2 4 from their supplies of provisions.1 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; 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 3 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 whole, heavy on the other offenders. No man was put to death, though William's panegyrist holds that death was the fitting punishment for their offences.5 But in those days, both in Normandy and elsewhere, the legal execution of a state criminal was an event which seldom happened. 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. 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 8 3 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 proelium 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 66 6 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. 7 See above, pp. 127-129, and compare the whole career of Eadric. WILLIAM'S TREATMENT OF THE VANQUISHED. 175 was a sense in which William the Conqueror was not a man of blood. He would sacrifice any number of lives to his boundless ambition; he did not scruple to condemn his enemies to cruel personal mutilations;1 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 did he swerve from this rule, when he sent the noble Waltheof to the scaffold. And as that act stands out conspicuously from its contrast to his ordinary conduct, so it is the act from which it is impossible not to date the decline of his high fortune. And at the time of his first great victory, William was of an age when men are commonly disposed to be generous, nor had any of the worst features of his character as yet come to the surface. With one exception only, no very hard punishments were inflicted on the conquered rebels. The mass of the rebellious Barons paid fines, gave hostages, and had to submit to the destruction of the castles which they had raised without the ducal licence.3 To this, and to other measures of the same kind, it is owing that such small traces of the Norman castles of the eleventh century now remain. Neal of Saint Saviour had to retire for a time to Britanny, but his exile must have been short, as we find him, seemingly in the very next year, again in office and in the ducal favour. He survived his restoration forty-four years; he lived to 1 See his alleged Laws, R. Howden, ii. 218, and the remarks of Professor Stubbs, Preface, xxix, xxxii. 2 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 et hoc memoriæ prodere, quam piâ continentia cædem semper vitaverit, nisi bellicâ vi aut aliâ gravi necessitudine urgente. Exsilio, carcere, item aliâ animadversione quæ vitam non adimeret, ulcisci malebat: quos juxta ritum sive legum instituta cæteri principes gladio absumunt, bello captos vel domi criminum capitalium manifestos." The words in Italics are clearly an euphemism for mutilation, as we shall see by his conduct at Alençon. So the Abingdon Chronicler (1076), speaking of William's worst doings, tells us ; Sume hi wurdon geblende, and sume wrecen of lande, and sume getawod to scande. pus wurdon pas kyninges swican genyserade." Here is no mention 66 of capital punishment, save in the case of Waltheof only. 3 Will. Pict. 82. "Dein ad jussum ejus festinanter ac funditus destruxere munitiones novarum rerum studio constructas." Will. Gem. vii. 17. "Conspicientes itaque cuncti optimates qui deviârant a Ducis fidelitate illum omne præsidium fugæ partim destruxisse, partim interclusisse, datis obsidibus, rigida colla ei ut domino suo subdidere. Sic castellis ubique eversis, nullus ultra ausus est contra eum rebellem animum detegere." * Will. Pict. u. s. "Nigellum alio tempore [I do not understand this], quoniam improbe offensabat, exsilio punitum fuisse comperio." Wace (9311) gives the place of his exile; repay at Senlac the old wrong done by Englishmen to his father's province, but, almost alone among the great Norman chiefs, he received no share in the spoils of England. As for Guy, he presently left the country of his own free will. His sojourn at William's court must have been little else than an honourable imprisonment, and it would seem that he now found little respect or sympathy in Normandy.1 He returned to his native land, the Burgundian Palatinate, and there, we are told, spent the rest of his days in plotting against his brother, the reigning Count William.2 One criminal only was reserved for a harsher fate. Grimbald was taken to Rouen, and there kept in prison-such as prisons were in those days-and in fetters. He was looked on as the foulest traitor of all; he it was whom the Duke charged with the personal attempt on his life at Valognes.3 Grimbald confessed the crime, and named as his accomplice a knight named Salle the son of Hugh. The accused denied the charge, and challenged Grimbald to the judicial combat. Before the appointed day of battle came, Grimbald was found dead in his prison. He was buried with his fetters on his legs, his lands were confiscated, and part of them was given to the church of Bayeux. Plessis became a domain of the see, and other portions of the estates of Grimbald became the corpses of various prebends in the cathedral church.1 The power of William was now on the whole firmly established. He had still to withstand many attacks from hostile neighbours, and we shall have yet to record one more considerable revolt within the Norman territory. But the Norman Barons now knew that they had grants to the Abbey of Marmoutier which the Duke had made out of his estates in Guernsey ("insula quæ appellatur Grenesodium") during his banishment. See the charters in Delisle, Preuves, 21-25. By some evident slip of dictation or copying, Neal instead of Guy is made, in Palgrave, iii. 217, to defend himself at Brionne. He died in 1092. Delisle, p. 24. 1 Will. Pict. 82. "Guido in Burgundiam sponte rediit propter molestiam probri. Ferre apud Normannos pigebat vilem se cunctis, odiosum esse multis." 2 Will. Pict. 82; Will. Malms. iii. 230. Mr. Thomas Roscoe, on the other hand (History of William the Conqueror, p. 61), tells us that" at a subsequent period he highly distinguished himself in the service of the duke, and headed a large body of veteran troops at the famous battle of Hastings." 4 Ib. 9362; "A Baieues fu lors otréiée, Quant l'iglise fu dediée, Mise à chescun en l'abéie." See Pluquet and Taylor's notes. The "abéie "must mean the cathedral church, but it was a great sacrifice to the rime for one of its canons to speak of it as an abbey. The grant of Plessis and other possessions "Grimoldi perfidi to Odo and his successors in the see of Bayeux will be found in Gallia Christiana, xi. 64. EFFECTS OF THE REBELLION. 