HIS STATESMANSHIP AND MILITARY GENIUS. 167 scrupulous Others beside him could have led the charge at Val-ès- chap. VIII. dunes; others beside him could have chosen the happy moment for the ambush at Varaville; others beside him could have endured the weariness of the long blockade beneath the donjon of Brionne. Others, it may even be, beside him could have cut their way through palisade and shield-wall and battle-axe to the royal Standard of England. But none in his own age, and few in any age, have shown His statesmanship. themselves like him masters of every branch of the consummate craft of the statesman. Calm and clearsighted, he saw his object before him; he knew when to tarry and when to hasten; he knew when to strike and how to strike, and how to use alike the noblest and the vilest of men as his instruments. Utterly unscrupulous, though His unfar from unprincipled, taking no pleasure in wrong or ness as to oppression for its own sake, always keeping back his means. hands from needless bloodshed, he yet never shrank from force or fraud, from wrong or bloodshed or oppression, when they seemed to him the straightest paths to accomplish his purpose. His crimes admit of no denial; but, with one single exception, they never were wanton crimes. And when we come to see the school in which he was brought up, when we see the men whom he had to deal with from his childhood, our wonder really ought to be that his crimes were not infinitely blacker. His per- His persosonal virtues were throughout life many and great. We hear much of his piety, and we see reason to believe that his piety was something more than the mere conventional piety of lavish gifts to monasteries. Punctual in every His religious zeal. exercise of devotion, paying respect and honour of every kind to religion and its ministers, William showed, in two ways most unusual among the princes of that age, that his zeal for holy things was neither hypocrisy, nor fanaticism, nor superstition. Like his illustrious contemporary on the Imperial throne, he appeared as a real eccle nal virtues. General excellence siastical appointments. CHAP. VIII. siastical reformer, and he allowed the precepts of his religion to have a distinct influence on his private life. of his eccle- He was one of the few princes of that age whose hands were perfectly clean from the guilt of simony. His ecclesiastical appointments for the most part do him honour; the patron of Lanfranc and Anselm can never be spoken of without respect. In his personal conduct he practised at least one most unusual virtue; in a profligate age he was a model of conjugal fidelity. He was a good and faithful friend, an affectionate brother-we must perhaps add, too indulgent a father. And strong as was his sense of religion, deep as was his reverence for the Church, openhanded as was his bounty to her ministers, no prince that ever reigned was less disposed to yield to ecclesiastical usurpations. No prince ever knew better how to control the priesthood within his own dominions; none knew better both how to win the voice of Rome to abet his purposes, and how to bid defiance to her demands when they infringed on the rights of his Crown and the laws of his Kingdom. While all Europe rang with the great strife of Pope and Cæsar, England and Normandy remained at peace under the rule of one who knew how, firmly and calmly, to hold his own against Hildebrand himself. Effects of his reign in Normandy, France, and Eng land. But to know what William was, no way is so clear as to see what William did in both the countries over which he was so strangely called to rule. We are too apt to look on him simply as the Conqueror of England. But so to do is to look at him only in his most splendid, but at the same time his least honourable, aspect. William learned to become the Conqueror of England only by first becoming the Conqueror of Normandy and the Conqueror of France. He found means to conquer Normandy by the help of France and to conquer France by the help of Normandy. He turned a jealous overlord into an effective ally against his rebellious subjects, and he turned HIS GOOD GOVERNMENT IN NORMANDY. 169 nothing Excellence Instead in Nor of his rule those rebellious subjects into faithful supporters against CHAP. VIII. that jealous overlord. He came to his Duchy under every His early disadvantage. At once bastard and minor, with com- struggles. petitors for his coronet arising at every moment, with turbulent barons to hold in check and envious neighbours to guard against, he was, throughout the whole of his early life, beset by troubles, none of which were of his own making, and he came honourably out of all. The change which William wrought in Normandy was less than a change from anarchy to good order. of a state, torn by internal feuds and open to the attacks mandy. of every enemy, his Duchy became, under his youthful rule, a loyal and well-governed land, respected by all its neighbours, and putting most of them to shame by its prosperity. In the face of every obstacle, the mighty genius of the once despised Bastard raised himself and his principality