VI. THE LAST WARS OF WILLIAM RUFUS.[429]

VI. THE LAST WARS OF WILLIAM RUFUS.[429]

1097-1099.

[Sidenote: Character of the last years of Rufus. 1097-1100.]

[Sidenote: Little to record at home, and much abroad.]

[Sidenote: Temper and schemes of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: His designs on France.]

The latter years of the reign of the Red King, beginning from the departure of Anselm, are far richer in foreign than in domestic events. Even within the isle of Britain we have, as we have already seen, chiefly to deal with the lands which lie beyond the actual English kingdom. Scotland has received a king at the bidding of the over-lord in England. A deep plan has been laid for the better subjugation of the seemingly unconquerable Welsh. A Norwegian king has slain an earl of England in strife on the shore of a Welsh island. But within England itself the greatest event which we have had to record has been the immediate result of that distant strife in the succession to an English earldom. When Robert of Bellême became the most powerful subject in England, it was undoubtedly an event of no small importance both at the moment and in its results. It added perceptibly to the evils even of the reign of unlaw. Still it was not in itself an event on the same scale as the rebellion of Odo or the rebellion of Robert of Mowbray, or as the beginning or the ending of the dealings between Anselm and the King. And the same character of the time goes on to the end. There is in England itself nothing to record besides the great architectural works of the King, a few ecclesiastical deaths and appointments, and those natural portents and phænomena which are characteristic of the whole time, and which come thicker upon us as we draw nearer to the end. Beyond sea, on the other hand, this time of less than three years is the most stirring time of the whole reign. King of England, over-lord of Scotland, not in form Duke of the Normans, but master of Normandy as his brother never was, the Red King goes on to greater schemes. Rufus seems to have been always puffed up by success, but never cast down by bad luck. His personal failure in Wales was really a marked contrast to the success of Eadgar in Scotland. But Rufus seems to have had the happy gift of plucking out of all states of things whatever tended to gratify his pride, and of forgetting all that looked the other way. He, or others in his name, had set up a king at Dunfermline. This was enough to make him put out of sight all thought that he had in his own person marched to Snowdon and taken nothing by his march. He felt himself more than ever Monarch of Britain, King of kings within his own island. We can believe that it rankled in his soul that, outside that island, he was less than a king. The lord of Normandy had in any case a formal over-lord in the French King, and William Rufus was lord of Normandy only by an anomalous and temporary title. He held the duchy only as a merchant holds a pledge. We can well understand how such a man would chafe at the thought that he had anywhere even a nominal superior. Such an one as William deemed himself was dishonoured by being, even in the most nominal way, the man of such an one as Philip. And the noblest way of escaping from the acknowledgement of a superior was by himself taking that superior’s place. The Monarch of Britain would be also Monarch of Gaul, of so much at least of Gaul as in any sense admitted the over-lordship of Paris. The lord of Winchester and Rouen would be lord of Paris also. William wished for a war with France, and a war with France could at any moment be had. The eternal question of the Vexin stood always awaiting its solution.

[Sidenote: Wars with France and Maine.]

[Sidenote: Beginning of war. 1097-1098.]

[Sidenote: William crosses the sea.]

But a war with France was not the only war which William Rufus had now to wage on the Gaulish mainland. He had to strive against a noble city, a valiant people, ruled by a prince worthy of his city and his people. Besides striving with France and Philip, he had to strive against Maine, he had to strive against Helias. The war with France was doubtless the object with which he crossed the sea; but mischief had long been brewing in the troublesome land to the south of Normandy, and about the time when the French war began, the standing Cenomannian difficulty grew into open war also. William had thus two wars to wage at once. These two wars, with France and with Maine, are told in our narratives as if they were altogether distinct, and had no bearing on one another. Yet the two were going on at the same time at no great distance from one another, and some of the chief actors on one side were flitting to and fro between the two. It is hard to say in which region the first actual fighting took place. In both it must have begun in the winter after Anselm had gone on one errand into Burgundy and Eadgar on another into Scotland. It was then that King William crossed the sea also, with the object doubtless of making war on France. The Cenomannian war was thrown in as something incidental. The war with Maine has in itself, as a tale, by far the greater charm of the two. But it is needless to say that far higher interests were, or might have been, at stake in the war with France. Of the wide-reaching schemes of William Rufus, and of their remarkable position among those things which might have been but which were not, I have spoken at some length elsewhere.[430] But it is only in its latest stage that the war showed even any likelihood of growing beyond the scale of a border struggle. It was, in profession at least, a war for the Vexin, and it was in the Vexin that it was mainly waged.

[Sidenote: Comparison of the two wars.]

[Sidenote: Comparative position of France and Maine.]

[Sidenote: Helias and Philip.]

[Sidenote: Advantage of the kingly dignity.]

The result of the war was widely different in the two cases. We may sum it up by saying that Maine was subdued and that France was not. Maine was at least held to be subdued. In the first Cenomannian war the capital was taken; the prince was made a prisoner; so much of the land as was really attacked was subdued. In the second war the capital was taken and the prince was driven out. But against France no real advantage at all seems to have been gained. To modern ideas this difference may seem no wonderful result of the difference between the invasion of a county and the invasion of a kingdom. But in the eleventh century the resources of Maine could not have been very greatly inferior to the resources of France. In one sense indeed the resources of Maine were by far the greater of the two, inasmuch as Helias reigned at Le Mans and Philip reigned at Paris. But in truth the comparison between a county and a kingdom is not a fair one. The France of those days was not a kingdom; it was simply that small part of a great kingdom which was held to obey――which under Philip certainly did not obey――the nominal king of the whole. The king was simply that one among the princes of the kingdom who always claimed, and who sometimes received, the homage of the others. We must never underrate the vast moral advantage which the king drew from his kingly dignity;[431] but, on the other hand, we must not be thereby led to overrate the material strength of the king’s actual dominion. Supposing that the resources of Maine and of France had been positively equal, if Helias had the advantage over Philip that the one was Helias and that the other was Philip, this advantage was far more than counterbalanced by the fact that Philip was a king while Helias was only a count. That he was a count of doubtful title, always threatened by a neighbour more powerful than himself, was of course a further incidental disadvantage; but the essential difference is inherent in the position of the two princes and their dominions. The king, even though the king was Philip, was a king, and men had scruples about personally attacking one who was at once their own lord on earth and the anointed of the Lord of Heaven. William Rufus doubtless had no such scruples about that or about any matter; but such scruples had been felt by his father; they were to be felt in times to come by Henry of Le Mans and of Anjou, of Normandy and of England.[432] Such scruples would not be felt by Normans withstanding French aggression on their own land; we may remember how a lance from the Côtentin had laid Philip’s father on the ground at Val-ès-dunes.[433] They would not be felt by native Englishmen, to whom Normandy, France, and Maine, were all alike foreign and hostile lands. But we may suspect that there was many a knight in William’s host who, when he went forth to invade the lands of the lord of his lord in an utterly unprovoked quarrel, did not go forth with quite so light a heart as that with which he went forth to win back for his lord a land of which his lord had some shadow of ground for professing that he had been robbed by one of his own men.

[Sidenote: Lewis son of Philip.]

Maine then was, in a sense, conquered; France was not conquered in any sense. Le Mans was taken; Paris was hardly threatened. And this, we may believe, was at least partly owing to the fact that Le Mans was only the city of a count, while Paris was the city of a king. Both lands had a champion in whom we may feel a personal interest. While we follow the steps of an old acquaintance in Count Helias, we gladly watch the beginnings of a new acquaintance, not indeed in King Philip himself, but in his gallant son the Lord Lewis.[434] He has his special biographer, and we only wish that the minute detail in which we can read his actions in dealing with the immediate vassals of the French duchy had been extended to the greater though shorter strife which he had to wage against the sovereign of Normandy and England.

[Sidenote: Beginning of the war of Maine. January, 1098.]

It is not easy to tell the story of these two wars in exact chronological order. The early part of the French war is told without any dates, while we know when the actual fighting began in Maine. This was in the January which followed William’s crossing to the continent, the January of the year in which Earl Hugh was killed in Anglesey. Whether there was any fighting on the French border earlier than that we cannot tell. For a later stage of the French war we have dates, and its dated stage clearly follows the end of the first Cenomannian war. If we go back to the causes of the two struggles, it is equally hard to find the beginning. In both cases there was a standing quarrel, which might have broken out into war at any time. But the French war has a certain right to precedence, inasmuch as it was doubtless rather to attack France than to attack Maine that William Rufus crossed the sea. It may therefore be our best course, first to trace out the earlier undated part of the French war down to the point where there is a clear break in the story. We may then follow the fortunes of Le Mans and Maine, till we reach the later dated part of the French war which followed their first momentary conquest.

§ 1. The Beginnings of the French War.

1097-1098.

[Sidenote: King Philip;]

[Sidenote: his adulterous marriage with Bertrada of Montfort.]

[Sidenote: He puts away his first wife.]

[Sidenote: Philip and Bertrada;]

[Sidenote: their alleged marriage by Odo. 1092.]

Of Philip King of the French, the fourth king of the house of Paris, we have often heard already, and from what we have heard we shall hardly expect him to take any leading part either in war or in council. He is chiefly memorable for his adulterous marriage with Bertrada of Montfort, the wife of Fulk Rechin of Anjou. He had got rid of his first wife, the daughter of Count Florence of Friesland and step-daughter of that Count Robert of Flanders who bore the Frisian name. The mother of his son Lewis and his daughter Constance was put away by Philip on some plea of kindred, and was shut up in the castle of Montreuil.[435] Some years later Bertrada became her successor. Of her and Fulk we shall hear again in our Cenomannian story; she was in some sort given to Fulk as the price of Cenomannian bondage. But, as Fulk had at least one wife living, the validity of the marriage might have been fairly called in question. If the scandal of the time may be trusted, Bertrada, wearying of Fulk, and fearing that he might deal by her as he had dealt by others, offered herself to King Philip to supply the place which he had made vacant.[436] She won his heart, so far as he had any, and she seems to have been the only thing that he really cared for. But she who had been a countess at Angers would not be less than queen at Paris, and a ceremony of marriage was gone through. More than one prelate was charged with the uncanonical deed. The version which most concerns us is that which tells how, when no prelate in France would thus profane the sacraments of the Church, the King looked beyond the border, and found one less scrupulous in the person of the Bishop of Bayeux. The churches of Mantes, it is said, were Odo’s reward for his thus pandering to the misdeeds of his royal neighbour.[437]

[Sidenote: Scandal occasioned by the marriage.]

[Sidenote: Opposition of Ivo and Hugh of Lyons.]

[Sidenote: Excommunication of Philip and Bertrada.]

Much scandal and searching of heart followed on the pretended marriage, scandal which spread throughout all France, throughout all Gaul, throughout all Christendom. The famous Bishop Ivo of Chartres protested in many letters to the King and others.[438] If a council of the prelates of France, gathered by the King’s authority at Rheims, was inclined to deal gently with the royal sinner, there were higher ecclesiastical powers who were more unbending. Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, Primate of all the Gauls, no subject of Parisian dukes or kings, but a prince of that Imperial Burgundy which knew no king but Cæsar, gathered an assembly which spoke in another voice. The friend of Anselm, the friend of Urban, called together the bishops of the Gauls at Autun, and their voice denounced the offence which the bishops of France alone had been inclined to pass over.[439] Higher powers still spoke at Piacenza and at Clermont. Philip and Bertrada were excommunicated often and absolved now and then. None would eat at their table; the dogs were said to refuse the morsels which fell from it. Wherever they went, the public exercise of Christian worship stopped, though, by a somewhat inconsistent indulgence, they were allowed to have a low mass said before them in a private chapel.[440] It would seem as though, in spiritual as well as in temporal things, subjects were to suffer from the crimes of kings, while the kings themselves went unscathed. But when Philip and Bertrada left any town, the bells at once struck out. Then, with allusion no doubt to the supposed power of the bells to chase away thunder and pestilence, the King would say to his companion, “Do you hear, my beauty, how they drive us away?”[441] For fifteen years, allowing perhaps for occasional times of reconciliation, the King of the French never wore his crown or his kingly robes or appeared in royal state at any public ceremony.[442]

[Sidenote: Sons of Philip and Bertrada.]

[Sidenote: Bertrada’s schemes against Lewis.]

[Sidenote: Philip invests Lewis with the Vexin. 1092.]

By this second marriage or adultery, which was held to be in no way done away by the death of the lawful Queen in prison,[443] Philip had two sons, Philip and Florus. Bertrada wished to be the mother of a king, and in after times the lawful heir Lewis was said to have been the object of not a few plots on the part of his step-mother, if even step-mother she is to be called. But at this stage Philip seems to have kept sense enough to see the merits of his son, and to place full trust in him. By the consent of his realm, he made Lewis the immediate ruler and defender of the exposed frontier of the royal dominions. He granted him in fief the towns of Mantes and Pontoise, and the whole French Vexin.[444] But Lewis was made more than this. Practically, whether by any formal act or not, Lewis became the ruler of France, so far as France just then had any ruler. Philip, scorned and loathed of all men, with the curses of the Church hurled over and over again against him, withdrew from ruling, fighting, or anything else but his own pleasures, and threw the whole burthen of the government and defence of his kingdom on the shoulders of his young and gallant son.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Question of the Vexin.]

[Sidenote: Grounds of offence on the part of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: William demands the French Vexin. 1097.]

We are not told at what exact moment the old question of the Vexin was again first stirred. Philip was not likely to stir it, neither was Robert; William Rufus might not care to stir it while he was lord only of part of Normandy, and not of the whole. But when all Normandy became his, the old dispute naturally came up again in his mind. He would not have been William Rufus if he had not sought to win all that his father had held, all that his father had claimed, and among the rest the place where his father found his death-wound. The special acts of authority exercised by Philip in the Vexin, the grant of the land as his son’s fief, the grant of the churches of Mantes, the churches which were rebuilding out of his father’s dying gifts, to his own rebellious uncle Odo, would be likely to stir him up still more to put forward his old claim. At last, after reflecting, we are told, on the wars and the fate of his father in that region, he sent, in the year of the departure of Anselm, solemnly to demand the cession of the whole Vexin, specially naming the towns and fortresses of Pontoise, Chaumont, and Mantes.[445] Of these Mantes and Chaumont were in the strictest sense border fortresses; Pontoise――the bridge on the Oise, as its name implies――lies far nearer the heart of the King’s territory; Pontoise in an enemy’s hand would indeed be a standing menace to Paris. The demands of the Red King almost amounted to a demand for the surrender of the independence of the French kingdom.

[Sidenote: The demand is refused.]

[Sidenote: William crosses to Normandy. November 11-30, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Excesses of the King’s followers.]

[Sidenote: Silence of English writers as to the French war.]

It is needless to say that the demand was refused. Lewis and his counsellors declined to give up the Vexin or any of its fortresses.[446] King William accordingly crossed the sea to assert his rights, and the French campaign possibly began before the end of the year. It is wonderful, when we remember that it is chiefly from our own writers that we get the details of William Rufus’ Norman campaigns, how little they tell us about his French campaigns. Of the war of Maine to which we shall presently come they tell us little enough. Still the name of Maine does appear in their pages, while the name of France at this stage does not. We learn indeed that in the November of this year the King crossed into Normandy, but with what object we are not told.[447] What we are told is eminently characteristic of the Red King and his reign. As so often happened, his crossing was delayed by the weather; meanwhile his immediate followers carried out to the full that licence which the King’s immediate followers were wont to allow themselves till Henry and Anselm found sharp means to check them.[448] “His hired in the shires there they lay the most harm did that ever hired or here in frithland should do.”[449] If the army at large is meant, the expression is a strange one. The hired is the King’s household, taking in doubtless household troops in personal attendance on the King, like the old housecarls, but not surely the whole force, national or mercenary. But it was the King’s household whose excesses were specially complained of; and this casual outburst of bitterness is a speaking comment on the general pictures of their misdoings which we have already come across.[450] But it is only of damage done in England by the King’s household that our Chronicler tells us anything. Of warlike exploits on the other side of the Channel neither he nor any other English writer tells us at this stage a single word.[451]

[Sidenote: William and Lewis.]

[Sidenote: Chief men on William’s side.]

[Sidenote: Difficulties of Lewis.]

[Sidenote: Fate of the captives on each side.]

If from the silence of our own writers we turn to our chief authority on the French side, we shall find a vivid general picture of the war, but hardly any account of particular events. We get indeed one of the most striking of personal contrasts. Though the war which was now waged by Rufus was in every sense a war waged against France, yet it could hardly be called a war personally waged against the nominal ruler of France. It was a war for the Vexin, waged against the lord of the Vexin, and, in its first stages at least, mainly confined to the Vexin. The struggle between William and Lewis, as it is set forth by the biographer of the French prince, was an unequal one. William had his old weapons at command――the wealth of England, the traitors whom that wealth could bribe, the mercenaries whom that wealth could hire.[452] He had his own experience in war; he had his veteran troops and their veteran commanders. Next under the King, comparatively young in years, but first of all in daring as in wickedness, was Robert of Bellême. Then came the King’s brother Henry, and the well-known names of Count William of Evreux, Earl Hugh of Chester, and the old Earl Walter of Buckingham.[453] These were formidable foes for an untried youth like Lewis; the aged warrior who was old on the day of Senlac must have been a strange contrast indeed to the gallant lad on whom the fortune of France now rested. Lewis had, we are told, neither men nor money nor allies; he had to pick up all where and how he could. Whenever, often by running to and fro as far as the borders of Berry or Auvergne or Burgundy, he had got together three hundred, or perhaps five hundred, knights, he met King William of England marching against him with ten thousand.[454] Here was little room for pitched battles; Lewis could not risk a meeting with such an enemy in the open field. He had often to retire, sometimes openly to fly.[455] And the different state of the hoards of the two princes showed itself in an effect on their military operations which is characteristic of the time. When warriors on the English side――we must use the language of our French informant――fell into French hands, the price of their ransom was speedily paid. When French warriors were made prisoners by the forces of Rufus, there was no money to ransom them. They had to languish in bonds with only one hope of deliverance. Those only were set free who were willing to become the men of the King of England and to bind themselves by oath to fight against their own natural lord.[456]

[Sidenote: French traitors.]

[Sidenote: Guy of the Rock.]

[Sidenote: Norman possessions beyond the Epte.]

[Sidenote: Roche Guyon.]

[Sidenote: The castle bored in the rock.]

[Sidenote: Guy submits to Rufus.]

Some then at least of the native subjects of the French crown, who had no conflicting engagements to plead, did not scruple, in the extremities in which they found themselves, to take service on behalf of the invader against their own lord. It is therefore the less wonderful if another class of men, whose interests and whose duties were more doubtful, deemed, when they had to choose between two lords, that Rufus was the lord to be chosen. Others again were found of baser mould, who simply took the money of the Red King, and for its sake turned against their own people on behalf of strangers. Among these one is specially marked, one who by his geographical position was called on to be among the foremost champions of France against Norman invasion. This was one of the lords who commanded the fortresses on the Seine, a man whose possessions lay close to the Norman border, Guy of the Rock, the Rock which has taken its name from him and which still is known as La Roche Guyon.[457] The position of his chief stronghold made his adhesion of no small importance. The stream of Epte, flowing during a great part of its course through a deep valley, seems designed by nature to part Normandy and France; but, as we have seen, the frontier was ever disputed, and here and there the Norman held small portions of territory on the left bank of the river. One of these Norman holdings on the French side lies by the small village of Gasny, where the boundary, surviving in that of the modern department, is still marked at some distance up the opposite hill. A slight further ascent brings the traveller in sight of one of the noblest bends of the Seine, where the great river, with all its islands, runs immediately below a long line of chalk hills, with their white spurs jutting out in endless fantastic shapes. The windings of the Seine have in fact left at this point little more than a narrow isthmus between itself and its lowlier tributary. Just within the French territory at this point, and commanding this important sweep of the great French river, lay the domains of the lord of the Rock. The ridge on which the traveller stands ends in a bluff to the south-east. There, where the hills open for another tributary of the Seine, close by the island of Lavancourt, stood Guy’s now vanished fortress of Vetheuil. But, as we now gaze, by far the most prominent object in the whole curved line of the hill, placed like the imperial seat in the centre of an ancient amphitheatre, rising over the church, the more modern castle, the town, and the airy bridge which modern art has thrown across the river, soar the relics of the fortress which still bears Guy’s name. A spur of the hill is crowned by a small keep, with a round tower attached to a square mass within its compass. But in the days of the Red King, the Guy’s Cliff of the Vexin, now the site of a castle so preeminently visible, was specially known as the site of the stronghold that was invisible. The lords of the rock had, like the Kenite of old, literally made their nest in the rock itself. The chalk is to this day habitually bored to make houses, churches,[458] any kind of excavation that may be needed. In days before our time this custom had been applied to a more dangerous use; the plundering chiefs of the rock had scooped themselves out a castle in its side. More than one of the chambers remain――comfortless to our eyes, but perhaps not more comfortless than the chambers within many a tower of timber or masonry――whence these troglodyte barons looked out to mark the craft upon the Seine, and to exact, by a custom which lingered on till late times, a toll from every passer by. Guy of the Rock now submitted to the island king, and his submission supplied a new fetter to pen up the king of the mainland within his havenless realm. At the very entrance of the French territory on this side, Guy’s Rock, Vetheuil, and all that is implied in the possession of Vetheuil and of the Rock, passed from the obedience of the lord of Paris to the obedience of the lord of Winchester and Rouen.

[Sidenote: Policy of Robert of Meulan.]

[Sidenote: He receives William’s troops.]

[Sidenote: Importance of the position of Meulan.]

[Sidenote: Description of Meulan.]

