As Robert grew older and it became necessary to determine on a successor,--the right of the oldest son was not yet altogether fixed,--Constance began to intrigue against her husband. Robert was in the habit of saying: "My hen pecks, but she gives me plenty of chickens." They had had six children; but had lost their eldest son, Hugues, in 1025. Of the three remaining sons, Eudes, the eldest, was an idiot; Henry, the second, was his father's choice; and Robert, the youngest, was favored by Constance, "with her habitual spirit of contradiction." She said, with some reason, that Henry was weak, inactive, deceitful, and negligent of affairs, and could no more be king than his father could; whereas Robert had far more energy and sense than his brothers. For once, the king resisted, and with the consent of the peers assured the succession to Henry. Constance fomented ill feeling between the two sons, and between Henry and his father. Robert, with the notion that injustice had been done him, was soon in revolt against his father. But the queen had always been so harsh to all her children that none of them seem to have had faith in her or affection for her, and the two brothers, Henry and Robert, soon became reconciled to each other and made a joint invasion of their father's dominions, pillaging his castles and territories. The poor king, after many ravages had been committed, at length bribed his sons to let him sing his last hymns in peace. Henry was to succeed to the throne, and Robert became Duke of Burgundy.

The peace thus made did not long outlast King Robert. He died in July, 1031, and the monks mourned their friend and protector, and many of the poor sincerely bewailed the loss of their "good father"; but there is no sign of any excessive grief on the part of Constance. She soon gave the kingdom cause to mourn in other fashion; for no sooner was Henry I. seated on his throne than his mother began to stir up rebellion against him. She had always been violent in private as in public life, and treated Henry in particular "as if she hated him like a stepmother." Her intrigues now were so far successful that she won over to her side most of the direct vassals of the crown, and the greater number of the towns in the duchy of France declared themselves in favor of placing Robert, Duke of Burgundy, on the throne. By surrendering the county of Sens to her old enemy, Eudes, Count of Blois, Constance gained his aid. This plot of a mother against her son was successful in all but one main point: the other son, in whose name she was preparing to wage civil war, took no active part against his brother, and appears to have remained quietly in Burgundy. Perhaps he was wise enough to understand that what Constance was really scheming for was the continuance of her own power, and that if placed on the throne he would have been completely under her control.

In this crisis of the affairs of the kingdom, Henry, fleeing with a following of but twelve vavasours, called upon Normandy for aid; and most effective aid he had from one whose name was to become famous, a nucleus for the gathering of romance. This was Duke Robert of Normandy, surnamed Robert the Devil, who carried on a predatory warfare so savage and so successful that most of the revolted lords near the borders of Normandy "bowed their heads before him." Old Foulques Nerra, probably in one of his edifying fits of repentance, at length brought Constance to a reconciliation with Henry, reproaching her with the brutal fury with which she was treating her son. The miserable queen, who had caused so much unhappiness to her husband and to her sons, did not long survive the peace, dying at Melun in July, 1032. Her ally Eudes continued the struggle some little while, but was at last vanquished and forced to disgorge half of the county of Sens which Constance had given him as a bribe.

Thus ends the life of one of the first of the French queens who really took an active part in affairs. Beautiful, witty, and full of graces and caprices essentially feminine, as well as of some masculine qualities, she yet appears to have inspired no love, nothing but dread, in anyone who came near her; and the chroniclers of the time seem to delight in telling anecdotes illustrative of her wickedness as contrasted with Robert's saintliness. But we must remember that at least she accomplished something, and that her enemies tell her story.

At the period of which we write, Normandy was all powerful, and the Capets had come to look upon her dukes now as their most dangerous foes and now as their most useful friends. Duke Robert the Magnificent, as his courtiers called him, or Robert the Devil, as literature knows him, had an amour which is interesting as showing that class distinctions were not so rigid as one might think. According to Wace's story of the romance:

"A Faleize ont li Dus hante,...

Une meschine i ont amée,

Arlot ont nom, de burgeis née."

(The duke did much frequent Falaise,... There he loved a girl named Arietta, born of a burgess of the town). Arietta, the tanner's daughter, was to become a figure of romance in the story of Robert the Devil; but, romance or no romance, she was the mother of the greatest of the Norman dukes, William the Conqueror, born in 1028. William had hard work to keep his place in Normandy, but we cannot stop to tell of the long and successful struggle which he waged against the haughty barons who refused to bow to the illegitimate son of the tanner's daughter. We all know the story of how the citizens of Alençon, which he was besieging, beat skins upon the walls of one of their redoubts, crying: "Work for the tanner!" and how William captured the redoubt, cut off the hands and feet of the unlucky jokers, and threw them over the town walls.

With a man of such temper, it is not unnatural that there should have arisen a curious story of his courtship, which began soon after this episode at Alençon. Engaged in constant conflict with his neighbors, William determined at least to secure the friendship of Flanders. He sought the hand of Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. Mauger, William's uncle, objected to the marriage, because Matilda and William were cousins, and caused the clergy to prohibit it. The Pope issued a special pronouncement against it. With him William could not proceed after the manner which doubtless most commended itself to him, but when the Italian Lanfranc, at the monastic school of Bee, dared to pronounce the marriage sinful, William promptly gave orders to burn down the farms from which the monks drew their sustenance, and to banish Lanfranc. But a shrewd display of courage and wit on Lanfranc's part made William his friend; and soon it was agreed that if William would found two monasteries the sin of his marriage would be forgiven him.