendom, and treason and anarchy surrounded him as he grew to manhood. Disorder broke at last into open revolt. Surprised in his hunting-seat at Valognes by the rising of the Bessin and Cotentin districts, in which the pirate temper and lawlessness lingered longest, William had only time to dash through the fords of Vire with the rebels on his track. A fierce combat of horse on the slopes of Val-ès-dunes, to the southeastward of Caen, left him master of the duchy, and the old Scandinavian Normandy yielded forever to the new civilization which streamed in with French alliances and the French tongue. William was himself a type of the transition. In the young duke’s character the old world mingled strangely with the new, the pirate jostled roughly with the statesman. William was the most terrible, as he was the last outcome of the northern race.

The very spirit of the “sea-wolves” who had so long “lived on the pillage of the world” seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery, the fury of his wrath, the ruthlessness of his revenge. “No knight under heaven,” his enemies confessed, “was William’s peer.” Boy as he was, horse and man went down before his lance at Val-ès-dunes. All the fierce gayety of his nature broke out in the chivalrous adventures of his youth, in his rout of fifteen Angevins with but five soldiers at his back, in his defiant ride over the ground which Geoffry Martel claimed from him--a ride with hawk on fist as though war and the chase were one. No man could bend his bow. His mace crashed its way through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest heights in moments when other men despaired. His voice rang out like a trumpet to rally his soldiers as they fled before the English charge at Senlac. In his winter march on Chester he strode afoot at the head of his fainting troops, and helped with his own hands to clear a road through the snowdrifts. With the northman’s daring broke out the northman’s pitilessness. When the townsmen of Alençon hung raw hides along their walls in scorn of the baseness of his birth, with cries of “Work for the tanner!” William tore out his prisoners’ eyes, cut off their hands and feet, and flung them into the town.

At the close of his greatest victory he refused Harold’s body a grave. Hundreds of Hampshire men were driven from their homes to make him a hunting-ground, and his harrying of Northumbria left the north of England a desolate waste. There is a grim, ruthless ring about his very jests. In his old age Philip of France mocked at the Conqueror’s unwieldy bulk and at the sickness which confined him to his bed at Rouen. “King William has as long a lying-in,” laughed his enemy, “as a woman behind her curtains!” “When I get up,” swore William, “I will go to mass in Philip’s land, and bring a rich offering for my churching. I will offer a thousand candles for my fee. Flaming brands shall they be, and steel shall glitter over the fire they make.” At harvest-tide town and hamlet flaring into ashes along the French border fulfilled the Conqueror’s vow. There is the same savage temper in the loneliness of his life. He recked little of men’s love or hate. His grim look, his pride, his silence, his wild outbursts of passion, spread terror through his court. “So stark and fierce was he,” says the English chronicler, “that none dared resist his will.” His graciousness to Anselm only brought out into stronger relief the general harshness of his tone. His very wrath was solitary. “To no man spake he, and no man dared speak to him,” when the news reached him of Harold’s accession to the throne. It was only when he passed from the palace to the loneliness of the woods that the king’s temper unbent. “He loved the wild deer as though he had been their father. Whosoever should slay hart or hind man should blind him.” Death itself took its color from the savage solitude of his life. Priests and nobles fled as the last breath left him, and the Conqueror’s body lay naked and lonely on the floor.

It is not to his victory at Senlac, but to the struggle which followed his return from Normandy, that William owes his title of the “Conqueror.” The struggle which ended in the fens of Ely had wholly changed William’s position. He no longer held the land merely as elected king; he added to his elective right the right of conquest. The system of government which he originated was, in fact, the result of the double character of his power. It represented neither the purely feudal system of the Continent nor the system of the older English royalty. More truly, perhaps, it may be said to have represented both. As the successor of Eadward, William retained the judicial and administrative organization of the older English realm. As the conqueror of England he introduced the military organization of feudalism so far as was necessary for the secure possession of his conquests. The ground was already prepared for such an organization; we have seen the beginnings of English feudalism in the warriors, the “companions,” or “thegns,” who were personally attached to the king’s war-band, and received estates from the folk-land in reward for their personal services. In later times this feudal distribution of estates had greatly increased, as the bulk of the nobles followed the king’s example and bound their tenants to themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation. On the other hand, the pure freeholders, the class which formed the basis of the original English society, had been gradually reduced in number, partly through imitation of the class above them, but still more through the incessant wars and invasions which drove them to seek protectors among the thegns at the cost of their independence. Feudalism, in fact, was superseding the older freedom in England even before the reign of William, as it had already superseded it in Germany or France. But the tendency was quickened and intensified by the Conquest; the desperate and universal resistance of his English subjects forced William to hold by the sword what the sword had won, and an army strong enough to crush at any moment a national revolt was necessary for the preservation of his throne. Such an army could only be maintained by a vast confiscation of the soil. The failure of the English risings cleared the way for its establishment; the greater part of the higher nobility fell in battle or fled into exile, while the lower thegnhood either forfeited the whole of their lands or redeemed a portion of them by the surrender of the rest.

