Ja mez, ço dist, sa paiz n’areit,
Se son aveir ne li rendeit.”
Henry ravages the neighbouring lands (see above, [p. 529], and p. 286); then the King and the Duke come to besiege him, without any hint how William came to be in Normandy, or how the two brothers, who were enemies less than a hundred lines before, have now come to be allies.
It is plain that the striking event of the occupation of the Mount of which he would hear a good deal in his childhood, if it did not actually come within his own childish days, was strong in Wace’s imagination, but that he took very little pains to fit the tale into its right place in the history. It is specially hard to reconcile his picture of the action of Earl Hugh with the facts of the case. There is perhaps no literal contradiction. Hugh, while giving up his castles to Robert (see p. 284), may have given Henry secret advice, and the words of Robert of Torigny in the Continuation of William of Jumièges (see p. 323) may be taken as implying that Henry looked on him as having been on the whole faithful to him. But Wace could hardly have conceived Hugh as giving up the castle of Avranches to Robert.
The ending of the siege is still more thoroughly misconceived than the beginning. The brothers are all reconciled; Henry gets the Côtentin back again (14740);
“De l’acordement fu la fin
K’à Henri remest Costentin,
K’en paiz l’éust tant è tenist,
Ke li Dus li suen li rendist.”
William goes back to England, whereas we know (see p. 293) that he stayed in Normandy for six months. Robert goes to Rouen. Henry pays off his mercenaries—out of what funds we are not told, and the other accounts do not speak of his followers as mercenaries. He then follows Robert to Rouen (14750);