to a place in the eyes of Europe such as Normandy and its prince had never held before. And these great successes were gained with far less of cruelty or harshness than might have been looked for in so ruthless an age. He shared indeed in the fierce passions His geneof his race, and in one or two cases his wrath hurried him, or his policy beguiled him, into acts at which occasional humanity shudders. At all stages of his life, if he was debonair to those who would do his will, measure stern to all who withstood it. think of all that he went through, of the treachery and ingratitude which he met with on every side, how his most faithful friends were murdered beside him, how he himself had to flee for his life or to lurk in mean disguises, he was beyond 'Chron. Petrib. 1087. "He was milde bam godum mannum þe God lufedon, and ofer eall gemett stearc þam mannum þe widcwadon his willan." The former clause is rather oddly altered in the version of Robert of Gloucester (p. 374); "To hem þat wolde his wylle do, debonere he was and mylde, ral forbearance and cruelty. CHAP. VIII. We shall see that it is not without reason that his panegyrist praises his general forbearance and clemency. In short, the reign of William as Duke of the Normans was alike prosperous and honourable in the highest degree. Had he never stretched forth his hand to grasp the diadem which was another's, his fame would not have filled the world as now it does, but he would have gone down to his grave as one of the best, as well as one of the greatest, rulers of his time. His reign in England. of his undertaking. If we turn from William Duke of the Normans to William King of the English, we may indeed mourn that, in a moral sense, the fine gold has become dim, but our admiration for mere greatness, for the highest craft of the statesman and the soldier, will rise higher than ever. No doubt he was highly favoured by fortune; nothing but an extraordinary combination of events could have made the Conquest of England possible. But then it is the true art of statesmanship, the art by which men like William carry the world before them, to know how to grasp every fortunate moment and to take advantage Difficulties of every auspicious turn of events. Doubtless William could never have conquered England except under peculiarly favourable circumstances; but then none but such a man as William could have conquered England under any circumstances at all. He conquered and retained a land far greater than his paternal Duchy, and a land in which he had not a single native partisan. Yet he contrived to put himself forward in the eyes of the world as a legal claimant, and not as an unprovoked invader. We must condemn the fraud, but we cannot help admiring the skill, by which he made men believe that he was the true heir of England, shut out from his inheritance by a perjured usurper. Never was a more subtle web of fallacy woven by the craft of man; never did diplomatic ingenuity more triumphantly obtain its end. He contrived Skill dis played in English HIS SKILL IN ACQUIRING THE ENGLISH CROWN. ment. 171 to make an utterly unjust aggression bear the aspect, not CHAP. VIII. only of righteous, but almost of holy, warfare. The wholesale spoiler of a Christian people contrived to win for himself something very like the position of a Crusader. And, landed on English ground, with no rights but those in his acquisition of of his own sword, with no supporters but his own foreign it; army, he yet contrived to win the English Crown with every circumstance of formal legality. He was elected, crowned, and anointed like his native predecessors, and he swore at the hands of an English Primate to observe the ancient laws of England. By force and by craft, but and in his subsequent with the outward pretext of law always put prominently governforward, he gradually obtained full possession of the whole land; he deprived the nation one by one of its native leaders, and put in their places men of foreign birth and wholly dependent on himself. No prince ever more richly rewarded those to whom he owed his Crown, but no prince ever took more jealous care that they should never be able to bring his Crown into jeopardy. None but a man like him could have held down both conquerors and conquered, and have made his will the only law for Norman and Englishman alike. His consummate policy guarded against the dangers which he saw rife in every other country; he put the finishing stroke to the work of Ecgberht, and made England the most united Kingdom in Western Christendom. Normans and Englishmen conspired against him, and called the fleets and hosts of Denmark to their help. But William held his own alike against revolters at home and against invaders from abroad. Norman and English rebels were alike crushed; sometimes the Dane was bought off, sometimes he shrank from the firm array with which the land was guarded. All opposition was Severity of his police. quelled by fire and sword; but when it was quelled, whenever and wherever William's rule was quietly accepted, his hand was heavy upon all smaller disturbers of the |