Chapter IV: Sketch of the History of Normandy During the Tenth Century.188 (2)

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.]