The news sent to the King. But it was not enough for the garrisons to hold out. They served a master beyond the sea; and that master had yet to learn either that they were holding out or that there was any enemy for them to hold out against. We are in this story doubtless dealing with the work of a very few days. The fight by the ford, the entry of Helias, and the fire, all took place on the same day. The siege of the castles would begin at the first moment that any engines could be brought up. Whether Helias had brought them with him, or whether he had to send for them, we are not told. We may be sure that there was no great delay in sending the news to the King; but the messenger did not start till he had something more to tell than that Le Mans, or what was left of it, was in the hands of its own count. A Norman Pheidippidês, Amalchis by name, the special courier of Robert of Bellême, was sent with the news.[688] The news brought to him in the New Forest. He crossed the sea; he hastened to the King’s hunting-seat of Clarendon, and met William and a party of his favourite companions going forth to hunt in the New Forest. The King asked the messenger what the news was. The news was speedily told; Le Mans was taken by treason. But Amalchis could add some words of comfort, how his own lord held Ballon, how the King’s troops in the city, though besieged and attacked by the enemy, still held out in the fortresses, how they were longing for the King to come in person to their help.[689] We can hardly believe that Rufus had heard nothing of the general movements of Helias in southern Maine; but all that had happened since the Count set forth for Pontlieue came to his ears in a single message.
William rides to the coast. At the hearing of such a tale as this William the Red did not tarry. He waited for no counsellors. His words were only, “Let us go beyond the sea and help our friends.” When those around him bade him wait till a force could be made ready, he answered, “I will see who will follow me. Do you think that I shall be left without men? I know well the youth of my lands, they will hasten to come to me, even at the risk of shipwreck.” So saying, without following, without preparation, he loosened his bridle, he put spurs to his horse, he rode straight to the sea-shore at Southampton, and at once trusted himself all alone to an old crazy ship which he found there. He crosses to Touques. The sky was cloudy; the wind was contrary; the blasts tossed up huge waves; the sailors prayed him to wait till the winds and the waves should be more inclined to peace and mercy. “I never heard of a king being drowned,” cried Rufus; “make haste, loose your cables; you will see the elements join to obey me.” He set sail, and the next morning he reached the haven of Touques, God, we are told by the monk of Saint Evroul, being his guide.[690]
The spot where William landed must, especially at the moment of William’s landing, have had a widely different look from that which it bears in our own day. Touques in Rufus’ time. The river from which the town of Touques takes its name, flowing down from Lisieux to its mouth by the modern pleasure-town of Trouville, has had its course shifted by modern improvements; but it has perhaps not greatly changed in width or bulk of stream since the time of our story. Touques lies a few miles inland; but a high tide would easily bring up the small vessels of that day to the point which was once a busy haven, but which now affords at the most a landing-place for barges. The single long street, full of picturesque wooden buildings of later times, and containing a striking disused church of the days of Rufus or his father, now turns away from the stream, as if to show that the days of Touques as a haven have passed away. In those days the inland port, placed in the rich vale of the stream, under the shadow of the hills, those to the right forming the forest-land of Touques, was a frequented spot; and at the moment when the ship came which bore Rufus and his fortunes, it presented a busy scene. Landing of the King. As was usual in the summer-tide, a crowd of persons, both clerical and lay, was gathered at the riverside.[691] When they saw a ship coming from England, they pressed to ask what the news might be. Specially they asked how the King fared. And lo, the King was there as his own messenger to answer them.[692] He returned their greetings in merry mood, and all wondered and were glad.[693] We must remember that Normandy had better reason to be glad at the presence of Rufus than either England or Maine. His ride to Bonneville. The King landed; he sprang on the first beast that he could find, a mare belonging to a priest, and so took the road which led towards the south-east to the castle of Bonneville, on the slope of the hills which overlook and guard the haven. The distance is short, and most of it is uphill, and the speed of the priest’s mare was most likely not equal to the speed of the King’s own horse which had borne him from Clarendon to Southampton. A loyal crowd, clerks and peasants, were thus able to follow him on foot, cheering their sovereign as he rode up the hill-side to the castle.[694]
The castle of Bonneville. The headlong rush by land and sea was now over, and the Red King again found himself in one of the chief strongholds of Normandy. The castle of Bonneville, placed, not on the top of the hill, but on a small spur projecting from its side, was in fact the citadel of Touques. It specially guarded the inland haven; otherwise one might rather have looked for the site of such a fortress on the hills which overlook the sea and guard the actual mouth of the stream. Yet from the towers of Bonneville we look out on a wide and a goodly prospect. Almost at the foot of the hill lies Touques itself. The river stretches away to its mouth at Deauville; on the right the valley is fenced in by the high ground of the forest, on the left by the hill crowned by the castle of Lassay, famous in later times, with the small priory of Saint Arnold, still keeping work of the Conqueror’s day, nestling on the hill-side. But at Bonneville itself no strictly architectural work remains which can have served the Red King as a resting-place after his fierce journey. The existing castle, a shell-keep strengthened by round towers, seems to be in all parts later than the days of Rufus, later than the days of Norman independence. A single gateway only could possibly be placed even within the latter years of the twelfth century. But the site is an ancient one; the castle is girded by a ditch, and the ditch is in some parts further strengthened by an embankment, which seem more likely to have been taken advantage of by the Norman dukes than to be their original work. Early history and legends of Bonneville. Bonneville had been one of the dwelling-places of William the Great, and it is one of the many towns and castles which claim to have been the scene of the oath of Harold.[695] Though the existing buildings are later, the hill itself and its earthworks are there, as when Rufus drew breath among them. He there rested for a moment, after being borne with the swiftest speed of his own age from the sports of the West-Saxon forest to the serious business which pressed on a ruler of Normandy when Le Mans was again held by a hostile power.
