his fool.

CHAP. VIII. spent in the employment of William's favourite weapon the bow against either savage or harmless victims. At last William one night, when all his party except his immediate housewarned by hold had left him, while he was yet in his first sleep, Gallet his fool, like his uncle Walter at an earlier stage of his life, burst into his room, staff in hand, and aroused him. If he did not arise and flee for his life, he would never leave the Côtentin a living man. The Duke arose,

His escape. half dressed himself in haste, leaped on his horse, seemingly alone, and rode for his life all that night. A bright moon guided him, and he pressed on till he reached the estuary formed by the rivers Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide supplied a ford, which was afterwards known as the Duke's Way. William crossed in safety, and landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church of Saint Clement. He entered the building, and prayed for God's help on his way. His natural course would now have been to strike for Bayeux; but the city was in the hands of his enemies; he determined therefore to keep the line between Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching the loyal districts. As the sun rose, he drew near to the church and castle of Rye, the dwelling-place of a faithful His recep- vassal named Hubert. The Lord of Rye was standing at tion by Hubert of his own gate, between the church and the mound on Rye. which his castle was raised. William was still urging on his foaming horse past the gate; but Hubert knew and

3

66

tirer de l'arc."

1 Roman de Rou, 8803. "Par li boiz chacié et bersé." "Berser" is explained (Roquefort, Glossaire de la Langue Romaine) by On William's skill with the bow, see Will. Malms. iii. 279.

2 See above, p. 195.

3 On the church of Rye, parts of which may be as old as this time, see

De Caumont, iii. 572.

4 Roman de Rou, 8846;

"Hubert de Rie ert à sa porte,

Entre li mostier et sa mote,

Guillame vit désaturné

E sun cheval tuit tressué."

Hubert seems to have been an early riser and a good church-goer. On the

"mote" see Appendix S.

WILLIAM'S ESCAPE FROM VALOGNES.

247

stopped his sovereign, and asked the cause of this headlong CHAP. VIII. ride. He heard that the Duke was flying for his life before his enemies. He welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh horse, he bade his three sons ride by his side, and never leave him till he was safely lodged in his own castle of Falaise.1 The command of their He reaches father was faithfully executed by his loyal sons. We are

not surprised to hear that the house of Rye rose high in William's favour; and we can hardly grudge them their share in the lands of England, when we find that Eudo the son of Hubert, the King's Dapifer and Sheriff of Essex, was not only the founder of the great house of Saint John at Colchester, but won a purer fame as one of the very few Normans in high authority who knew how to win the love and confidence of the conquered English.2

Falaise.

of the re

The Bessin and the Côtentin were now in open rebellion. Progress We are told that men cursed the rebels, and wished well bellion. to the Duke in their hearts. But the revolted Barons had for the time the upper hand. They seized on the ducal revenues within their districts, and robbed and slew many who still clave to their allegiance. The dominion of the male line of Rolf, the very existence of Normandy as an united state, seemed in jeopardy. William did not venture to meet his enemies with the forces of the districts which still remained faithful. He was driven to seek for foreign He seeks help of the aid, and he sought it in a quarter where one would think King of the

1 Roman de Rou, 8860 et seqq. I see no reason to doubt the general truth of the story, but there is a passage in the sequel which sounds mythical. William's pursuers presently ask Hubert which way the Bastard is gone, and he puts them on a wrong scent (vv. 8874). This story is as old as the babyhood of Hermês.

2 On Eudo see Ellis, Introduction to Domesday, i. 415. Orderic (489 C) calls him "Normannici Ducis dapiferum, qui in pago Constantino divitiis et potestate inter Normanniæ proceres eminebat." The good character of Eudo comes from the Colchester History in the Monasticon, iv. 607, which I shall have to refer to again. He married Roberia, daughter of Richard son of Count Gilbert (Ib. 608).

French.

Henry

comes to

person.

CHAP. VIII. that nothing short of despair could have led him to dream of seeking for it. He craved help of one who was indeed bound to grant it by every official and by every personal tie, but who had hitherto acted towards William only as a faithless enemy, ready to grasp at any advantage, however mean and treacherous. The Duke of the Normans, driven to such humiliation by the intrigues of an ungrateful kinsman, crossed the French border, and made his suit to his Lord King Henry at Poissy. He met with favour in the his help in eyes of his suzerain; a French army, with the King at its head, was soon ready to march to the support of Duke William against his rebels. It is hard to see why Henry, whose whole earlier and later conduct is of so opposite a kind, stood forth for this once faithfully to discharge the duties of an honourable over-lord towards an injured vassal. One would have thought that a revolt which, above all others, tended to the dismemberment of Normandy would have been hailed by Henry as exactly falling in with the interests of the suzerain power. Instead of the one strong and united state which had hitherto cut him off from the whole coast from Britanny to Ponthieu, there was now a chance of the establishment of two or three small principalities, each insignificant in itself, and all probably hostile

His

probable motives.