177 a master.1 For some years to come, internal discord, strictly so called, underwent a sort of lull to a degree most remarkable in such an age. Under the firm and equal government of her great Duke, Normandy began to recover from her years of anarchy, and to rise to a higher degree of prosperity than she had ever yet attained to.2 The Duchy became, more completely than it had ever been before, a member of the Capetian and of the European commonwealth. The Capetian King indeed soon learned again to look with a grudging eye on his northern neighbour; but the general result of the struggle must have been to make Normandy still more French than it was before. The French and the Scandinavian elements had met face to face, and the French element had had the upper hand. Frenchmen and French Normans had overthrown the stout Saxons of the Bessin and the fierce Danes of the Côtentin. The distinction between the two parts of Normandy is still one which even the passing traveller may remark; but, from the day of Val-ès-dunes, it ceased to show itself in the great outward expressions of language and political feeling. The struggle which began during the minority of Richard the Fearless was now finally decided at the close of the minority of William the Bastard. The Count of Rouen had overcome Saxons and Danes within his own dominions, and he was about to weld them into his most trustworthy weapons wherewith to overcome Saxons and Danes beyond the sea. The omen of the fight against Neal and Hamon might well have recurred to the mind of William, when Neal himself and the son of Hamon marched forth at his side from the camp at Hastings, and went on to complete the conquest of England at Exeter and York. § 3. From the Battle of Val-ès-dunes to William's Visit to William was thus at peace at home; his next war was indeed one of his own seeking, but it was one from which he could not have shrunk without breaking through every tie alike of gratitude and of feudal duty. This is the first time that I have had directly to mention a power, which had been, for more than a hundred years, steadily growing up to the south of Normandy, and which was to exercise a most important influence on the future history of Normandy and, 1 Will. Pict. 82. "Normanni superati semel universi colla subdidere domino suo, atque obsides dedere plurimi." 2 Ib. 113. "Ejus animadversione et legibus e Normanniâ sunt exterminati latrones, homicidæ, malefici. Caussam viduæ, inopis, pupilli, ipse humiliter VOL. II. N audiebat, misericorditer agebat, rectissime definiebat. Ejus æquitate reprimente iniquam cupiditatem vicini minus valentis aut limitem agri movere aut rem ullam usurpare, nec potens audebat quisquam nec familiaris. Villæ, castra, urbes, jura per eum habebant stabilia et bona." through Normandy, on that of England. I mean the dynasty of the Counts of Anjou. That house, the house which mounted the throne of England in the person of a great-grandson of William, produced a succession of princes to whose personal qualities it must mainly have been owing that their dominions fill the place which they do fill in French and in European history. Anjou holds a peculiar position among the great fiefs of France. It was a singular destiny which gave so marked a character, and so conspicuous a history, to a country which seems in no way marked out for separate existence by any geographical or national distinction. Normandy, Britanny, Flanders, Aquitaine, Ducal Burgundy, all had a being of their own; they were fiefs of the Crown of France, but they were in no sense French provinces. But Anjou was at most an outpost on the Loire, a border district of France and Aquitaine; beyond this position it had nothing specially to distinguish it from any other part of the great Parisian Duchy. A momentary Saxon occupation in the fifth century cannot be supposed to have left behind it any such abiding traces as were certainly left by the settlement of the same people at Bayeux, perhaps even by their less famous settlement at Seez. It was wholly to the energy and the marked character of its individual rulers that Anjou owed its distinct and prominent place among the principalities of Gaul. The restless spirit of the race showed itself sometimes for good and sometimes for evil, but there was no Count of Anjou who could be called a fool, a coward, or a fainéant. The history or legends of the family which was to rise to such greatness laid claim to no very remote or illustrious pedigree. The first Count of Anjou, who held a part only of the later County, was invested with that 1 The dependence of Anjou on the Duchy of France is acknowledged in a charter of Geoffrey Grisegonelle quoted in the Art de Vérifier les Dates, ii. 833. He calls himself "Gratiâ Dei, et Senioris Hugonis largitione, Andegavensis Comes." Anjou seems to have been a possession of Robert the Strong before he received Paris. See Chron. S. Ben. Div. ap. . D'Achery, ii. 377. 2 On the Saxon occupation of Anjou, see Greg. Tur. ii. 18; Hist. Franc. Epit. I, 2. 2 D'Achery's Spicilegium, iii. 234. It is introduced by a most curious fragment, namely a short Angevin history written or dictated by Count Fulk, nephew and successor of Geoffrey Martel. A lay historian is a phænomenon which we have not come across since the time of our own Ethelweard, and it is not to be denied that the Count shows much sounder sense, and a much nearer approach to historical criticism, than the monastic writer. He had at least one advantage in his princely rank, that he had nothing to gain by flattering 3 On the Saxons of Seez, the Saxones his own forefathers. Diablintes, see Stapleton, i. xliii. The history of the Counts of Anjou is given at length, but mixed up with much legendary matter in the early parts, in the "Gesta Consulum Andegavensium," written by a monk of Marmoutier in the time of Henry the Second, and printed in Gest. Cons. 235. "Datus est ei et dimidius comitatus Andegavis civitatis ad defendendam regionem et urbem, sævisque prædonibus oppositus est, et Comes ibi factus." So in the fuller account in p. 239, which adds, "quia ultra Meduanam in Andegavo alter Comes habebatur." |