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CHAPTER VII.

The Norman Defences.

I.

The feudal State was essentially a military administration, controlled by men who could fight as well as collect dues or preside in a court. During the reigns of Richard and John, Normandy was put to the most severe military test in the history of the duchy, and the records reveal an organisation in which the financial and judicial arrangements which have been described in a previous chapter, fall into a secondary place. We see a strong ring fence of fortresses, supported in the interior by the magnificent castles of Falaise, Domfront, Caen, Montfort. The defences of this extended frontier were organised on definite lines: knights and serjeants took up their appointed tasks in the castles of the March, and were reinforced by mercenaries drawn in small bands from a motley reserve of Welsh, Brabançons, Gascons, even Saracens. Along the main roads between these fortresses and the chief centres of Norman government, Rouen, Lisieux, Caen, Argentan, passed stores, weapons, carpenters' material, military engines; the Seine, carefully policed by a service of bailiffs, joined Rouen to Vaudreuil or Château-Gaillard; and behind all lay the ports, Barfleur the chief, and the constant ferry across the Channel.

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1. See especially the accounts of the prepositura of Barfleur, e.g., in 1203 (Rot. Scacc., ii, 505). One of the numerous entries reads "pro passagio clericorum et servientium Regis pluries euncium in Angliam xxvij li. iiij so. per breve Regis."

Administrators, some of them full of memories of the crusade with King Richard, and great barons who had learned to fight in the school of the young Henry, joined with a crowd of rising self-seeking men, with leaders of mercenaries, and with the king's clerks, in the service of this vast machine. The machine itself was fed by loans, aids and tallages collected with increasing frequency on both sides of the Channel.

This was the stage upon which the dukes of Normandy waged war. They fought with mercenaries and a depleted feudal levy. Behind the feudal and mercenary troops the arrière-ban or host, including the communal forces of the self-governing towns, lay in reserve. The campaign

generally came to an end at the time of harvest, when an autumn truce intervened, followed, after the solemn Christmas feast, by a colloquy in January on Saint Hilary's day. If the colloquy were futile, war began again. There was little method in the fighting; it was an affair of forays and quick tussles in the open field, elaborate sieges and defence in the castles, of booty, prisoners, and hostages everywhere. We must seek in writs and chronicles for the clue to this ordered insanity, in which king takes queen, and ace takes king.'

of

The frontiers of Normandy were not natural frontiers; only at one point, where the forests of Perche and La Trappe rise in broad folds, and the boundary turns northwestwards from the Avre, could a prominent barrier be seen. In the more important districts the fortunes of war had fixed a line along a river or across a plain. Hence in times of peace there was constant intercourse between the inhabitants on either side of the frontier, and in times of war there was certain devastation. Feudal custom and local commerce paid small heed to political distinctions. Fiefs of Gournai carried Norman law into the Beauvaisis. Along the Avre the lord of Tillières in Normandy and the lord of Brézolles in the Chartrain possessed rights in each

other's domains. Important barons who lived across the border, such as the lord of Fougères and the count of Perche, held lands in England and Normandy. The Bretons came in large numbers to the famous fair of Montmartin in the Côtentin-their absence from it in time of war seriously diminished the receipts of the Norman exchequer.2 In consequence of this close intercourse special arrangements were enforced when hostilities broke out; for example, the custom of Vernon forbade the prosecution of suits of inheritance during the period of actual warfare.3 Some rules applied to the marches as a whole at all times, such as that which forbade the sale of woods without the consent of the duke or his representative.♦ The problem of the marches was, however, most serious in ecclesiastical cases. The ecclesiastical and secular frontiers did not altogether coincide. The diocese of Rouen included the French Vexin, the diocese of Séez ran into Perche. During war the churches suffered severely, and the attacks were not confined to the property of the church which lay within the political boundary. At one time, in the year 1196, the questions raised by this condition of things were so serious that the archbishop of

1. See the treaty in 1200, as quoted above, p. 252. 2. Stapleton, II, ccl, and I, lxxx.

3. See Lebeurier, Coutumes de Vernon du xiie siècle (Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes, xvi, 1855, p. 527). This French translation (14th century) of customs drawn up shortly after the cession of Vernon to France reveals other interesting traces of the connection between Vernon and the neighbouring parts of France and the Chartrain. For example, Lebeurier finds a similarity between the mayor of Vernon, who was not a communal officer, and the mayors of the villages and bourgs of the Chartrain (p. 523).

