The first Normandy was, as has been said, the district lying around Rouen, but in 924 the district of Bayeux was added to it, hereafter to become a stronghold of the older language and customs against the Frenchified influences of Rouen. Freeman says: “Nowhere out of old Saxon or Frisian lands can we find another portion of continental Europe which is so truly a brother land of our own. The district of Bayeux, occupied by a Saxon colony in the latest days of the old Roman empire, occupied again by a Scandinavian colony as the result of its conquest by Rolf, has retained to this day a character which distinguishes it from any other Romance-speaking portion of the Continent.”
AN APPROACH TO THE ABBEY, MONT ST MICHEL
As we have seen, at the time of Rolf’s settlement in Neustria there were two powers in France, the King of France, Charles the Simple, and the powerful Duke of the French, who included in his dominions the future capital, Paris. It was to the King of France that Rolf did homage as overlord; and the story goes that the proud Northman, on being told to kiss the monarch’s foot by way of homage, deputed one of his men to act as his proxy, and that this man, no humbler than his master, contemptuously raised the king’s foot to his own mouth, thereby oversetting the monarch. The story is probably apocryphal, but it has lived with odd persistence.
Rollo died in 931, and a few years after his death his son William Longsword had the satisfaction of adding to his lands the district of Côntentin, including the peninsula and the land as far south as Granville. He obtained this additional land when he was suppressing what was called a revolt of the Bretons—for the Dukes of Normandy held shadowy rights over Brittany, rights which they were never able to enforce. By his new conquest the Channel Isles were included in Normandy, and oddly enough it was thus they became attached to the English crown, for when the Norman dukes, as kings of England, lost all their other French possessions, they retained the islands. William Longsword was of a softer mould than his father, and from what can be gathered from the chronicles of the time he was a man of a thoughtful cast of mind, serious and gentle, a character rare enough in his age. He was succeeded by his son Richard, who, of all the Norman dukes except the Conqueror himself, is the best known to English people from Miss Yonge’s charming story, The Little Duke, in which it is to be feared she regards both father and son through a haze of idealisation; but it is indeed difficult if not impossible to make sufficient allowances for the radically different cast of thought in a bygone age, and to draw men as they really were. Richard the Fearless reigned for more than fifty years, and it was ten years before his death that Hugh Capet combined in himself the power of the kings and dukes of France, and became the first king of consolidated France. Richard had been sent as a lad to Bayeux, in order that he might be brought up under the influences of the country of his ancestors instead of becoming too much Frenchified; but he was of a vigorous disposition, and there seems to have been no reason to believe that he would have suffered unduly from any softening influence.
Nothing is more striking in the early annals of France than the succession of weak rulers she produced; occasionally there arose a man of capacity and power, but his sons were invariably weaklings. France does not seem to have been able to carry on a strong ruling race. In contrast to this, note the towering figures of the Norman dukes—the gigantic Rolf, the wise William Longsword, Richard the Fearless, Robert the Devil, William the Conqueror—all men of exceptional power and capacity. The infusion of Norman blood seems to have given just that basic power of endurance needed in the Teutonic nation. Richard the Fearless was succeeded by his son Richard the Good, and he by two of his sons successively, another Richard, and Robert the Devil or the Magnificent (see p. [34]). It was Roberts son William, who, left as a child to his inheritance, became the most famous of his race. No story of romance or legend is more wonderful than that of the Conqueror. At present we leave it aside to form the theme of a separate chapter, so as not to prolong too far this sketch of Norman history, which is necessary for any understanding of the topographical allusions.
With the Conquest, Normandy began to sink in importance; as in the case of a mother who has brought forth a son, destined to wield power and occupy positions far beyond her capacity, she herself took a secondary place. To be the independent King of England was grander than to be Duke of Normandy subject to the kings of France, and it needed but a generation or two to make the English forget the fact of their being conquered, and to look upon Normandy as a appanage of the English crown. It was a strange position altogether; the best blood of Normandy was emptied into England at the Conquest; abbots, warriors, nobles, men of learning and men of birth settled in the new country and became the English, and England found herself so much Normanised as to be transformed.
It is customary to consider that the history of Normandy ends with the conquest of England, being thenceforth merged in that of the greater country; but though the importance of Normandy as a country was lessened by the union, her history is by no means identical with that of England. Normandy several times enjoyed a sovereign prince altogether distinct from him who wore the crown of England, and this state of affairs began immediately after the death of William the Conqueror, who left the duchy to his eldest son Robert, while the second son William became King of England. Of Robert we know chiefly that he suffered from an incurable “mollesse,” and further, as regards personal details, that as “Jambes eût cortes, gros les os,” he earned the nickname of Court-hose. This son of a famous father and admirable mother, was a libertine, given over to pleasure, incapable of taking decisive action, one of those weak characters on which experience cannot engrave permanent lines, but withal full of the courage of his race. He was, however, unable to hold what had been left him. William had prophesied that his youngest son Henry should be greater than both his brothers, and Henry soon began to fulfil the parental prophecy by seizing and holding for himself the Côtentin peninsula, and with it the lordship of Mortain. Nothing is more significant of the grasping natures of the trio of brothers than the way in which they changed over, first one couple joining against the remaining one, and then almost immediately breaking up for a fresh combination. William and Henry warred against Robert; Henry and Robert combined to thwart William; William and Robert mutually agreed to keep Henry out of the succession, and so on; exactly as self-interest dictated for the moment. Finally William came uppermost, and Robert submitted, and henceforth practically held his duchy at the pleasure of his brother. It was Henry’s turn to be the “odd man out,” and he fled before his elder brothers, taking refuge in Mont St Michel, where they both besieged him. He had to submit, and, yielding up the fortress, retired a penniless adventurer. But in some way he afterwards regained the whole of the Côtentin. When the crusading mania began, Robert was seized with it; under his rule Normandy had been wretchedly governed, and little he cared. For a comparatively small sum he mortgaged his duchy to his brother William the Red, for six years, and went off to the Holy Land. Normandy was probably the better for his action. In returning from the Holy Land, he managed to occupy a year in the journey, and on the way he married Sybilla, daughter of Count Geoffrey of Flanders. He had already, it may be stated, two sons and a daughter, who seem to have inherited the best of the traits of his house. One of the sons, Richard, while on a visit to his uncle William in England, was accidentally killed in the New Forest.
ENTRANCE TO MONT ST MICHEL