But it is very likely that this coming of the Northmen, the Normans, out of France will have caused you to ask a question or two in your minds. You may be wondering how it should be that Normans, Northmen, should be coming to England from Normandy, that is to say from the south. You may be wondering how it is that there are Northmen established there, as Dukes, that is as great rulers. When last we considered the Continent of Europe this Normandy was part of the great Empire of Charlemagne. In order to see how the Northmen came to be there we may go back to the Empire of Charlemagne in the ninth century. We have seen how that Empire was brought about and compacted. It is now a most important thing for the understanding of the great story that we should see how quickly that splendid Empire fell to pieces after Charlemagne's death. The understanding of that will make quite clear how the Normans were able to settle themselves as independent rulers of the part of France which is still, after them, called Normandy.
CHAPTER XV
THE CRUSADES
We have seen that the kings of the date to which this greatest story now has come, do not seem to have realised that if they partitioned up their possessions among several sons the result was likely to be that there would be disunion and righting. Charlemagne had three sons, and would, it appears, have divided his Empire by his will among them, but two of those sons died, so that the whole Empire came into the hands of the survivor.
This survivor, however, had, in his turn, three sons, and at his death the Empire was divided amongst the three. In this division we see the beginnings of the present arrangement of the greater part of Europe, for one son took a territory of which the boundaries were nearly the same as those of modern France, another had what corresponds more or less to Germany of to-day, and the third to something very like modern Italy. The Italian brother, the eldest, had the title of Emperor.
And now—to state shortly what was the rather natural outcome of that division—the kings, or those who claimed the kingship, of those territories fought over their possessions for at least a century and a half, 150 years.
Of course that meant that the people of the country were in constant misery and fear of their lives and uncertainty about any property they might have. Bands of soldiers, followers of their feudal lords, went about the country, and were very rough and brutal, taking all they could find and paying nothing. The authority of the king could not deal with these disturbers of the peace. The big landowners grew more and more independent of the king. He might be their feudal lord, in name, but for all this century and a half the King of France had no more power than several of the great lords themselves. More and more then it became necessary for the poorer class, if they would live safely, to live under the protection of one or other of the big men. This led to the clustering of the houses of the poor people round about the castle, the strong place, of their lord. He organised them as a fighting force, when fighting had to be done, and stood for them in place of the king. They were his faithful subjects, getting his protection as their return for working and fighting for him. Some of these lords grew so powerful and so dangerous to the king that he was glad to grant them their independence and full possession of their lands in return for their assurance that they would not take arms against him and attack his territory.
Normandy
Now all the while that the Danes and Northmen were harrying the shores of England they paid their attentions no less to the coasts of France, going up the Seine to Rouen, especially, and establishing winter quarters there very much as the Danes did in England. The emperor and the kings of France strove against them, but if they were defeated they only came back again in numbers larger than before. The end of it was that in the beginning of the tenth century the king deemed it his best policy to give up to the Northmen or Normans all that Normandy which they held despite all he could do against them. He made it condition that they should become Christians. And thus it was that they were firmly established as a Duchy under a Duke (dux, or leader) at the date of their conquest of England in 1066.