March of Rufus. Against this new enemy William Rufus set out from Alençon. He had to overtake the host which was already at Fresnay. He crossed the Sarthe; he continued his course along its left bank, and stopped for the first time at Rouessée-les-fontaines.[582] This point is no great distance from Alençon, and it is still some way north of Fresnay. The present village of Rouessée contains no signs of any castle or mansion fitted for a king’s reception. Castle of Bourg-le-roi. One suspects that the exact spot meant must be the neighbouring castle of Bourg-le-roi, a castle said to take its name from Rufus himself. Here a ruined round tower, with walls of amazing thickness and girded by a deep ditch, looks down from a small hill on what seems to be the preparation for a large town which has never been built. A small village and church are sheltered within walls of vast compass, pierced by gates of later date than the days of Rufus and Helias. His next stage is distinctly spoken of as an encampment. The King had now joined his army. Rufus at Montbizot That night his camp was pitched at Montbizot, in the peninsula between the Sarthe and the Cenomannian Orne.[583] and Coulaines. On the third day he encamped in the meadows, by the Sarthe, hard by the village of Coulaines.[584] He was still on the left bank of the river, the same bank as the city itself, though the bend which the stream makes immediately under the hill of Le Mans gives the city almost the look of standing on the other side. Wide meadows spread from the village of Coulaines to the foot of the hill; they were now covered by the tents of Rufus. View of Le Mans. Right before the eyes of the army, high on its hill, rose the city which they were come to attack, and it rose so as to bring at once before their leader’s eyes the objects which would specially stir up his wrath. As Le Mans is seen from the meadows of Coulaines, the city and its hill lie almost out of sight to the south-west. The prominent objects are those which stand in the north-east corner of the city and in the adjoining suburb. Highest of all, rising above the city itself, soared the abbey of Saint Vincent without the walls, the house whose tenants had been so cruelly oppressed by Robert of Bellême.[585] Saint Julian’s, on its lower ground, almost closes in the view on the other side. When Rufus drew nigh, the twin towers of Howel rose high in all the freshness of their newly-finished masonry, to remind the King that the chair of the prelate whom his father had appointed was now filled by a successor in whose choice no regard had been paid to his own pleasure. Between the two minsters rose the royal tower, the tower of his father, the fortress which had passed away from him and from his father’s house, held no longer even by a rebellious vassal, as he might deem Helias, but by the invading stranger from Anjou. How deeply one at least of these feelings rankled in the mind of Rufus is shown by his dealings with the immediate neighbourhood of his encampment. The village of Coulaines was an episcopal lordship. Rufus ravages Coulaines. For the churl chivalry taught no mercy; in his wrath against Hildebert, the King burned the church and the whole village, and cruelly laid waste the neighbouring lands.[586]

But however fiercely Rufus might wreak his spite on the unlucky lands and tenants of the bishopric without the walls, the flock of Hildebert within the city was safe for a while. Le Mans was not to pass into the King’s hands just yet, and Ralph of Beaumont and Geoffrey of Mayenne might still keep their bat-like nature for some while longer. Sally from the city. For it is at this stage that the local historian places an exploit of the citizens of Le Mans which reminds us of the way in which our own Godwine was said to have won the special favour of Cnut for himself and his fellow-Englishmen.[587] The men of the city marched forth—​whether under Angevin leadership we are not told—​to attack the King’s camp at Coulaines. Rufus goes away. Rufus, deeming that some treachery was on foot, marched off in the night with his army. In the morning the citizens occupied the camp and found no one there.[588] It is hard to say what we are to make of this story, which has a somewhat mythical sound. But it has at least thus much of truth in it, that Rufus was obliged to break up the siege of Le Mans for a while. Ballon betrayed to Rufus and occupied by Robert of Bellême. The castle of Ballon, of which we have already so often heard, was betrayed to Rufus by its lord Pagan of Mont-Doubleau, and it was held that this strong position, nearly due north of the city, almost put the city itself into the King’s power. Robert of Bellême was put in command at Ballon, with three hundred knights. At his bidding the land was ravaged in every way; the vines were rooted up and the crops were trampled down. But at last the invaders began to feel the effects of the damage they themselves had done. A failure of provisions, especially of oats for the horses, hindered the Red King from keeping on the siege.[589] The siege of Le Mans raised. He went away into Normandy, bidding his men go home and see to their harvests, and come again when the crops were reaped.[590] Nothing is more natural in the case of the native Normans, who would feel in such a case very much as Englishmen felt; but one can hardly believe that William allowed his great mercenary force to be wholly broken up. And again, the question keeps always presenting itself, What was going on in the Vexin? Was there any moment when so eager a warrior, with two wars on his hands at once, left both of them to take care of themselves? Throughout this story the relations between the French and the Cenomannian wars form a never-ceasing puzzle. But we presently come to an incident of the campaign which is the most characteristic in the whole history of William Rufus.

