Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine

by Edward A. Freeman

Limay Church, Tower, S.E.

So much for the spot, beyond the limits of his own Duchy, where William, in the words of our Chronicles, "did a rueful thing, and more ruefully it him befel." Of the points within Normandy which his name invests with their main interest, we have already spoken of his birthplace at Falaise—where the brutal work of "restoration," i.e. of scraping and destroying, is still going on in full force—of the field of his early victory at Val-ès-dunes, and of the victory won for him by others at Mortemer. We may, however, suggest that any one who visits Val-ès-dunes, will not do amiss if he extends his ramble as far as the churches of Cintheaux and Quilly. Cintheaux is one of the best of the small but rich twelfth-century churches which are so common in the district. And its worthy curé, the historian of Val-ès-dunes, is doing his best to bring it back to its former state, without subjecting it, like Falaise or like one of the spires of Saint Stephen's, to the cruel martyrdom of the apostle Bartholomew. Quilly is more remarkable still, as possessing a tower containing marked vestiges of that earlier Romanesque style of which Normandy contains so much fewer examples than either England or Aquitaine. Cintheaux=Centella, has also a certain historic interest in the generation after William. There, in 1105, King Henry and Duke Robert, "duo germani fratres," had a conference. We forget who it was who translated "duo germani fratres" by "two German brothers," and went on to rule that the Henry spoken of must have been the Emperor Henry the Fourth, and to remark that the conference happened not very long before his death. Cintheaux, however, has carried us from the age of William into the age of his sons, and we must retrace our steps somewhat. The sites connected with William himself will easily fall into three classes—those which belong to his wars with France and Anjou, those which figure in the Breton campaign which he waged in company with Earl Harold, and those which have a direct bearing on the Conquest of England. The second class we may easily dispose of. Of Dol and Dinan we have said somewhat already, and Dinan especially is a place familiar to many Englishmen. But we may remark that, though Dinan contains few remains of any great antiquity, few places better preserve the general effect of an ancient town. It still rises grandly above the river, spanned both by the lowly ancient bridge and the gigantic modern viaduct; the walls are nearly perfect, and houses, partly through the necessities of the site, have not spread themselves at all largely beyond them. We may add that the good sense of the inhabitants has found out a way to make excellent boulevards without sacrificing the walls to their creation. Rennes, the furthest point reached by the two comrades so soon to become enemies, is now wholly a modern city. Saint Michael's Mount has become a popular lion, which can only be seen under the vexatious companionship of a guide and a "party." It is therefore impossible to study the interior with much comfort or profit. Yet one has still time to wonder at the strange effect produced by crowding the buildings of a great monastery on the top of the rock, an effect which reaches its highest point when we go up a staircase and find ourselves landed in a cloister of singular beauty. But the rock and the buildings—nowhere better seen than from the Mount of Dol—are still there, a most striking object from every point of the landscape, Saint Michael "in peril of the sea" seeming to watch over the bay which bears his name, as from his height at Glastonbury he seems to watch over the flats and the hills peopled with the names alike of British and of West-Saxon heroes. And the vast expanse of sand brings vividly before us the scene in the Tapestry where the giant strength of the English Earl is shown lifting with ease the soldiers who found themselves engulfed in the treacherous stream.

Domfront Castle

The wars of William with Geoffrey of Anjou and Henry of Paris introduce us to several points, striking in the way both of nature and of art. Few among them surpass Domfront, William's first conquest beyond the bounds of his own Duchy, the fortress which he won by the mere terror of his name after the fearful vengeance which he had inflicted on the rebels of Alençon.[17] The spot reminds one in some degree of his own birthplace at Falaise. That is to say, the castle crowns one rocky hill, and looks out on another, still wilder and more rugged, with a pass between them, through which runs the stream of the Varenne, a tributary of the Mayenne, as that is in its turn of the Loire. But the position of the two towns is different. Though the castle of Falaise occupies so commanding a site, the town itself is anything but one of the hill-towns, while Domfront is one of the best of the class. Not that it is the least likely to be an ancient hill-fort, like Chartres, Le Mans, or Angers; both Falaise and Domfront are, beyond all doubt, towns which have gathered round their respective castles in comparatively modern times. Both, there can be no doubt, date, in their very beginnings, from a time later than the Norman settlement. Still Domfront is practically a hill-town; the walls simply fence in the top of the height, and the town, never having reached any great size, has not yet spread itself to the bottom. A more picturesque site can hardly be found. Of the castle, the chief remnant is a shattered fragment of the keep, most likely the very fortress which surrendered to William's youthful energy.[18] As for churches, the only one within the walls is worthless, but the church of Notre-Dame at the foot of the hill is one of the best and purest specimens of Norman work on a moderate scale to be found anywhere. The original work is nearly untouched, except that the barbarism of modern times has removed about half the nave.

