Chapter XII: The Later Reign of William in Normandy.159 (3)

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

[Sidenote: Marriage of Duke William. 1053.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The King’s division assembles at Mantes.]

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

[Sidenote: Preparations of William.]

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

[Sidenote: William’s plan of defence.]

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

[Sidenote: Ravages of the French.]

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

[Sidenote: The French at Mortemer surprised by the Normans.]

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

[Sidenote: The news brought to William.]

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

[Sidenote: The story illustrative of Norman craft.]

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

[Sidenote: William fortifies Breteuil as a check on Tillières.]

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

[Sidenote: Peace concluded. 1055.]

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

[Sidenote: Extension of William’s frontier southwards. 1048–1063.]

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

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

[Sidenote: Increase of William’s power.]