Fulk attacks Ballon. While William was away, Count Fulk, at the head of a mixed host, Angevin and Cenomannian, laid siege to the newly-betrayed castle of Ballon. The attack went on for some days; a message was sent to the King for help. To meet this fresh danger, the nobles of Maine and Anjou pressed in greater numbers to help the Count and his force. Successful sally of the besieged. The defenders of the castle planned a sally. Beggars went out as spies, and brought in news that the besiegers were busy dining at the hour of tierce. The sally was made; the besiegers were surprised in the midst of their meal;[591] a hundred and forty knights and a crowd of foot-soldiers were taken prisoners. The rest took to flight and left a rich spoil of arms, clothes, and furniture as a prey to the Normans. Many of the captives were men of high rank and great possessions. The story almost reads as if Robert of Bellême condemned them to die of hunger; if so, Rufus came before hunger had done its work; cold would no longer be a means of torture. William at Ballon, c. July 20, 1098. It was now not Lent, but the third week in July, when King William with a great force came to Ballon. A cry presently reached him from the prisoners, “Noble King William, set us free.” The chivalrous King, who had no mercy for the peasants of Coulaines, felt his heart stirred towards the captive knights of Anjou. His treatment of the captive knights. He ordered that a meal should be made ready for them along with his own followers, and he set them free on their parole till the meal was ready. Some of his companions suggested to him that, in the crowd and confusion, they might easily escape. Rufus cast aside such a suggestion with scorn. He would never believe that a good knight would break his word; he who should do so would have punishment enough in the scorn of all mankind that would follow him.[592] Illustration of the chivalrous spirit. Here we see the chivalrous character in all its fulness. Justice and mercy go for nothing; the law of God and the law of man go for nothing; the oath of the crowned king, the promise of a prince and a brother, go for nothing; but the class tie of knighthood is sacred; the promise made under its guaranty is sacred. As a good knight, William Rufus is faithful to his own word pledged as such to others; as a good knight, he will not believe that a brother of his order can be other than faithful to his word pledged as such to him.

Fulk goes back to Le Mans. The siege of Ballon was at an end. Fulk, we are told, betook himself to the city, and there stayed in some of the monasteries, waiting to see what would happen.[593] But the defenders of Le Mans, both native and Angevin, had now made up their minds that resistance to the power of Rufus was hopeless; their object was to treat for peace. Negotiations for peace. The captive Helias was allowed a share in the negotiations; he was specially fearful that Fulk might make some agreement by which he himself might be cut off from Maine for ever.[594] Share of Helias. By the King’s leave, Bishop Hildebert and some of the chief men of the city visited Helias, and they agreed on terms which were put into the form of an agreement between Rufus and Fulk. Convention between William and Fulk. August, 1098. It was rather a military convention than a treaty of peace, and it left all the disputed questions unsettled. Nothing was said either as to the general question about the bishopric or as to the particular election of Hildebert. Nor was it at all ruled who was to be looked on as lawful Count of Maine. It was not even agreed that hostilities were to cease. The actual terms are conceived in words which seem to come from Rufus himself. The memory of his father is put prominently forward. Le Mans to be surrendered. Le Mans and all the fortresses which had been held by the late King William were to be surrendered to King William his son. Helias to be set free. Helias and all other prisoners on both sides were to be set free.[595] All sides, we are told, rejoiced at this agreement. To William and his followers it was a great immediate triumph. To the people of Le Mans it was at least immediate deliverance from a wasting struggle. And wary men may have seen that the liberation of Helias was not too dearly bought even by the surrender of his capital. If the valiant Count were set free, free alike from fetters and from promises, he would win back his lost city and dominion before long.

