VICTORY OF WILLIAM.

259

Randolf

The fortune of the day was now distinctly turning CHAP. VIII. against the rebels; but had all of them displayed equal loses heart courage, the issue of the struggle might still have been and flees. unfavourable to King and Duke. Neal of Saint Saviour still fought among the foremost of the men of his peninsula, but the heart of his accomplice from Bayeux began to fail him. Randolf had seen his most cherished vassal fall by the hand of his young sovereign; his heart quailed lest the like fate should be his own; he feared lest Neal had fled; he feared that he was betrayed to the enemy; he repented that he had ever put on his helmet; it was sad to be taken captive, it was a still worse doom to be slain. The battle ceased to give him any pleasure; 1 he gave way before every charge; he wandered in front and in rear; at last he lost heart altogether; he dropped his lance and his shield, he stretched forth his neck,2 and rode for his life. The cowards, we are told, followed him; but Neal conNeal still kept up the fight, giving and taking blows till his fight to the strength failed him. The French pressed upon him; their last. numbers increased, the numbers of the Norman lessened; some of his followers had fled, others lay dead and dying around him. At last the mighty lord of the Côtentin saw that all hope was lost. On the rising ground of Saint Lawrence the last blow seems to have been struck. The spot was afterwards marked by a commemorative chapel,

These are spirited lines; so is the whole description of the battle; yet how feebly does the Romance of Gaul, even in this its earliest and most vigorous shape, sound beside the native ring of the Ludwigslied and the Song of Maldon.

1 Roman de Rou, 9249. "La bataille mult li desplait."

I assume that this means something more than mere sorrow at ill success; it seems to imply the loss of the "certaminis gaudia," which he had doubtless enjoyed in the opening charge of the battle. Through the whole of this paragraph I do little more than translate the lifelike description of Wace.

tinues the

CHAP. VIII. which was destroyed by the Huguenots in the religious wars. On its site it doubtless was that the valiant Neal at last turned and left the field, seemingly the last man of the whole rebel army.

Rout of the rebels.

Complete

ness of the

The rout now became general. The example of Randolf drew after it far more followers than the example of Neal. The rebels rode for their lives in small parties, the troops of the King and the Duke following hard upon them, and smiting them from the rear. From the ridge of Saint Lawrence they rode westward, to reach the friendly land of Bayeux; they rode by the Abbey of Fontenay and the quarries of Allemagne; but the flood of the Orne checked their course; men and horses were swept away by the stream, or were slaughtered by the pursuers in the attempt to cross; the mills of Borbillon, we are told, were stopped by the dead bodies.2

The victory was a decisive one, and it was one which victory. proved no less decisive in its lasting results than it had The French been as a mere success on the field of battle. King Henry return. had done his work well and faithfully; he now went

auxiliaries

back to his own land, and left William to complete the reduction of his revolted subjects. One of them, the original author of the plot, still offered a long and vigorous resistance. Of the conduct of Guy of Burgundy in the field we hear nothing, except an incidental mention of a wound which he received there.3 Indeed, since the

1 Roman de Rou, 9288. "En Béessin volent torner."

"Rex cum

2 Ib. 9295-8. In most of our accounts the Orne plays an important part in the destruction of the rebels. Will. Pict. 81. "Absorbuit non paucos fluvius Olna equites cum equis." Will. Gem. vii. 17. Duce. tantâ eos illico strage delevit, ut quos gladius non extinxit, Deo formidinem inferente, fugientes fluvius Olnæ absorberet." Will. Malms. iii. 230. "Multi fluminis Olna rapacitate intercepti, quod, in arcto locati, equos ad transvadandos vortices instimularent."

3 Ord. Vit. 657 B. "Guidonem vulneratum et de bello fugâ elapsum."

2

SIEGE OF BRIONNE.

261.

appearance of his three great Norman adherents, the CHAP. VIII. Burgundian prince has nearly dropped out of sight.1 He Escape of Guy. now reappears, to receive from the Norman writers a vast out-pouring of scorn on account of his flight from the field, though it does not appear to have been in any way more shameful than the flight of the mass of his Norman allies. At any rate he was not borne away in the reckless rush of his comrades towards the Orne. He escaped, with a large body of companions,3 in quite the opposite direction, to his own castle of Brionne on the Risle. There he took up a position of defence, and was He defends speedily followed and besieged by Duke William. The Brionne. castle of Brionne of those days was not the hill-fortress, the shell of a donjon of that or of the next age, which now looks down upon the town and valley beneath. The stronghold of Count Guy had natural defences, but they were defences of another kind. The town itself seems to have been strongly fortified; but the point of defence which was most relied on at Brionne was the fortified hall of stone which stood on an island in the river. William had once brought his own native Falaise to yield to one vigorous assault; but at Brionne, though we are expressly told

1 The only writer, I think, who introduces Guy personally in his account of the war is William of Malmesbury (iii. 230); "Cum his per totam Normanniam grassabatur prædo improbissimus, inani spe ad comitatum illectus."

E prælio lapsus," says William of Jumièges; "vix elapsus," according to William of Malmesbury; while, in William of Poitiers, it rises turpissime elapsus."

to "

3 "Cum magno equitatu," says William of Poitiers (81).