William at Bonneville. The castle which Rufus had now reached, the nearest fortress in Normandy to the spot in England from which he had so wildly rushed, now became the starting-point of a campaign which, in its beginning, was not unskilfully planned. At Bonneville the King began to make his preparations for the recovery of Le Mans. His levy. He sent his messengers to and fro, and soon gathered a large force. He marches towards Le Mans. He then began his march southward; he crossed the frontier, and pressed on towards Le Mans, harrying the land as he went.[696] The effect of his coming was immediate. When the news came that the King was on his way, the forces of Helias began to fail him; he no longer dared to go on with the siege of the castles; he no longer dared even to hold the city.[697] Helias flees to Château-du-Loir. He fled from Le Mans, and hastened to the defence of his immediate possessions in the southern part of the county. Here he took up his head-quarters in his own fortress specially known as the Castle of the Loir. Within its walls the Count of Maine again waited for better days, while the hosts of Normandy drew near to his capital.[698]
Flight of the citizens. Meanwhile despair reigned in Le Mans. A crowd of the citizens, with their wives and children and all that they had, followed their prince.[699] When Rufus heard of the flight of Helias, he was still north of Le Mans.William passes through Le Mans. He pressed on to overtake his enemy; he reached the city; but, like Harold on the march to Stamfordbridge, he did not deem it a time to tarry even a single night within its walls. And in the mind of Rufus there was doubtless another motive at work besides either military precaution or even simple military ardour. With him it would be a point of honour to occupy, at the first moment that he could, the ground on which his choice troops had been put to flight by the hasty levies of Helias. His camp beyond the Huisne. He marched through the city, over the battleground of Pontlieue; he crossed the bridge of the Huisne, and pitched his camp on the broad plain[700] to the south of the stream. He had thus passed into what might seem the immediate dominions of his rival, as his rival had passed at the same point to attack the city which he claimed as specially his own.
He harries southern Maine. Helias burns the castles. From his camp on the left back of the Huisne Rufus began a deliberate and fearful harrying of the whole southern part of Maine. But before his troops could reach the strongholds of the enemy, they found the land laid waste before them. Even two castles, those of Outillé and Vaux-en-Belin,[701] were set fire to by the Count’s own partisans. Robert of Montfort—the Norman Montfort—pressed on with five hundred knights, put out the fire at Vaux, repaired the fortress, and held it for the King.[702] Helias meanwhile was biding his time in the Castle of the Loir. Helias keeps on the defensive. His force was still strong; but he deemed it no time for any attack on his part. Perhaps he knew Rufus well enough to feel sure that against him the tactics of Fabius were the tactics which were most likely to prevail.