The dependence of the Church on the royal power was strictly enforced. Homage was exacted from bishop as from baron. No royal tenant could be excommunicated without the king’s leave. No synod could legislate without his previous assent and subsequent confirmation of its decrees. No papal letters could be received within the realm save by his permission. William firmly repudiated the claims which were now beginning to be put forward by the court of Rome. When Gregory VII called on him to do fealty for his realm, the king sternly refused to admit the claim. “Fealty I have never willed to do, nor do I will to do it now. I have never promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did it to yours.”

The Conquest was hardly over when the struggle between the baronage and the crown began. The wisdom of William’s policy in the destruction of the great earldoms which had overshadowed the throne was shown in an attempt at their restoration made by Roger, the son of his minister, William Fitz-Osbern, and by the Breton Ralf de Guader, whom the king had rewarded for his services at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk. The rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven over sea; but the intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in William’s half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Under pretense of aspiring by arms to the papacy, Bishop Odo collected money and men; but the treasure was at once seized by the royal officers, and the bishop arrested in the midst of the court. Even at the king’s bidding no officer would venture to seize on a prelate of the Church; it was with his own hands that William was forced to effect his arrest. “I arrest not the bishop, but the Earl of Kent,” laughed the Conqueror, and Odo remained a prisoner till William’s death.

It was, in fact, this vigorous personality of William which proved the chief safeguard of his throne. “Stark he was,” says the English chronicler, “to men that withstood him. Earls that did aught against his bidding he cast into bonds; bishops he stripped of their bishoprics, abbots of their abbacies. He spared not his own brother; first he was in the land, but the king cast him into bondage. If a man would live and hold his lands, need it were that he should follow the king’s will.” But, stern as his rule was, it gave peace to the land. Even amid the sufferings which necessarily sprang from the circumstances of the Conquest itself, from the erection of castles, or the inclosure of forests, or the exactions which built up the great hoard at Winchester, Englishmen were unable to forget “the good peace he made in the land, so that a man might fare over his realm with a bosom full of gold.” Strange touches of a humanity far in advance of his age contrasted with the general temper of his government. One of the strongest traits in his character was his aversion to shed blood by process of law; he formally abolished the punishment of death, and only a single execution stains the annals of his reign. An edict yet more honorable to him put an end to the slave-trade which had till then been carried on at the port of Bristol. The pitiless warrior, the stern and awful king was a tender and faithful husband, an affectionate father. The lonely silence of his bearing broke into gracious converse with pure and sacred souls like Anselm. If William was “stark” to rebel and baron, men noted that he was “mild to those that loved God.”

ROBERT GUISCARD.

BY EDWARD GIBBON.

[Born about 1015, died 1085. This Norman adventurer, the sixth son
of a small baron, became Duke of Apulia and Calabria in Italy by
conquest, and founded the Kingdom of Naples, which existed till
1860. Equally distinguished by personal prowess, generalship, and
diplomatic astuteness, he filled a large figure in the affairs of
his time, and was one of the stoutest bulwarks against Saracenic
aggression.]

The pedigree of Robert Guiscard is variously deduced from the peasants and the dukes of Normandy--from the peasants, by the pride and ignorance of a Grecian princess; from the dukes, by the ignorance and flattery of the Italian subjects. His genuine descent may be ascribed to the second or middle order of private nobility. He sprang from a race of _valvassors_ or _bannerets_, of the diocese of Coutances, in the lower Normandy; the castle of Hauteville was their honorable seat, his father Tancred was conspicuous in the court and army of the duke, and his military service was furnished by ten soldiers or knights. Two marriages, of a rank not unworthy of his own, made him the father of twelve sons, who were educated at home by the impartial tenderness of his second wife. But a narrow patrimony was insufficient for this numerous and daring progeny; they saw around the neighborhood the mischiefs of poverty and discord, and resolved to seek in foreign wars a more glorious inheritance. Two only remained to perpetuate the race and cherish their father’s age; their ten brothers, as they successively attained the vigor of manhood, departed from the castle, passed the Alps, and joined the Apulian camp of the Normans.

The elder were prompted by native spirit; their success encouraged their younger brethren, and the three first in seniority--William, Drogo, and Humphrey--deserved to be the chiefs of their nation and the founders of the new republic. Robert was the eldest of the seven sons of the second marriage, and even the reluctant praise of his foes has endowed him with the heroic qualities of a soldier and a statesman. His lofty stature surpassed the tallest of his army; his limbs were cast in the true proportion of strength and gracefulness, and to the decline of life he maintained the patient vigor of health and the commanding dignity of his form. His complexion was ruddy, his shoulders were broad, his hair and beard were long and of a flaxen color, his eyes sparkled with fire, and his voice, like that of Achilles, could impress obedience and terror amid the tumult of battle. In the ruder ages of chivalry such qualifications are not below the notice of the poet or historian. They may observe that Robert at once, and with equal dexterity, could wield in the right hand his sword, his lance in the left; that in the battle of Civitella he was thrice unhorsed, and that in the close of that memorable day he was adjudged to have borne away the prize of valor from the warriors of the two armies. His boundless ambition was founded on the consciousness of superior worth; in the pursuit of greatness he was never arrested by the scruples of justice, and seldom moved by the feelings of humanity. Though not insensible of fame, the choice of open or clandestine means was determined only by his present advantage. The surname of _Guiscard_[21] was applied to this master of political wisdom, which is too often confounded with the practice of dissimulation and deceit; and Robert is praised by the Apulian poet for excelling the cunning of Ulysses and the eloquence of Cicero. Yet these arts were disguised by an appearance of military frankness; in his highest fortune he was accessible and courteous to his fellow-soldiers, and, while he indulged the prejudices of his new subjects, he affected in his dress and manners to maintain the ancient fashion of his country.