While Guy thus sold to the invader the very entrance-gate of the French kingdom, the Red King found another ally in a far more famous man who held a position of at least equal importance higher up the Seine. At the head of the nobles who held lands of both kings stood the acknowledged master of all subtle policy, Count Robert of Meulan. We have been so long familiar with his name, whether as the youthful warrior of Senlac or as the experienced counsellor of the Red King, that we may have almost forgotten that the title by which we call him is French, and that he was as great a lord in France as he was in England or in Normandy. We find it hard to think of him as one of those who had thus to choose between two lords, and that he might conceiveably have chosen the cause of Philip――or rather of Lewis――against William. We cannot fancy that he took long to decide. He may have argued that William, lord both of Normandy and of England, had two parts in him, while Philip of France had only one. He received the troops of the Red King into his castles, and his adhesion was held to have been of special help to his undertaking. He opened, we are told, a clear path for the English into France.[459] The words sound as if they belonged to the fourteenth, fifteenth, or sixteenth century rather than to the last years of the eleventh. And they are clothed with a strange significance when we remember that the man who now opened a way into France for the combined host of Normandy and England was the same man who, two-and-thirty years before, had opened a way into the very heart of England for the combined host of Normandy and France.[460] But in a geographical point of view the expression is fully justified. In a war between the lord of Rouen and the lord of Paris, no man’s friendship could be more valuable to either side than the friendship of the Count of Meulan. A man weaker in fight and less wary in council than the Achitophel of his day might, if he kept the Seine barred as the lord of Meulan could bar it, have gone far to hold the balance between the contending kings. As at Mantes, as at Rouen, as at Paris itself, the islands so characteristic of the Seine are at Meulan also brought into play for purposes of habitation and defence. Meulan indeed is, what neither Paris nor Rouen is, at once a hill-fortress and a river-fortress. At a point of the river lying between Mantes, the seat of the Conqueror’s death-wound, and Poissy, the spot where he went to crave help of his lord before the day of Val-ès-dunes, a hill which the surrounding valleys gird as with a natural fosse rises from the right bank of the river. A group of islands is formed at this spot by the branches of the winding stream, fit places for the landing of the forefathers of the Normans in their pirate days. The spot was seized on for defence. A castle arose on the side of the hill, with a town at its foot sloping swiftly down to the river. There a bridge of some antiquity joins the right bank to a central island, which is joined again to the left bank by another bridge. The island, once strongly fortified, still keeps the significant name of the Fort. The bridge which joins the island to the left bank of the river, where lies the suburb known as Les Mureaux, was, at least in later times, defended by a tower bearing the name of La Sangle. A considerable extent of the outer walls of the castle may be traced, and a specially diligent inquirer may thread his way to a small fragment of the castle itself, and may there mark work of a somewhat later date than the time with which we have to do. It is more easy to trace out a large part of the defences of the Fort, and to mark the churches, surviving and desecrated, one of which, high on the hill side, also belongs, like so many others, to the age next following. As in so many other places, so at Meulan, we cannot lay our hand on anything which we can positively affirm to be the work of its most famous lord. But we can well see that the strength of the spot, a spot which in later times played no small part in the wars of the League, was well understood in the days of our story, and that so important a position was strengthened by all the art of the time. When Count Robert received the forces of Normandy and England on the height and in the island of Meulan, he did indeed open a way for those forces into the heart of France. It was a way which might have been expected to lead them straight to the city which then, as ever, might be deemed to be more than the heart of France, to be France itself.

[Sidenote: William’s prospects.]

Count Robert was doubtless guided, then and always, by policy. Many of his neighbours who found themselves in the like case followed his lead. They could not serve two masters; so they made up their minds to serve the master who was strongest either to reward or to punish, him whose purse was the deeper and whose spirit was the fiercer.[461] Altogether the odds seemed frightfully against the French side. Rufus might indeed have small chances of carrying out his grand scheme of uniting Paris――perhaps Poitiers and Bourdeaux――under the same lord as Winchester and Rouen; but things at least looked as if the conquest of the disputed lands was about to advance the Norman frontier most dangerously near to the French capital. Above all, when the Seine was barred both at Roche Guyon and at Meulan, we ask how things stood in the border town which lay between them, the town which was one of the special subjects of William’s demands on Philip. How fared it at Mantes when the stream both above and below was in the hands of the enemy? To this question we get no answer; but we see that, in any case, the King of the French was more closely shut up than ever in the central prison-house of his nominal realm.

[Sidenote: Failure of William’s plans.]

[Sidenote: Pontoise and Chaumont not taken.]

[Sidenote: Castle of Chaumont.]

But, small as seemed young Lewis’s means of defence, weakened as he further was by treason among his own or his father’s vassals, the resistance made by the French to the Norman or English invasion was valiant, stubborn, and, we may add, successful. William Rufus was much further from conquering France than Henry the Fifth, or even than Edward the Third, was in after times. With all his wealth, all his forces, he could not conquer the land; he could not even take the fortresses to which he specially laid claim. He could not conquer the Vexin; he could not take either Pontoise or Chaumont. While we hear nothing of Mantes, we know that both these two last-named fortresses successfully withstood his attacks. Of the three fortresses which were the special objects of the war, one, that of Chaumont, became in some sort its centre. The Chaumont with which we have to deal is still distinguished from other places of the same name as Chaumont-en-Vexin. It stands about five miles east of the Epte, at the point where the frontier stream of Rolf is joined by the smaller stream of the Troesne, and makes a marked turn in its course from nearly due south to south-west. The region is a hilly one, though it contains no heights of any remarkable elevation. The Bald Mount itself, which――unluckily for the inquirer――is bald no longer, is a wide-spreading hill crowned with a mound which stands out prominently to the eye on every side. The line of the wall which it supported may still be easily traced, and in a few places it is actually standing. On the steep north-eastern side of the hill the small town of Chaumont nestles at its foot, while the stately church of the later days of French architecture soars above the town as the castle again soars above the church. Of the part played in the war by this stronghold we shall hear a little later.

[Sidenote: The castle of Gisors.]

[Sidenote: Its first defences. 1096.]

[Sidenote: Strengthened by Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: Gisors under Henry the Second.]

[Sidenote: Present appearance of Gisors.]

The height of Chaumont commands a vast prospect on all sides; the eye stretches far away over the friendly land to the south, towards the hills bordering on the Seine; but the special rival of Chaumont, the fortress at the junction of the Epte and Troesne, is shut out from sight by a near range of hills which follow the line of the smaller stream. Where the two rivers join, the Epte, like the greater Seine, divides to form a group of islands at the foot of a low hill on the right, the Norman, bank. Here stands the town and fortress of Gisors, the chief bulwark of Normandy towards the north-eastern corner of the Vexin. Once a dependency of the neighbouring Neauflé, whose mound and square tower form a prominent object in the landscape, Gisors had now become a stronghold indeed. It had been first fenced in about two years before by Pagan of Gisors, a man of whom we shall hear in the course of the war.[462] Somewhat later William gave orders that the border post should be made into a fortress of the greatest possible strength, and he committed the work to the most skilful engineer at his command. All the craft and subtlety of the Devil of Bellême were employed to make Gisors a stronghold which might shelter the eastern frontier of Normandy against all enemies. As far as one can see, the islands in the Epte and the hill which rises above them near to the right bank of the main river were united in one common plan of defence. The town itself, taking in the islands, was walled, either now or at a later time, and defended with a ditch throughout those parts of its circuit which were neither sheltered by the river nor by the castle hill. In the great defences of this last we see the fruit of the engineering skill of Robert of Bellême, and we better learn what in those days was deemed a specially strong fortress. On all sides save that where town and castle join, the hill is girded by a deep ditch, and on the north, the side which lies away from both town and river, the ditch is doubled, and the chief entrance on this side is defended by an outpost between the two. The ditch fences in a vast walled space, in the middle of which art has improved nature by piling up a vast artificial mound crowned by a shell keep. The earthworks are most likely older than either Robert of Bellême or Pagan of Gisors. The outer wall and the shell keep may well be part of Robert’s design, if they are not actually his work; but the towers which now rise so proudly over Gisors, not only the round tower, precious in local legend, but the vast octagon on one side of the keep which bears the name of the martyr of Canterbury, must all be of later date than our time. A graceful chapel within the keep, where the visitor is told with special emphasis that Saint Thomas once said mass, has thus much to show in favour of the legend that it is clearly a work of Henry the Second’s days. His days were stirring days at Gisors as well as the days of Rufus, and a hundred years of sieges had brought new improvements into the art of fortification. All in short that strikes the eye as the traveller draws near to Gisors, the castle towers, no less than the strange and striking outline of one of the stateliest of those churches which boasted no bishop or abbot at their head, belongs to later days than those of the Red King’s campaign of Chaumont. Of the defences of the town below little can now be traced, and that part of the defences of the castle on which the historian looks with the deepest interest is carefully hidden from distant view. The tower of Saint Thomas and its lower fellow both seem to rise from the midst of a wood――a wood artificially planted, seemingly for the express purpose of robbing Gisors of its characteristic feature, of shutting out from sight the mighty motte and keep which Robert of Bellême made ready at the Red King’s bidding to be the strongest bulwark of the Norman land.

[Sidenote: Castle of Trye.]

[Sidenote: Primæval and later antiquities.]

Near as Gisors stands to Chaumont, another fortress barred the way between them. The road between the two towns passes through Trye――distinguished from its neighbour Trye-la-Ville as Trye-Château――which appears in our story along with Chaumont as one of the French fortresses which Gisors was specially meant to keep in check. Yet Trye must have been itself specially meant as an outpost against Gisors. Close by Gisors is one of the points where the Norman frontier overlaps the Epte; so that Trye, lying between two and three miles from Gisors, is yet nearer than Gisors to the actual frontier. Trye does not lie, like Chaumont, hidden behind the hills; it stands boldly in the teeth of the enemy, clearly seen from the hill of Gisors, and barring the main road between Gisors and Chaumont, a road which led over level ground and neither over hill nor swamp. Otherwise the site has not, like Gisors and Chaumont, any marked advantages of ground, nor, at present at least, are any earthworks visible. In our time, though a gate and a tower of later date than our story recall the days of the military importance of Trye, the attractions of the spot are chiefly of other kinds. Between Trye and Chaumont a cromlech, known as the Three Stones, calls up the thought of days and men which were as mysterious in the time of Rufus as they are now. More than one fragment of mediæval architecture may be lighted on by the way, and Trye itself stands conspicuous for the singular and beautiful Romanesque work――again too late for our immediate time――to be found both in its ecclesiastical and its secular buildings.

[Sidenote: Castle of Boury.]

[Sidenote: National feeling in the French Vexin.]

[Sidenote: Prisoners on both sides.]

[Sidenote: Gilbert of Laigle.]

[Sidenote: Simon of Montfort.]

Chaumont and Trye may practically be looked on as one piece of defence. A third fortress, that of Boury,[463] lay further apart to the south-west, hidden from Gisors, like Chaumont, by another line of hills. All three castles seem to have remained unsubdued through the whole war. The valour of the French resistance is dwelled on with pleasure by our Norman or English guide. Did the monk of Saint Evroul, the young scholar of the Severn side, remember that, after all, his father belonged neither to the land of his birth nor to the land of his adoption, but was in truth a Frenchman from Orleans?[464] The French Vexin was inhabited by a valiant race, in whom, if we are not pressing too far the words of our story, a distinct feeling of French nationality was strong. They were ready to run all risks――it is not said for their King, but for the defence of their country, for the glory of their nation, for the honour of the French name.[465] Valiant men, mercenaries it would seem――but who was to pay them?――from all parts of Gaul, or at least of France, pressed to their help, and a brave and successful defence was made. Prisoners on both sides underwent the two different fates which were already spoken of. The name on the Norman side which is best known to us is that of the fierce Gilbert of Laigle; with him we hear of the former lord and fortifier of Gisors.[466] Among the captives on the French side the national historian records one who bore a far loftier name, but one which at that moment was hardly a name of honour. Two of the long line of Simons of the French Montfort are heard of in the course of our story, father and son, father and brother of her who in our authorities appears commonly as the woman from Anjou, but who on the Strong Mount of her fathers may have been deemed a Queen of the French. One Simon is now spoken of as a prisoner; both are found somewhat later fighting stoutly in the cause of France. We have heard that the Red King let none free who would not undertake to fight on his side. Are we to infer that a forefather of our own deliverer had learned the lesson of Harold, that an extorted oath is of no strength?

§ 2. The First War of Maine.

1098.

[Sidenote: Dates of the French war. November, 1097――September, 1098.]

[Sidenote: War of Maine. January――August, 1098.]

[Sidenote: History of Maine. 1089-1098.]

These events on the French side, of which thus far we have but a vague account, would seem to have happened during the first half of the year with which we are dealing. But all that we can say for certain is that they happened between the November of one year and the September of the next. Of the struggle which was going on at the same time in Maine, the dates are far more clear. It began in January and it was deemed to be over in August. But its immediate occasion arose the year before, and its general causes go much further back. Fully to understand the war of William and Helias, more truly the war of Helias and Robert of Bellême, we must trace out the events of several years. While we have been following the fates of England, Normandy, Scotland, and Wales, much of high interest has been going on in Maine which had no connexion with the affairs of any part of Britain, and which had but little influence on Norman affairs either. But now that England and Normandy have again a common ruler, the affairs of England, or at least the affairs of her King, have again a close connexion with the affairs of Maine. We have now therefore to take up the tale of that noble city and county from the days when we had to tell of Duke Robert’s campaign before Ballon and Saint Cenery.[467]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Robert suspects the loyalty of Maine. 1089.]

[Sidenote: He asks help of Fulk of Anjou.]

[Sidenote: Fulk asks for Bertrada of Montfort.]

[Sidenote: Bertrada brought up by Heloise.]

[Sidenote: William of Evreux’s bargain about his niece.]

The submission of Maine to the Norman Duke which then took place lasted only till the next favourable opportunity for asserting the old independence of the city and county. No great time after he had taken possession, Robert began to suspect the loyalty of his Cenomannian subjects. A strange story follows, which connects itself in a way yet stranger with the tale of the royal household of France which we have lately been telling. Robert, it seems, was sick at the moment when he, or some one else for him, thought it needful to take action against impending revolt in Maine. He sent messengers and gifts to Count Fulk of Anjou, the famous Rechin, praying him to come to him.[468] Fulk, it will be remembered, claimed the over-lordship of Maine, and Robert himself had, long before, at the peace of Blanchelande, done a formal homage to Fulk for the county.[469] The Angevin Count was supposed to have influence with the people of Maine, influence which might be enough to hinder them from revolting. That influence Robert now prayed Fulk to use. The Angevin agreed on one condition, namely that the Norman would use his own influence in quite another quarter, for quite another purpose. Fulk wanted a wife. As the story is told us, he is said to have had two living wives already; but that seems not to have been the case.[470] His first wife, the daughter of a lord of Beaugency, died, leaving a daughter. He then married Ermengarde of Bourbon――a description not to become royal for some ages――the mother of his son Geoffrey Martel. Her he put away on the usual plea of kindred, and now it was that he appeared as the wooer of that Bertrada of whom we have already spoken of in her later character. The daughter of Simon of Montfort was the niece of Count William of Evreux, through her mother Agnes, Count William’s sister. Her mother would seem to have been dead, and she was brought up in her uncle’s house, under the schooling of Countess Heloise.[471] The Count of Anjou, no longer young, driven to strange devices as to his shoes,[472] and burthened with a former wife whose divorce might be called in question, felt that he was hardly likely to win favour as a lover in the eyes either of Bertrada herself or of her guardians. But the Rechin was skilful at a bargain. He would engage to keep Maine in the Duke’s obedience, if the Duke would get him the damsel of Montfort to wife.[473] Robert set off for Evreux in person, and pleaded Fulk’s cause with Count William. The Count of Evreux was duly shocked, and set forth the obvious objections to the marriage. But he too was open to a bargain; he would get over his scruples if the Duke would restore to him certain lordships to which he asserted a right, and would grant certain others to his nephew William of Breteuil. These lands had been the possession of his uncle Ralph of Wacey, guardian of the Great William in his early days, who it seems was sportively known as Ralph with the Ass’s Head.[474] Let the Duke give him and his nephew back their own, and Bertrada should be, as far as the Count of Evreux was concerned, Countess of Anjou.

[Sidenote: Robert consents.]

[Sidenote: His counsellors.]

[Sidenote: Fulk marries Bertrada.]

[Sidenote: Maine kept quiet for a year.]

The Duke did not venture to answer without the advice of his counsellors. But the combined wisdom of Robert of Bellême, lately a rebel but now again in favour,[475] of the Ætheling Eadgar, and of that monastic William of Arques of whom we have already heard,[476] advised the acceptance of Count William’s terms. The whole county of Maine was of more value than the lordships which the Count of Evreux demanded as the price of his niece.[477] The power and the will of Fulk to do what he promised about Le Mans and Maine seems not to have been doubted. The double bargain was struck, and it was carried out for a season. Count William and his nephew got all that they asked, except that one lordship passed to Gerard of Gournay. Fulk too got what he asked, namely Bertrada, till such time as King Philip took her away. She had time to quarrel with her stepson Geoffrey, and to become the mother of Fulk, afterwards Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem, and grandfather of the first Angevin King of England. And Count Fulk was able, by whatever means, to keep the Cenomannian city and county in a formal allegiance to the Norman Duke, till such time as the temptations to revolt became too strong to be withstood.

[Sidenote: Movements in Maine.]

[Sidenote: Hugh son of Azo sent for. 1090.]

[Sidenote: Union of Geoffrey and Helias.]

Our story however seems to imply that the submission of Maine to Robert was wholly on the surface, and that all this while schemes were going on for shaking off the hated Norman yoke. The present movement took the same form which had been taken by the movement in the Conqueror’s day.[478] The avowed object of Cenomannian patriotism was now, as then, the restoration of the ancient dynasty. The valour and energy of the citizens of Le Mans are constantly spoken of; but we hear nothing this time of the commune. The rule of some prince seems to be assumed on all hands, and for a while all seem to have agreed in seeking that prince in the same quarter in which they had sought a prince already. Little indeed of good for Le Mans or Maine had come of the former application to Azo and Gersendis; but their son Hugh had now reached greater years and experience, and the men of Maine again sent into Italy to ask for him to reign over them.[479] The application was supported both by Geoffrey of Mayenne, of whom we have so often heard during the last thirty years, and by Helias of La Flèche, who might well have asserted his own claims against those of the distant house of Este.[480]

[Sidenote: Helias of La Flèche.]

[Sidenote: His character]

[Sidenote: and descent.]

[Sidenote: His castles.]

[Sidenote: His possible claim on the county.]

[Sidenote: He accepts the succession of Hugh.]

Helias now becomes the hero of the Cenomannian tale. He is one of the men of his time of whom we can get the clearest idea. We see him alike in his recorded acts and in his elaborately drawn portrait; and by the light of the two we can hail in him the very noblest type of the age and class to which he belonged. We see in him a no less worthy defender of the freedom of Maine than Harold was of the freedom of England. He stands before us with his tall stature, his strong, thin, and well-proportioned frame, his swarthy complexion, his thick hair cropped close after Norman or priestly fashion.[481] Brave and skilful in war, wise and just in his rule in peace, ready and pleasant in speech, gentle to the good and stern to the evil, faithful to his word, and corrupted neither by good nor evil fortune, a man withal of prayer and fasting, the bountiful friend of the Church and the poor, Helias stands forth within the narrow range of a single county of Gaul as one who, on a wider field, might have won for himself a place among the foremost of mankind.[482] With the house of the old Counts of Maine he had a twofold connexion. The male line of Herbert Wake-dog had come to an end; but in the female line Helias came of it in two descents, while Hugh came in one only. Not only was his mother Paula one of the sisters of the younger Herbert, but his father John of La Flèche was son of a daughter of Wake-dog himself.[483] To his father’s Angevin fief of La Flèche, among the islands of the Loir, his marriage with Matilda, a grand-niece of Archbishop Gervase of Rheims, known to us better as Bishop of Le Mans,[484] had added a string of castles in the south of Maine. Two of these, Mayet and the one which is specially called the Castle of the Loir, fill a prominent place in our story.[485] Helias was plainly the greatest lord of eastern Maine, the modern department of Sarthe, as Geoffrey of Mayenne was the greatest in western Maine, the modern department which still bears the name of his own fortress.[486] One might have thought that the position of Helias as a great local chief might, when the elders of Maine were called on to choose a prince, have outweighed any slight genealogical precedence on the part of the stranger Hugh. But the great men of the county may not have been disposed to place one of themselves over their own heads. Anyhow Helias, like his father before him,[487] waived his own claim to the succession. Along with the lord of Mayenne and the great mass of the people of the city and county, he welcomed the Ligurian prince――such is the geography of our chief guide――when he came to take possession of the dominion to which the voice of the Cenomannian people had called him a second time.[488]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Negotiations with Hugh.]

[Sidenote: Revolt of Maine. 1090.]

[Sidenote: Invitation to Hugh.]

We are to suppose that the negotiations with the house of Este were going on during the year when Count Fulk contrived to keep Maine outwardly quiet. But when the quarrel between William and Robert broke out, when Normandy was divided and dismembered, the Angevin over-lord’s influence gave way. The time for action was clearly come. Le Mans and all Maine now openly rose against the Norman dominion. Duke Robert’s garrisons were driven out;[489] the Cenomannian land was again free. But the first act of restored freedom was to invite Hugh of Este, descendant of the ancient counts, to come at once to take possession, and to rule in the palace on the Roman wall which fences in the Cenomannian hill.

[Sidenote: Opposition of Bishop Howel.]

[Sidenote: Howel imprisoned by Helias.]

[Sidenote: Interdict of Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: Liberation of Howel on Hugh’s coming.]

