Part 8

It is hard to keep the fortunes of all these races and kingdoms clear in our minds. We cannot help thinking of England, and looking at all this early history of the Normans and their growth in relation to it. Then we must keep track of the Danes and Northmen, who have by no means outgrown their old traits and manners, though their cousins in Normandy have given up privateering and the long ships. The history of France makes a sort of background for Normandy and England both.

These marriages of which I have just told you greatly increased the magnificence and the power of the Norman duchy and widened the territory in every way. The Norman dukes could claim the right to interfere in the affairs of those states to which they were allied, and they improved their opportunities. But the most important of all the alliances has not been spoken of at all—the marriage of Richard the Fearless' daughter Emma to Æthelred the Unready of England.

Æthelred himself was the black sheep of his illustrious family—a long line of noble men they were for the most part. In that age much of the character of a nation's history depended upon its monarch, and it is almost impossible to tell the fortunes of a country except by giving the biographies [Pg103] of the reigning king. This Æthelred seems to have had energy enough, but he began many enterprises and never ended them, and wasted a great deal of strength on long, needless expeditions, and does not appear to have made effective resistance to the enemies who came knocking at the very gates of England. He had no tact and little bravery, and was given to putting his trust in unworthy and treacherous followers. Æthelred was the descendant of good King Ælfred and his noble successors, but his own kingdom was ready to fall to pieces before he reigned over it very long, and his reign of thirty-eight years came near to being the ruin of England. There were two or three men who helped him in the evil work, who were greater traitors at heart than Æthelred himself, and we can hardly understand why they were restored to favor after their treason and selfishness were discovered. As one historian says, if we could only have a few of the private letters, of which we have such abundance two or three centuries later, they would be the key to many difficulties.

The Danes were nibbling at the shores of England as rats would gnaw at a biscuit. They grew more and more troublesome. Over in Normandy, Richard the Good was treating these same Danes like friends, and allowing them to come into his harbors to trade with the Norman merchants. In the Côtentin country they found a people much like themselves, preserving many old traditions, and something of the northern speech. The Côtentin lands were poor and rocky, but the hills were crowded [Pg104] with castles, well armed and well fortified, and the men were brave soldiers and sailors, true descendants of the old vikings. They sought their fortunes on the sea too, and we can trace the names of these Côtentin barons and their followers through the army of William the Conqueror to other castles in the broad English lands that were won in less than a hundred years from Æthelred's time. Very likely some of these Côtentin Normans were in league with the northern Danes who made their head-quarters on the Norman shores, and went plundering across the Channel. Soon Æthelred grew very angry, which was to be expected, and he gathered his fleets at Portsmouth, and announced that he should bring Duke Richard back a captive in chains, and waste the whole offending country with fire, except the holy St. Michael's Mount.

The fleet obeyed Æthelred's foolish orders, and went ashore at the mouth of the river Barfleur, only to find the Normans assembled from the whole surrounding country—not a trained army by any means, but an enraged peasantry, men and women alike, armed with shepherds' crooks, and reaping-hooks and flails, and in that bloody battle of Sanglac, they completely routed the English. All the invaders who escaped crowded into six of their vessels and abandoned the rest, and hurried away as fast as they could go. This was a strong link in the chain that by and by would be long enough to hold England fast, and put her at the mercy of the Normans altogether. There was peace made before very long, though the Normans considered themselves [Pg105] to have been grievously insulted, and laughed at the English for being so well whipped. Perpetual peace, the contract unwisely promises, and the pope interfered between the combatants, to prevent the shedding of innocent blood. After the promises were formally made, Æthelred tried to make the alliance even closer. He had children already—one, the gallant Eadmund Ironside, who might have saved the tottering kingdom if he had only held the authority which was thrown away in his father's hands. The name of Æthelred's first queen has been lost, but she was "a noble lady, the daughter of Thored, an Ealdorman," and had been some time dead, so with great diplomacy King Æthelred the Unready, "by the grace of God Basileus of Albion, King and Monarch of all the British Nations, of the Orkneys and the surrounding Islands," as he liked to sign himself, came wooing to Normandy. Emma, the duke's sister, married him and went to England.

Æthelred gave her a splendid wedding-present of [Pg106] wide domains in the counties of Devon and Hants, part of which held the cathedral cities of Winchester and Exeter, the pride and defence of Southern Britain. Queen Emma gave the governorship of Exeter to her chief adviser and officer, Hugh the Norman, and her new subjects called her the Gem of Normandy, and treated her with great deference. She had the beauty of her race and of Rolf's descendants, and her name was changed to Ælfgifu, because this sounded more familiar to the English ears. At least that is the explanation which has come down to us.