1 We learn the place of meeting from Orderic (372 A); "Unde coactus juvenis Dux Pexeium convolavit, ibique pronus ad pedes Henrici Regis corruit, et ab eo contra malefidos proceres et cognatos auxilium petivit." So Roman de Rou, 8942;

"Par pleintes ke Willame fist,

E par paroles ke il dist,

Fist li Reis asembler son ost."

Other writers are less eager to set forth William's humiliation. William of Jumièges (vii. 17) says, "Necessitate coactus Henricum Francorum Regem expetiit pro subveniendi obtentu." The Brevis Relatio (ap. Giles, Scriptt. 3) says simply, "Contulit se ad Regem Franciæ." William of Poitiers (81) slurs over William's application to the King, and takes no further notice of Henry's share in the campaign, beyond adding, after his account of the battle, "Interfuit huic proelio Franciæ Rex Henricus, victrici caussæ auxilians.'

KING HENRY HELPS WILLIAM.

249

to one another. Such states would run a fair risk of being OHAP. VIII, recovered one by one by their over-lord. Henry had himself in past years encroached on the Norman territory, and he had not scrupled to give encouragement to Norman traitors against their own sovereign. Yet the common interest of princes may have led him to see that it was bad policy to abet open rebellion, and he may have doubted whether the aggrandizement of the mutinous Barons of the Bessin and the Côtentin would be any real gain to France. Such neighbours might prove far more turbulent as vassals, and might not be much more easy to subdue as enemies, than the comparatively firm and orderly government of the Dukes of Rouen. At all events French aid was freely granted to the princely suppliant.1 The King set forth at the head of his army to join the troops which William had gathered from the loyal districts, and to share with them in a decisive encounter with the rebel forces.

VAL-ÈS

DUNES,

1047;

The French and the loyal Normans joined their forces BATTLE OF some miles to the east of Caen, in the neighbourhood of the memorable field of Val-ès-dunes. The spot is not one specially attractive in itself; it is not one of those spots which seem marked out by the hand of nature as specially designed to become the scene of great historical events.

1 The original writers do not greatly trouble themselves about the seeming inconsistency of Henry's conduct. There is perhaps a slight touch of sarcasm in the words of William of Jumièges (vii. 17), “ Tunc tandem Rex memor beneficii quod a patre ejus sibi quondam impensum fuerat, vires Francorum simul coëgit." But William of Malmesbury knows no motive but pure gratitude (iii. 230); “Necessitas Regem tutorem excivit ut desperatis partibus pupilli succurreret. Itaque paternæ benevolentiæ recordatus, quod eum favore suo in regnum sublimaverat, apud Walesdunas in defectores irruit." We then find ourselves in the thick of the battle. Orderic (372 A) seems to make it an act of simple magnanimity on the King's part; "At ille [Henricus], ut erat clemens, desolato adolescent compatiens, robur exercitus Francorum excivit, et in Neustriam Duci auxiliaturus perrexit." William, or Orderic, in the death-bed summary (657 B), leaves out the French aid altogether; "Tunc auxiliante Deo, qui justus judex est, inter Cadomum et Argentias hostes vici."

ance in the

life of

William.

CHAP. VIII. But we shall see that, for the purposes of the particular battle which was fought there, no ground could have been better suited. Nor, at first sight, does the fight of Valès-dunes, an engagement of cavalry between two Norman factions, seem to have any claim to a place among the great its import- battles of history. But Val-ès-dunes was the first pitched battle of the Conqueror; it was the field on which he first won a right to that lofty title, and the lessons which he learned there stood him in good stead on a far more awful day. And more than this, it was there that William conquered his own land and his own people, and by that earlier conquest both schooled and strengthened himself for his mightier conquest beyond the sea. Normandy had first to be firmly grasped, and her fierce Barons to be brought under the yoke, before the hand of William could be stretched forth to fix its grasp on England, and to press the yoke upon the necks of her people. In a word, the strife with Randolf and Neal and their revolted provinces was the needful forerunner of the strife with Harold and his Kingdom. The tourney of Norman horsemen upon the open slope of Val-ès-dunes was William's school of fence for the sterner clashing of axe and spear upon the palisaded heights of Senlac.

Val-èsdunes a

battle be

And there is another aspect in which the two battles have a common feature. Val-ès-dunes, no less than Senlac, tween was a struggle between the Roman and the Teuton. The and Teu- fact was not indeed forced in the same way upon men's tonic Nor- minds by the outward contrast of language, of tactics, of

Romanized

mandy.

every badge of national difference. Still it is none the less true that, at Val-ès-dunes, the old Scandinavian blood of Normandy found its match, and more than its match, in the power of France and of the French portions of the Norman Duchy. Danish Coutances and Saxon Bayeux were brought face to face with Romanized Rouen and Evreux and with royal Paris itself. From all the lands