The chief opponent of the movement for independence was, as before, the Bishop. The throne of Saint Julian was still filled by the Breton Howel, the nominee of the Conqueror, and he stood firm in his loyalty to his patron’s eldest son.[490] He withstood the revolt by every means in his power, and scattered interdicts and anathemas against the supporters of the newly-elected Count.[491] Hugh had not yet come, and the opposition of the Bishop was felt to be dangerous. Helias therefore, whose piety did not lead him to any superstitious reverence for ecclesiastical privileges, dealt with Howel as an enemy, or at least as one whom it was well to keep out of the way for a season. As the Bishop was going through his diocese with a train of clergy, in the discharge of some episcopal duty, Helias seized him, carried him off, and put him in ward at La Flèche.[492] The great grievance seems to have been that Howel was denied the company of his attendant clergy, and was allowed the services only of one unlettered rustic priest. The fear was lest the Bishop and his more learned companions would, in their Latin talk, plot something which their keepers would not understand.[493] This very complaint shows that the Bishop’s imprisonment was not of a very harsh kind. But the cause of the captive prelate was zealously taken up by his clergy. Le Mans and its suburbs were put under a practical interdict; divine worship ceased; the bells were silent; the doors of the churches were stopped up with thorns.[494] Great, it is said, was the joy when the Bishop was set free and came back to his city. We are told by a writer in the episcopal interest that Helias set him free in a fit of penitence, in answer to many intercessions from nobles, clergy, and neighbouring bishops. Howel was gracious and forgiving, and let his wrongs be forgotten on the restoration of whatever had been taken from him.[495] All this is possible; but the more definite statement that Howel was kept in ward till Hugh came shows that his captivity was a matter of policy, and that he was set free as soon as it seemed that no object could be gained by prolonging it.

[Sidenote: Hugh reaches Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: Howel flees to Robert.]

[Sidenote: Robert’s carelessness as to his loss.]

[Sidenote: He cleaves to his rights over the bishopric.]

[Sidenote: Dispute between Hugh and Howel.]

[Sidenote: Howel refuses to acknowledge Hugh as advocatus.]

[Sidenote: Howel and his Chapter.]

[Sidenote: Disputes about the deanery.]

[Sidenote: Howel comes to England.]

[Sidenote: Return of Howel. June 28, 1090.]

Meanwhile Hugh was on the road. At the border fortress of La Chartre he was met by the magistrates of Le Mans――the city seems, as often in Cenomannian history, to act for the whole county――who swore oaths to him, counting, it is added, their former oaths to Duke Robert for nought.[496] The Bishop, determined not to acknowledge the revolution, fled to the court of the prince whom he did acknowledge. But he found little help there. The idle and luxurious Robert seemed not to care, he seemed almost to rejoice, that so noble a part of his dominions had fallen away from him.[497] One thing only he would not give up; he would at all hazards cleave to his rights over the Cenomannian bishopric. Robert bade Howel to go back to Le Mans, but to do nothing which could be taken as an admission of Hugh as temporal lord of the bishopric.[498] Howel went home, and found the new Count, for whatever reason, quartered in the episcopal palace. He had himself to live in the abbey of Saint Vincent, just outside the city. A long dispute followed between the Breton Bishop and the Italian Count, and then came a still fiercer dispute between the Bishop and a party in his own Chapter. One or two points are of constitutional interest, and remind us of questions which we have just before heard of in our own land. The Count called on Howel to acknowledge himself as his feudal superior for the temporalities of the bishopric.[499] He refused and left the city, on which Hugh seized the temporalities of the bishopric. Worse even than the Count were the Bishop’s clerical enemies, one Hilgot at their head. By a cruel subtlety they had persuaded him to appoint as Dean a mere boy from his own land, Geoffrey by name, of the age of twelve years only――so it is said. Now they turned about, found fault with the appointment, and set up an anti-dean of their own.[500] The Bishop crossed over to England for help, and, strange to say, he found a friend in the King.[501] But meanwhile all kinds of wrongs were done to his people, even to branding an innocent boy in the face.[502] At last a reconciliation between the Count and the Bishop was brought about, partly because of the turn taken by public feeling. Saint Julian’s, in the absence of its chief pastor, was forsaken, while crowds flocked to keep the feasts of the Church at the Bishop’s monastic retreat. This was at the priory of Solêmes, near Sablé, lying south-west of the city, towards the Angevin border.[503] At last the prelate came back amidst universal joy, and the Count made good all wrongs and losses that he had undergone.[504]

[Sidenote: Unpopularity of Hugh.]

[Sidenote: February, 1091.]

[Sidenote: Danger of Maine.]

[Sidenote: Helias buys the county.]

But happier days were to come for the Bishop and the people of Maine. It was not only to Howel and his clergy that the Italian Count had made himself hateful. He had none of the qualities which were needed in the ruler of a high-spirited people in a time of danger. Idle, timid, weak of purpose, he had no power among the men over whom he was set; and he had not, as seems to have been hoped for, brought with him any store of money from the south.[505] His wife, a daughter of Robert Wiscard, a woman of a lofty spirit, was too much for him. He put her away, and was excommunicated by Pope Urban for so doing.[506] Despised of all men, he was thinking of flight.[507] It was now moreover the moment when the Norman power had again become specially dangerous to Maine. The sons of the great William, lately at variance, were now reconciled, and the subjugation of Maine was one of the terms of their agreement.[508] Helias saw his opportunity. He set forth the dangers of the land to his cousin. Hugh said that he wished to sell his county and be off.[509] Helias argued that, in that case, he ought to sell it to no one but himself. He set forth his right by birth; he said that it was no easy place that he was seeking. But his just rights and a love for the freedom of the land called him to it, and he trusted that God would help him in his post of danger.[510] A bargain was soon struck. For a sum of ten thousand Cenomannian shillings Hugh agreed to abdicate in favour of his cousin. The coronet of Maine passed from the son of Gersendis to the son of Paula. Hugh went back into Italy with his money, and Helias was received without opposition as Count of Maine.[511]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: First reign of Helias. 1091-1098.]

[Sidenote: His strong and just rule.]

[Sidenote: His friendship for Howel.]

[Sidenote: Peace of the land.]

[Sidenote: 1096.]

The reign of Helias over Le Mans and Maine lasted for about twenty years, with a break of three years of warfare of which we shall presently have to speak. First came a time of seven or eight years, during which the Cenomannian people might indeed be objects of envy to the people either of Normandy or of England. The new prince, by every account of his actions, showed himself the model of a ruler of those times. He did justice and made peace; as far as a prince of those days could do so, he sheltered the weak from the oppressions of the strong.[512] His personal piety was not lessened, nor was his devotion to the Church less zealous, now that the ecclesiastical power was no longer a political enemy. Strong in the friendship of his late gaoler, Bishop Howel could rule his diocese in peace, and could carry on his works of building, both in the city itself and in his neighbouring lordship of Coulaines.[513] And these happy years were years of peace without as well as within. The rule of Helias was undisputed; Maine saw neither revolt within her own borders nor invasion from any power beyond them. Whatever designs either Robert or William may have cherished against the independence of Maine, those designs did not for the present take the shape of any overt act. Robert seems to have done absolutely nothing; the first signs of impending evil showed themselves soon after William’s acquisition of Normandy; but there was no open warfare for two years longer.

[Sidenote: Translation of Saint Julian. October 17, 1093.]

[Sidenote: Visit of Pope Urban to Le Mans. November or December, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Sickness of Howel. 1095-1097.]

In these times of exceptional quiet there is little to record beyond ecclesiastical ceremonies. It was a bright day at Le Mans when Bishop Howel was able to translate the body of the venerated patron of the city to the place of honour in his new building.[514] That was the time when Anselm, already enthroned, was waiting for consecration, and when Malcolm had turned away from Gloucester to plan his last invasion of Northumberland.[515] In these years too Howel must have finished the two stately towers of Saint Julian’s minster, of which we shall before long have a tale to tell. But Le Mans presently saw a greater day than all, as it seemed at least in the eyes of the biographer of her bishops. After the days of Piacenza and Clermont, Pope Urban honoured the Cenomannian city with his presence. For three days the sovereign Pontiff was the guest of Howel, and we are told that, though it was a year of scarceness, yet the Bishop of Le Mans was able to entertain the Pope and his following right bountifully.[516] Howel, it is said, appeared among his fellow-bishops conspicuous for the gifts of both mind and body. Men rejoiced with him on the happiness of receiving such a guest, and deemed from his health and vigour that he might long enjoy his honours.[517] Before long he fell sick, and his sickness was unto death, although his end did not come till nearly two years after the preaching at Clermont. The visit of Urban, the death of Howel, led to important events in the history of Maine.

[Sidenote: Helias takes the cross. 1095-1096.]

[Sidenote: Estimate of his action.]

[Sidenote: Sigurd and Eystein.]

[Sidenote: Argument in favour of the Crusade.]

The preaching of the crusade, above all the presence, and doubtless the preaching, of the crusading Pope in his own city, stirred up the same impulse in the heart of Helias which was stirred up in the hearts of so many other men of his day. Young and strong, devout and valiant, he would go and fight to win back the sepulchre of his Lord from the misbelievers and to deliver his Christian brethren in other lands from their cruel bondage. By the counsel of the Pope, the Count of Maine took the cross, and made ready to go on the armed pilgrimage along with his neighbours, with Robert of Normandy and Stephen of Chartres.[518] Our feeling perhaps is that Helias, like Saint Lewis, had a stronger call to stay at home than to go on the crusade. A certain part of mankind, a small part certainly, but that part among which his immediate duty lay, was peaceful and happy under his rule as they were not likely to be under the rule of any other. Could it be right, we might argue, for him to leave a work which none could do but himself, a work which he had taken on his shoulders of his own free will, for another work, however noble, which others could do as well as himself? Let Robert go and win honour abroad instead of dishonour at home. Normandy was in such a case that the coming even of Rufus was a happy change. Let Stephen of Chartres go; he left his royal-hearted Adela behind him. Let King Philip go, if he could go; his son Lewis would rule his realm far better than he. But let Helias stay, and keep for his land and city that well-being which he had given and which another might take away. An argument nearly the same as this was actually pressed on the crusading Sigurd by his stay-at-home brother Eystein. While Sigurd was warring far away, Eystein had done a great deal of good to his own people in Norway.[519] But there are moments in the world’s history, moments when all has to be sacrificed to a great cause, when arguments like these, so sound against ordinary warfare, sound above all against the utterly purposeless warfare of those days, cannot be listened to. If Western Christendom was to arm for a crusade, it was well that that crusade should be headed by the noblest men in Western Christendom. The work would not be done, if it were only left to lower souls. If Godfrey was to march, it was fit that Helias should march beside him. Godfrey went; Helias did not go. He had now a neighbour who made it vain for him to think of leaving his own land in jeopardy, even to carry out his promise to Pope Urban and to go on the holy war.

[Sidenote: William in Normandy. August (?), 1096.]

[Sidenote: Danger to Maine.]

[Sidenote: Importance of Norman neutrality.]

[Sidenote: Helias and Robert.]

[Sidenote: Helias and William.]

[Sidenote: He professes himself William’s vassal.]

[Sidenote: Answer of Rufus; he demands the cession of Maine.]

[Sidenote: Challenge of Helias.]

[Sidenote: Rufus lets Helias go with a defiance.]

The bargain between William and Robert had just been struck. The two brothers were together at Rouen. Robert was about to set out for Jerusalem; William had come to take possession of Normandy. It would have been the height of rashness for Helias to join in the enterprise of Robert, unless he could make his county safe during his absence against any aggression on the part of William. According to Norman doctrines, Maine was simply a rebellious province. Robert had done nothing to stop the rebellion, but he had never acknowledged either Hugh or Helias as lawful Prince of the Cenomannians. Where Robert had done nothing, William would be likely to act with vigour. The claims which Robert had simply not acknowledged William might be inclined to dispute with the sword. It was therefore of the utmost moment for the Count of Maine to secure the friendship, or at least the neutrality, of the new ruler of Normandy. Helias doubtless knew that, if William bound himself by his knightly promise, that promise would be faithfully kept, and he perhaps hoped that towards one who was bound on a holy errand, an errand during which he would be harmless and powerless as far as Maine and Normandy were concerned, the chivalrous king might be disposed to pledge such a promise. He therefore went to Rouen, and sought interviews with both brothers. He first took counsel with the Duke.[520] Robert, we know, could give counsel to others,[521] and he had no temptation at this moment to give unfriendly counsel to Helias. By his advice, the Count of Maine went to the King; he addressed him reverently, and, if his words be rightly reported, acknowledged himself his vassal. So to do was no degradation, and the acknowledgement might turn the King’s heart towards him. He set forth his purpose of going to the crusade; he said that he wished to go as the King’s friend and in his peace.[522] Then Rufus burst forth in a characteristic strain. Helias may go whither he thinks good; but let him give up the city and county of Maine; whatever his father held it was William’s will to hold also.[523] Helias answers that he holds his county by lawful inheritance from his forefathers, and that he hopes by God’s help to hand it on to his children. But if the King has a mind to try the question in a peaceful pleading, he is ready to maintain his right before kings, counts, and bishops, and to abide by their judgement.[524] Rufus tells him that he will plead against him with swords and spears and countless arrows.[525] Then Helias spoke his solemn challenge. He had wished to fight against the heathen in the name of the Lord, but he had found the enemies of Christ nearer to his own doors. The county which he held was his by the gift of God;[526] he would not lightly give it up, nor leave his people to the wolves as sheep without a shepherd. Let the King and all his nobles hear. He bore the cross of a pilgrim; that cross he would not lay aside; he would bear it on his shield, on his helmet, on the saddle and bridle of his horse. Under the protection of that sign he would go forth to defend himself against all who might attack him, that all might know that those who were fighting against him were fighting against a warrior of the cross. He trusted in Him who ruled the world and who knew the secrets of his heart, that a day would come when he would be able to discharge his vow according to the letter.[527] The Red King bade him go whither he would and do what he would; he had no mind to fight against crusaders, but he would have the city which his father had once won.[528] Let Helias get together workmen to repair his broken walls.[529] He would presently visit the citizens of Le Mans, and would show himself before their gates with a hundred thousand pennoned lances.[530] He would send cars drawn by oxen, and laden with arrows and javelins. But before the oxen could reach Le Mans, he would be there with many legions of armed men.[531]

[Sidenote: Helias makes ready for defence.]

[Sidenote: William delays his attack. 1096-1097.]

Such was the threatening message which Helias was bidden to receive as the most certain truth and to go back and tell his accomplices――that is, we may understand, his faithful subjects. He went back to his capital, and began to put his dominions into a state fit to withstand an attack. But as yet no attack came; for a year or more neither king nor legions nor oxen were seen before the gates of Le Mans. William was busy with many matters, with the dispute with Anselm, with the Welsh war, with the affairs of Scotland. We are told, characteristically enough, that in the midst of all these affairs he forgot Maine altogether. Helias meanwhile remained in actual possession of the county, not attacked or disturbed by Rufus, but in no way acknowledged by him, with the King’s threats hanging over him, and knowing that an attack might come at any moment. At last this armed neutrality came to an end. An event happened which called the King’s mind back to Cenomannian affairs in a manner specially characteristic of Cenomannian history.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Affairs of the bishopric.]

[Sidenote: Death of Howel July 29, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Helias nominates Geoffrey.]

[Sidenote: The canons choose Hildebert.]

[Sidenote: Helias accepts the election.]

[Sidenote: Geoffrey Archbishop of Rouen. 1111.]

[Sidenote: Hildebert Bishop of Le Mans. 1097-1126.]

[Sidenote: Archbishop of Tours. 1126-1134.]

Again, as so often in our story, the bishopric of Le Mans becomes the centre of the drama and the subject of dispute among the princes of the world. In the middle of the summer, shortly before the council of Winchester, Bishop Howel died, seemingly of the same sickness which had come upon him soon after the visit of Pope Urban. Helias, like Hugh, deemed himself, as the reigning Count, to be the temporal lord of the bishopric, and he at once nominated to the vacant see. His choice was the Dean of Saint Julian’s, that same Geoffrey who had been placed by Howel in the deanery in his childhood, and who, if the dates be right, must still have been wonderfully young for a bishop.[532] But the canons of Saint Julian’s stood upon their right of free election, and chose a man of greater name, their Chancellor and Archdeacon, the famous Hildebert.[533] They placed him at once, seemingly against his own will, on the episcopal throne.[534] At first Helias was wroth, and was minded to set aside this direct slight to his authority. But the rights of the Chapter were set before him, and, unlike our own Confessor under less provocation, he yielded, and accepted the election.[535] The Dean, deeming himself sure of the bishopric, had made ready a great feast; but his dainties were spread and eaten to no purpose.[536] His time of promotion was only deferred. Fourteen years later, Geoffrey succeeded William the Good Soul in the archbishopric of Rouen. So his now more successful competitor was not fated always to remain in the second rank of prelacy. One of the great scholars of his day, renowned for his writings both in prose and verse, a diligent writer of letters and thereby one of the authorities for our history, a builder, a reformer, an enemy of heresy who could yet deal gently with the heretic,[537] a model in short, we are told, of every episcopal virtue, Hildebert ruled the church of Le Mans for more than twenty-nine years, and then for the last nine years of his long life was removed to the metropolitan throne of Tours.[538]

[Sidenote: Claims of the Norman Dukes over the bishopric.]

[Sidenote: Anger of Rufus at the election of Hildebert.]

All the elements of the Cenomannian state, prince, clergy, and people, had joined in the elevation of Hildebert. But there was one to whom any free election or nomination by any of the local powers was in its own nature distasteful. It was perhaps because their claim was very doubtful that the princes of the Norman house clave with such special obstinacy to their rights over the temporalities of the see of Le Mans. The bishopric was the one thing in Maine which even the careless Robert cared about.[539] And to William Rufus, who so deeply cherished his father’s memory, it would seem a crowning indignity that a bishop appointed by his father, a special and loyal friend of his father, should be succeeded by any one, whether the choice of count, chapter, or commune, in whose election he himself had no share. When the King heard of the election of Hildebert, he was very wroth. He forbade his consecration, seemingly under threats of open war.[540] Hildebert was consecrated none the less, and the war which Rufus had hitherto planned in his heart, broke out in action.[541]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William in Normandy. November, 1097.]

[Sidenote: His designs on Maine.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême attacks Maine.]

[Sidenote: Helias strengthens the castle of Dangeul.]

[Sidenote: Its position.]

When William crossed the sea in the November following the election of Hildebert, we may believe that the wrong which he held to have been done to him in the matter of that election was in his mind as a secondary cause of action, along with his demand of the Vexin from the King of the French. He came for war with France; he was ready for war with Maine also. But we do not hear of any actual military operations till the next year had begun. And, when warfare began, it was at first warfare carried on, just as often happened in Wales and even in Scotland, by the King’s licence indeed, but not by the King himself. The immediate danger lay on the side of the county which was threatened by the constant enemy of Maine and of Helias, Robert of Bellême. From him came the first acts of warfare. It was against him that Helias now found it needful to strengthen his castle of Dangeul.[542] This point lies to the north-east of Ballon, at only a few miles’ distance. The castle stands on a height nearly equal to that of Ballon, though Dangeul does not take the same marked form of a promontory, but rather stands on the edge of a wide expanse of high ground sinking by stages down to the plain below. The fortress has wholly vanished; but its site may be traced within the grounds of the modern château which has taken its place, and which represents, in a figure, the stronghold of Helias. The view which the spot commands shows how well the site was chosen. The eye ranges as far as the height of Sillé-le-Guillaume on one side, as far as the Norman Chaumont on the other. Dangeul stood right in the way of an advance of the arch-enemy, whether from his own home at Bellême or from any of his Norman or Cenomannian fortresses.

[Sidenote: Geographical character of the war; waged chiefly with Robert of Bellême.]

The war of Maine is largely a war between Helias and Robert of Bellême. This gives the war its special geographical character. The immediate possessions of Helias lay in the south-eastern part of the county; the fortresses of the enemy threatened him from the north-east. The capital lay between them. The result is that the seat of war is confined to the eastern part of Maine, the modern department of Sarthe, and that Le Mans itself is its special centre. Of western Maine, the modern department of Mayenne, we hear nothing. There is no news from the old battle-field of Domfront, Ambrières, and Mayenne itself, though of the lord of Mayenne we still continue to hear. There is nothing this time to tell of Sainte-Susanne or of Sillé-le-Guillaume.[543] The war takes up such an area as is natural when the strife is waged mainly for the city of Le Mans, when it is waged between the lord of La Flèche and the lord of Bellême. The enemy advances from Alençon and Mamers; he is checked by the fortification of Dangeul.

[Sidenote: Effects of the occupation of Dangeul.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême invites the King. January, 1098.]

[Sidenote: William and Robert against Helias.]

[Sidenote: Guerrilla warfare of Helias.]

[Sidenote: William leaves Maine.]

The occupation of this last strong post by Helias was not without effect. He did not indeed win back any of the castles which were held by Robert of Bellême; but the garrison of Dangeul kept the invader in check, and hindered him from carrying his accustomed ravages through the whole country. This move of Helias seems even to have convinced Robert that the conquest of Maine was an undertaking too great for his own unassisted power. In January he went to the King, and stirred him up to a direct attack on Helias. With a lover of warfare like Robert winter went for nothing; it would be just the time to take the enemy by surprise, while they were not expecting any attack. The King, we are told, was unwilling. It is hard to understand why this should be, unless he was too busily occupied with the war in the Vexin. He was ashamed however――the chivalrous feeling again comes in――to shrink from any warlike enterprise which was proposed to him.[544] The King and the Count of Bellême set forth; but they found the Count of Maine fully their match. He knew how war was to be carried on in his own land against an enemy stronger than himself. He planted detachments at every convenient post; he lined the hedges and defences of every kind with men; he guarded the passages of the streams, and the difficult approaches of the woods. Against this kind of skirmishing warfare the mighty Rufus and all his knights were able to do as little as they were able to do against the light-armed Welsh.[545] The King waxed fiercer than ever against the men of Maine and their Count; but he withdrew his own personal presence, betaking himself doubtless to the other seat of war.

