The glories of our Alain’s name,
My heart shall ever sing his praise,
Who won the fight and wears the bays![4]
The Saxons of this lay are, of course, the Norsemen, who, speaking a Teutonic tongue, would seem to the Celtic-speaking Bretons to be allied to the Teuton Franks.
Bretons and Normans
During the latter half of the tenth and most of the eleventh century the Counts of Rennes gained an almost complete ascendancy in Brittany, which began to be broken up into counties and seigneuries in the French manner. In 992 Geoffrey, son of Conan, Count of Rennes, adopted the title of Duke of Brittany. He married a Norman lady of noble family, by whom he had two sons, Alain and Eudo, the younger of whom demanded a share of the duchy as his inheritance. His brother made over to him the counties of Penthièvre and Tréguier, part of the old kingdom of Domnonia in the north. It was a fatal transference, for he and his line became remorseless enemies of the ducal house, with whom they carried on a series of disastrous conflicts for centuries. Conan II, son of Alain, came under the regency of Eudo, his uncle, in infancy, but later turned his sword against him and his abettor, William of Normandy, the Conqueror.
Notwithstanding the national enmity of the Normans and Bretons, there existed between the Dukes of Normandy and the Dukes of Brittany ties of affinity that rendered the relations between the two states somewhat complicated. At the time when Duke Robert, the father of William of Normandy, set out upon his pilgrimage, he had no nearer relative than Alain, Duke of Brittany, the father of Conan II, descended in the female line from Rollo, the great Norse leader, and to him he committed on his departure the care of his duchy and the guardianship of his son.
Duke Alain declared the paternity of his ward doubtful, and favoured that party which desired to set him aside from the succession; but after the defeat of his faction at Val-ès-Dunes he died, apparently of poison, doubtless administered by the contrivance of the friends of William. His son, Conan II, succeeded, and reigned at the period when William was making his preparations for the conquest of England. He was a prince of ability, dreaded by his neighbours, and animated by a fierce desire to injure the Duke of Normandy, whom he regarded as a usurper and the murderer of his father Alain. Seeing William engaged in a hazardous enterprise, Conan thought it a favourable moment to declare war against him, and dispatched one of his chamberlains to him with the following message: “I hear that you are ready to pass the sea to make conquest of the kingdom of England. Now, Duke Robert, whose son you feign to consider yourself, on his departure for Jerusalem left all his inheritance to Duke Alain, my father, who was his cousin; but you and your abettors have poisoned my father, you have appropriated to yourself the domain of Normandy, and have kept 29 possession of it until this day, contrary to all right, since you are not the legitimate heir. Restore to me, therefore, the duchy of Normandy, which belongs to me, or I shall levy war upon you, and shall wage it to extremity with all my forces.”