Submission of Le Mans. But for the present all went according to the pleasure of the Red King. Rufus, as his father had twice done, entered Le Mans without bloodshed, amidst at least the outward welcome of its inhabitants. And it may well be that, if Helias was not to be had, they may have looked on William as a more promising master than Fulk. The convention was formally accepted, and it was immediately carried out. The castles occupied by the King’s troops. Robert the son of Hugh of Montfort, that Hugh whom we have already heard of on Senlac and at Dover,[596] was sent at the head of seven hundred chosen knights, full armed in their helmets and coats of mail, to occupy the fortresses of Le Mans.[597] They met with no opposition; the garrisons, native or Angevin, marched out; the Normans took possession. All the strong places of the city—​the ancient palace of the counts on the Roman wall—​the donjon of William the Great, the royal tower, standing so dangerously near to the north wall of Saint Julian’s minster—​the other fortress of the Conqueror, the tower of Mont Barbet on its height, overlooking the city from the side of Saint Vincent’s abbey—​all that the father had either subdued or called into being—​now passed without a blow into the hands of the son. The King’s banner—​what was the ensign wrought upon it?--was hoisted amid shouts of victory on the highest point of the royal tower. King William the Red had achieved the object which in his thoughts came nearest to the nature of a duty. He had brought under his hand all that had ever been under the hand of his father.[598]

William’s entry into Le Mans. On the day of the military occupation followed the day of the joyous entry. The Red King entered, doubtless by the northern gate, the gate between Saint Vincent’s abbey and the royal tower. His new subjects welcomed him with shouts and songs, and were received by him to his full peace.[599] His reception by Hildebert. Bishop Hildebert, seemingly now admitted to favour, with his clergy and people, met the King with psalms and processions. They led him by the royal tower, with his own banner floating on its battlements, to the cathedral church, now a vaster and more splendid pile than when the first Conqueror had been led to it with the same pomp.[600] The church of Saint Julian. The twin towers of Howel soared in their freshness; the aisles which we still see, with their abiding Roman masonry, had risen at his bidding; it may well have been by the mighty portal of his rearing that Rufus entered within the hallowed walls. Within, the sight was different in every stone, in every adornment, from that on which we now gaze. The columns and arches of Saint Julian’s nave were still the columns and arches of the basilica which Aldric had raised when Le Mans was a city of the Empire of the pious Lewis.[601] It may be that of those columns we can here and there spell out some faint traces amid the finer masonry and gorgeous foliage of the next age. But of the works to the east, still new when Rufus came, the splendid reconstructions of later times have left us no signs. The choir of Arnold still blazed in all its freshness with the rich decorations which had been added by the skill and bounty of Howel. The first bloom had not passed away from the painted ceiling, from the rich pavement, from the narrow windows glowing with the deep richness of colour which no later age could surpass. Through all these new-born splendours of the holy place the scoffer and blasphemer was solemnly guided to the shrines of Saint Julian and of all the saints of Le Mans. And there were moments when the heart of Rufus was not wholly shut against better thoughts. As at Saint Martin of the Place of Battle, so at Saint Julian in newly-won Le Mans, we may deem that some dash of thankfulness was mingled with his swelling pride, as he felt that he had finished his father’s work.

