Sybilla attempted to reclaim her husband from the crowd of bad companions who gathered round him on his re-entry into Normandy, and when Robert was tired of her, as he soon became of everything, he found this inconvenient, so in less than two years she died suddenly of poison. Robert had returned too late to put in a bid for the throne of England! which was already occupied by Henry; but the death of William freed him from any obligation to pay back the debt on his duchy, and Sybilla’s dowry went in other directions. Henry now made a treaty with his brother, by which he delivered up the Côtentin, but kept Domfront and Mortain. However, becoming once more embroiled with Robert, he quickly won for himself the whole duchy, clinching the matter at the famous battle of Tinchebray, whereby the process of his father was reversed, and the King of England now conquered Normandy as the Duke of Normandy had then conquered England. After the terrible death of his son near Barfleur, Henry set his heart on the succession of his daughter Maude, who had been married first to the Emperor of Germany, and afterwards on his death, evidently by her father’s choice, to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Maine, one of the most powerful of the rulers who might have opposed her succession in Normandy. Yet Maude never ascended the throne that her father had so carefully guarded for her. It is true that a claimant who might have proved very formidable, William, the remaining son of Robert, had died seven years before his uncle Henry, but there remained the two sons of Adela, daughter of the Conqueror; of these the younger, Stephen, was determined to oust his cousin. During the weary civil war that followed, Normandy was many times traversed by one party or the other, but on the whole the country declared for Stephen. The Count of Anjou was an hereditary enemy, and the Normans did not relish the idea of being governed by him in his wife’s name. When at last, after the death of Stephen’s son Eustace, it was settled that Henry should be recognised as next heir to his cousin, the land enjoyed peace. With the accession of Henry a fresh era began, for the new king held in France not only Normandy, but in right of his mother and his wife, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, and Acquitaine—together more than half the country—a formidable vassal for the French king! Henry was tenacious of his rights, and it was only as his turbulent sons grew older, and displayed to the full those unfilial dispositions so common in their race, that he consented to divide some of his possessions among them, to be held from him as lord. His gifts were many times changed, but it seems certain that Richard had ruled in Acquitaine as an independent sovereign before his father’s death, while Geoffrey, by his marriage with Constance, heiress of Brittany, became Duke of Brittany. Henry gave to his youngest and best loved John the title of Count of Mortain, and with it the vicounty of the Côtentin; and in 1181 he made his eldest son, Henry, Duke of Normandy. But Henry the younger did not long survive, dying at the early age of twenty-eight, after rebelling against his father almost continuously since his attainment of manhood. Therefore, at the death of the king, Richard came to the throne. John still continued ruler of Mortain and the Côtentin under his brother, and these dominions gave him an opportunity for putting in practice those treasonable conspiracies by which he hoped to throw off Richard’s yoke, and become an independent sovereign. Richard, however, was too strong for him; he marched into Normandy, and speedily showed himself master. Thereupon John came humbly to ask forgiveness at Lisieux. The story goes that Richard, with the open-minded heartiness which won him so much more love than his worse qualities merited, exclaimed that he forgave him freely, and set his behaviour down to bad influence, as he was only a child. As John was then six-and-twenty, this reason must have galled him had he possessed an atom of pride, but we have reason to think he did not. While Richard was otherwise engaged in the Holy Land and on the Continent, John made a second attempt to win his realms, which was brought to an end by a knowledge of his brother’s death. He heard this while at Carentan, and gleefully hastened to take advantage of it. True, there was still a boy to be reckoned with, young Arthur, son of his dead brother Geoffrey—a boy who was already Duke of Brittany, and who inherited to the full the proud fierce temper of his mother Constance. But John had two points in his favour: first, that in the old days a brother was often considered to have a better right to a throne, especially if he were a man, than a nephew who was still a child, and this idea had not altogether died out; secondly, the Normans of all people would have been the last to yield homage to the duke of the hated Bretons, their nearest neighbours, with whom they had been perpetually at war, and for whom they felt a fierce jealousy. On the other hand, Arthur had a powerful ally in Philip, King of France, who saw that it would be much more to his own advantage to have a weak boy as ruler of Normandy than a man equal to himself in cunning and craftiness. Therefore Philip helped Arthur, and even promised him his little daughter in marriage. But unluckily for the boy who was the principal actor in the drama, he fell into the hands of his uncle,—some say he was captured by treachery while asleep,—however that may be, he was in John’s clutches, and little chance was there for him to get out again. This was in August 1202. John carried his prisoner at once to one of the strongest castles in his dominions, namely Falaise. Arthur was now between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and John, reckoning without that stubborn courage of nature which the boy inherited, attempted to make him abdicate his rights, in vain. Finding this hopeless, he hurried him away to Rouen, there to dispose of him finally. Arthur’s incarceration at Falaise is dealt with in the chapter on Falaise, and his captivity at Rouen is treated in the chapter on Rouen. The fury of the Bretons, who saw the last of their ruling race, a promising boy, thus foully murdered by the duke of the Normans, their life-long foes, may be imagined; it hardly needed the French king’s call to arms to make them rise in their wrath and flood in upon the neighbouring towns of Normandy. The conduct of John after this displays a pitiable weakness. He alone of all the Conqueror’s line showed a lack of courage; others had been weak, vacillating, unfilial, cruel, vicious, but it remained for John to combine all these qualities in himself. His movements were like those of a timid animal who knows the huntsmen are closing in on him, but has not courage to make a dash through the ring. He hurried from Rouen to Caen, from Caen to Brix, and Brix to Valognes. Back again to Caen, and then to Domfront. He returned to the Côtentin, and at last embarked at Barfleur without striking a blow to save that land, which he had not hesitated to gain by murdering a boy, when he thought there was no personal danger in the action. He did indeed return in 1206 for a short time, but never in such a spirit as to make the retrieving of his dominions possible. Meantime the Normans did not submit so quietly; they could not endure the entry of the Bretons, and sternly defended themselves at Mont St Michel, which was set on fire, and at Caen; but it was of no use; the Bretons, after a triumphal progress, met the French king, who had received the submission of Caen as well as Lisieux and Bayeux, and thus with hardly a struggle there fell into the hands of France that territory which she had so long and so jealously regarded. If ever a king deserved to lose his land, it was the craven John.