Eu Church, S.E.

After Domfront had submitted to William and had become permanently incorporated with Normandy, he himself founded the fortress of Ambrières, as a border stronghold.[19] A fragment of the castle still overlooks the lower course of the Varenne, but the ground is no longer Norman. Some way further on the same road we reach Mayenne, a town whose name suggests far later warfare, but which was an important conquest of William's in the days when Maine was the border ground, and the battle-field, of Norman and Angevin.[20] The site of Mayenne, sloping, like that of Mantes, down to a large river, has caused quite another arrangement. The river is here the main point for attack and defence as well as for traffic. The castle therefore does not crown the highest point of the town, but flanks the stream with a grand range of bastions, a miniature of the mighty pile of Philip Augustus at "black Angers." This lower position of castles, thus returned to in later times, seems however to have been the usual position for the fortresses of the earliest Norman time. Before the Scandinavian conquerors were fully settled in the country, the great point was to occupy sites commanding the sea and the navigable rivers; it was a sign of quite another state of things when the lord of the soil perched himself on the crest of an inland hill. Of the earlier type of fortress we have an example in the castle of Eu, a name whose associations may seem to be wholly modern, but which is, in truth, as the border fortress of Normandy towards Flanders and the doubtful land of Ponthieu between them, one of the most historic sites in the Duchy. Eu figures prominently in the wars of Rolf; in its church William espoused his Flemish bride; in its castle he first received his renowned English guest.[21] The church of William's day has given way to a superb fabric of the thirteenth century, which needs only towers, which are strangely lacking, to rank among the finest minsters in Normandy. The castle where William and Harold met has given way to that well-known building of the House of Guise which lived to become the last home of lawful royalty in France. But the site still reminds one of the days of Rolf rather than of the days of William. It can hardly be said to command the town; it is itself commanded by higher ground immediately above it; town, church, castle, all seem from the surrounding hills to lie together in a hole. But it is admirably placed for commanding the approaches from the sea and from the low, and in Rolf's time no doubt marshy, ground lying between the town and the water. In exact contrast to Eu, stands the noble hill-castle of Arques, near Dieppe, the work of William's rebellious uncle and namesake, which he had to win by the slow process of hunger from Norman rebels and French auxiliaries.[22] The little town, with a church of later date, but of striking outline, lies low, lower than Eu; but the castle soars above it, crowning a peninsular height which forms the extremity of a long range of higher ground. The steep slopes of the hill might have seemed defence enough, but Count William did not deem his fortress secure without cutting an enormous fosse immediately within its circuit, so that any one who climbed the slope of the hill would find a deep gulf between himself and the fortress, even if he were lucky enough to escape falling headlong. The building has been greatly enlarged in later times, but the shell of Count William's keep, a huge massive square tower, is still here, as perhaps are some portions of his gateway and of his surrounding walls. The view is a noble one, and it takes in the site of that later battle of Henry of Navarre to which Arques now owes most of its renown, and which has gone some way to wipe out the memory of both Williams, Count and Duke alike.

One point more. Round the lower course of the Dive all sorts of historical associations centre. The stream divides the older and the later Normandy, but of these the later is the truer, the land where the old speech and the old spirit lingered longest. By its banks was fought the battle in which Harold Blaatand rescued Normandy from the Frank, and in which the stout Dane took captive with his own hands Lewis King of the West-Franks, the heir and partial successor of Charles.[23] There, too, are the causeway and bridge of Varaville, marking the site of the ford where William's well-timed march enabled him to strike almost as heavy a blow against the younger royalty of Paris as the Danish ally of his forefathers had struck against the elder royalty of Laon.[24] The French invaders of Normandy, King Henry at their head, had gorged themselves with the plunder of the lands west of the Dive and were now carelessly advancing towards the high ground of Auge in the direction of Lisieux. The King with his vanguard had already climbed the hill, when he looked round, only to behold the mass of his army cut to pieces before the sudden onslaught of the irresistible Duke. William had marched up from Falaise and had taken them at the right moment, almost as Harold took his Norwegian namesake at Stamford bridge. It is one of those spots where the story is legibly written on the scene. The causeway is still there, and it is easy to realise the King looking on the slaughter of his troops, and hardly withheld from rushing down to give them help which must have proved wholly in vain. The heights from which he looked down stretched to the sea, by the mouth of the river. The port of Dive, now nearly choked up with sand, was then a great haven, and there the fleet of William, assembled for the conquest of England, lay for a whole month, waiting for the favourable winds which never came till they had changed their position for the more auspicious haven of Saint Valery.