• The description given by William of Poitiers (u.s.) is remarkable; "Brionium. . contendit. Oppidum hoc, quum loci naturâ, tum opere inexpugnabile videbatur. Nam, præter alia firmamenta, quæ moliri consuevit belli necessitudo, aulam habet lapideam arcis usum pugnantibus præbentem, quam fluvius Risela nullo quidem tractu vadi impatiens circumfluit." This seems to show that the town had fortifications of its own; and this again suggests the question, what was the state of the point overhanging the town where the present castle stands? See Appendix S. 5 See above, p. 204.

himself at

1047-10501

1

CHAP. VIII. that the stream was everywhere fordable, the island fortress seems to have been deemed proof against any attacks Siege of of this kind. A regular siege alone could reduce it, and Brionne. William was driven to practise all the devices of the military art of his day against his rebellious cousin. He built a castle, this time doubtless of wood, on each side of the river, and thus cut off the besieged from their supplies of provisions. Constant assaults on the beleaguered hall are spoken of, but their aim seems to have been mainly to frighten the besieged rather than to produce any more practical effect;2 hunger was the sure and slow means on which William relied to bring Guy to reason. The siege was clearly a long one, though it is hardly possible to believe, on the incidental statement of a single authority, that it was spread over a space of three years.3 Surrender At last the endurance of Guy and his companions gave way, and he sent messengers praying for mercy. The Duke required the surrender of the castle; but touched, we are told, by the tie of kindred blood, he bade Guy remain in his court. Nor was the Duke's hand, on the

of Brionne.

1 Will. Pict. 81. "Castella utrimque ad ripas fluminis bipartiti opponens." So Will. Gem. "Stabilitis munitionibus in utrâque parte fluminis vocabulo Risle." 2 Will. Pict. 81. "Oppugnatione diurnâ territans.” $ William of Poitiers merely says "postremo." Orderic (687 B), in describing the speedy capture of Brionne by Duke Robert in 1090, says, "Sic Robertus Dux ab horâ nonâ Brionnam ante solis occasum obtinuit, quam Guillelmus pater ejus, cum auxilio Henrici Francorum Regis, sibi vix in tribus annis subigere potuit, dum Guido filius Rainaldi Burgundionis post prælium Vallisdunensis illic præsidium sibi statuit." But there is nothing in any other writer to imply that Guy held out for any such length of time, and it seems quite inconsistent with the account of William of Jumièges. Moreover it is clear that Henry took no part in the siege; "Quem [Guidonem] Dux, Rege Franciam repetente, propere insequutus," &c. (Will. Gem. vii. 17.)

+ Will. Pict. u. s. "Motus Dux consanguinitate, supplicitate, miseriâ victi, non acerbius vindicavit. Recepto castro, in curiâ suâ commanere eum concessit." So Will. Gem. u. s. "Dux, suorum consultu, miseria misertus, clementer illi pepercit, et, recepto castello Brioci, cum suis domesticis eum manere in domo suâ jussit."

WILLIAM'S TREATMENT OF THE VANQUISHED.

1

4

263

Rarity of

executions.

whole, heavy on the other offenders. No man was put CHAP. VIII. to death, though William's panegyrist holds that death William's clemency was the fitting punishment for their offences. But in to the vanquished. those days, both in Normandy and elsewhere, the legal execution of a state criminal was an event which seldom political happened.2 Men's lives were recklessly wasted in the endless warfare of the times, and there were men, as we have seen, who did not shrink from private murder, even in its basest form.3 But the formal hanging or beheading of a noble prisoner, so common in later times, was, in the eleventh century, a most unusual sight. And, strange as it may sound, there was a sense in which William the Conqueror was not a man of blood. He William's would sacrifice any number of lives to his boundless ambi- treatment tion; he did not scruple to condemn his enemies to cruel personal mutilations; he would keep men for years, as a mere measure of security, in the horrible prison-houses of those days; but the extinction of human life in cold blood was something from which he shrank. His biographer exultingly points out this feature in his character, and his recorded acts do not belie his praise. Once only

1 Will. Pict. 81. "Supplicia item consociis, quæ capitalia ex æquo irrogarentur, condonare maluit ob rationabiles caussas.' This distinct statement cannot be shaken by the vastly inferior authority of Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. p. 759 C), who says, “Quosdam exsulavit, quosdam corpore minuit."

2 As for our English practice in this matter, it is enough to say that not a drop of English blood was shed by the executioner during all the civil disturbances of the reign of Eadward. Under William, Waltheof is made by Orderic (535 A) to say, 'Anglica lex capitis obtruncatione traditorem mulctat." If so, the Law had taken a sleep of sixty years when it was revived in his own case.

3 See above, pp. 190-195, and compare the whole career of Eadric.

* Compare the remarks of Palgrave, iii. 78.

5 See his alleged Laws, R. Howden, ii. 218, and the remarks of Professor Stubbs, Preface, xxix, xxxii.

• William of Poitiers, speaking of a somewhat later stage of his life, has the words (p. 93), "More suo illo optimo, rem optans absque cruore confectum iri ;" and he continues at length (94); “Monet equidem digna ratio

ordinary

of enemies.