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême continues the war.]

[Sidenote: Castles held by him in Maine.]

Meanwhile Robert of Bellême was left to carry on the struggle with Helias. He was ordered by Rufus to bring together as large a force as he could in his own fortresses, nor did the King forget to supply him with abundance of money for that purpose.[546] On such a bidding as this, Robert of Bellême, Robert the Devil on Cenomannian lips, set to work with a will which fully bore out his surname. He built new fortresses, he strengthened the old ones with deep ditches.[547] He had already occupied nine castles, besides fortified houses, on Cenomannian ground.[548] The list is given as Blèves, Perray, Mont-de-la-Nue, Saônes, Saint Remy-du-plain, Lurçon, Allières, Motte de Gauthier-le-Clincamp, and Mamers. All these lie in the north-eastern part of the county, the part immediately threatened from Alençon and Bellême. They occupy nearly the whole of the land between the Cenomannian Orne and the upper course of the Sarthe above Alençon, lying on each side, north and south, of the great forest of Perseigne. The line of the Sarthe from Alençon to Le Mans remained untouched, while Ballon stood as the advanced guard of the capital, and Dangeul was a yet further outpost of Helias, in the very teeth of the invader from Bellême. Perray, alone among the points held by Robert, stands as far south as the lower course of the Orne.

[Sidenote: Mamers.]

[Sidenote: Blèves.]

[Sidenote: Allières.]

[Sidenote: Saint Remy-du-plain.]

[Sidenote: Saônes.]

[Sidenote: Small architectural remains of the eleventh century.]

Several of the castles on this list occupied marked sites, and have left considerable traces. Mamers and Blèves were strictly border fortresses, points which Robert had seized just within the Cenomannian border; the others were more advanced points in the heart of the Cenomannian land. Mamers, with its streets sloping down to the young Orne, is the only one of the places on our list which is now at all a considerable town. But the only signs of its fortifications which are to be seen are found in the names of its streets, which suggest the former presence of a fort by the river and of a castle on somewhat higher ground. Mamers, due west from Bellême, may well have been Robert’s first conquest, and its occupation may have marked his first advance into the dominions of his neighbour. But he must also, early in his career, have made himself master of Blèves. This is a point which has no natural advantages of height, but which, standing in the very north-east corner of Maine, separated from Perche by a small tributary of the Sarthe, is important from its border position and as commanding a bridge. A mound which once stood there has been levelled; a graceful Renaissance house near its site is the present representative of the castle; but parts of the ditches may still be seen; the church, near but not within the enclosure, contains work which may have been looked on by Hildebert and Helias, and ancient masonry still remains at the manorial mill. Blèves lies north of the forest of Perseigne; at Allières, on its eastern verge, all actual traces of the castle have vanished; but the church again contains some small parts which seem contemporary with our story, and the site of the fortress may well be marked by the modern château on the hill-side commanding a wide view to the south. But more speaking witnesses of this war may be seen at two points lying south of the forest and directly west of Mamers. Saint Remy, distinguished as Saint Remy du Plain from a namesake to the south-east known as Saint Remy du Mont, stands, not indeed in the plain, but on the edge of the high ground. It commands an extensive view, reaching to the point which bounds most of the views in northern Maine, the butte of Chaumont. A site of the like kind, but with a less wide prospect, is held by Saônes at a short distance to the south, hard by that unusual feature in these lands, a small lake. Saônes is now a small village, but it was once of importance enough to give its name to the surrounding district of Saosnois or Sonnois. In both these cases the castle-mound rises immediately to the west of the church, the latter at Saint Remy being a late building of more pretension than is usual in the neighbourhood. Each mound has its surrounding ditch, which at Saint Remy is of most striking depth; each has its encircling wall; each has its inner tower, that at Saônes of an irregular four-sided shape, that of Saint Remy octagonal without and round within. Here are two unmistakeable and most striking sites of the fortresses which the invader from Perche rent away from the Cenomannian county. But, with such small remains of walls as are still left, it is hard to say in each case how much may be the work of Robert of Bellême himself. The mounds――natural hills improved by art――and their ditches are doubtless far older than his day; the walls must often be far later. There is little architectural detail left to decide such points; we are left to the less certain evidence of masonry. Some of the masonry in the inner building at Saônes certainly has the air of work of the eleventh century. In any case, whatever may be the exact amount of his work among the existing remains, everything bears witness to the impression which Robert’s invasion made on the district and to the reputation which he left behind him. Not far from Saônes, some remains of dykes, of the age or object of which it would be rash to speak with certainty, still keep the name of Robert the Devil.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Nature of the country and of the war.]

[Sidenote: Teaching of the landscapes in Maine.]

[Sidenote: The castles.]

[Sidenote: Their object private war.]

[Sidenote: Contrast with England.]

[Sidenote: Comparative rarity of castles in England.]

[Sidenote: State of the Cenomannian castles.]

A visit to the scene of this war, a look-out from any of the chief fortified points, brings forcibly home to us the nature of that kind of struggle with which we are dealing. Nothing but an actual sight of Italy and Greece fully brings home to the mind the state of things when each city was a sovereign commonwealth, armed with all the powers of war and peace. Till we take in the fact with our own eyes, we do not thoroughly understand how men felt and acted when they constantly lived with rivals, rivals who might at any moment become enemies, within sight of their own territory. The out-look from any of the Cenomannian heights, the out-look from the home and centre of mischief on the hill of Bellême, brings home to us another state of things with equal force. Had the commune of Le Mans lived on, had other neighbouring cities followed its example, the older Greek, the later Italian, model might have been seen in all its fulness on the soil of northern Gaul. And warfare between Le Mans and Tours, between Le Mans and Alençon, carried on with that mixture of lofty and petty motives which is characteristic of warfare between rival cities, would have been ennobling compared with the state of things which actually was. For here we see every available point seized on to make what, at least in the hands of Robert of Bellême, was a mere den of robbers.[549] From his own scarped mound at Bellême the destroyer could see far enough into the Cenomannian land to give a keen whet to his appetite for havoc. Within the land which thus lay open to his attack, we see from every height the sites, not of one or two only, but of a whole crowd of strongholds which have passed away. A very few only of these strongholds could ever have been needed for the protection of any town or for the general defence of the country. They were strongholds which had been first raised for the purpose of private war, and which, in the hands of their present master, were turned to the purpose of general oppression. One wonders how, in such a state of things, when almost every village was overshadowed by its robber’s nest, a single husbandman could till his field, or a single merchant carry his wares from town to town. And we must remember that, unless during the nineteen years of anarchy, this state of things never existed in England. Our forefathers raised their wail over the building of the castles and over the evil deeds which were wrought by those who built them. But at no time in England, save on the borders which were exposed to the foreign enemies of the kingdom, did castles stand so thick on the ground as they did in the land on which we now look. The eye which has been used to track out the scenes of the Cenomannian war comes back to an English landscape of the same kind, to mark the steep bluff or the isolated mount, which seems designed to be girt with a ditch and crowned with a donjon, and almost to wonder that no ditch or donjon ever was there. And, as we gaze on the land where they crowned every tempting site, we better understand the joy and thankfulness with which men hailed the reign of any prince who put some curb on the pride and power of the knightly disturbers of the peace and gave to smaller men some chance of possessing their own in safety. We can understand how in such a prince this overwhelming merit was held to outweigh not a few vices and crimes in his own person. We can understand how, at the beginning of every period of restored order, a general sweeping away of castles was as it were the symbolic act of its inauguration. And perhaps the thought comes all the more home to the mind, because the Cenomannian castles are, to so great an extent, a memory and not a presence. They are not like those castles by the Rhine which have come to take their place as parts of a picturesque landscape. As a rule, it is not the castles themselves, but the sites where we know that they once stood, which catch the eye as it ranges from Mamers to Sillé, from Ballon to Alençon. But when we see how many spots within that region had been made the sites of these dens of havoc――when we think how many of them had, in the hands of Robert of Bellême, become dens of havoc more fearful than ever――we shall better understand how men cherished the names of William the Great and of his youngest son; we shall better understand the work which had now to be done in the Cenomannian land by one nobler than either the son or the father.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Wrong and sacrilege of Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: Helias defeats Robert at Saônes.]

[Sidenote: Cruelty of Robert.]

In the minds of Helias and his contemporaries the occupation of so large a part of their country was yet more keenly embittered by the despite done to holy places and the wrong wrought on men who enjoyed exceptional respect even in the fiercest times. Some of the strongholds of Robert the Devil were planted on lands belonging to the Church, especially to the abbeys of Saint Vincent and La Couture without the walls of Le Mans. The peaceful tenants of these religious houses, accustomed to a milder rule than their neighbours, groaned under the oppressions of their new masters.[550] Stirred up by this wrong and sacrilege, the Count of Maine marched forth to protect his people. Now that the King was gone, he even ventured on something like a pitched battle. He met Robert of Bellême at the head of a superior force near the lake and castle of Saônes, not far, it may be, from the dyke which specially bears the tyrant’s name. The pious Count and his followers, calling on God and Saint Julian, attacked the sacrilegious invaders and put them to flight.[551] Several of the nobles of Normandy were wounded or taken prisoners. Robert of Courcy, a name not new to us,[552] lost his right eye. William of Wacey and several others were taken, and were released on the payment of heavy ransoms.[553] Helias, in short, carried on a defensive warfare in the spirit of a Christian knight. Not so his enemy. Robert of Bellême carried on a war of aggression in the spirit of a murdering savage. All the worst horrors of war were let loose upon the land. Robert’s treatment of prisoners was not that which the captive Normans met with at the hands of Helias. In the holy season of Lent, when other sinners, we are told, forsook their sins for a while, the son of Mabel only did worse than ever. Three hundred prisoners perished in his dungeons. Large ransoms were offered for their release; but Robert would not forego for money the pleasure of letting them die of cold, hunger, and wretchedness.[554]

[Sidenote: April, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Second victory of Helias. April 28, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Helias taken prisoner near Dangeul.]

The war thus went on till the end of April. On the Wednesday in the last week of that month Helias made an expedition against Robert. The exact point of attack is not told us; but doubtless it was some of the fortresses held by the enemy. It was perhaps Perray, the hostile point furthest to the south, perhaps Saônes, the scene of his own former victory over the invaders. The starting-points of the Count’s operations were the two points which he held as outposts of the city against attacks from the north, Ballon and his own immediate dwelling-place at Dangeul. From these castles Helias led forth his forces. The day’s skirmish was successful; the pride of Robert the Devil received another check.[555] But fortune soon turned from the better to the worse cause. The Count bade the main body of his followers march on to Ballon, while he himself, with seven knights only, was minded to halt at his own castle of Dangeul. As he drew near to the fortress, he saw a few men lurking among the trees and bushes.[556] Trees and bushes are still there in abundance, surrounding the modern house which in a figure represents the castle of Helias. The presence of liers-in-wait so near his own home was threatening. Helias rode against them and scattered them; in so doing he also scattered his own small party. But the few men in the thickets were only the advanced guard of a larger body. The arch-fiend Robert was himself near in ambush. At the lucky moment he sprang forth; his comrades seized the Count, along with his standard-bearer Hervey of the Cenomannian Montfort,[557] and the more part of his small following. The few who escaped made their way to Ballon, to turn the joy of their comrades into sorrow at the news that Count Helias was a prisoner.[558]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Contrast between Robert of Bellême and William Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Helias surrendered to the King.]

[Sidenote: William and Helias.]

[Sidenote: Helias kept at Rouen.]

The noblest man in Gaul was now at the mercy of the vilest. Helias was helpless in the hands of Robert of Bellême. The tale which follows is picturesque in itself, and it is specially valuable as throwing light on the mixed character of the Red King. With all his evil deeds, he was at least not the worst man with whom we have to do. We now see what mere chivalry could do and what it could not do. It could not raise a man to the level of Helias; but it kept him from sinking to the level of Robert of Bellême. Helias was far too important a captive to be left to die a lingering death in the dungeons of Robert. He was taken to Rouen, and handed over to the King; and in the King’s hands he at least ran no risk as to life or limb. William Rufus might perhaps not understand a patriot fighting for his city and country. He could perhaps understand a prince fighting for the inheritance of his fathers. He could most fully understand and admire a gallant and honourable knight fighting manfully in any cause, even though his gallantry was directed against himself. In one or other of those characters, Helias extorted a kind of respect from the King who was so bitterly enraged against him. The fortune of war had gone against the defender of Maine, but William was not disposed to press his advantage harshly. Helias was kept in the castle of Rouen, a prisoner, but a prisoner whose durance was, by the King’s express order, relieved by honourable treatment.[559]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: State of things at Le Mans;]

[Sidenote: the new municipality.]

[Sidenote: Bishop Hildebert and the Council.]

[Sidenote: William’s council at Rouen.]

[Sidenote: His speech.]

[Sidenote: A great levy ordered.]

One element of the Cenomannian state, and that the highest, was thus lost to it. But at Le Mans the prince was only one element in the state; the ecclesiastical and the civic powers appear alongside of him at every stage. As soon as the Count was in the hands of the enemy, another power, perhaps not the old commune, yet some form of republican or municipal government, at once sprang up. Bishop Hildebert appears at the head of a council or assembly of some kind which devised measures daily for the safety of the commonwealth.[560] We must not build too much on the expressions of rhetorical writers who loved to bring in classical allusions; still, considering what Le Mans had been, a momentary burst of the old freedom is no more than we might reasonably look for. If so, the restored commonwealth had, at its first birth, to brave the full might of the younger William, as the former commonwealth had had to brave the full might of the elder. We can only tell the tale as we have it, and we have no means of connecting what was going on in Maine with what was going on at the same time in the Vexin. Yet one is a little surprised to find William, at this stage of the year, sitting quietly at Rouen, holding a council, and presently sending forth orders for the levying of a great army, as if two wars were not already waging. In his council of the Norman barons the Red King is made to express himself in a humane and devout strain. Hitherto he had been careless about winning back the heritage of his father; he had been unwilling, for the mere sake of enlarging his dominions, to trouble a peaceful population or to cause the death of human beings.[561] Now however God, who knew his right, had, without any knowledge of his, delivered his enemy into his hands; what should he do further?[562] The writers of these times do indeed allow themselves strange liberties in putting speeches, and sometimes very inappropriate speeches, into the mouths of the actors in their story. But surely to put words like these into the mouth of William Rufus, as something uttered in seriousness, would be going beyond any conceivable licence of this kind. Considering his better authenticated speeches, one is tempted to believe that we have here the memory of some mocking gibe. He, King William, had not laid waste the fields of Maine nor caused men to die of hunger in prison. It was only Robert of Bellême who had done such things. It would be quite in character with Rufus, as with Jehu, to ask, Who slew all these?[563] Nor is such brutal mockery in any way inconsistent with the display of chivalrous generosity whenever any appeal is made personally to himself in his knightly character. Anyhow we are told that the barons advised that a summons should go forth bidding the whole force of Normandy to come together for an expedition to win back the land of Maine. They themselves would come, willingly and with all daring, in their own persons.[564]

[Sidenote: Numbers of the army.]

All this reads strangely in a narrative which, a page or two before, had told us of the warfare around Gisors which, one would think, must have been going on at this very moment. But we read that the messengers went forth, and that the host came together. Not only from Normandy, but from Britanny and Flanders, from Burgundy and France――not a word as to the treason implied in this last name――men flocked to the banners of the prince who was so bountiful a paymaster.[565] At some stage of their march, an aged French warrior, a survivor of the wars of King Henry――one therefore who could remember the ambush of Varaville and the flames of Mortemer, perhaps even the clashing of lances at Val-es-dunes――Gilo de Soleio by name, beheld the host from the top of a high hill. He had seen many and great gatherings of men, but never on this side the Alps――had he fought then in Apulia or at Dyrrhachion?――had he seen so vast an army. He told the number of the men at fifty thousand.[566] Be the figures trustworthy or not as to this particular army, this is one of several hints which help to show us what passed in those days for an army of unusual numbers.[567]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The army meets at Alençon. June, 1098.]

[Sidenote: The army at Fresnay.]

[Sidenote: The castle and church of Fresnay.]

[Sidenote: Beaumont-le-Vicomte.]

[Sidenote: The Viscount Ralph asks for a truce.]

[Sidenote: Rufus grants it.]

[Sidenote: Action of Geoffrey of Mayenne.]

The trysting-place of this great host was at Alençon, the border town and fortress of Normandy, where the Sarthe divides the Norman and Cenomannian lands.[568] Once famous as the town whose people had felt so stern a vengeance for their insults to the great William, it was now a stronghold of Normandy against Maine, at all events a stronghold of Robert of Bellême against those who still maintained the cause of the captive Helias. There the army met in June.[569] Rufus, in invading Maine, was repeating an exploit of his father. He entered by the same road, and began by threatening the same fortress. The words of our authorities may lead us to think that he himself tarried at Alençon, while his army, or the bulk of it, marched to Fresnay.[570] Fresnay-le-Vicomte, Fresnay-on-Sarthe, was the first castle in Maine to which the Conqueror had laid siege, and under its walls Robert of Bellême had been girt with the belt of knighthood.[571] At that time Fresnay, along with Beaumont lower down the river, had dared to withstand the invader. Both fortresses stand on heights overlooking the Sarthe; Fresnay, seated on a limestone rock rising sheer from the stream, might seem well able to defy any enemy. Of the ancient part of the castle nothing is left but shattered walls and a stern gateway of a later age. The church, a gem of the art of an age nearly a hundred years later, contains only a small part which can have been standing in the days of Rufus. Beaumont is not mentioned in our present story. But its square keep must have already looked down on the Sarthe and its islands, while a mound on each side of the town, one seemingly artificial, one by the river-side only improved by art, may perhaps mark the sites of besieging towers raised by the Conqueror to bring town and castle into subjection.[572] The then lord of Fresnay and Beaumont, the Viscount Hubert, had at a later stage forsaken both his castles on the Sarthe, to defy, and that successfully, the whole might of William the Great from his more inaccessible donjon on the rock of Sainte-Susanne.[573] His successor, the Viscount Ralph, felt no call to run any such risks. When the army drew near to Fresnay, when no hostilities beyond a little skirmishing had as yet taken place, Ralph went to the King at Alençon and asked for a truce. He pleaded that he was but one member of a body; he could not take on himself the duties of the head of that body; he could not without dishonour be the first man in Maine to yield his castle without fighting. The council of Maine was sitting in the city; he, Ralph, was bound by their resolves; let the King go on to Le Mans and negotiate; as he should find peace or war at Le Mans, he should find peace or war at Fresnay.[574] Rufus, always ready to answer any appeal to his personal generosity, praised the proposal of Ralph, and granted him the truce which he asked for.[575] He did the like to others whose lands lay on his line of march. Among these we hear of Rotrou of the Cenomannian Montfort, and of one whose name has for so many years been sure to meet us the first moment he set foot on Cenomannian soil, the now surely aged Geoffrey of Mayenne.[576]

[Sidenote: Estimate of their conduct.]

[Sidenote: Fulk Rechin at Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: May 5, 1098.]

[Sidenote: He is received.]

[Sidenote: Fulk’s son Geoffrey left at Le Mans.]

The conduct of these lords seems to show lukewarmness, to say the least, in the cause of Cenomannian independence. We are again reminded of the days of the commune, of the unwillingness of the nobles to accept the republican government, of the special treason of Geoffrey himself.[577] We can understand that many of the lords of castles throughout Maine, though they might prefer their own count to the king who came against them, might yet prefer the king to any form of commonwealth. The local historian does not scruple to use strong language on the subject. For we can hardly doubt that Geoffrey, Ralph, Rotrou, and others in the like case, are the persons who are referred to as the faithless men by whose consent Rufus was led to hasten to the city.[578] But the King had another motive to call him thither. By this time there was no longer a commonwealth to be dealt with; Le Mans had again a prince, though no longer her native prince. In the very week after Helias was taken prisoner, Fulk of Anjou came to Le Mans, and brought with him his son Geoffrey. He himself came in his character of superior lord,[579] while Geoffrey, to whom Eremburga, the only child of Helias, was betrothed, might pass in some sort for the heir of the county.[580] The citizens, we are told, received the Angevin count willingly; any master was better than the Norman. Fulk put garrisons in the fortresses of La Mans, with his son in command. He then left the city, seemingly for operations in other parts of Maine.[581]

[Sidenote: March of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Castle of Bourg-le-roi.]

[Sidenote: Rufus at Montbizot]

[Sidenote: and Coulaines.]

[Sidenote: View of Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: Rufus ravages Coulaines.]

Against this new enemy William Rufus set out from Alençon. He had to overtake the host which was already at Fresnay. He crossed the Sarthe; he continued his course along its left bank, and stopped for the first time at Rouessée-les-fontaines.[582] This point is no great distance from Alençon, and it is still some way north of Fresnay. The present village of Rouessée contains no signs of any castle or mansion fitted for a king’s reception. One suspects that the exact spot meant must be the neighbouring castle of Bourg-le-roi, a castle said to take its name from Rufus himself. Here a ruined round tower, with walls of amazing thickness and girded by a deep ditch, looks down from a small hill on what seems to be the preparation for a large town which has never been built. A small village and church are sheltered within walls of vast compass, pierced by gates of later date than the days of Rufus and Helias. His next stage is distinctly spoken of as an encampment. The King had now joined his army. That night his camp was pitched at Montbizot, in the peninsula between the Sarthe and the Cenomannian Orne.[583] On the third day he encamped in the meadows, by the Sarthe, hard by the village of Coulaines.[584] He was still on the left bank of the river, the same bank as the city itself, though the bend which the stream makes immediately under the hill of Le Mans gives the city almost the look of standing on the other side. Wide meadows spread from the village of Coulaines to the foot of the hill; they were now covered by the tents of Rufus. Right before the eyes of the army, high on its hill, rose the city which they were come to attack, and it rose so as to bring at once before their leader’s eyes the objects which would specially stir up his wrath. As Le Mans is seen from the meadows of Coulaines, the city and its hill lie almost out of sight to the south-west. The prominent objects are those which stand in the north-east corner of the city and in the adjoining suburb. Highest of all, rising above the city itself, soared the abbey of Saint Vincent without the walls, the house whose tenants had been so cruelly oppressed by Robert of Bellême.[585] Saint Julian’s, on its lower ground, almost closes in the view on the other side. When Rufus drew nigh, the twin towers of Howel rose high in all the freshness of their newly-finished masonry, to remind the King that the chair of the prelate whom his father had appointed was now filled by a successor in whose choice no regard had been paid to his own pleasure. Between the two minsters rose the royal tower, the tower of his father, the fortress which had passed away from him and from his father’s house, held no longer even by a rebellious vassal, as he might deem Helias, but by the invading stranger from Anjou. How deeply one at least of these feelings rankled in the mind of Rufus is shown by his dealings with the immediate neighbourhood of his encampment. The village of Coulaines was an episcopal lordship. For the churl chivalry taught no mercy; in his wrath against Hildebert, the King burned the church and the whole village, and cruelly laid waste the neighbouring lands.[586]

[Sidenote: Sally from the city.]

