KING HENRY HELPS WILLIAM.

249

to one another. Such states would run a fair risk of being CHAP. 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 stricts, 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 exercitûs 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."

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 ance in the battle of the Conqueror; it was the field on which he first

life of

William.

Val-èsdunes a

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.

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

battle be

Romanized

and Teu- fact was not indeed forced in the same way upon men's

tonic Normandy.

minds by the outward contrast of language, of tactics, of 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

BATTLE OF VAL-ES-DUNES.

251

William.

east of the Dive men flocked to the Ducal standard. The CHAP. VIII. episcopal cities of Lisieux and Evreux, no less than primatial Districts which supRouen, sent forth their loyal burghers, and the men of the ported surrounding districts pressed no less eagerly to the muster. They came, according to the old divisions which the suppression of the peasant revolt had not wholly broken up, arranged in companies which still retained the name of communes, suggesting the freedom which they had perhaps not wholly lost.1 From beyond the Seine came the troops of Caux, from between Seine and Dive came the men of Auge, and from the south of the Duchy came the men of Duke Robert's County of Hiesmes. And who can doubt that foremost among them all were the burghers of William's own Falaise, zealous on behalf of a Prince who was also their own immediate countryman? But the whole west of Normandy, the land where the old Norman speech and spirit had longest lingered, was arrayed on the side of the rebels. Except the contingent of his own birthplace and its neighbourhood, no part of the Duke's force seems to have come from the lands west of the Dive; all else came from the old domain of Rolf, the oldest, but, then as now, not the most Norman Normandy.2

tion of the

The field of battle lies just within the hostile country.3 DescripSouth-east of Caen, in continuation of the high ground of field of Allemagne immediately south of the town, stretches a

4

1 Roman de Rou, 8997. "La s'asemblerent li cumunes." For the list of the districts which helped William see vv. 8946 et seqq.

2 See Appendix W.

3 My account of the field and battle of Val-ès-dunes is drawn from an examination made on the spot in May, 1867. In company with Mr. J. R. Green, I went over the whole ground, Wace in hand. No modern description can do more than amplify Wace's few topographical touches (Roman de Rou, 8978 et seqq.), and his minute and spirited account of the battle. Every detail shows in how thoroughly honest and careful a spirit he set to work. On the topography, see De Caumont, Statistique Monumental du Calvados, ii. 84 et seqq., and Appendix W.

* I should greatly like to come across some explanation of this puzzling name (see De Caumont, i. 53). Nothing is more likely than a Teutonic

battle.

CHAP. VIII. long, broad, and slightly elevated plain, sloping gently towards the east.1 It hardly deserves to be called a hill, and the indentations with which its sides are broken

3

hardly deserve to be called valleys.2 Several villages and churches, Secqueville, Bellengreville, Billy, Chicheboville, form the boundaries of the field, but the plain itself is open and without any remarkable feature. A ridge somewhat higher than the rest of the ground, known as Mount Saint Lawrence, is the only conspicuous point of the plain itself, and this marks the western boundary of the actual battle-ground. The little stream of the Muance, a tributary of the Orne, bounds the plain to the south-east. To the north lies the high ground of Argences, over which William advanced with the troops of the loyal districts. The French auxiliaries, approaching from the south by way of Mezidon, first reached the little village of Valmeray, where a ruined tower of later date marks the site of the church of Saint Brice in which King Junction Henry heard mass before the battle.1 Meanwhile the Ducal and Duke's forces crossed the Muance at the ford of Berengier,5 and at once joined the French. King and Duke now ranged their troops in the order in which it was most

of the

French forces.

colony anywhere in these parts, but such a colony would hardly be called Allemannia. The name is ancient, as it occurs in William's foundation charter of Saint Stephen's. See Neustria Pia, 626. The copy there given is not very accurate, as I can witness from having (for once) examined an original manuscript.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIELD.

253

natural to meet an enemy advancing from the west. The CHAP. VIII. Normans, who had come from the north, formed the right wing, while the French, coming from the south, naturally formed the left. There was pitched the royal standard, on which we are told that the presumption of the upstart house of Paris had dared to emblazon the eagle of Julius and Charles.2 King Henry and Duke William, each baton in hand,3 were now marshalling their troops, and the battle seemed about to begin, when, if we may trust our only detailed narrative of that day's fight, one side was cheered and the other dispirited by an unlooked-for incident.

Tesson

Duke.

Ralph of Tesson was lord of the forest of Cingueleiz, the Ralph of forest some way to the south of Caen, between the rivers joins the Orne and Lise, and his chief seat was at Harcourt Thury. He was a lord of great power, and his contingent is said to have mustered no less than a hundred and twenty knights with their banners and tokens. He had no ground of offence against the Duke; yet he had joined in the conspiracy, and had sworn on the saints at Bayeux to smite William wherever he found him.5 But his heart smote him when he found himself standing face to face against his lord in open battle. His knights too pressed around him, and reminded him of his homage and plighted faith,

One might wish that another oath on the saints at Bayeux could have found

as easy and convenient fulfilment.