William leaves Le Mans. The stay of William at Le Mans does not seem to have been long. The government of the city was put into the hands of Count William of Evreux and of Gilbert of Laigle. The royal tower, well provisioned, stocked with arms and with all needful things, was placed under the immediate command of Walter the son of Ansgar of Rouen.[602] General submission of Maine. The nobles of Maine now came in to make their submission and to receive the King’s garrisons into their castles. Among them were Count Geoffrey of Mayenne and the Viscount Ralph of Beaumont. The terms of their engagement were fulfilled. Their castles were to follow the fortune of Le Mans, and Le Mans now was King William’s.[603]

But he who had lately been the lord of them all was waiting for the benefits of the convention to be extended to himself. We are a little surprised when we presently find the King at Rouen, and when we further find that Helias, who had been lately in ward in the castle there, had now to be brought hither from a prison at Bayeux.[604] Meeting of William and Helias. The King and his captive met face to face. The contrast between the outward look of the two men was as striking as the difference in their inward souls. Before the victorious King, short, bulky, ruddy, fierce of countenance, hasty and stammering in speech, stood the captive Count, tall, thin, swarthy, master of eloquent and winning words. Something of bodily neglect marked, perhaps not so much the rigour of his confinement as a captive’s carelessness of wonted niceties. His hair, usually neatly trimmed, was now rough and shaggy.[605] The King seems to have begun the dialogue;[606] “I have you, Sir.” Helias answered with dignity and respect, as a man of fallen fortunes speaking to a superior in rank, and yet not stooping to any unworthy submission. Proposals of Helias. He called on the King, in the name of his might and his renown, to help him. He had once, he said, been a count, lord of a noble county. Fortune had now turned against him, and he had lost all. He asked leave to enter the King’s service, to be allowed to keep his rank and title of count, but pledging himself not to make any claim to the Cenomannian county or city, till by some signal exploit on the King’s behalf he should be deemed worthy to receive them as a grant from the King’s free will. Till then it would be enough for him to have his place in the royal following and to enjoy the royal friendship.

William disposed to accept Helias’ proposal. Such an appeal as this went straight to the better part of William’s nature, and he was at once disposed to agree to the proposal of Helias. But then stepped in the selfish prudence of Robert of Meulan, who measured other men by himself. He is hindered by Robert of Meulan. He was now the King’s chief adviser, and he jealously grudged all influence which might fall to the lot of any one else.[607] The admission of Helias to the King’s friendship and councils would of all things be the least suited for Robert’s purposes. He could not bear that any man, least of all a man of a spirit so much higher than his own, should be so near the throne as Helias threatened to be. The men of Maine, said the Count of Meulan, were a cunning and faithless race. All that the captive Helias sought by his offers was to insinuate himself into the King’s favour, to learn his secrets, that he might be able, when a fitting moment came, to rise up against him with more advantage and join himself to his enemies with greater power. The purpose of Rufus was changed by the malignant counsel of Count Robert. The petition of Helias was refused; it was again made; it was again refused. Defiance of Helias. Then the Count of Maine spoke his defiance. “Willingly, Sir King, would I have served you, if it had been your pleasure; willingly would I have earned favour in your sight. But now, I pray you, blame me not, if I take another course. I cannot bear with patience to see mine inheritance taken from me. All right is denied to me by overwhelming violence; wherefore let no man wonder if I again renew my claim, if I strive with all my might to win back the honour of my fathers.” Rufus was beside himself with wrath at words like these; but it was in words only that his wrath spent itself. He stammered out, “Scoundrel, what can you do? Be off, march, take to flight; Answer of Rufus. I give you leave to do all you can, and, by the face of Lucca, if you ever conquer me, I will not ask you for any grace in return for my favour of to-day.” Even after this outburst, the Count had self-command enough to ask for a safe-conduct, and the King had self-command enough to grant it. Helias set free. Helias was guided safely through the Norman duchy, and made his way, to the delight of his friends, to his own immediate possessions on the borders of Maine and Anjou.[608]