Things were in a very bad way in England—the Anglo-Saxon rule of that time was founded upon fraud and violence, and the heavy misfortunes which assailed the English made them fear worse troubles later on. The wisest among them tried to warn their countrymen, but the warnings were apparently of little use. The make-believe rejoicings at Queen Emma's coming were quickly over with, and soon we hear of her flight to Normandy. Many reasons were given for this ominous act. Some say that Æthelred disgusted her by his drunkenness and lawlessness, and others that Hugh the Norman was treacherous, and betrayed his trust to the Danes, and that the queen was a partner in the business. There is still another story, that Æthelred was guilty of a shocking massacre, and that Emma fled in the horror and confusion that it made. Yet later she returned to England as the queen of Cnut the Dane.

Now we must change from England to France altogether for a few pages, and see how steadily the [Pg107] power of the Normans was growing, and how widely it made itself felt. We must see Richard the Good as the ally of France in the warfare waged by King Robert against Burgundy, which was the most important event of Robert's reign. Old Hugh of Paris had carefully avoided any confusion between the rights of Burgundy and the rights of France when he established the foundation of his kingdom. He was a wise politician, and understood that it would not do to conflict with such a power as Burgundy's, which held the Low Countries, Spain, and Portugal and Italy within its influence. Since his day Burgundy had been divided, but it was still distinguished for its great piety and the number of its religious institutions. Robert's uncle was Duke of Burgundy, and he was a very old man; so Robert himself had high hopes of becoming his successor. His chief rival was the representative of the Lombard kings in Italy—Otho William, who was son of Adalbert, a pirate who had wandered beyond the Alps, and Gerberga, the Count of Chalons' daughter. After Adalbert died Gerberga married old Duke Henry of Burgundy, and prevailed upon him to declare her son as his successor. This was illegal, but Otho William was much admired and beloved, and the great part of the Burgundians upheld his right.

Behold, then, Richard the Good and his Norman soldiery marching away to the wars! Duke Henry was dead, and King Robert made haste to summon his ally. Thirty thousand men were mustered under the Norman banner, and the black raven of war went slowly inland. What an enterprise it was to transport [Pg108] such a body of men and horses across country! Supplies could not be hurried from point to point as readily as in after-times, and the country itself must necessarily be almost devastated as if a swarm of locusts had crept through it. Normandy was overflowing with a military population anxious for something to do, with a lingering love for piracy and plundering. They made a swift journey, and Richard and his men were at the gates of the city of Auxerre almost as soon as the venerable duke was in his grave.

There was a tremendous siege; Robert's rival had won the people's hearts, and in the natural strongholds of the mountain slopes they defended themselves successfully. Besides this brave opposition of the Burgundians, the Normans were fought against in a more subtle way by strange phenomena in the heavens. A fiery dragon shot across the sky, and a thick fog and darkness overspread the face of the earth. Auxerre was shrouded in night, and the Norman archers could not see to shoot their arrows. Before long the leagued armies raised the siege of the border city and marched on farther into the country up among the bleak, rocky hills. Only one of the Burgundian nobles—Hugh, Count of Chalons and Bishop of Auxerre—was loyal to the cause of King Robert of France. Presently we shall see him again under very surprising circumstances for a count, not to speak of a bishop! The country was thoroughly ravaged, but some time passed before it was finally conquered. At last there was a compromise, and Robert's son was elected duke. His [Pg109] descendants gave France a vast amount of trouble in later years, and so Burgundy revenged herself and Otho William's lost cause.

Richard of Normandy had kept his army well drilled in this long Burgundian campaign, but before his reign was over he had another war to fight with the Count of Dreux. The lands of Dreux were originally in the grant made to Rolf, but later they were held by a line of counts, whose last representative disappeared in Richard the Fearless' reign. We find the country in Richard's possession without any record of war, so it had probably fallen to the crown by right. There was a great Roman road through the territory like the Watling Street that ran from Dover to Chester through England, and this was well defended as the old Roman roads always were. Chartres was joined to Dreux by this road, and Chartres was not at peace with Normandy. So a new fort and a town sprung up on the banks of the river to keep Chartres in check: Tillières, or the Tileries, which we might call the ancestor of the famous Tuileries of modern Paris.