[Sidenote: Rufus goes away.]

[Sidenote: Ballon betrayed to Rufus and occupied by Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: The siege of Le Mans raised.]

But however fiercely Rufus might wreak his spite on the unlucky lands and tenants of the bishopric without the walls, the flock of Hildebert within the city was safe for a while. Le Mans was not to pass into the King’s hands just yet, and Ralph of Beaumont and Geoffrey of Mayenne might still keep their bat-like nature for some while longer. For it is at this stage that the local historian places an exploit of the citizens of Le Mans which reminds us of the way in which our own Godwine was said to have won the special favour of Cnut for himself and his fellow-Englishmen.[587] The men of the city marched forth――whether under Angevin leadership we are not told――to attack the King’s camp at Coulaines. Rufus, deeming that some treachery was on foot, marched off in the night with his army. In the morning the citizens occupied the camp and found no one there.[588] It is hard to say what we are to make of this story, which has a somewhat mythical sound. But it has at least thus much of truth in it, that Rufus was obliged to break up the siege of Le Mans for a while. The castle of Ballon, of which we have already so often heard, was betrayed to Rufus by its lord Pagan of Mont-Doubleau, and it was held that this strong position, nearly due north of the city, almost put the city itself into the King’s power. Robert of Bellême was put in command at Ballon, with three hundred knights. At his bidding the land was ravaged in every way; the vines were rooted up and the crops were trampled down. But at last the invaders began to feel the effects of the damage they themselves had done. A failure of provisions, especially of oats for the horses, hindered the Red King from keeping on the siege.[589] He went away into Normandy, bidding his men go home and see to their harvests, and come again when the crops were reaped.[590] Nothing is more natural in the case of the native Normans, who would feel in such a case very much as Englishmen felt; but one can hardly believe that William allowed his great mercenary force to be wholly broken up. And again, the question keeps always presenting itself, What was going on in the Vexin? Was there any moment when so eager a warrior, with two wars on his hands at once, left both of them to take care of themselves? Throughout this story the relations between the French and the Cenomannian wars form a never-ceasing puzzle. But we presently come to an incident of the campaign which is the most characteristic in the whole history of William Rufus.

[Sidenote: Fulk attacks Ballon.]

[Sidenote: Successful sally of the besieged.]

[Sidenote: William at Ballon, c. July 20, 1098.]

[Sidenote: His treatment of the captive knights.]

[Sidenote: Illustration of the chivalrous spirit.]

While William was away, Count Fulk, at the head of a mixed host, Angevin and Cenomannian, laid siege to the newly-betrayed castle of Ballon. The attack went on for some days; a message was sent to the King for help. To meet this fresh danger, the nobles of Maine and Anjou pressed in greater numbers to help the Count and his force. The defenders of the castle planned a sally. Beggars went out as spies, and brought in news that the besiegers were busy dining at the hour of tierce. The sally was made; the besiegers were surprised in the midst of their meal;[591] a hundred and forty knights and a crowd of foot-soldiers were taken prisoners. The rest took to flight and left a rich spoil of arms, clothes, and furniture as a prey to the Normans. Many of the captives were men of high rank and great possessions. The story almost reads as if Robert of Bellême condemned them to die of hunger; if so, Rufus came before hunger had done its work; cold would no longer be a means of torture. It was now not Lent, but the third week in July, when King William with a great force came to Ballon. A cry presently reached him from the prisoners, “Noble King William, set us free.” The chivalrous King, who had no mercy for the peasants of Coulaines, felt his heart stirred towards the captive knights of Anjou. He ordered that a meal should be made ready for them along with his own followers, and he set them free on their parole till the meal was ready. Some of his companions suggested to him that, in the crowd and confusion, they might easily escape. Rufus cast aside such a suggestion with scorn. He would never believe that a good knight would break his word; he who should do so would have punishment enough in the scorn of all mankind that would follow him.[592] Here we see the chivalrous character in all its fulness. Justice and mercy go for nothing; the law of God and the law of man go for nothing; the oath of the crowned king, the promise of a prince and a brother, go for nothing; but the class tie of knighthood is sacred; the promise made under its guaranty is sacred. As a good knight, William Rufus is faithful to his own word pledged as such to others; as a good knight, he will not believe that a brother of his order can be other than faithful to his word pledged as such to him.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Fulk goes back to Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: Negotiations for peace.]

[Sidenote: Share of Helias.]

[Sidenote: Convention between William and Fulk. August, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Le Mans to be surrendered.]

[Sidenote: Helias to be set free.]

The siege of Ballon was at an end. Fulk, we are told, betook himself to the city, and there stayed in some of the monasteries, waiting to see what would happen.[593] But the defenders of Le Mans, both native and Angevin, had now made up their minds that resistance to the power of Rufus was hopeless; their object was to treat for peace. The captive Helias was allowed a share in the negotiations; he was specially fearful that Fulk might make some agreement by which he himself might be cut off from Maine for ever.[594] By the King’s leave, Bishop Hildebert and some of the chief men of the city visited Helias, and they agreed on terms which were put into the form of an agreement between Rufus and Fulk. It was rather a military convention than a treaty of peace, and it left all the disputed questions unsettled. Nothing was said either as to the general question about the bishopric or as to the particular election of Hildebert. Nor was it at all ruled who was to be looked on as lawful Count of Maine. It was not even agreed that hostilities were to cease. The actual terms are conceived in words which seem to come from Rufus himself. The memory of his father is put prominently forward. Le Mans and all the fortresses which had been held by the late King William were to be surrendered to King William his son. Helias and all other prisoners on both sides were to be set free.[595] All sides, we are told, rejoiced at this agreement. To William and his followers it was a great immediate triumph. To the people of Le Mans it was at least immediate deliverance from a wasting struggle. And wary men may have seen that the liberation of Helias was not too dearly bought even by the surrender of his capital. If the valiant Count were set free, free alike from fetters and from promises, he would win back his lost city and dominion before long.

[Sidenote: Submission of Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: The castles occupied by the King’s troops.]

But for the present all went according to the pleasure of the Red King. Rufus, as his father had twice done, entered Le Mans without bloodshed, amidst at least the outward welcome of its inhabitants. And it may well be that, if Helias was not to be had, they may have looked on William as a more promising master than Fulk. The convention was formally accepted, and it was immediately carried out. Robert the son of Hugh of Montfort, that Hugh whom we have already heard of on Senlac and at Dover,[596] was sent at the head of seven hundred chosen knights, full armed in their helmets and coats of mail, to occupy the fortresses of Le Mans.[597] They met with no opposition; the garrisons, native or Angevin, marched out; the Normans took possession. All the strong places of the city――the ancient palace of the counts on the Roman wall――the donjon of William the Great, the royal tower, standing so dangerously near to the north wall of Saint Julian’s minster――the other fortress of the Conqueror, the tower of Mont Barbet on its height, overlooking the city from the side of Saint Vincent’s abbey――all that the father had either subdued or called into being――now passed without a blow into the hands of the son. The King’s banner――what was the ensign wrought upon it?――was hoisted amid shouts of victory on the highest point of the royal tower. King William the Red had achieved the object which in his thoughts came nearest to the nature of a duty. He had brought under his hand all that had ever been under the hand of his father.[598]

[Sidenote: William’s entry into Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: His reception by Hildebert.]

[Sidenote: The church of Saint Julian.]

On the day of the military occupation followed the day of the joyous entry. The Red King entered, doubtless by the northern gate, the gate between Saint Vincent’s abbey and the royal tower. His new subjects welcomed him with shouts and songs, and were received by him to his full peace.[599] Bishop Hildebert, seemingly now admitted to favour, with his clergy and people, met the King with psalms and processions. They led him by the royal tower, with his own banner floating on its battlements, to the cathedral church, now a vaster and more splendid pile than when the first Conqueror had been led to it with the same pomp.[600] The twin towers of Howel soared in their freshness; the aisles which we still see, with their abiding Roman masonry, had risen at his bidding; it may well have been by the mighty portal of his rearing that Rufus entered within the hallowed walls. Within, the sight was different in every stone, in every adornment, from that on which we now gaze. The columns and arches of Saint Julian’s nave were still the columns and arches of the basilica which Aldric had raised when Le Mans was a city of the Empire of the pious Lewis.[601] It may be that of those columns we can here and there spell out some faint traces amid the finer masonry and gorgeous foliage of the next age. But of the works to the east, still new when Rufus came, the splendid reconstructions of later times have left us no signs. The choir of Arnold still blazed in all its freshness with the rich decorations which had been added by the skill and bounty of Howel. The first bloom had not passed away from the painted ceiling, from the rich pavement, from the narrow windows glowing with the deep richness of colour which no later age could surpass. Through all these new-born splendours of the holy place the scoffer and blasphemer was solemnly guided to the shrines of Saint Julian and of all the saints of Le Mans. And there were moments when the heart of Rufus was not wholly shut against better thoughts. As at Saint Martin of the Place of Battle, so at Saint Julian in newly-won Le Mans, we may deem that some dash of thankfulness was mingled with his swelling pride, as he felt that he had finished his father’s work.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William leaves Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: General submission of Maine.]

The stay of William at Le Mans does not seem to have been long. The government of the city was put into the hands of Count William of Evreux and of Gilbert of Laigle. The royal tower, well provisioned, stocked with arms and with all needful things, was placed under the immediate command of Walter the son of Ansgar of Rouen.[602] The nobles of Maine now came in to make their submission and to receive the King’s garrisons into their castles. Among them were Count Geoffrey of Mayenne and the Viscount Ralph of Beaumont. The terms of their engagement were fulfilled. Their castles were to follow the fortune of Le Mans, and Le Mans now was King William’s.[603]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Meeting of William and Helias.]

[Sidenote: Proposals of Helias.]

But he who had lately been the lord of them all was waiting for the benefits of the convention to be extended to himself. We are a little surprised when we presently find the King at Rouen, and when we further find that Helias, who had been lately in ward in the castle there, had now to be brought hither from a prison at Bayeux.[604] The King and his captive met face to face. The contrast between the outward look of the two men was as striking as the difference in their inward souls. Before the victorious King, short, bulky, ruddy, fierce of countenance, hasty and stammering in speech, stood the captive Count, tall, thin, swarthy, master of eloquent and winning words. Something of bodily neglect marked, perhaps not so much the rigour of his confinement as a captive’s carelessness of wonted niceties. His hair, usually neatly trimmed, was now rough and shaggy.[605] The King seems to have begun the dialogue;[606] “I have you, Sir.” Helias answered with dignity and respect, as a man of fallen fortunes speaking to a superior in rank, and yet not stooping to any unworthy submission. He called on the King, in the name of his might and his renown, to help him. He had once, he said, been a count, lord of a noble county. Fortune had now turned against him, and he had lost all. He asked leave to enter the King’s service, to be allowed to keep his rank and title of count, but pledging himself not to make any claim to the Cenomannian county or city, till by some signal exploit on the King’s behalf he should be deemed worthy to receive them as a grant from the King’s free will. Till then it would be enough for him to have his place in the royal following and to enjoy the royal friendship.

[Sidenote: William disposed to accept Helias’ proposal.]

[Sidenote: He is hindered by Robert of Meulan.]

[Sidenote: Defiance of Helias.]

[Sidenote: Answer of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Helias set free.]

Such an appeal as this went straight to the better part of William’s nature, and he was at once disposed to agree to the proposal of Helias. But then stepped in the selfish prudence of Robert of Meulan, who measured other men by himself. He was now the King’s chief adviser, and he jealously grudged all influence which might fall to the lot of any one else.[607] The admission of Helias to the King’s friendship and councils would of all things be the least suited for Robert’s purposes. He could not bear that any man, least of all a man of a spirit so much higher than his own, should be so near the throne as Helias threatened to be. The men of Maine, said the Count of Meulan, were a cunning and faithless race. All that the captive Helias sought by his offers was to insinuate himself into the King’s favour, to learn his secrets, that he might be able, when a fitting moment came, to rise up against him with more advantage and join himself to his enemies with greater power. The purpose of Rufus was changed by the malignant counsel of Count Robert. The petition of Helias was refused; it was again made; it was again refused. Then the Count of Maine spoke his defiance. “Willingly, Sir King, would I have served you, if it had been your pleasure; willingly would I have earned favour in your sight. But now, I pray you, blame me not, if I take another course. I cannot bear with patience to see mine inheritance taken from me. All right is denied to me by overwhelming violence; wherefore let no man wonder if I again renew my claim, if I strive with all my might to win back the honour of my fathers.” Rufus was beside himself with wrath at words like these; but it was in words only that his wrath spent itself. He stammered out, “Scoundrel, what can you do? Be off, march, take to flight; I give you leave to do all you can, and, by the face of Lucca, if you ever conquer me, I will not ask you for any grace in return for my favour of to-day.” Even after this outburst, the Count had self-command enough to ask for a safe-conduct, and the King had self-command enough to grant it. Helias was guided safely through the Norman duchy, and made his way, to the delight of his friends, to his own immediate possessions on the borders of Maine and Anjou.[608]

[Sidenote: Illustration of the King’s character.]

Of all the stories of the Red King there is none more characteristic than this. His first impulse is to accept a generous and confiding offer in the spirit in which it was made. For a moment he seems to rise to the level of the man who stood before him. Even when his better impulse is checked by an evil counsellor, he does not sink so low as many would have sunk in the like case. In the wildest wrath of his insulted pride, he does not forget that his word as a good knight is pledged to the man who has defied him. Rufus was bound by all the laws of chivalry to let Helias go this time, whatever he might do if he caught him again. And the laws of chivalry Rufus obeyed in the teeth of temptations of opposite kinds. A meaner tyrant might have sent Helias at once to death or blinding. A calmer or more wary prince, even though not a tyrant, might have argued that it was unsafe for him and his dominions to let the man go free who had uttered such a challenge. He might further have argued that a speech which was so like an open declaration of war at once set aside the conditions of peace. But William Rufus, when once on his point of honour, was not led away from it either by the impulse of vengeance or by the calculations of prudence. His knightly word was pledged that Helias should go free. Free therefore he went, after his defiance had been answered by a counter defiance, each alike emphatically characteristic of the man who uttered it.

§ 3. The End of the French War.

September-December, 1098.

[Sidenote: William on the continent. 1097-1099.]

[Sidenote: Extent of William’s conquests in Maine.]

[Sidenote: He begins, but does not finish.]

The war of Maine was, or seemed to be, over. And, just at this point we get a chronology clear enough to enable us to fix the connexion of the two works which were going on at once. We have seen William in his Norman capital at a time when we should rather have looked for him on one or other of his Norman frontiers. But it seems plain that he spent the whole year on the mainland, and that he did not cross to England at any time between the two Christmas feasts which he is specially said to have kept in Normandy. Helias was set free in August, and we are led to believe that Rufus now deemed that the war of Maine was over, or at least that he could afford to despise it in its present stage. We shall presently see that the war of Maine was by no means over, and that William’s Cenomannian conquests hardly reached beyond the capital and the lands north of the capital. We are inclined to wonder that a warlike prince like Rufus took no further heed to a campaign which was manifestly unfinished, while an active enemy was again at liberty and was still in possession of a strong line of castles. But this is neither the first nor the last time in which we find William the Red much more vigorous in beginning a campaign than in ending it. And in this case he may, with two wars on his hands, have not unreasonably thought that, after so great a conquest as that of the capital of Maine, he could afford to turn his thoughts to the other seat of warfare. In the month after Helias was set free, he made up his mind for a special effort against the stubborn border-land of France.

[Sidenote: William sets forth. September 27, 1098.]

[Sidenote: The sign in the sky.]

[Sidenote: Its meaning.]

[Sidenote: He marches to Pontoise.]

Two days before Michaelmas, William set forth, from what head-quarters we are not told, at the head of a great army. On his way to the seat of war he enjoyed the hospitality of Ralph of Toesny on the hill of Conches. That night there was a sign in the heavens; the whole sky blazed and seemed as red as blood. At other times such a portent in the heavens might not have seemed too great to betoken some great victory or defeat on the part of one or other of the contending kings of the West. But, while Christendom was on its march to the eastern land, the heavens could tell of nothing meaner than the ups and downs of the strifes between two continents and two creeds. If the sky was red over Conches and Evreux and the whole western world, it was because at that moment Christians and heathens met in battle in the eastern lands, and by God’s help the Christians had the victory.[609] But William Rufus cared little for signs and wonders, even when he himself was deemed to be the subject of their warning. His heart was not in Palestine, but on the French border; and his present business was a march against the most distant of the three fortresses to which he laid claim. Chaumont and Trie still held out; but their garrisons could not hinder him from carrying a destructive raid into districts far more distant from his head-quarters at Gisors. He marched to the south-east, burning, plundering, and carrying off prisoners from the whole French territory as far as Pontoise.[610]

[Sidenote: Castle and town of Pontoise.]

[Sidenote: Strong position of the town.]

[Sidenote: Pontoise the furthest point of the raid.]

The invading King had now reached a point of French soil nearer to Paris than the spot where Count Robert kept the Seine barred at Meulan. At Pontoise, as the name implies, was the bridge spanning the Oise, the tributary which joins its waters with those of the Seine at Conflans――the Gaulish Confluentes――between Paris and Meulan. Here a precipitous rock rises above the stream, a rock which, strengthened and defended by art in every way, was crowned by the vast circuit of the castle of Pontoise. Here is no town sloping down from the castle to the river. The castle rock rises sheer――it rose most likely from the water itself, till the Oise, like the Seine at Rouen, was curbed by a quay. In the view from the bridge, the castle, shorn as it is of its towers and of all that can give stateliness to such a building, still lords it over everything. The town of Pontoise seems to crouch by the side of the rock; the great church of Saint Maclou, with its lofty tower of late architecture, is wholly hidden from sight. It is only at some distance beyond the river, in the suburb known as that of Saint Ouen l’Aumône, that we begin to see that the church stands on ground not much lower than the site of the castle. We then learn that the town of Pontoise, standing on a height separate from the castle-rock, well walled, and with streets as steep as those of Le Mans or Lincoln, was in itself no contemptible fortress. As usual, there is little or nothing in town or church or castle that we can positively assign to the period of our story. But the main features of the spot must be the same now as they were when the Red King led his plundering host as far as the bridge of the Oise. It is plain that this was the end of his course on this side; it is plain that Pontoise was not added to the list of fortresses which were taken by him or betrayed to him. But we have nothing to explain why he turned back at this point, whether he met with any repulse in an attack on Pontoise or whether he attacked Pontoise at all. We only know that Pontoise marks in one sense the furthest point of the French campaigns of William Rufus. We shall presently find him on another side at a greater distance from his own dominions; but Pontoise marks his nearest approach to the capital of France. Had Pontoise been William’s as well as Meulan, Paris would indeed have been threatened. But this south-eastern journey was clearly, in its effect at least, a mere plundering raid, from which Rufus came back to attempt a more regular attack on the nearer enemy at Chaumont.

[Sidenote: Siege of Chaumont.]

[Sidenote: The archers of Chaumont shoot the horses only.]

[Sidenote: Chaumont not taken.]

The siege of Chaumont is described to us in greater detail than the march on Pontoise, but we do not, any more than at Pontoise, get a really intelligible account. It is plain that the siege was a considerable enterprise, one to which Rufus led his whole army. It is also plain from the result that its issue must have an important effect on the turn of affairs. But of the siege itself all that we hear is one of those strange stories by which we are sometimes met, stories which must have some meaning, which must be grounded on some fact, and which yet, as they stand, pass all belief. We are told that the defenders of Chaumont were valiant men, strong to defend the battlements of their own castle. But to defend their own castle was all that they could do; their numbers were not enough to enable them either to meet William’s great army in open battle, or even to hinder his plunderers from laying waste the neighbouring lands. But the defence of Chaumont itself was stout, and, as it turned out, successful. Yet we are told that the garrison of Chaumont, out of the fear of God and out of tenderness towards men, stood strictly on the defensive, or took the offensive only towards brute beasts. In taking aim at the besiegers, they avoided the persons of the riders, and aimed all their blows at the horses. Seven hundred horses of great price fell under the arrows and darts of the men of Chaumont, and their carcases made a rich feast for the dogs and birds of prey of the Vexin.[611] The virtue of these scrupulous warriors did not go unrewarded. Our story breaks off somewhat suddenly; but we see that at all events Chaumont was not taken.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Rare notices of southern Gaul.]

[Sidenote: Coming of William of Poitiers.]

[Sidenote: Alliance of Normandy and Aquitaine.]