Illustration of the King’s character. Of all the stories of the Red King there is none more characteristic than this. His first impulse is to accept a generous and confiding offer in the spirit in which it was made. For a moment he seems to rise to the level of the man who stood before him. Even when his better impulse is checked by an evil counsellor, he does not sink so low as many would have sunk in the like case. In the wildest wrath of his insulted pride, he does not forget that his word as a good knight is pledged to the man who has defied him. Rufus was bound by all the laws of chivalry to let Helias go this time, whatever he might do if he caught him again. And the laws of chivalry Rufus obeyed in the teeth of temptations of opposite kinds. A meaner tyrant might have sent Helias at once to death or blinding. A calmer or more wary prince, even though not a tyrant, might have argued that it was unsafe for him and his dominions to let the man go free who had uttered such a challenge. He might further have argued that a speech which was so like an open declaration of war at once set aside the conditions of peace. But William Rufus, when once on his point of honour, was not led away from it either by the impulse of vengeance or by the calculations of prudence. His knightly word was pledged that Helias should go free. Free therefore he went, after his defiance had been answered by a counter defiance, each alike emphatically characteristic of the man who uttered it.

§ 3. The End of the French War.
September-December, 1098.

The war of Maine was, or seemed to be, over. And, just at this point we get a chronology clear enough to enable us to fix the connexion of the two works which were going on at once. We have seen William in his Norman capital at a time when we should rather have looked for him on one or other of his Norman frontiers. William on the continent. 1097–1099. But it seems plain that he spent the whole year on the mainland, and that he did not cross to England at any time between the two Christmas feasts which he is specially said to have kept in Normandy. Helias was set free in August, and we are led to believe that Rufus now deemed that the war of Maine was over, or at least that he could afford to despise it in its present stage. Extent of William’s conquests in Maine. We shall presently see that the war of Maine was by no means over, and that William’s Cenomannian conquests hardly reached beyond the capital and the lands north of the capital. He begins, but does not finish. We are inclined to wonder that a warlike prince like Rufus took no further heed to a campaign which was manifestly unfinished, while an active enemy was again at liberty and was still in possession of a strong line of castles. But this is neither the first nor the last time in which we find William the Red much more vigorous in beginning a campaign than in ending it. And in this case he may, with two wars on his hands, have not unreasonably thought that, after so great a conquest as that of the capital of Maine, he could afford to turn his thoughts to the other seat of warfare. In the month after Helias was set free, he made up his mind for a special effort against the stubborn border-land of France.

William sets forth. September 27, 1098. Two days before Michaelmas, William set forth, from what head-quarters we are not told, at the head of a great army. On his way to the seat of war he enjoyed the hospitality of Ralph of Toesny on the hill of Conches. That night there was a sign in the heavens; The sign in the sky. the whole sky blazed and seemed as red as blood. At other times such a portent in the heavens might not have seemed too great to betoken some great victory or defeat on the part of one or other of the contending kings of the West. But, while Christendom was on its march to the eastern land, the heavens could tell of nothing meaner than the ups and downs of the strifes between two continents and two creeds. Its meaning. If the sky was red over Conches and Evreux and the whole western world, it was because at that moment Christians and heathens met in battle in the eastern lands, and by God’s help the Christians had the victory.[609] But William Rufus cared little for signs and wonders, even when he himself was deemed to be the subject of their warning. His heart was not in Palestine, but on the French border; and his present business was a march against the most distant of the three fortresses to which he laid claim. Chaumont and Trie still held out; but their garrisons could not hinder him from carrying a destructive raid into districts far more distant from his head-quarters at Gisors. He marches to Pontoise. He marched to the south-east, burning, plundering, and carrying off prisoners from the whole French territory as far as Pontoise.[610]