For in this campaign, exactly as in the earlier campaign in Maine and in the campaign in the Vexin, the thing which most strikes us is the way in which it ends, or, more truly, the way in which it comes to no end at all. William besieges Mayet. While Helias held out at Château-du-Loir, William, instead of attacking him, laid siege to Mayet. At this last point, lying some way north of Château-du-Loir, we find the scene of some of the most remarkable anecdotes in our whole story, and it is here that the last serious warfare of the Red King seems to have taken place.[703] The siege was not a long one, and its result was strange and unexpected; but the few days which it took are crowded with incident, and they set William Rufus before us in more than one character. He first appears in a mood which may be thought wholly unexpected; perhaps as touched by devotion himself, at all events as hearkening readily to the devotional scruples of others. The King’s host appeared before Mayet on a Friday, and he gave orders for a general attack on the castle on the next day.[704] Observance of the Truce of God. The sabbath morning dawns; the warriors are vying with one another in girding on their weapons and making ready for the attack.[705] Then a pious scruple, a scruple which seems to have occurred to no man on the day of Senlac, touched the hearts of some of the elders of the host. Certain unrecorded wise men crave of the King that, out of reverence for the Lord’s burial and resurrection, he will spare the besieged both that day and the next, and will grant them a truce till Monday. In other words, they demand the observance of the Truce of God.[706] The King gives glory to God, and gives orders that it shall be as they wish; nothing shall be done against the castle on either Saturday or Sunday; on Monday the attack shall be made.[707]
We now get a glimpse within the walls. The defenders of Mayet, we are told, were men of proved valour and endurance, faithful to their lord and ready to fight for him to the death.[708] It is worth notice that, through the whole story, the Red King’s favourite arms are never heard of within the bounds of Maine. No bribery in Maine. The wealth of England, which carried such weight within Normandy and France, which proved such an unanswerable argument in the mind of King Philip, goes for nothing on the banks of the Sarthe and the Loir. It seems never to enter into any man’s mind that it was worth trying to buy over any man who owned Helias as his lord. So now in the Red King’s camp steel lies idle on the holy days of the older and the newer law; and gold seems to lie idle no less. Preparations of the besieged. But those days were not days of idleness within the bulwarks of Mayet. The gallant defenders of the castle were making ready for the attack. One special means of defence was to place wicker crates along the walls in order to break the force of the stones hurled by the King’s artillery.[709] The castle attacked on Monday. At last Monday came, and the assault began. The deep and wide ditch of the castle was found to be no small hindrance to the besiegers. A wild story is told that the King ordered the ditch to be filled up with horses and mules, the beasts seemingly of draught and burthen.[710] Story of Robert of Bellême. For them, as the villains of the brute world, there was no mercy; the destrier of the knight was, in knightly hearts, entitled to some share of the respect due to his rider. But the tale adds that Robert of Bellême, the man so hateful in Cenomannian memory, improved on the King’s order, and bade the ditch be filled, not only with horses, but with human villains also.[711] Such an order would really be thoroughly in the spirit of chivalry. Illustrations of chivalry. It would have come well from the mouths of those French gentlemen who called at Crecy for the slaughter of the so-called peasants whom they had hired from Genoa.[712] But William the Red had learned beneath the walls of Rochester what the churls of one land at least could do, and he was not likely to carry his knightly ideal quite so far as this. The tale, we may suspect, is a bit of local Cenomannian romance, part of the popular tale of the devil of Mamers. Those who tell it add that the effect of the order was to cause the immediate flight of all the members of the despised class who were within hearing.[713] The besiegers fill the ditch with wood. But the most trustworthy narrative of the siege of Mayet tells us nothing of any of these strange ways of filling up a ditch. There we read only of vast piles of wood which were hurled into it, and of a path raised on piles which the besiegers strove to make level with the palisade of the castle.
The besieged burn the wood. But the devices of the garrison of Mayet were at least equal to the devices of their enemies. They hurled down masses of burning charcoal, and so, by the help of the summer heat, they burned up the piles of wood with which the besiegers were filling up the ditch.[714] All Monday both sides strove with all their might against one another, and the King began to be grieved and angry that all his efforts had availed nothing.[715] Narrow escape of William. While he was thus troubled in mind, a stone was aimed at him from a lofty turret. It missed William himself, but a warrior who stood by him was crushed to pieces by the falling mass.[716] Then there rose a loud shout of mockery from the wall; “Lo, the King now has fresh meat; let it be taken to the kitchen and made ready for his supper.”[717] We might have looked to hear that for such scorn as this the Red King vowed a vengeance like his father’s vengeance at Alençon. But either Rufus and his counsellors were strangely cowed, or else they were glad of any excuse to throw up an enterprise one day of which seems to have been enough to weary them. William’s captains advise a retreat. The lords and high captains of the King’s host impressed on their master’s mind that the defences of Mayet were very strong, that its defenders were very brave, that, sheltered as they were behind their strong walls, they had a great advantage over besiegers encamped in the open air.[718] These sound strange arguments in an age when warfare chiefly consisted in attacking and defending strong places. They sound strangest of all when they are addressed to a king who, so short a time before, had taken it for granted that not only men and walls, but the winds and the waves, would yield to his will. But the reasoning of these prudent warriors is said to have carried conviction to the King’s mind. Rufus saw that the best thing that he could do was to march off while he was still safe. There were other ways besides besieging castles by which more damage could be done to the enemy with less risk to his own followers.[719] The siege raised on Tuesday. Orders were given to march to Lucé with the first light of Tuesday. The host arose early, and went on, making a fearful harrying as they went.The land ravaged. Vines were rooted up, fruit-trees cut down, walls and houses overthrown. The whole of that fertile land was utterly laid waste with fire and sword.[720]