There were several fierce battles, and sometimes gaining and sometimes losing, the Normans found themselves presently in a hard place. We are rather startled to hear of the appearance of king Olaf of Norway and the king of the Swedes as Richard's allies. The French people had not wholly outgrown their hatred—or fear and distrust either—of the pirates, and when the news came that bands of Northmen were landing in Brittany there was a wild excitement. Richard and the Chartres chieftain were making [Pg110] altogether too much of their quarrel, and King Robert, as preserver of the public peace, was obliged to interfere. After this episode everybody was more afraid of Normandy than ever, and Chartres was the gainer by the town of Dreux, with its forest and castle, that being the king's award. We cannot help wondering why Richard was persuaded to yield so easily, with all his Northmen eager enough to fight—but they disappear for the time being, and many stories were told of their treacherous warfare in Brittany; of the pitfalls covered with branches into which they tempted their mounted enemies on the battle-field of Dôl. All this seems to have been a little private diversion on their way to the Norman capital, where they were bidden for the business with Chartres.

Then there was a fight with the bishopric of Chalons, which interests us chiefly because Richard's son and namesake first makes his appearance. Renaud, the son of Otho William, who had lost the dukedom of Burgundy, had married a Norman damsel belonging to the royal family of Rolf. This Renaud was defeated and captured by the Count-Bishop of Chalons, of whom we know something already. He was loyal to King Robert of France, you remember, in the war with Burgundy, and now he treated Renaud with terrible severity, and had broken his vows, moreover, by getting married.

King Robert gave the Normans permission to march through his dominions, and seems to have turned his back upon the Count-Bishop. There was a succession of sieges, and the army burned and [Pg111] destroyed on every side as it went through Burgundy, and finally made great havoc in one of the chief towns, called Mirmande in the chronicles, though no Mirmande can be heard of now in that part of the world, and perhaps the angry Normans determined to leave no trace of it for antiquarians and geographers to discover. The Count-Bishop flees for his life to Chalons, and when he was assailed there, he was so frightened that he put an old saddle on his back and came out of the city gates in that fashion to beg for mercy. The merry historian who describes this scene adds that he offered Richard a ride and that he rolled on the ground at the young duke's feet in complete humiliation. One might reasonably say that the count made a donkey of himself in good earnest, and that his count's helmet and his priestly, shaven crown did not go very well together.

The third Richard covered himself with glory in this campaign, however, and went back to Normandy triumphant, to give his old father great pleasure by his valor. But Richard the Good was very feeble now, and knew that he was going to die; so, like Richard the Fearless, he went to Fécamp to spend his last days.

When he had confessed to the bishops, he called for his faithful barons, and made his will. Richard was to be his successor, and his courage and honesty deserved it; but the old father appears to have had a presentiment that all would not go well, for he begged the barons to be loyal to the good youth. Robert, the second son, fell heir to the county of Exmes, upon the condition that he should be faithful [Pg112] to his brother. There was another son, Mauger, a bad fellow, who had no friends or reputation, even at that early day. He was a monk, and a very low-minded one; but later he appears, to our astonishment, as Archbishop of Rouen. No mention is made of his receiving any gift from his father; and soon Richard the Good died and was buried in the Fécamp Abbey. In after years the bones of Richard the Fearless were taken from the sarcophagus outside the abbey door, and father and son were laid in a new tomb near the high altar.

All this early history of Normandy is told mainly by two men, the saga-writers of their time—William of Jumiéges, who wrote in the lifetime of William the Conqueror, and Master Wace, of Caen, who was born on the island of Jersey, between thirty and forty years after the conquest of England. His "Roman de Rou" is most spirited and interesting, but, naturally, the earlier part of it is not always reliable. Both the chroniclers meant to tell the truth, but writing at a later date for the glory of Normandy, and in such a credulous age, we must forgive them their inaccuracies.

They have a great deal more to say about Richard the Good than about his two sons, Richard and Robert. Richard was acknowledged as duke by all the barons after his father's death, and then went in state to Paris to do homage to King Robert. This we learn from the records of his contract of marriage with the king's daughter, Lady Adela, who was a baby in her cradle, and the copy of the settlements is preserved, or, at least, the account of the dowry [Pg113] which Richard promised. This was the /seigneurie/ of the whole Côtentin country, and several other baronies and communes; Cherbourg and Bruot and Caen, and many cities and lands besides. Poor little Lady Adela! and poor young husband, too, for that matter; for this was quite a heartless affair of state, and neither of them was to be any happier for all their great possessions.