The war now takes a turn of special interest, which makes us specially regret the very unsatisfactory nature of our materials. The field of our story is suddenly enlarged; but events do not crowd it at all in proportion to its enlargement. It is but seldom that our tale brings us into any direct dealing with the lands and the princes south of the Loire. We have seen the tongue of oil supplant the Danish tongue in Normandy, and we have seen it appear as a rival to our own speech in our own island. But we have been seldom called on to listen to the accents of the tongue of oc. But at this moment the chief potentate of that tongue suddenly appears on the field of our story, an appearance from which we naturally look for great events. The young lord of the Vexin and heir of France had to meet a new enemy, almost as powerful, and quite as reckless and godless, as the old one. Another William, William of Poitiers and Aquitaine, came to the help of William of Normandy and England.[612] He was in the end to go to the crusade――to go not exactly in the guise of Godfrey or Helias.[613] But he had not yet set out; and, before he went, he came to strike a blow on behalf of the prince to whom he was said to have sold the reversion of his dominions. The mighty dukes of the North and the South might seem to have utterly hemmed in the smaller realm of the king whose men they were or should have been.[614] The final results of their alliance were not memorable, but the coming of the southern duke had the immediate effect of carrying the war into districts little used to the presence of English or even of Norman warriors.

[Sidenote: Campaign to the west of Paris.]

[Sidenote: Valley of the Maudre.

[Sidenote: Maule.]

[Sidenote: Montfort-l’Amaury.]

[Sidenote: Neauphlé-le-Château.]

[Sidenote: Epernon.]

[Sidenote: The two Williams march against the Montfort castles.]

[Sidenote: Seat of war affected by the coming of William of Poitiers.]

It can hardly fail to have been the march of William of Aquitaine which led to a campaign carried on in the lands west and south-west of Paris, within the triangle which may be drawn between the three points of Mantes, Paris, and Chartres. One side of this triangle is formed by the Seine itself, and here the adhesion of the Count of Meulan must have effectually guarded the seat of war from the north. Somewhat to the west of Meulan, between that fortress and Mantes, the small stream of the Maudre empties itself into the Seine. The course of this stream and the valley through which it flows formed the chief seat of warfare at this stage, seemingly after the attacks on Chaumont had proved fruitless. Small as the Maudre is, its course makes a clearly marked valley, running nearly north and south. About the middle of it lies Maule, the fortress of Peter of Maule, the benefactor of the house of Saint Evroul, and therefore high in favour with its historian. Further to the south, where the stream is a mere brook, the valley widens into a plain between hills, and here some of the strongest points are occupied by the strongholds of the French house of Montfort, numbering among them the spot which gave that house its ever-memorable name. Here rose the hill which above all others glories in the name of the Strong Mount, the home of the Simons and the Amalrics. Under the name of Montfort-l’Amaury it still keeps the less illustrious of the two names, one or other of which was always borne by its successive counts. To the north-east of the cradle of their race, on the other side of the Maudre, the Counts of Montfort had planted another stronghold on a height, which, though all traces of a fortress have passed away, still keeps the name of Neauphlé-le-Château, as distinguished from another place of the same name, Neauphlé-le-Vieux. Much further to the south-west, on the upper course of the Drouelle, a tributary of the Eure, stood Epernon, another fortress of the house of Montfort, a border fortress of the strictly French territory towards the lands of the Counts of Chartres. On this district now fell the heavy wrath of the two Williams, who led a mighty multitude against Montfort and Epernon and laid waste the whole surrounding land. They had traitors in their service; they came under the guidance of Almaric the Young and of Nivard of Septeuil.[615] This last place lies in the valley of the Vaucouleurs, a stream running almost parallel with the Maudre and joining the Seine at Mantes. Such a position, lying nearly due west from Maule, and at a greater distance north-east from Montfort, marks a dangerous outpost thrown out from the Norman side into the heart of the French territory. Of the line of march of the Poitevin duke we have no account; but it must have been his coming which caused the seat of war to be changed from the north-west of the threatened capital of France to the south-west, a region so much better suited for an invader from the south.

[Sidenote: No special mention of Lewis.]

[Sidenote: The castles resist singly.]

[Sidenote: Peter of Maule.]

[Sidenote: The two Simons of Montfort.]

[Sidenote: The elder Simon defends Neauphlé.]

[Sidenote: The castle of Montfort.]

[Sidenote: The church.]

[Sidenote: Defence of the younger Simon.]

[Sidenote: Interest of the defence.]

It is somewhat singular that, while we have so striking a general picture of the courage and conduct of the young Lewis during this struggle, we hear nothing of any particular exploit of his, we hear nothing of any help given by him to any of the threatened fortresses. It is their own lords, each for himself, who withstand, and successfully withstand, the attacks of the powers of North and South. Our chief informant――English, Norman, and French, all at once――enlarges on the failure of Philip to give any help to his vassals; but we should never learn from him that his place was supplied by his son.[616] Every man, it would seem, fought for his own hand. We are told this of a crowd of unnamed lords defending unnamed fortresses. But we are not left to guess at the name of the friend of Saint Evroul, Peter of Maule, who, with his sons Ansold and Theobald, successfully defended his fortress in the valley of the Maudre.[617] We must suppose that the forces of the two Williams were scattered and frittered away in a series of desultory attacks against strongholds scattered all over the country. But to us at least the main interest of the campaign gathers round the dwellings of the house of Montfort. We should be well pleased to have even such details of a warfare which affected them as we have had of the sieges of Chaumont and as we shall presently have of the siege of Mayet. But we hear only of the result, how the arms of the two Simons, elder and younger, defended all the possessions which looked up to the Strong Mount as their head. The elder guarded the height of Neauphlé, where a curve in the hills, theatre-shape, awakens some faint remembrance of the kingly mount of Laon.[618] But the Mons fortis itself, the hill from whence, in after times, Simon the father went to work the bondage of Toulouse and Simon the son to work the freedom of England, must have been among the strongholds which were saved by the energy of the younger bearer of the name which was to be so fearfully and so gloriously renowned. High on its peninsular hill, still keeping some small traces of elder towers along with one graceful fragment of far later days, the castle of Montfort looks down over church and town, over hills and plains, bidding defiance to foes on every side, but bidding the most direct defiance of all to any foe who should advance by the path which must have been trodden by the Aquitanian duke. For of all the outlooks from the height of Montfort the widest and the most striking is that by which the eye looks out towards those southern lands which came so near to forming a South-Gaulish realm for its own lords. The church stands beneath on a lower point of the steep. The works of later times, which have filled its windows with the painted forms of the basest of the later Valois, have spared one side of the more ancient central tower, preserving to us forms which were looked on, not indeed by the Simons of our own immediate story, but by the Simon of Muret and the Simon of Evesham. A gate at the base of the castle mound, though the actual building must be of later date, still keeps the name of that Hugh Bardolf, himself joined by a tie of affinity to the house of Montfort, of whom we have heard elsewhere as one of the most abiding of the enemies of Normandy.[619] Here, while the father defended Neauphlé, the son defended the cradle of their race, and their other outlying possessions. Not a detail is given us; but our historian emphatically tells us that it was by the help of God that the lords of Montfort kept their fortresses safe from the twofold enemy.[620] And, though a King of the English marched against them, though doubtless there was no lack of native English warriors in his train, yet we may join in the pious thankfulness of our guide at Saint Evroul. It was not good for English interests in any wide or lasting sense that the sovereign of England should even hold his ancestral Normandy, much less that he should inherit Aquitaine and conquer France. When the lords of Montfort in the eleventh century beat back from their strongholds all the efforts of England and Normandy, of Poitiers and Aquitaine, they were in truth working in the same cause as their glorious descendant in the thirteenth. Unknowingly and indirectly, they were, no less than he, fighting for the freedom and the greatness of what in their eyes seemed hostile England.

[Sidenote: The war lingers on.]

[Sidenote: Christmas, 1098.]

[Sidenote: No successes of the two Williams.]

[Sidenote: A truce agreed to.]

The war seems to have lingered on through another winter, the second of those when King William kept his Christmas feast in Normandy. But no successes are recorded either of William of England or of William of Aquitaine. The Red King had really done nothing, either alone or in company with his Poitevin ally. The gallant resistance of the men of the French borderland had beaten him back at every point. He was now glad to conclude a truce, which the events which followed made practically a peace.[621]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Survey of the French war. Its ill-success.]

[Sidenote: Illustration of William’s character.]

It is not at first easy to understand why so very little came of such great preparations as those which William Rufus made for the French war. The strength of two great states, during the later stages of the war the strength of three great states, was broken by efforts which, even allowing as much as we can for the energy of young Lewis, were mainly those of the nobles and people of a single district. England, Normandy, and Aquitaine, were baffled by the men of the French Vexin. It is true indeed that the war of Maine was far from being really ended, but Rufus seems at this stage to have thought little of the efforts of the man whom he had bidden to do his worst against him. Nor was there anything this year in England, as there was the year before, to draw off the King’s attention from continental affairs. Scotland was quiet under a king of his own naming; Magnus did not really threaten England; the Welsh border might be left to Robert of Bellême or those whom he had left in charge. All that we can do is to record this singular break-down of a great force, without being able fully to explain it. One remark may be made. Men of the temper of Rufus often get simply weary of undertakings which bring little success, and in which there is nothing to call forth any special point of personal vengeance or personal honour. Rufus claimed the Vexin; but his heart does not seem to have been set on its possession, as it clearly was set on the possession of Le Mans. There was no one on the French border who had stung him personally to the quick as Helias had done. The want of success in the joint undertaking of the two Williams is certainly hard to understand; but we can quite understand how William of England and Normandy might, in sheer disgust, throw up an undertaking in which he did not at once succeed. When he was once more wounded in the most sensitive part, he was, as we shall presently see, all himself again.

§ 4. The Gemót of 1099.

[Sidenote: William keeps Christmas in Normandy. 1098-1099.]

[Sidenote: Easter Gemót. April 10, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Whitsun Gemót in the new hall at Westminster. May 10, 1099.]

William, master of Le Mans, but hardly to be called master of Maine, and assuredly not master of the Vexin, stayed in Normandy during the winter which followed the double war in those regions. The time of his absence is spoken of as a time of special oppression in England, a time when the exactions of Flambard and his fellows grew worse and worse, on account of the great sums which had to be sent over the sea for the King’s wars.[622] The Christmas feast was again kept in Normandy, in what city or castle we are not told, but such incidental notices as we have seem to point to Rouen as his usual head-quarters when he was in the duchy. He came back to England in time for the Easter feast; the feast implies the assembly; but we have no account of its doings; there was no longer in England either an Anselm to afford subjects for discussion or an Eadmer to report the debates. The next festival was of greater importance, if only on account of the place where it was held, a place ever-memorable in the history of England from that day to this. “At Pentecost the King William held his court for the first time in the new building at Westminster.”[623]

[Sidenote: Buildings of William Rufus.]

[Sidenote: They are reckoned among national grievances.]

[Sidenote: Various grievances.]

[Sidenote: Complaints in 1096,]

[Sidenote: in 1097.]

[Sidenote: Signs and wonders in 1098.]

[Sidenote: Bad weather of 1098.]

[Sidenote: The great buildings in London. 1097.]

The architectural works of William Rufus form a marked feature in his reign; but the place which they hold in the national annals is singular. They are set down among the grievances of that unhappy time. Besides the bad weather, which was not the Red King’s fault, and the bad harvests which were deemed to be in some measure his fault, there were the unrighteous taxes and the other forms of unlaw which were directly his fault; lastly there were the great buildings which are set down as not the least among his ways of oppressing the people. We have heard some of the wails which the Chronicler sends up year by year. The year of the purchase of Normandy was a year when the land was pressed down by manifold gelds and by a heavy time of hunger.[624] The next year, the year of Anselm’s going, was a year of signs in the heavens, and of ungelds and unweather below.[625] The next year, the year of Maine, the year of the Vexin, the year of Anglesey, had also its physical wonders. In the summer a pool at Finchampstead in Berkshire was said to have welled up blood.[626] At Michaelmas the heaven seemed well-nigh all night as if it were burning.[627] That was a very grievous year, through manifold ungeld and through mickle rains that all the year never stopped; and――what came home to those who could look back to the bright days of the Golden Borough――well-nigh all tilth in the marsh-land died out.[628] Such are the mournful voices to which we listen year by year; but in the central year of the three another grievance is added. “Eke many shires that with work to London belonged were sorely harassed through the wall that they wrought around the Tower, and through the bridge that well nigh all flooded away was, and through the King’s hall-work that man in Westminster wrought, and many men therewith harassed.”[629]

[Sidenote: Earlier parallels.]

[Sidenote: Abuse of the old law.]

[Sidenote: The bridge and the Tower.]

[Sidenote: Question as to the hall.]

This was the light in which three great works of building on which Englishmen of later days learned to look with national pride were looked on by the men of the time when they were wrought. We hear the cry of the Hebrew in the brick-field toiling to rear up the treasure-cities of the Pharaohs. We hear the cry of the Roman plebeian, as the proud Tarquin constrained him to give the sweat of his brow to fence in the seven hills with walls or to burrow beneath the ground to lay the foundations and turn the arches of the great sewer.[630] So it was in the days of the Red King with the Tower of London, the bridge of London, the hall of Westminster. We may believe that, as so often happened, the old law of England was turned to purposes of oppression. The repair of bridges and fortresses was the universal burthen on the Englishman’s eðel, the duty which he owed, not to a personal lord, but to the commonwealth of which he was a member.[631] In one case at least we know that the defences of the local capital were laid by local law upon the people of the whole shire.[632] What was law at Chester would seem from the words of the Chronicler to have been law in London also. There were certain “shires that with work to London belonged.” William Rufus may therefore have been quite within the letter of the ancient law in calling on the people of certain shires to contribute in money or labour to any works which were needed for either the Tower or the bridge of London. But it is clear that this is the kind of law which opens the way to a great amount of oppression in detail, and that the law itself supplies temptations to extort more than the law gives. The bridge at least was an useful work, and if the men of London thought that the Tower stood by their walls rather to overawe them than to defend them, that was an argument which could not be openly brought forward. But it is by no means clear whether the ancient law about bridges and fortresses could be stretched so as to take in works at the King’s palace. Anyhow the burthen laid on the people was frightfully oppressive, and those who felt the burthen bitterly complained. And, if we rightly understand the Chronicler, the grievance of building the bridge was doubled by a flood which swept away the unfinished work, and made it needful to build it over again.[633]

[Sidenote: Growth of the greatness of London.]

[Sidenote: Relations of London and Winchester.]

Thus, amid the toils and groans of the people, three mighty works arose, to hand down the name of William Rufus to after ages as a great builder. While Rufus was harrying the land of Maine, a land which but for him might have remained peaceful and happy under a righteous ruler, while he was striving in vain to bring the heights of Chaumont and Montfort under his power, the people of a large part of England were giving their strength and their money to make London put on a new face, to make all things ready for the time when the King should again come to his island kingdom to wear his crown in or hard by its greatest city. All these works point, among other things, to the steady growth of the greatness of London. The city had grown fast in importance during the whole century which was now drawing to an end, and at no time faster than during Harold’s nine months of little stillness.[634] London had become the city of the King; Winchester was left to be the city of the Old Lady.[635] The attractions of the New Forest drew the Conqueror, specially after the death of Eadgyth, back again to the old West-Saxon capital; but this preference of Winchester as the head-quarters of sport in no way checked the advance of London as the real head of the kingdom. Harsh as may have been the means by which the Red King raised his great buildings, richly as he and they may have earned the curses of his subjects at the time, we can say nothing against either the taste or the policy which led him to the defence and the adornment of the great city and of the palace which lay under its shadow.

[Sidenote: The wall round the Tower.]

[Sidenote: London Bridge.]

[Sidenote: Westminster Hall.]

[Sidenote: Its two founders.]

[Sidenote: Its architecture.]

[Sidenote: Recasting by Richard the Second.]

[Sidenote: Legal position of the reign of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: History of the hall.]

Notwithstanding any momentary checks, the works went on and prospered. The great tower of Gundulf――strange work for the meek follower of Anselm――was fenced in with a surrounding wall. The river was spanned by its first stone bridge, that long range of narrow arches, itself a thickly-peopled city over the stream, of which the last traces vanished in our own early days. But above all there now arose that famous hall of Westminster whose name has come to be another name for the law of England. Strange founder for such a pile might seem the prince whose reign was before all others the reign of unlaw. And yet it was not wholly unfitting that the Prytaneion of England should first arise at the bidding of William the Red, and should take a new form at the bidding of a later king in whose days unlaw was again mighty. The great hall arose at the bidding of Rufus, in the stern and solemn form of the art of his day――the day, be it remembered, of William of Saint-Calais and the choir of Durham――with its low massive walls, its two ranges of pillars and arches, far removed, we may be sure, from the graceful forms which had been at Spalato and which were to be again at Oakham, but standing firm in their strength, bearing the full impress of the style whose leading feature is that of simple, changeless, abiding, rest.[636] At the bidding of Richard of Bourdeaux the walls were cased, and pierced with windows of forms unknown in the days of the Red King; his pillars and arches were swept away; the central space and its aisles were thrown into a single body; the timber roof of wondrous span and wondrous workmanship leaped boldly from wall to wall, with a daring which might have pleased the swelling pride of Rufus himself. Thus, at the word of two despotic kings, arose the pile which may claim, no less than its neighbours, Saint Peter’s chapter-house and Saint Stephen’s chapel, to be the chosen home of English freedom. For in England law has ever grown out of unlaw. The despotism of Normans and of Tudors only paved the way for the outbursts of freedom in the thirteenth century and in the seventeenth; a reforming Henry dogged the steps alike of Rufus and of Richard. And if from one side the reign of Rufus was a reign of unlaw, from another side it was a reign of overmuch law. It saw the beginning of those legal subtleties, that web woven by the wicked skill of Flambard, which makes the Red King’s day a marked epoch in legal history. His reign bridges the space between the days when we had laws but when we had no lawyers, and the days when lawyers had grown so many and so subtle that the true ends of law were sometimes forgotten among them. If from one side the hall of Westminster has been one of the cradles of English freedom, from another side it has been the special home of that form of unlaw by which men have been sent to a wrongful doom under the outward forms of justice. Of all that is good and bad in the history of the law of England the hall of Rufus is the material embodying. Within no other building reared by the hand of man has so great a share of English history been wrought.

[Sidenote: Object of the hall.]

[Sidenote: Personal pride of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Legends of the hall.]

[Sidenote: Alleged sayings of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: The Whitsun feast.]

[Sidenote: The sword borne by the King of Scots.]

But it was not directly as the dwelling-place either of law or of its opposite that Rufus first reared his hall. It was built rather as a trophy of his own swelling pride. The home of the Confessor, the home of the Conqueror, was not stately enough for the Red King. He would be lodged, at least in that special home of kingship, as better became the idea which he had formed of his own greatness. It was the hall of the king, rather than the hall of the kingdom, the centre and crown of his own house, the place for the display of his own splendour, which Rufus sought to call into being. When the work was done, other men deemed that it was as great, perhaps greater, than even so great a king could need. But its founder was not satisfied. Nero, when he had finished his Golden House, allowed that he was at last lodged like a man. Rufus, when he had outdone the works of all that had gone before him, hardly deemed that he was lodged like a man in his palace of Westminster. The new hall, when it was done, was not half so great as he had meant it to be.[637] Some add a wilder saying, that he would build a house on such a scale that the great hall should be but one of its bed-chambers.[638] But the hall, such as it was, vast in the eyes of other men, small in the eyes of its master, was ready for use by the day of the Pentecostal feast. Then the assembly came together; then the accustomed rites were gone through in the West Minster; then the banquet and the council were held, as was wont, under its shadow, in the accustomed place, but within new walls and under a new roof. Within those walls, beneath that roof, men for the first time saw King William of England, lord, as he deemed, of Scotland, Normandy, and Maine, in all his own greatness and glory, in all the greatness and glory of his new work. One feature in that great gathering might indeed have helped to swell his heart even higher than it had ever before been swollen. The crown was, as usual, placed on his head in the minster and worn in the hall. And on that day at least he must have felt that the crown which was placed on his head was in truth an imperial diadem. William the Red was not indeed rowed on the Thames by vassal kings, like Eadgar the Giver-of-peace. But in the pomps of that day he saw a king march before him as his vassal, a king who had received his crown at his own bidding. When King William of England wore his cynehelm in church and hall, King Eadgar of Scotland, first of his men in rank and honour, bore the sword of state before his lord.[639] Was that day of pride and pomp merely a day of pride and pomp, or were any of the great affairs of William’s kingdom and empire dealt with in the joint presence of the Monarch of Britain and his kingly vassal? One thing only we know; one act alone of that gathering is recorded. But that act is one which has no small fitness as the one act which we know that the Red King did in his new building.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Deaths of bishops and abbots.]

[Sidenote: Walkelin of Winchester. January 3, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Character and acts of Walkelin.]

[Sidenote: The monks take possession of Walkelin’s church. April 8, 1093.]

[Sidenote: Walkelin joint-regent with Flambard. 1097.]

[Sidenote: The King’s demand for money. Christmas, 1097-1098.]

The hands of Randolf Flambard must have been just then full of work, and the coffers of King William must have been just then well filled with wealth flowing in from the usual sources. Bishops and abbots had for some time been dying most conveniently for the King and his minister. Within the first few days of the year of Le Mans and Chaumont died the friend, some said the kinsman, of the Conqueror, the Norman Walkelin, the successor of English Stigand in the see of Winchester.[640] Though he had appeared as an adversary of Anselm,[641] though he had once designed to supplant the monks of the Old Minster by secular canons,[642] though he was said to have lessened the revenues of the monks to increase those of the bishopric,[643] he still left behind him a good name in the monastic annals of his church, both for the austerity of his own life and for the affection which he afterwards learned to show to the brethren.[644] Winchester tradition loved to tell of the pious fraud by which he had cajoled the Conqueror out of the whole timber of a great wood towards the rebuilding of his church.[645] It told how, in the year of the King’s temporary penitence, the monks had, in the presence of well-nigh all the prelacy of England, taken possession of the church of Walkelin’s building, and how they had presently gone on to rase to the ground the church of Æthelwald which had been deemed so stately a pile not much more than a hundred years before.[646] It told how, when the King set forth for the French war, the Bishop of Winchester was left as joint-ruler of the realm with the mighty chaplain and Justiciar.[647] And it told the last tale, how, when he had barely entered on his new office, on the very Christmas morning, while the holiest rite of Christian worship was going on, the King’s messenger came to demand two hundred pounds without delay. The Bishop, like Anselm, knew that he could raise no such sum without robbery of the Church and oppression of the poor. He prayed that he might be set free from a world of which he was weary. Two days later his prayer was answered; while the Red King warred at Chaumont and Mayet, Randolf Flambard remained sole ruler of England.[648]

[Sidenote: Death of Turold of Peterborough,]

[Sidenote: and of Robert of New Minster.]