The invading King had now reached a point of French soil nearer to Paris than the spot where Count Robert kept the Seine barred at Meulan. At Pontoise, as the name implies, was the bridge spanning the Oise, the tributary which joins its waters with those of the Seine at Conflans—​the Gaulish Confluentes—between Paris and Meulan. Castle and town of Pontoise. Here a precipitous rock rises above the stream, a rock which, strengthened and defended by art in every way, was crowned by the vast circuit of the castle of Pontoise. Here is no town sloping down from the castle to the river. The castle rock rises sheer—​it rose most likely from the water itself, till the Oise, like the Seine at Rouen, was curbed by a quay. In the view from the bridge, the castle, shorn as it is of its towers and of all that can give stateliness to such a building, still lords it over everything. The town of Pontoise seems to crouch by the side of the rock; the great church of Saint Maclou, with its lofty tower of late architecture, is wholly hidden from sight. It is only at some distance beyond the river, in the suburb known as that of Saint Ouen l’Aumône, that we begin to see that the church stands on ground not much lower than the site of the castle. Strong position of the town. We then learn that the town of Pontoise, standing on a height separate from the castle-rock, well walled, and with streets as steep as those of Le Mans or Lincoln, was in itself no contemptible fortress. As usual, there is little or nothing in town or church or castle that we can positively assign to the period of our story. But the main features of the spot must be the same now as they were when the Red King led his plundering host as far as the bridge of the Oise. Pontoise the furthest point of the raid. It is plain that this was the end of his course on this side; it is plain that Pontoise was not added to the list of fortresses which were taken by him or betrayed to him. But we have nothing to explain why he turned back at this point, whether he met with any repulse in an attack on Pontoise or whether he attacked Pontoise at all. We only know that Pontoise marks in one sense the furthest point of the French campaigns of William Rufus. We shall presently find him on another side at a greater distance from his own dominions; but Pontoise marks his nearest approach to the capital of France. Had Pontoise been William’s as well as Meulan, Paris would indeed have been threatened. But this south-eastern journey was clearly, in its effect at least, a mere plundering raid, from which Rufus came back to attempt a more regular attack on the nearer enemy at Chaumont.

Siege of Chaumont. The siege of Chaumont is described to us in greater detail than the march on Pontoise, but we do not, any more than at Pontoise, get a really intelligible account. It is plain that the siege was a considerable enterprise, one to which Rufus led his whole army. It is also plain from the result that its issue must have an important effect on the turn of affairs. But of the siege itself all that we hear is one of those strange stories by which we are sometimes met, stories which must have some meaning, which must be grounded on some fact, and which yet, as they stand, pass all belief. We are told that the defenders of Chaumont were valiant men, strong to defend the battlements of their own castle. But to defend their own castle was all that they could do; their numbers were not enough to enable them either to meet William’s great army in open battle, or even to hinder his plunderers from laying waste the neighbouring lands. But the defence of Chaumont itself was stout, and, as it turned out, successful. The archers of Chaumont shoot the horses only. Yet we are told that the garrison of Chaumont, out of the fear of God and out of tenderness towards men, stood strictly on the defensive, or took the offensive only towards brute beasts. In taking aim at the besiegers, they avoided the persons of the riders, and aimed all their blows at the horses. Seven hundred horses of great price fell under the arrows and darts of the men of Chaumont, and their carcases made a rich feast for the dogs and birds of prey of the Vexin.[611] Chaumont not taken. The virtue of these scrupulous warriors did not go unrewarded. Our story breaks off somewhat suddenly; but we see that at all events Chaumont was not taken.