In the meantime Robert, the Duke's brother, was not in the least satisfied, and made an outcry because, though he was lord of the beautiful county of Exmes, the city of Falaise was withheld from him. There was a man from Brittany who urged him to resent his wrongs, and made trouble between the brothers; Ermenoldus he was called, /the theosophist/; and there is a great mystery about him which the old writers stop to wonder over. He was evidently a sort of magician, and those records that can be discovered give rise to a suspicion that he had strayed far eastward with some pirate fleet toward Asia, and had learned there to work wonders and to compass his ends by uncanny means.

There was a siege of Falaise, which Robert seized and tried to keep by main strength; but Richard's army was too much for him, and at last he sued for peace. The brothers went back to Rouen apparently the best of friends; but there was a grand banquet in Rolf's old castle, and Richard was suddenly death-struck as he sat at the head of the feast, and was carried to his bed, where he quickly breathed his last. The funeral bell began to toll while the banquet still went on, and the barons made themselves merry in the old hall. [Pg114]

There was great lamentation, for Richard was already much beloved, and nobody doubted that he had been poisoned. So Robert came to the throne of Normandy with a black stain upon his character, and during all the rest of his life that stain was not overlooked nor forgotten.

As for the baby-widow, she afterward became the wife of the Count of Flanders, Baldwin de Lisle, and she was the mother of Matilda, who was the wife of William the Conqueror.

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VI.

ROBERT THE MAGNIFICENT.

"What exile from himself can flee?"—BYRON.

Before we begin the story of the next Duke of Normandy whose two surnames, the Devil, and the Magnificent, give us a broad hint of his character, we must take a look at the progress of affairs in the dukedom. There is one thing to be remembered in reading this history, or any other, that history is not merely the story of this monarch or that, however well he may represent the age in which he lived and signify its limitations and development.

In Normandy one cannot help seeing that a power has been at work bringing a new Northern element into the country, and that there has been a great growth in every way since Rolf came with his vikings and besieged the city of Jumièges. Now the dukedom that he formed is one of the foremost of its day, able to stand on equal ground with the royal kingdom and duchy of France, for Robert's homage is only the homage of equals and allies. Normandy is the peer of Burgundy and of Flanders, and every day increases in strength, in [Pg116] ambition, in scholarship and wealth. The influence and /prestige/ of the dukedom are recognized everywhere, and soon the soldiers of Normandy are going to take hold of English affairs and master them with unequalled strength. Chivalry is in the bloom of its youth, and the merchants of Falaise, and Rouen, and their sister cities, are rich and luxurious. The women are skilled in needlework and are famous for their beauty and intelligence. Everywhere there are new castles and churches, and the land swarms with inhabitants who hardly find room enough, while the great army hardly draws away the overplus of men from the farms and workshops. There are whole districts like the Côtentin peninsula, that are nearly ready to pour out their population into some new country, like bees when they swarm in early summer, and neither the fashion of going on pilgrimage to the holy shrines, nor the spirit that leads to any warlike adventure, are equal to the need for a new conquest of territory, and a general emigration.

There are higher standards everywhere in law and morals and customs of home-life. The nobles are very proud and keep up a certain amount of state in their high stone castles. In the Côtentin alone the ruins of more than a hundred of these can yet be seen, and all over Normandy and Brittany are relics of that busy, prosperous time. The whole territory is like a young man who has reached his majority, and who feels a strength and health and ambition that make him restless, and make him believe himself capable of great things.

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From followers of the black ravens and worshippers of the god Thor, the Normans have become Christians and devout followers of the Church of Rome. They go on pilgrimage to distant shrines and build churches that the world may well wonder at to-day and try to copy. They have great houses for monks and nuns, and crowds of priests and scholars, and it would not be easy to find worshippers of the old faith unless among old people and in secluded neighborhoods. There is little left of the old Northman's fashions of life but his spirit is as vigorous as ever, and his courage, and recklessness, his love of a fight and hatred of cowardice, his beauty and shapeliness, are sent down from generation to generation, a surer inheritance than lands or money. We grow eager, ourselves, to see what will come of this leaven of daring and pride of strength. There is no such thing for Normandy now, as tranquillity.

Duke Robert's story is chiefly interesting to us because he was the father of William the Conqueror, and in most of the accounts of that time it is hard to find any thing except various versions of his course toward his more famous son. But in reality he was a very gifted and powerful man, and strange to say, the conquest of England was only the carrying out of a plan that was made by Duke Robert himself.