Pilgrims had flocked to the shrine built by St Aubert, and in time a few rough houses clung like limpets to the sides of the rock, and became the nucleus of the present village.
A VIEW FROM THE TOP OF MONT ST MICHEL
Below and on each side of the church is the abbey, justly called La Merveille. This is composed of two vast buildings, backing on the rock and facing landward. It was built in the first half of the thirteenth century, and is one of the most perfect specimens of the architecture of the time in existence. Of the same date are the fortifications, ramparts, and bastions, which transformed the mount into a fortress and citadel. This tiny rugged island has had a chequered career. The Mount was the only spot in the whole of Normandy which defied England when she ruled the rest of the territory. It was besieged and attacked again and again without success. The ancient monks, with as much of the church militant as the church penitent in them, clung to their bare sharp rock, and defied the would-be invaders.
The abbot was a personage of great importance; at the time of the Conquest he fitted out six vessels for the Norman duke, and for this he was well rewarded, for monks of the abbey were raised to the highest ecclesiastical dignities in England. One became abbot of St Hilda, another of St Peter at Gloucester, another of Canterbury. Coins, bearing the image of the Archangel Michael, were struck also in commemoration of the Conquest.
In the fifteenth century the abbot had attained almost regal power, holding not only the adjacent isles of Tombelaine and Jersey and Guernsey, but even the sister isle of Mount St Michael off the Cornish coast, which had been given to the monastery by Edward the Confessor.
Tombelaine has a history of its own, independently of Mont St Michel. In 1048 two monks came and took up their abode here to live the contemplative life, and nearly a hundred years later a priory was founded on the rock, which was very popular with the abbots of the neighbouring monastery, so that one of them was buried here by his own request. After a while fortifications grew up around the cloistral walls of the priory, and thus the island was fitted to become an important strategic base. When the English seized it in Edward III.’s reign, they saw its possibilities, and strengthened the fortifications immensely.
What fortifications there were, remained till 1669, when they were demolished by order of the King of France. During the fourteenth century, when war flamed continually between England and France, they played a notable part. Mont St Michel itself was menaced, and though the pilgrims were allowed to pass to it over the yellow sands without hindrance, the inhabitants of the Mount were for a year more or less in a state of siege. But it was not until 1423 that the grand siege began, when pilgrims were intercepted and turned back, and sallies and counter-sallies passed between the large and small rock, crouching like two lions about to spring. Then the investment became more strict, English vessels appeared in the shallow waters of the bay, and the English soldiers thus reinforced, might probably have succeeded in cracking this very hard nut, had not the Bretons come to the assistance of the garrison, and sailing into the bay engaged the English in combat. There is little to be gathered of the details of the fight, but the effect was to make the English retire hastily to their entrenchments. This was by no means their last attempt, however, on the island fastness, for in 1427 a great attack was made under Lord Scales. It was at this time that the two cannons which now stand within the gate of the Mount were taken by the French.
A strange incident is the pilgrimage of 400 children, in the middle of the fifteenth century, to the Mount, from Germany and Flanders. These children had left their homes without the consent, and in many cases against the wishes, of their parents. The sight must have been an impressive one as the little pilgrims, travel-worn and stained, saw at length their goal, and crossed the shifting sands toward it. What became of them afterwards is not recorded, whether they returned to their homes or settled down in the country near, but the actual fact of the pilgrimage seems well attested, though the numbers taking part in it must be received with caution.
In the reign of Louis the Eleventh, the island was made into a state prison, and continued to be so more or less until 1863. During the French Revolution many of those called “enemies of the Republic” were incarcerated here, in deep and vaulted dungeons from which there was no possibility of escape. The buildings are now government property, and admittance is nominally free, as the officials who show strangers round are paid by the State; but a tip is also expected! The system is another of those annoying little arrangements which so mar the pleasure of a visit to the island. The guardian of the abbey waits until he has collected a sufficient party, say thirty or forty people, and then leads them through from room to room, locking each door behind him, and pouring forth a voluble string of monotonous words in the very worst “guide” style.