The war now takes a turn of special interest, which makes us specially regret the very unsatisfactory nature of our materials. The field of our story is suddenly enlarged; but events do not crowd it at all in proportion to its enlargement. Rare notices of southern Gaul. It is but seldom that our tale brings us into any direct dealing with the lands and the princes south of the Loire. We have seen the tongue of oil supplant the Danish tongue in Normandy, and we have seen it appear as a rival to our own speech in our own island. But we have been seldom called on to listen to the accents of the tongue of oc. But at this moment the chief potentate of that tongue suddenly appears on the field of our story, an appearance from which we naturally look for great events. The young lord of the Vexin and heir of France had to meet a new enemy, almost as powerful, and quite as reckless and godless, as the old one. Coming of William of Poitiers. Another William, William of Poitiers and Aquitaine, came to the help of William of Normandy and England.[612] He was in the end to go to the crusade—​to go not exactly in the guise of Godfrey or Helias.[613] But he had not yet set out; and, before he went, he came to strike a blow on behalf of the prince to whom he was said to have sold the reversion of his dominions. Alliance of Normandy and Aquitaine. The mighty dukes of the North and the South might seem to have utterly hemmed in the smaller realm of the king whose men they were or should have been.[614] The final results of their alliance were not memorable, but the coming of the southern duke had the immediate effect of carrying the war into districts little used to the presence of English or even of Norman warriors.

Campaign to the west of Paris. It can hardly fail to have been the march of William of Aquitaine which led to a campaign carried on in the lands west and south-west of Paris, within the triangle which may be drawn between the three points of Mantes, Paris, and Chartres. One side of this triangle is formed by the Seine itself, and here the adhesion of the Count of Meulan must have effectually guarded the seat of war from the north. Somewhat to the west of Meulan, between that fortress and Mantes, the small stream of the Maudre empties itself into the Seine. Valley of the Maudre. The course of this stream and the valley through which it flows formed the chief seat of warfare at this stage, seemingly after the attacks on Chaumont had proved fruitless. Small as the Maudre is, its course makes a clearly marked valley, running nearly north and south. Maule. About the middle of it lies Maule, the fortress of Peter of Maule, the benefactor of the house of Saint Evroul, and therefore high in favour with its historian. Further to the south, where the stream is a mere brook, the valley widens into a plain between hills, and here some of the strongest points are occupied by the strongholds of the French house of Montfort, numbering among them the spot which gave that house its ever-memorable name. Montfort-l’Amaury. Here rose the hill which above all others glories in the name of the Strong Mount, the home of the Simons and the Amalrics. Under the name of Montfort-l’Amaury it still keeps the less illustrious of the two names, one or other of which was always borne by its successive counts. Neauphlé-le-Château. To the north-east of the cradle of their race, on the other side of the Maudre, the Counts of Montfort had planted another stronghold on a height, which, though all traces of a fortress have passed away, still keeps the name of Neauphlé-le-Château, as distinguished from another place of the same name, Neauphlé-le-Vieux. Epernon. Much further to the south-west, on the upper course of the Drouelle, a tributary of the Eure, stood Epernon, another fortress of the house of Montfort, a border fortress of the strictly French territory towards the lands of the Counts of Chartres. The two Williams march against the Montfort castles. On this district now fell the heavy wrath of the two Williams, who led a mighty multitude against Montfort and Epernon and laid waste the whole surrounding land. They had traitors in their service; they came under the guidance of Almaric the Young and of Nivard of Septeuil.[615] This last place lies in the valley of the Vaucouleurs, a stream running almost parallel with the Maudre and joining the Seine at Mantes. Such a position, lying nearly due west from Maule, and at a greater distance north-east from Montfort, marks a dangerous outpost thrown out from the Norman side into the heart of the French territory. Seat of war affected by the coming of William of Poitiers. Of the line of march of the Poitevin duke we have no account; but it must have been his coming which caused the seat of war to be changed from the north-west of the threatened capital of France to the south-west, a region so much better suited for an invader from the south.

