The Siege of Saint Michael’s Mount.
The primary account of the siege which Henry endured at the hands of his brothers is the short one in Orderic, which I have chiefly followed in the text. There are still shorter notices in Florence of Worcester and in the Continuation of William of Jumièges. The shortest of all is in the local Annals;
“1090. Obsessio montis hujus, quæ facta est a Guillelmo Rufo rege Anglorum et a Roberto comite Normannorum, Henrico fratre eorum in hoc monte incluso.”
There is no objection to this date, as the writer seemingly begins the year at Easter. The accession of Harold is placed under 1065.
The account in Florence is noteworthy, as seeming to supply a reason for the attack made by the two older brothers upon the younger. After the treaty between William and Robert, he goes on;
“Interim germanus illorum Heinricus montem Sancti Michaelis, ipsius loci monachis quibusdam illum adjuvantibus, cum omnibus militibus quos habere potuit, intravit, regisque erram vastavit, et ejus homines quosdam captivavit, quosdam exspoliavit. Eapropter rex et comes, exercitu congregato, per totam quadragesimam montem obsederunt, et frequenter cum eo prœlium commiserunt, et homines et equos nonnullos perdiderunt. At rex, cum obsidionis diutinæ pertæsus fuisset, impacatus recessit.”
This account is true in a sense; it gives the purely military history, except that the words “impacatus recessit” would hardly suggest Henry’s honourable surrender. But no one would find out from Florence’s version that Henry occupied the Mount simply as the last spot left to him in his dominions. As a matter of warfare, it doubtless may be said that William and Robert besieged Henry because he occupied the Mount, and because he was, as we can well believe, driven to harry the neighbouring lands. But he occupied the Mount and harried the lands only because he was driven out of the rest of his county. That Florence misunderstood the matter is plain from his use of the words “regis terra,” which cannot apply to any land which could be reached from the Mount.
Wace has a long account, very confused in its chronology and in the sequence of events; but I have trusted to his local knowledge for some topographical details. William of Malmesbury twice refers to the siege. He tells it under the reign of Rufus (iv. 308); but seemingly wholly for the purpose of bringing in two famous anecdotes about William and Robert. The second time is in his sketch of Henry’s early life (v. 392). In the first account he at least puts the siege in its right place after the Treaty of 1091. In the second he seems, strangely enough, to make the siege immediately follow the death of Conan, or at least to follow Henry’s driving out of Rouen (see above, [p. 512]), which he places just after Conan’s death;
“Illud fuit tempus quo, ut supra lectum est, apud montem sancti Michaelis ambobus fratribus Henricus pro sui salute simul et gloria restitit.”