[Sidenote: Death of Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s. December 29, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Acts of Baldwin.]

[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the Church.]

[Sidenote: Miracles of Saint Eadmund.]

[Sidenote: Osgod Clapa.]

[Sidenote: Bishop Herfast.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Curzon.]

[Sidenote: Completion of the Church. 1094.]

[Sidenote: The King forbids the dedication.]

[Sidenote: Translation of Saint Eadmund. April 30, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Baldwin’s relation to the English.]

On the death of Bishop Walkelin presently followed the deaths of two other heads of great monastic bodies. One was Turold, the martial abbot of Peterborough, of whom we heard in the days of Hereward;[649] the other was Robert of New Minster, he whose staff had been bought for him by his too dutiful son the Bishop of Norwich.[650] And, a few days before the death of Walkelin, another great abbot passed away who was, in a way in which none of those three was, a link with earlier days. Abbot Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s, the skilful leech of King Eadward, if not himself of English birth, had at least received his staff from an English King. His house had been growing in wealth and fame ever since the penitent devotion of Cnut had changed the secular canons of Beadricsworth into the monks of Saint Eadmund’s. We have already heard of Baldwin’s medical skill and of his strivings for the privileges of his church against the East-Anglian bishopric.[651] He won fame also, like other abbots of his day, as the rebuilder of his church, the church which, besides his royal patron, sheltered the relics of the holy abbot Botolf and the valiant ætheling Jurwine.[652] The latest research has added largely to our knowledge of Baldwin and his house, and has brought to light several details which illustrate the reign of the Red King and the characters of some of the chief actors in it. Saint Eadmund had long ago begun to work signs and wonders. In King Eadward’s day he had avenged himself on our old friend Osgod Clapa, reverenced at Waltham but not reverenced at Saint Eadmund’s, because he had thrust himself into the holy place with his Danish axe in warlike guise on his shoulder.[653] In the days of the elder William, when the dispute was going on between the abbey and the bishopric, the saint had directly interfered to bring Bishop Herfast to a better mind by a bodily chastisement.[654] He had even appeared, as he had done to the tyrant Swegen,[655] mounted and lance in hand, to smite, and in smiting to reform, a courtier of the Conqueror’s, Randolf by name.[656] But we are more concerned with stories which directly bear on our own history. When Roger Bigod did so much evil in eastern England in the days of the general rebellion, Saint Eadmund did not fail to defend his own lands, and to smite with madness a certain Robert of Curzon to whom the rebel had presumed to grant a manor belonging to the abbey.[657] We read too how, when the new church was finished, King William, seemingly in the assembly at Hastings, by what caprice is not explained, gave permission for the translation of the martyr, but forbade the dedication of the church.[658] Meanwhile, a rumour, of which we have heard the like more than once, is spread abroad that the body of Saint Eadmund is not really there, and that the precious things which adorned the empty shrine might well be applied to the objects of the King’s warfare. The danger passed away, and, notwithstanding some opposition from Bishop Herbert, a solemn translation, in the presence of Bishop Walkelin of Winchester and of Randolf the chaplain, removed all doubts.[659] Abbot Baldwin survived this triumph two years and a half. His career had been a long and a busy one. In the course of his warfare with the East-Anglian bishops, he had found it needful to visit Rome, and he too, like others, found how great was the strength of gold and silver at the threshold of the Apostles.[660] He had gone on that journey with English companions, and when he died, during the Christmas feast which followed the departure of Anselm, he was mourned by men of both races.[661]

[Sidenote: Vacancy of Durham.]

[Sidenote: The bishopric granted to Flambard.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of Flambard. June 5, 1099.]

We cannot, as these stories alone show, go very far in the reign of Rufus without coming across the name of Randolf Flambard, chaplain and Justiciar. We are now about to hear of him in a new character. The churches of the prelates who so opportunely died, remained unfilled; their temporalities passed into the King’s hands; their revenues were to be gathered in, their tenants were to be squeezed as might be needful, by the zealous care of the faithful Randolf. But one church, of higher dignity than all these, which had stood vacant longer than all these, was at last to have a shepherd. The careful guardian of them all was at last to have his reward. The reward was a great one, but in the course of his long service he had doubtless gathered enough into his private hoard to pay the price even for such a gift. The hall was built; the Witan were assembled in it; and, as the one recorded act of the assembly, the King gave the bishopric of Durham to Randolf his chaplain, that ere drave all his gemóts over all England.[662] In the new hall of Westminster, the hall of justice, often the hall of injustice, the man who had wrought so much of real injustice, but who had raised the name of justice, in its official meaning, to the high place which it has ever after kept――the Justiciar Randolf Flambard, the founder of the greatness of his office, the creator of the feudal law of England――received one of the greatest of the prizes to which men of his class could look forward. The driver of gemóts, the exactor of the moneys of rich and poor, became, not only lord of strong castles and of barons and knights not a few, but also shepherd of souls in a great diocese, abbot of monks in a monastery too young as yet to have wholly lost its first love. The new successor of Saint Cuthberht, Randolf Bishop of Durham, was presently consecrated in Saint Paul’s minster by his metropolitan Archbishop Thomas. But the local patriotism of Durham takes care to put on record that, as his predecessor William of Saint-Calais had made no profession, so neither did he.[663]

[Sidenote: Character of the appointment.]

[Sidenote: Flambard’s episcopate. 1099-1128.]

[Sidenote: His works at Durham.]

[Sidenote: The castle of Norham. 1121.]

[Sidenote: His personal character.]

[Sidenote: 1106?-1128.]

The appointment of Randolf Flambard to a great bishopric, as it is the last recorded kingly act of Rufus in England, was the crowning act of that abuse of the royal power in ecclesiastical matters, that bringing low of the Church and her ministers, which is so marked a feature of his reign.[664] To place the bishop’s staff in the hands of Randolf Flambard was going a step further than to place it in the hands of Robert Bloet. Yet Flambard showed himself in some ways, in all temporal ways, as a great prelate. A mighty builder, he joined his efforts with those of his monks to carry on Saint Cuthberht’s abbey on a plan as noble as that on which William of Saint-Calais had begun it, and with greater richness of detail.[665] He strengthened the fortifications of his castle and city; he laid out the green between the castle and the abbey. At the extreme border of what was now the English kingdom, not on the extreme border of his own diocese, he founded the famous castle of Norham. It was built, we are told, as a defence alike against border thieves and against attacks of invading Scots.[666] But this last motive was hardly needed in the days of Eadgar, Alexander, and David. Every temporal right of his church he defended to the uttermost.[667] Still eager to be first, pretending with voice and gesture more of wrath than he really felt, we see in the mighty Bishop of Durham essentially the same man as the royal officer who made sad the enthronization day of Anselm.[668] As to his life and conversation strange tales are told. The Bishop is said to have wantonly exposed his monks to temptations most contrary to monastic rule, to have entertained them in the episcopal hall along with guests most unbecoming for an episcopal castle, and to have marked as hypocrites all who refused to join in his unseemly revelries.[669] But the mass of Flambard’s doings as bishop, good or bad, belong to the reign of Henry, to his own second episcopate. Our own story will show him, after a short occupation of his see, an exile, an exile after the type of William of Saint-Calais rather than after the type of Anselm. From that exile he came back, as his predecessor came back, to go on with his great work, to rule, with unabated strength of mind and body, to extreme old age, and to die with every sign of penitence.[670]

[Sidenote: Later events of the year. 1099.]

The appointment of Flambard is the last recorded act of the Red King on English ground. We take leave of him, as far as the affairs of our own country are concerned, in the new hall of Westminster, placing the bishop’s staff in a hand which doubtless grasped it more readily than the hand of Anselm. But we have still to see somewhat of him in two other characters, in either of which he was more at home than in that of the civil ruler. We have to look at him as the hunter and as the warrior. From the great ceremony at Westminster he seems to have straightway taken himself to enjoy the sports of the woods in Wiltshire. The prince who ruled on both sides of the channel had come back to his island realm to busy himself both with English affairs and with English pleasures. While thus engaged, his thoughts were once more suddenly called to matters beyond the sea.

§ 5. The Second War of Maine.

April-September 1099.

[Sidenote: Action of Helias. August, 1098-April 1099.]

[Sidenote: August, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Helias withdraws to La Flèche.]

[Sidenote: He strengthens the castles on the Loir.]

[Sidenote: La Chartre.]

[Sidenote: La Flèche.]

[Sidenote: Château-du-Loir.]

[Sidenote: Preparations of Helias. August 1098-April 1099.]

[Sidenote: April 10, 1099.]

In the August of the last year William had given Helias of Maine his full leave to do what he could against him, reserving doubtless to himself the like power to do what he could against Helias. In the months which had since passed the Count of Maine had shown that he could do a good deal; but it seemingly was not till he had shown the full range of his powers of doing that the King felt himself called on once more to try his own powers against him. William did not stir himself till the news came that Helias was again in Le Mans, and then he stirred himself indeed. Helias, when he was set free in August, went at once to his own immediate possessions on the border of Maine and Anjou. If he was no longer Count of Maine, he was still lord of La Flèche. If he could no longer reign on the Cenomannian height, in the palace on the Roman wall or in the tower before whose rising strength the Roman wall itself had given way, he could at least keep his own native town and castle. At La Flèche, and in the whole southern part of the county, Helias still reigned, undisputed and unthreatened. He was still lord of the whole line of fortresses which guarded the course of the Loir, the tributary of the greater stream with which its name is so easily confounded. The castles along that river, reared doubtless to guard the Cenomannian border against attacks from the south, served, now that things had so strangely turned about, to protect the southern districts of Maine against attacks from its own capital. In front of the land to be guarded stood the castles of Mayet and Outillé. Along the Loir itself stood a formidable line of defences; La Chartre guarded one end, La Flèche the other; between them lay La Lude and the fortress which is still specially known as the Castle of the Loir. The stream flows below the hill-fort of La Chartre, once held by Geoffrey of Mayenne,[671] but the name of this castle is not mentioned in our present story. The omission is singular, as La Chartre must always have been a post of special importance, guarding Maine towards the land of Chartres as well as towards the now Angevin land of Tours. It rises, like Bellême and Saint Cenery, on the bluff of a promontory where two mounds with their fosses mark the site of the fortress, and where the rocky sides of the hill are pierced, like the hill of Nottingham, like so many hills along the greater Loire, with the dwelling-places of man. Much lower down the Loir is Helias’ own special home of La Flèche, where all traces of his day have vanished, but where the castle of John and Paula must have stood, on a site most unlike that of La Chartre, on one of the rich and grassy islands which are there formed by the branching of the stream. Château-du-Loir lies between the two, and the river from which it takes its name is a far less prominent feature there than at either La Flèche or La Chartre. The fortress which is specially called the Castle of the Loir stands at a greater distance from its waters than either of the other two. But of the stronghold itself it has more to show than either. The castle stands half-hidden in the midst of the small modern town, and the approaches to it have been carefully defaced and levelled. But the stump of a tower of irregular shape still remains, which may well be a fragment of the stronghold of Helias; the neighbouring church too still keeps under its choir a crypt which must be far older than his day. Still in possession of a considerable part of his dominions, master of a district so strongly guarded, the undisputed lord of La Flèche began to make everything ready for a campaign which might make him once more Count of Le Mans. From August till April, Helias kept within his own lands――like a bull in the hiding-places of the woods, says the local writer[672]――strengthening his own fortresses and making alliances wherever he could. The whole line of castles, together with the fortified villages in the neighbourhood, had by Easter-tide been made ready for defence against the attacks of any enemy.[673]

[Sidenote: Helias begins operations.]

[Sidenote: He marches against Le Mans. June, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Junction of Sarthe and Huisne.]

[Sidenote: Battle at Pontlieue.]

[Sidenote: Victory of Helias; he recovers Le Mans.]

Helias now deemed that the time was come for offensive operations against the invaders of Maine. He began to attack the posts which were occupied by the King’s forces, and to lay waste the lands in their possession. In this work he was secretly favoured by the people of the country,[674] and before long a large body of his friends and neighbours had openly joined his banner. In June he set forth at the head of a great force for an enterprise against the city itself.[675] We should like to know what, in such a case, was deemed a great force; but we may suspect that the following of Helias would largely consist of irregular levies, not well fitted, unless with the advantage of very superior numbers, to measure themselves with the picked and tried mercenaries of Rufus. The army marched northwards towards Le Mans. A little to the south-west of the city the Sarthe is joined by the Huisne, the stream which, with its tributaries, waters the whole north-eastern part of Maine. The river is at this point shallow and weedy, with woody banks and small islands in its bed. Two old lines of road lead from the south towards the lower course of the Huisne. One leads towards the bridge of Pontlieue, a bridge which has a history in modern times.[676] The other leads to a ford less than a mile lower down the stream, now known as the ford of Mauny. One of our accounts distinctly makes Helias cross by a ford; the other seems less distinctly to imply that he crossed by a bridge.[677] At any rate he crossed in this quarter, immediately south of Le Mans. He challenged the King’s troops in the city to come forth. The challenge was accepted, and a battle followed on the ground between the Huisne and the city. Pontlieue may now pass as a suburb of Le Mans, and not its least busy suburb. In those days the flat ground was doubtless all open; the hospital reared by Henry the Second in the neighbourhood of his native city must have been placed there as in a rural retreat. The fight was stout; the King’s troops fought valiantly; but they were put to flight by the greater numbers of the liberating host. The beaten garrison sought shelter in the city; fliers and pursuers streamed in together; the gates could not be shut; Count Helias was again in Le Mans at the head of a conquering army.[678]

[Sidenote: Joy of the citizens.]

[Sidenote: The castles still held for Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Comparison with the deliverance of York in 1069.]

[Sidenote: The Normans set fire to the city.]

[Sidenote: Discouragement of the citizens.]

The joy of the citizens of Le Mans was indeed great at his coming.[679] Their own lord, their native count, the happiness of whose former reign they remembered in its fair contrast with the Norman dominion, was again amongst his faithful people. The formal welcome which had greeted the coming of Rufus was exchanged for heartfelt delight at the coming of Helias. But there was still work to be done. Helias was in Le Mans; but the garrison of Rufus was in Le Mans also. The garrison had not been able to hinder the Count’s followers from entering the city; but the Count’s followers had not been able to hinder the garrison from securing themselves in the fortresses of the city, in the King’s tower and in Mont-Barbet.[680] And now the story reads almost word for word like a famous scene in our own history just thirty years before.[681] Helias entered Le Mans as Eadgar and Waltheof entered York. And at Le Mans, as at York, the native deliverers occupied the city while the foreign garrison still held the castles. The Normans at Le Mans betook themselves to the same means of defence as the Normans at York, the familiar means of defence of their nation. Whether he would or not, the joyous entry of Helias was to be celebrated with the same kind of offerings as the crowning and the churching of the Conqueror. Westminster, York, Mantes, had felt the Norman power of destruction; the turn of Le Mans was now come. Walter the son of Ansgar set his engineers to work, and, when the evening came, flaming brands and hot cinders were hurled from their engines upon the houses of the city. It was summer; all things were dry; a strong east wind was blowing, and all Le Mans was presently in a blaze.[682] How the great minster, so near to the King’s tower, escaped without damage does not appear. But, as the church stands between the castle and the main part of the city, we may conceive that the fiery bolts launched by the engines from the tower might fly over the roof of its nave without doing harm. In any case, before the end of the day on which Helias entered, a large part of the city and suburbs was burned. The true prince was again in his own city; but he had nothing there to reign over, except smoking ruins commanded by a hostile fortress. And we are told that the love of the citizens for their count was somewhat lessened by this mischance of warfare, which was surely no fault of his. We are significantly told that they were less eager to fight for him in the evening than they had been in the morning.[683] Wooden houses indeed could easily be rebuilt; it may even be that that day’s fire cleared the space for those noble domestic buildings of a little later date, some of which the official barbarism of our own day has deigned to spare, and of which those that still remain count among the choicest treasures of Le Mans.[684] But at the moment the effect must have been disheartening, and the change in the feelings of the people is in no way wonderful.

[Sidenote: Operation against the castles.]

[Sidenote: The castles besieged in vain.]

[Sidenote: Question of the church towers.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême strengthens Ballon.]

At Le Mans, as at York in the like case, the business of the moment was the assault of the castles; but at Le Mans the enterprise of the deliverers was less fortunate than it had been at York. The citizens of Le Mans were not, like the citizens of York, to have the pleasure of breaking down the stronghold of the stranger. Helias himself, after all, was a French prince of the eleventh century, and he would hardly have been so ready as Waltheof was to encourage such a work. He had never, during his earlier reign, thought of playing Timoleôn in that special fashion. But in any case the fortresses were first to be taken. Walter the son of Ansgar seems to have been a more wary captain than William Malet and Gilbert of Ghent. He did not risk a sally, and Helias had not the same opportunity as Waltheof of showing his personal prowess by cutting off Norman heads in the gate.[685] He was driven to a formal siege of the castle. Amid the ashes of the burned city he planted his engines to play upon the royal tower. We may almost suspect, from a story which we shall come to presently, that the new towers of Saint Julian’s were profaned to warlike uses, and were made, as they well might be, to play a part in the attack. But in any case the attack was in vain. The strength of the fortresses, the skill with which their defenders brought engines to answer engines, were too great for all the battering-works of Helias.[686] The King’s tower and Mont Barbet both held out, and Robert of Bellême took the further precaution of strengthening the defences of Ballon.[687]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The news sent to the King.]

[Sidenote: The news brought to him in the New Forest.]

But it was not enough for the garrisons to hold out. They served a master beyond the sea; and that master had yet to learn either that they were holding out or that there was any enemy for them to hold out against. We are in this story doubtless dealing with the work of a very few days. The fight by the ford, the entry of Helias, and the fire, all took place on the same day. The siege of the castles would begin at the first moment that any engines could be brought up. Whether Helias had brought them with him, or whether he had to send for them, we are not told. We may be sure that there was no great delay in sending the news to the King; but the messenger did not start till he had something more to tell than that Le Mans, or what was left of it, was in the hands of its own count. A Norman Pheidippidês, Amalchis by name, the special courier of Robert of Bellême, was sent with the news.[688] He crossed the sea; he hastened to the King’s hunting-seat of Clarendon, and met William and a party of his favourite companions going forth to hunt in the New Forest. The King asked the messenger what the news was. The news was speedily told; Le Mans was taken by treason. But Amalchis could add some words of comfort, how his own lord held Ballon, how the King’s troops in the city, though besieged and attacked by the enemy, still held out in the fortresses, how they were longing for the King to come in person to their help.[689] We can hardly believe that Rufus had heard nothing of the general movements of Helias in southern Maine; but all that had happened since the Count set forth for Pontlieue came to his ears in a single message.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William rides to the coast.]

[Sidenote: He crosses to Touques.]

At the hearing of such a tale as this William the Red did not tarry. He waited for no counsellors. His words were only, “Let us go beyond the sea and help our friends.” When those around him bade him wait till a force could be made ready, he answered, “I will see who will follow me. Do you think that I shall be left without men? I know well the youth of my lands, they will hasten to come to me, even at the risk of shipwreck.” So saying, without following, without preparation, he loosened his bridle, he put spurs to his horse, he rode straight to the sea-shore at Southampton, and at once trusted himself all alone to an old crazy ship which he found there. The sky was cloudy; the wind was contrary; the blasts tossed up huge waves; the sailors prayed him to wait till the winds and the waves should be more inclined to peace and mercy. “I never heard of a king being drowned,” cried Rufus; “make haste, loose your cables; you will see the elements join to obey me.” He set sail, and the next morning he reached the haven of Touques, God, we are told by the monk of Saint Evroul, being his guide.[690]

[Sidenote: Touques in Rufus’ time.]

[Sidenote: Landing of the King.]

[Sidenote: His ride to Bonneville.]

The spot where William landed must, especially at the moment of William’s landing, have had a widely different look from that which it bears in our own day. The river from which the town of Touques takes its name, flowing down from Lisieux to its mouth by the modern pleasure-town of Trouville, has had its course shifted by modern improvements; but it has perhaps not greatly changed in width or bulk of stream since the time of our story. Touques lies a few miles inland; but a high tide would easily bring up the small vessels of that day to the point which was once a busy haven, but which now affords at the most a landing-place for barges. The single long street, full of picturesque wooden buildings of later times, and containing a striking disused church of the days of Rufus or his father, now turns away from the stream, as if to show that the days of Touques as a haven have passed away. In those days the inland port, placed in the rich vale of the stream, under the shadow of the hills, those to the right forming the forest-land of Touques, was a frequented spot; and at the moment when the ship came which bore Rufus and his fortunes, it presented a busy scene. As was usual in the summer-tide, a crowd of persons, both clerical and lay, was gathered at the riverside.[691] When they saw a ship coming from England, they pressed to ask what the news might be. Specially they asked how the King fared. And lo, the King was there as his own messenger to answer them.[692] He returned their greetings in merry mood, and all wondered and were glad.[693] We must remember that Normandy had better reason to be glad at the presence of Rufus than either England or Maine. The King landed; he sprang on the first beast that he could find, a mare belonging to a priest, and so took the road which led towards the south-east to the castle of Bonneville, on the slope of the hills which overlook and guard the haven. The distance is short, and most of it is uphill, and the speed of the priest’s mare was most likely not equal to the speed of the King’s own horse which had borne him from Clarendon to Southampton. A loyal crowd, clerks and peasants, were thus able to follow him on foot, cheering their sovereign as he rode up the hill-side to the castle.[694]

[Sidenote: The castle of Bonneville.]