He grasped with a rapacious, that he might distribute with a liberal hand; his primitive indigence had taught the habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not below his attention, and his prisoners were tortured with slow and unfeeling cruelty to force a discovery of their secret treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy with only five followers on horseback and thirty on foot; yet even this allowance appears too bountiful. The sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville passed the Alps as a pilgrim, and his first military band was levied among the adventurers of Italy. His brothers and countrymen had divided the fertile lands of Apulia, but they guarded their shares with the jealousy of avarice; the aspiring youth was driven forward to the mountains of Calabria, and in his first exploits against the Greeks and the natives it is not easy to discriminate the hero from the robber. To surprise a castle or a convent, to ensnare a wealthy citizen, to plunder the adjacent villages for necessary food, were the obscure labors which formed and exercised the powers of his mind and body. The volunteers of Normandy adhered to his standard; and, under his command, the peasants of Calabria assumed the name and character of Normans.

As the genius of Robert expanded with his fortune, he awakened the jealousy of his elder brother, by whom, in a transient quarrel, his life was threatened and his liberty restrained. After the death of Humphrey the tender age of his sons excluded them from the command; they were reduced to a private estate by the ambition of their guardian and uncle, and Guiscard was exalted on a buckler and saluted Count of Apulia and general of the republic. With an increase of authority and of force he resumed the conquest of Calabria, and soon aspired to a rank that should raise him forever above the heads of his equals. By some acts of rapine or sacrilege he had incurred a papal excommunication, but Nicholas II was easily persuaded that the divisions of friends could terminate only in their mutual prejudice; that the Normans were the faithful champions of the Holy See, and it was safer to trust the alliance of a prince than the caprice of an aristocracy. A synod of one hundred bishops was convened at Melphi, and the count interrupted an important enterprise to guard the person and execute the decrees of the Roman pontiff. His gratitude and policy conferred on Robert and his posterity the ducal title, with the investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands, both in Italy and Sicily, which his sword could rescue from the schismatic Greeks and the unbelieving Saracens. This apostolic sanction might justify his arms, but the obedience of a free and victorious people could not be transferred without their consent, and Guiscard dissembled his elevation till the ensuing campaign had been illustrated by the conquest of Consenza and Reggio. In the hour of triumph he assembled his troops, and solicited the Normans to confirm by their suffrage the judgment of the vicar of Christ; the soldiers hailed with joyful acclamations their valiant duke, and the counts, his former equals, pronounced the oath of fidelity with hollow smiles and secret indignation.

After this inauguration Robert styled himself, “by the grace of God and St. Peter, Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of Sicily”; and it was the labor of twenty years to deserve and realize these lofty appellations. Such tardy progress in a narrow space may seem unworthy of the abilities of the chief and the spirit of the nation, but the Normans were few in number, their resources were scanty, their service was voluntary and precarious. The bravest designs of the duke were sometimes opposed by the free voice of his parliament of barons; the twelve counts of popular election conspired against his authority, and against their perfidious uncle the sons of Humphrey demanded justice and revenge. By his policy and vigor Guiscard discovered their plots, suppressed their rebellions, and punished the guilty with death or exile; but in these domestic feuds his years and the national strength were unprofitably consumed. After the defeat of his foreign enemies--the Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens--their broken forces retreated to the strong and populous cities of the sea-coast. They excelled in the arts of fortification and defense; the Normans were accustomed to serve on horseback in the field, and their rude attempts could only succeed by the efforts of persevering courage. The resistance of Salerno was maintained above eight months; the siege or blockade of Bari lasted nearly four years. In these actions the Norman duke was the foremost in every danger; in every fatigue the last and most patient. As he pressed the citadel of Salerno a huge stone from the rampart shattered one of his military engines, and by a splinter he was wounded in the breast. Before the gates of Bari he lodged in a miserable hut or barrack, composed of dry branches, and thatched with straw--a perilous station, on all sides open to the inclemency of the winter and the spears of the enemy.

The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the present kingdom of Naples, and the countries united by his arms have not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years.

THOMAS À BECKET, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

BY DAVID HUME.

[Born in 1119, died by assassination in the Cathedral Church of
Canterbury in 1170. For a long time the Chancellor of England and
favorite adviser of the king, Henry II, he became on his
installation as archbishop the resolute advocate of papal
aggression against the rights and claims of the English kings to
the supreme control of national affairs.]