A STREET, MONT ST MICHEL

By a curious oversight in the ratification and the submission which followed this conquest, the Channel Islands were overlooked. It has been suggested they were simply forgotten; if so, the event proved fortunate for them, for they have remained ever since in the happy independence granted them by England. The title of Duke of Normandy was dropped by Henry III., John’s son, at the Treaty of Saintes in 1259, when it was agreed that Acquitaine should remain an English possession, and the title was afterwards borne by a scion of the ruling French house. But the tale of Normandy’s wars is not ended. For in the time of Edward, that monarch was set upon recovering not only the territory lost by his grandfather, but, if possible, the French crown for himself; he landed at Barfleur, and, quickly subduing the Côtentin, passed on to St Lo, Coutances, and Caen, taking towns and seizing vast quantities of precious stuffs wherever he went. These triumphs were followed by the famous battles of Crécy and Poitiers, and the historic siege of Calais. However, his conquest left no permanent mark on Normandy, for by the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, though he received much else, he resigned Normandy with his claim to the French crown, and it was reserved for his great-grandson, Henry V., to recover the duchy by the sword. This he actually did, after a brilliant series of victories; so that in the years 1417 and 1418 Normandy became an appanage of the English crown, but under the rule of the weak Henry VI. his father’s conquests lapsed, and by 1450 Normandy was once more included in the dominions of France, never again to be severed.

CHAPTER III
THE MIGHTY WILLIAM

William’s father was the fifth Duke of Normandy, and if the story of how he attained that dignity be true, certain it is that his nickname “Le Diable” was more fitting than the other, “Magnifique,” which he earned by his lavishness. His elder brother, Richard, was Duke of Normandy when Robert set up the standard of rebellion at Falaise. But Richard was no weakling, and did not suffer the disaffection to spread; he appeared before the walls with all the forces at his disposal, and soon compelled his younger brother to sue for peace. Then an arrangement was made by which a certain grant of land was conferred on the rebel, while the castle of Falaise, a powerful stronghold, was recognised as the property of the reigning duke. To celebrate the occasion the two brothers repaired in amity to Rouen, and there in the castle fortress, then standing on the site of the markets near the river, a banquet was held, to cement the new friendship and understanding. But suddenly Richard turned pale and sickened, and before nightfall he was dead. There was little doubt that poison had been in his cup; put there by whom but the man who was now duke, and held the power of life and death in his hands! None dare speak to accuse him, and, like many another in the Dark Ages, he reaped the full reward of his crime in perfect security. There were others of his family alive, uncles as powerful, and, had occasion arisen, doubtless as unscrupulous as himself; but Robert was on the spot, he held possession, and apparently without a word being raised in protest, he occupied his murdered brother’s place. An illegitimate son of his brother’s, named Nicholas, he placed in the abbey at Fécamp to be trained as a monk, a method often made use of by half savage kings to soften youthful rivals, still susceptible of being taught the hollowness of worldly ambition and the wickedness of rebellion against authority. It may be thought that this youth can hardly have been regarded as a serious rival, but in those days the marriage-tie was not deemed essential to inheritance. From William Longsword every Norman duke so far had been born out of wedlock, and though they had been legitimatised afterwards by some ceremony between their parents, this was rather a concession than a necessity. It is said that Nicholas entered with zest into his holy vocation, and was himself the architect of the first church of St Ouen at Rouen, of which there remains only the beautiful apse, known as the Tour aux Clercs. He was fourth abbot, and was buried in the church.

HARBOUR OF FÉCAMP