[Sidenote: Early history and legends of Bonneville.]

The headlong rush by land and sea was now over, and the Red King again found himself in one of the chief strongholds of Normandy. The castle of Bonneville, placed, not on the top of the hill, but on a small spur projecting from its side, was in fact the citadel of Touques. It specially guarded the inland haven; otherwise one might rather have looked for the site of such a fortress on the hills which overlook the sea and guard the actual mouth of the stream. Yet from the towers of Bonneville we look out on a wide and a goodly prospect. Almost at the foot of the hill lies Touques itself. The river stretches away to its mouth at Deauville; on the right the valley is fenced in by the high ground of the forest, on the left by the hill crowned by the castle of Lassay, famous in later times, with the small priory of Saint Arnold, still keeping work of the Conqueror’s day, nestling on the hill-side. But at Bonneville itself no strictly architectural work remains which can have served the Red King as a resting-place after his fierce journey. The existing castle, a shell-keep strengthened by round towers, seems to be in all parts later than the days of Rufus, later than the days of Norman independence. A single gateway only could possibly be placed even within the latter years of the twelfth century. But the site is an ancient one; the castle is girded by a ditch, and the ditch is in some parts further strengthened by an embankment, which seem more likely to have been taken advantage of by the Norman dukes than to be their original work. Bonneville had been one of the dwelling-places of William the Great, and it is one of the many towns and castles which claim to have been the scene of the oath of Harold.[695] Though the existing buildings are later, the hill itself and its earthworks are there, as when Rufus drew breath among them. He there rested for a moment, after being borne with the swiftest speed of his own age from the sports of the West-Saxon forest to the serious business which pressed on a ruler of Normandy when Le Mans was again held by a hostile power.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William at Bonneville.]

[Sidenote: His levy.]

[Sidenote: He marches towards Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: Helias flees to Château-du-Loir.]

The castle which Rufus had now reached, the nearest fortress in Normandy to the spot in England from which he had so wildly rushed, now became the starting-point of a campaign which, in its beginning, was not unskilfully planned. At Bonneville the King began to make his preparations for the recovery of Le Mans. He sent his messengers to and fro, and soon gathered a large force. He then began his march southward; he crossed the frontier, and pressed on towards Le Mans, harrying the land as he went.[696] The effect of his coming was immediate. When the news came that the King was on his way, the forces of Helias began to fail him; he no longer dared to go on with the siege of the castles; he no longer dared even to hold the city.[697] He fled from Le Mans, and hastened to the defence of his immediate possessions in the southern part of the county. Here he took up his head-quarters in his own fortress specially known as the Castle of the Loir. Within its walls the Count of Maine again waited for better days, while the hosts of Normandy drew near to his capital.[698]

[Sidenote: Flight of the citizens.]

[Sidenote: William passes through Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: His camp beyond the Huisne.]

Meanwhile despair reigned in Le Mans. A crowd of the citizens, with their wives and children and all that they had, followed their prince.[699] When Rufus heard of the flight of Helias, he was still north of Le Mans. He pressed on to overtake his enemy; he reached the city; but, like Harold on the march to Stamfordbridge, he did not deem it a time to tarry even a single night within its walls. And in the mind of Rufus there was doubtless another motive at work besides either military precaution or even simple military ardour. With him it would be a point of honour to occupy, at the first moment that he could, the ground on which his choice troops had been put to flight by the hasty levies of Helias. He marched through the city, over the battleground of Pontlieue; he crossed the bridge of the Huisne, and pitched his camp on the broad plain[700] to the south of the stream. He had thus passed into what might seem the immediate dominions of his rival, as his rival had passed at the same point to attack the city which he claimed as specially his own.

[Sidenote: He harries southern Maine.]

[Sidenote: Helias burns the castles.]

[Sidenote: Helias keeps on the defensive.]

From his camp on the left back of the Huisne Rufus began a deliberate and fearful harrying of the whole southern part of Maine. But before his troops could reach the strongholds of the enemy, they found the land laid waste before them. Even two castles, those of Outillé and Vaux-en-Belin,[701] were set fire to by the Count’s own partisans. Robert of Montfort――the Norman Montfort――pressed on with five hundred knights, put out the fire at Vaux, repaired the fortress, and held it for the King.[702] Helias meanwhile was biding his time in the Castle of the Loir. His force was still strong; but he deemed it no time for any attack on his part. Perhaps he knew Rufus well enough to feel sure that against him the tactics of Fabius were the tactics which were most likely to prevail.

[Sidenote: William besieges Mayet.]

[Sidenote: Observance of the Truce of God.]

For in this campaign, exactly as in the earlier campaign in Maine and in the campaign in the Vexin, the thing which most strikes us is the way in which it ends, or, more truly, the way in which it comes to no end at all. While Helias held out at Château-du-Loir, William, instead of attacking him, laid siege to Mayet. At this last point, lying some way north of Château-du-Loir, we find the scene of some of the most remarkable anecdotes in our whole story, and it is here that the last serious warfare of the Red King seems to have taken place.[703] The siege was not a long one, and its result was strange and unexpected; but the few days which it took are crowded with incident, and they set William Rufus before us in more than one character. He first appears in a mood which may be thought wholly unexpected; perhaps as touched by devotion himself, at all events as hearkening readily to the devotional scruples of others. The King’s host appeared before Mayet on a Friday, and he gave orders for a general attack on the castle on the next day.[704] The sabbath morning dawns; the warriors are vying with one another in girding on their weapons and making ready for the attack.[705] Then a pious scruple, a scruple which seems to have occurred to no man on the day of Senlac, touched the hearts of some of the elders of the host. Certain unrecorded wise men crave of the King that, out of reverence for the Lord’s burial and resurrection, he will spare the besieged both that day and the next, and will grant them a truce till Monday. In other words, they demand the observance of the Truce of God.[706] The King gives glory to God, and gives orders that it shall be as they wish; nothing shall be done against the castle on either Saturday or Sunday; on Monday the attack shall be made.[707]

[Sidenote: No bribery in Maine.]

[Sidenote: Preparations of the besieged.]

[Sidenote: The castle attacked on Monday.]

[Sidenote: Story of Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: Illustrations of chivalry.]

[Sidenote: The besiegers fill the ditch with wood.]

We now get a glimpse within the walls. The defenders of Mayet, we are told, were men of proved valour and endurance, faithful to their lord and ready to fight for him to the death.[708] It is worth notice that, through the whole story, the Red King’s favourite arms are never heard of within the bounds of Maine. The wealth of England, which carried such weight within Normandy and France, which proved such an unanswerable argument in the mind of King Philip, goes for nothing on the banks of the Sarthe and the Loir. It seems never to enter into any man’s mind that it was worth trying to buy over any man who owned Helias as his lord. So now in the Red King’s camp steel lies idle on the holy days of the older and the newer law; and gold seems to lie idle no less. But those days were not days of idleness within the bulwarks of Mayet. The gallant defenders of the castle were making ready for the attack. One special means of defence was to place wicker crates along the walls in order to break the force of the stones hurled by the King’s artillery.[709] At last Monday came, and the assault began. The deep and wide ditch of the castle was found to be no small hindrance to the besiegers. A wild story is told that the King ordered the ditch to be filled up with horses and mules, the beasts seemingly of draught and burthen.[710] For them, as the villains of the brute world, there was no mercy; the destrier of the knight was, in knightly hearts, entitled to some share of the respect due to his rider. But the tale adds that Robert of Bellême, the man so hateful in Cenomannian memory, improved on the King’s order, and bade the ditch be filled, not only with horses, but with human villains also.[711] Such an order would really be thoroughly in the spirit of chivalry. It would have come well from the mouths of those French gentlemen who called at Crecy for the slaughter of the so-called peasants whom they had hired from Genoa.[712] But William the Red had learned beneath the walls of Rochester what the churls of one land at least could do, and he was not likely to carry his knightly ideal quite so far as this. The tale, we may suspect, is a bit of local Cenomannian romance, part of the popular tale of the devil of Mamers. Those who tell it add that the effect of the order was to cause the immediate flight of all the members of the despised class who were within hearing.[713] But the most trustworthy narrative of the siege of Mayet tells us nothing of any of these strange ways of filling up a ditch. There we read only of vast piles of wood which were hurled into it, and of a path raised on piles which the besiegers strove to make level with the palisade of the castle.

[Sidenote: The besieged burn the wood.]

[Sidenote: Narrow escape of William.]

[Sidenote: William’s captains advise a retreat.]

[Sidenote: The siege raised on Tuesday.]

[Sidenote: The land ravaged.]

But the devices of the garrison of Mayet were at least equal to the devices of their enemies. They hurled down masses of burning charcoal, and so, by the help of the summer heat, they burned up the piles of wood with which the besiegers were filling up the ditch.[714] All Monday both sides strove with all their might against one another, and the King began to be grieved and angry that all his efforts had availed nothing.[715] While he was thus troubled in mind, a stone was aimed at him from a lofty turret. It missed William himself, but a warrior who stood by him was crushed to pieces by the falling mass.[716] Then there rose a loud shout of mockery from the wall; “Lo, the King now has fresh meat; let it be taken to the kitchen and made ready for his supper.”[717] We might have looked to hear that for such scorn as this the Red King vowed a vengeance like his father’s vengeance at Alençon. But either Rufus and his counsellors were strangely cowed, or else they were glad of any excuse to throw up an enterprise one day of which seems to have been enough to weary them. The lords and high captains of the King’s host impressed on their master’s mind that the defences of Mayet were very strong, that its defenders were very brave, that, sheltered as they were behind their strong walls, they had a great advantage over besiegers encamped in the open air.[718] These sound strange arguments in an age when warfare chiefly consisted in attacking and defending strong places. They sound strangest of all when they are addressed to a king who, so short a time before, had taken it for granted that not only men and walls, but the winds and the waves, would yield to his will. But the reasoning of these prudent warriors is said to have carried conviction to the King’s mind. Rufus saw that the best thing that he could do was to march off while he was still safe. There were other ways besides besieging castles by which more damage could be done to the enemy with less risk to his own followers.[719] Orders were given to march to Lucé with the first light of Tuesday. The host arose early, and went on, making a fearful harrying as they went. Vines were rooted up, fruit-trees cut down, walls and houses overthrown. The whole of that fertile land was utterly laid waste with fire and sword.[720]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: No real success on the King’s part.]

[Sidenote: Illustration of Rufus’ character.]

[Sidenote: The campaign unfinished.]

[Sidenote: William satisfied by the recovery of Le Mans.]

This seems a somewhat paltry ending for a campaign which began with the King’s breathless rush from the New Forest to Bonneville. Not very much had come of the headlong ride or of the sail in the crazy ship. William Rufus had gained no real success, military or political. He was as far as ever from the real possession of the whole land of Maine. He had rooted up a great many vines and cut down a great many fruit trees; but he had neither won a battle nor taken a fortress. His garrisons at Le Mans and at Ballon had held out; Helias had left Le Mans open to him; at Vaux Robert of Montfort had overcome, not Helias, but the flames. On the other hand, Helias himself was safe, in full command of most of his southern castles; from the only one of them which the King had actually attacked, he had turned away baffled after one day’s fighting. In all these cases it would seem as if the fiery impulses of Rufus soon spent themselves, as if all depended on the first rush. If that failed, he never had perseverance to go on. In his strangely mingled nature, he could be either a ruler or a captain when the fit to be either took him. He had not steadiness to be either for any long time together. Certain it is that he left all his continental campaigns unfinished; and this one, which was begun with such a special blaze of energy, was left more utterly unfinished than any of the others. And yet perhaps, after all, William Rufus had succeeded in the chief wish of his heart. Le Mans was the special prize of his father; its castles were the work of his father. But his father had had no special dealings with Mayet or Château-du-Loir. He might be satisfied to do without such small and distant possessions, he might be satisfied even to undergo defeat before them, as long as the city which his father had twice won, as long as the royal tower which his father had reared, were his beyond dispute.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William’s good treatment of Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: He enters the city.]

[Sidenote: He stops the oppressions of his garrison.]

[Sidenote: He drives out the canons.]

[Sidenote: He leaves garrisons and returns to England. September, 1099.]

But it is at least to William’s honour that, in his last entry at Le Mans, he showed himself a benefactor to the city which had suffered so much. Rufus had, as we have seen in the case of Robert of Bellême, men about him who were worse than himself. Or rather, putting aside such exceptional sinners as Robert of Bellême, he had men about him who simply did, as a matter of course, according to the fashion of the time, without either rising or sinking to those parts of the character of Rufus which are special to himself. So now the citizens of Le Mans found in the Red King himself a deliverer from the oppressions done by his officers. Those among the inhabitants who had stayed in the city and had not followed their Count in his flight, had suffered every kind of wrong-doing at the hands of the King’s garrisons. The tale, according to the local historian, was too long and sad to tell in full.[721] But matters grew better when the King came himself. William again entered Le Mans in triumph, a triumph won chiefly over vines and apple-trees, certainly not over the garrison of Mayet.[722] Anyhow he came in a merciful mood. He checked the excesses of his soldiers; it was owing to his bounty only that the city was saved from utter ruin.[723] But on one class of its inhabitants his hand was harder than on the rest. The canons of Saint Julian’s, or so many of them as had agreed to the election of Hildebert, were driven out by the King’s order.[724] William then disbanded his army,[725] leaving garrisons in the castles of Le Mans, and doubtless in that of Ballon also. He then left the mainland for the last time, and, after an absence of three months, came back to England about the time of the feast of Michaelmas.[726]

[Sidenote: William and Hildebert.]

[Sidenote: Hildebert reconciled to the King.]

[Sidenote: Charges brought against him.]

[Sidenote: William bids Hildebert pull down the towers of Saint Julian’s.]

[Sidenote: Dialogue between William and Hildebert.]

[Sidenote: The southern tower.]

[Sidenote: Appearance on the north side.]

But, if William Rufus, on his last visit to Le Mans, saved the inhabitants of the city from ruin, he presently deprived the city itself of one of its chief material ornaments. It was the election of Hildebert which had first stirred up his wrath, and he had picked out the lands of the bishopric, as the lands of a personal enemy, for special havoc.[727] Yet we read that, at some very early stage of his march, before he had yet crossed the frontier of Normandy and Maine, Hildebert met the King, and was received as a friend, on showing that he had had no hand in bringing about the occupation of the city by Helias.[728] But, after William had again entered Le Mans, the charge was once more brought against the Bishop by some of the clergy of Saint Julian’s who had opposed his election from the beginning. It was by Hildebert’s counsel, they said, that Helias had been received, and that the King’s castles had been besieged; nay, the towers of the minster itself, the twin towers of Howel, had been used, as they well might be, for the attack on the royal tower. William hearkened to the enemies of Hildebert, and gave him his choice, either to pull down the towers which were so liable to abuse, or else to follow him at once into England.[729] To the Bishop of Le Mans the sea-voyage itself seemed frightful;[730] and when its dangers were passed, when Hildebert had reached the shores of our island, his enemies, who seem to have crossed also, again began to accuse him to the King.[731] A strange dialogue followed between the two. William, in his craft, offered to purchase the destruction of the towers at a price which would have greatly increased the internal splendour of the church. Let the Bishop agree to pull down the towers, and he, King William, will give him a vast mass of gold and silver for the adornment of the new shrine of Saint Julian.[732] But the Bishop had his craft also. He was in the land so famous for gold and silver work, the land where Otto and Theodoric were doubtless still plying their craft. They had no such goldsmiths at Le Mans; let the King keep his precious ingots for works within his own kingdom.[733] Still the destruction of the towers is pressed upon him; all that he can gain, and that with difficulty, is a little delay. Hildebert at last went back to Le Mans, taking with him, not indeed the King’s great ingots, but some lesser ornaments for his church.[734] The burning of the city, the dispersion of his canons, the havoc wrought in his own lands, all weighed him down. He poured forth the full bitterness of his soul in his extant letters. The unrepealed order for the pulling down of the two towers still hung over him. Was it ever carried out? Our author does not say distinctly. We might rather infer from his story that the death of Rufus and the return of Helias saved the Bishop from his difficulties.[735] Yet the appearance of the building itself looks the other way. As the church of Saint Julian now stands, the southern tower of Howel has its existing representative. It is slender, and, if it stood against a building of ordinary height, it would be tall. Its upper part belongs to the late rebuilding of the transepts, but the lowest stage belongs to the latest and richest style of Romanesque, contemporary with the great recasting of the nave. It is no work of Howel or even of Hildebert; but it is the work of one who wished to reproduce, with the richer detail of his own day, the general likeness of what Howel’s tower had been. On the north side this tower has no fellow; the space at the end of the transept which answers to it is occupied by a ruined building of earlier Romanesque, which may well be the stump of the original tower of Howel.[736] Are we to infer that the bidding of Rufus was carried out――that the towers, or their upper stages, were actually destroyed――that every later ruler of Le Mans, the devout Helias among them, deemed the northern tower too near to the royal fortress to allow of its rebuilding, but that the rebuilding of the more distant tower on the southern side was begun in the earlier and finished in the later recasting of the church? May we look on the shattered building which joins hard to the northern transept of Saint Julian’s as being truly the remnant of a tower which Howel reared with the good will of William the Great, and which Hildebert, with a heavy heart, pulled down at the bidding of William the Red? If it be so, I know of no spot where architectural evidence speaks more strongly to the mind, where walls and columns and arches bring us more directly into the presence of the men who made and who unmade them. Among all the wonders of Saint Julian’s minster――beside the nave which is inseparably bound up with so many living pages of our story――beside the choir which in itself concerns not the historian of Norman kings and Cenomannian counts, but on which we gaze in breathless wonder as one of the noblest of the works of man――no spot comes more truly home to us than that where we see the small remnants of what once was there and is there no longer. Alongside of the soaring apse to the east, of the wide portal to the west, the northern tower of Howel is indeed conspicuous by its absence.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Robert at Jerusalem. July, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Death of Pope Urban. July 29.]

[Sidenote: Revolt in Anglesey. 1099.]

[Sidenote: Return of Cadwgan and Gruffydd.]

[Sidenote: Recovery of Anglesey and Ceredigion by the Welsh.]

The second war with Maine is the only event beyond the bounds of England which our own annalists record under this year, except indeed those œcumenical events besides which the affairs of Maine, and even the affairs of England, seem for the moment but as trifles. In the same month of July in which William made his way into Le Mans, his brother Robert, in quite another warfare, made his way into Jerusalem.[737] Presently, before he could have heard of his own work, the great preacher of the crusade, Pope Urban the Second, passed away.[738] With the affairs of Maine these events have a direct connexion. It was not the fault of Count Helias that he did not obey the teaching of Urban, that he did not enter the Holy City alongside of Robert and Godfrey. But it needs an effort to turn away either from Jerusalem or from Le Mans to record the last counter-revolution in Anglesey. Yet it is not amiss to remember that two lands were at the same moment striving for freedom against the Red King, and that the Briton and the Cenomannian had to hold their own against the same enemy. He who ruled at once at Bellême and at Shrewsbury was terrible to both alike. We may believe that the Britons marked their time while the fierce Earl had his hands full beyond the Channel, to strike another blow to win back their land, and specially to win back the island which had been the scene of the warfare of the last year. But it would seem that, in some parts at least of the land, there was little need for blows. The two princes who had fled to Ireland, Cadwgan son of Bleddyn and Gruffydd son of Cynan, now came back. Cadwgan obtained a peaceful settlement in Ceredigion; Gruffydd got possession of Anglesey, perhaps as the price of warfare. A son of Cadwgan, Llywelyn, was presently killed by the men of Brecheiniog, that is doubtless by the followers of Bernard of Newmarch.[739] Another Welsh prince, Howel by name, had to flee to Ireland.[740] We may infer that the central border-land was still firmly held by the conquerors, but that, though the French had constrained the Britons of Anglesey to become Saxons,[741] French and Saxons alike had to yield to the returning Britons both in Anglesey and in Ceredigion. Gruffydd and Cadwgan, names which are by this time familiar to us, are again established in Britain. Both of them play a part in the later history of their own land, and Cadwgan at least will appear again within the range of our own story.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Natural phænomenon.]

[Sidenote: The great tide. November 3, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Osmund of Salisbury. December 3, 1099.]

These Welsh matters find no place in the English Chronicles, which find so little space even for the deeds of Helias. Most likely they made no great impression on the mind of Rufus, now that, not Maine indeed, but at least Le Mans, was again his. He came back to England, a conqueror doubtless in his own eyes, about the feast of Saint Michael. The year did not end without one of those natural phenomena in which the reign is so rich. This time it was the wonderful flood-tide which, in the beginning of November, on a day of new moon, came up the Thames, flooded the land, overwhelmed houses and villages, and swept away men, oxen, and sheep.[742] A month later a new source of revenue began to flow into the Red King’s coffers. Bishop Osmund of Salisbury, the founder alike of the elder church and of the abiding ritual of his diocese, died early in December.[743] His temporalities passed, like those of Canterbury and Winchester, into the King’s hands. The Bishop of Durham had doubtless bade farewell to such duties; but the race of exactores, of clerical exactores, had not died out. There were still plenty of men in the Red King’s court who were ready to help in wringing the last penny out of the lands of bishops till they had wrung enough to buy bishoprics for themselves. The end is now drawing nigh; but till the end came, the groans of the Church, of the tenants of the Church, and of the whole people of the land, went up with a voice ever louder and louder.

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