4. Très ancien Coutumier (Tardif, i, 28), c. xxxiii. The original Latin version is preserved in the Vatican MS., not known to Tardif, and reads "Nemora non vendantur in meatibus marchie, nisi assensu ducis vel ejus justitie." (Viollet, Hist. litt. de la France, xxxiii, 62.)

Rouen, in his outraged dignity, forced the two kings to combine against him as against a third power.1

1

The open nature of the march gives the Norman castles peculiar importance in history. In this chapter I will first deal briefly with the legal position of the castle, and afterwards examine the line of Norman defences and the place of the castle in war.

Reasons of state have their origin in reasons of defence; only gradually are they explained by general considerations of utility. The earliest cases of interference with the customary rights of the Norman vassal concern the power of the duke over the castle, even the castle of a vassal. The customs of the duchy, as stated in 1091, not only forbade the erection without leave of castles and elaborate earthworks; they also allowed the duke to take possession of such as existed whenever occasion made it desirable for him to do so.2

It was one thing to insist that a castle should be licensed; it was another to claim the right of entry; and we may suspect that the latter right was of recent growth and showed William's clear apprehension of the fact that, if Normandy was to be strong and united, reasons of state must override feudal privilege. As a rule the policy of the dukes lay rather in the safer plan of checking the growth of fortifications outside the ducal demesne; it is significant that in England most private castles were

1. See my article, King Philip Augustus and the Archbishop of Rouen, in the Eng. Hist. Rev., xxvii, 111 seqq.

2. Consuetudines et justicie, c. 4 (Eng. Hist. Rev., xxiii, 507). 'Nulli licuit in Normannia fossatum facere in planam terram nisi tale quod de fundo potuisset terram jactare superius sine scabello, et ibi non licuit facere palicium nisi in una regula et illud sine propugnaculis et alatoriis. Et in rupe vel in insula nulli licuit facere fortitudinem, et nulli licuit in Normannia castellum facere, et nulli licuit in Normannia fortitudinem castelli sui vetare domino Normannie si ipse eam in manu sua voluit habere."

confined to the north and west, and that in Normandy many of those of which ruins still exist do not seem to contain remains of later than the eleventh century.2

I have referred in a previous chapter to the policy adopted by the counts of Anjou. Fulk Nerra shared the expense of his numerous erections with his immediate followers, who often were able to found new families which rose to great importance.3 Although this policy led to much disorder in later reigns, the share of the count in the creation of the castles was not forgotten. The story of Château-Gontier is particularly instructive. About 1007 Fulk Nerra fortified the site and entrusted it to a vassal, who was merely a castellan in charge; after some time he began to build a large and expensive tower, but finding himself unable to complete it, he left the work to Renaud Ivon, who worked hard and finished it. We cannot suppose that Renaud had no share in the completed structure, but, adds the narrator, 'the count, wise man as he was, retained personal lordship of the tower.'

Hence Angevin custom as well as hard experience had trained the counts of Anjou to continue the work of William and Henry I in Normandy. During the years 1141-1145 Count Geoffrey took castle after castle; he first

1. According to Stenton, William the Conqueror, (1908) p. 453, only fourteen castles east of Gloucester, of those built in William's reign, were in private hands.

2. e.g., Briquessart, Le Pin, Le Plessis Grimaut, La Pommeraye, Brionne. See the lists in Enlart, Manuel d'archéologie française, I, ii, (1904), pp. 635 ff. This is not very conclusive, since so many have

entirely disappeared.

3. Above p. 36. Halphen, Essai sur l'authenticité du fragment d'historie attribué au comte d'Anjou, Foulque le Réchin, in Bibl. de la Faculté des lettres of the University of Paris, xiii, (1901), p. 22. Halphen points out that the word aedificare may refer to castles built by vassals of the alleged builder. In a list of Fulk's castles, he mentions those whose first castellans founded new families.

4. Cartulary of Saint-Aubin, quoted in Halphen, Comté d'Anjou, p. 158.

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