No special mention of Lewis. It is somewhat singular that, while we have so striking a general picture of the courage and conduct of the young Lewis during this struggle, we hear nothing of any particular exploit of his, we hear nothing of any help given by him to any of the threatened fortresses. It is their own lords, each for himself, who withstand, and successfully withstand, the attacks of the powers of North and South. Our chief informant—​English, Norman, and French, all at once—​enlarges on the failure of Philip to give any help to his vassals; but we should never learn from him that his place was supplied by his son.[616] The castles resist singly. Every man, it would seem, fought for his own hand. We are told this of a crowd of unnamed lords defending unnamed fortresses. Peter of Maule. But we are not left to guess at the name of the friend of Saint Evroul, Peter of Maule, who, with his sons Ansold and Theobald, successfully defended his fortress in the valley of the Maudre.[617] We must suppose that the forces of the two Williams were scattered and frittered away in a series of desultory attacks against strongholds scattered all over the country. The two Simons of Montfort. But to us at least the main interest of the campaign gathers round the dwellings of the house of Montfort. We should be well pleased to have even such details of a warfare which affected them as we have had of the sieges of Chaumont and as we shall presently have of the siege of Mayet. But we hear only of the result, how the arms of the two Simons, elder and younger, The elder Simon defends Neauphlé. defended all the possessions which looked up to the Strong Mount as their head. The elder guarded the height of Neauphlé, where a curve in the hills, theatre-shape, awakens some faint remembrance of the kingly mount of Laon.[618] The castle of Montfort. But the Mons fortis itself, the hill from whence, in after times, Simon the father went to work the bondage of Toulouse and Simon the son to work the freedom of England, must have been among the strongholds which were saved by the energy of the younger bearer of the name which was to be so fearfully and so gloriously renowned. High on its peninsular hill, still keeping some small traces of elder towers along with one graceful fragment of far later days, the castle of Montfort looks down over church and town, over hills and plains, bidding defiance to foes on every side, but bidding the most direct defiance of all to any foe who should advance by the path which must have been trodden by the Aquitanian duke. For of all the outlooks from the height of Montfort the widest and the most striking is that by which the eye looks out towards those southern lands which came so near to forming a South-Gaulish realm for its own lords. The church. The church stands beneath on a lower point of the steep. The works of later times, which have filled its windows with the painted forms of the basest of the later Valois, have spared one side of the more ancient central tower, preserving to us forms which were looked on, not indeed by the Simons of our own immediate story, but by the Simon of Muret and the Simon of Evesham. A gate at the base of the castle mound, though the actual building must be of later date, still keeps the name of that Hugh Bardolf, himself joined by a tie of affinity to the house of Montfort, of whom we have heard elsewhere as one of the most abiding of the enemies of Normandy.[619] Defence of the younger Simon. Here, while the father defended Neauphlé, the son defended the cradle of their race, and their other outlying possessions. Not a detail is given us; but our historian emphatically tells us that it was by the help of God that the lords of Montfort kept their fortresses safe from the twofold enemy.[620] Interest of the defence. And, though a King of the English marched against them, though doubtless there was no lack of native English warriors in his train, yet we may join in the pious thankfulness of our guide at Saint Evroul. It was not good for English interests in any wide or lasting sense that the sovereign of England should even hold his ancestral Normandy, much less that he should inherit Aquitaine and conquer France. When the lords of Montfort in the eleventh century beat back from their strongholds all the efforts of England and Normandy, of Poitiers and Aquitaine, they were in truth working in the same cause as their glorious descendant in the thirteenth. Unknowingly and indirectly, they were, no less than he, fighting for the freedom and the greatness of what in their eyes seemed hostile England.

The war lingers on. Christmas, 1098. The war seems to have lingered on through another winter, the second of those when King William kept his Christmas feast in Normandy. But no successes are recorded either of William of England or of William of Aquitaine. No successes of the two Williams. The Red King had really done nothing, either alone or in company with his Poitevin ally. The gallant resistance of the men of the French borderland had beaten him back at every point. He was now glad to conclude a truce, A truce agreed to. which the events which followed made practically a peace.[621]

Survey of the French war. Its ill-success. It is not at first easy to understand why so very little came of such great preparations as those which William Rufus made for the French war. The strength of two great states, during the later stages of the war the strength of three great states, was broken by efforts which, even allowing as much as we can for the energy of young Lewis, were mainly those of the nobles and people of a single district. England, Normandy, and Aquitaine, were baffled by the men of the French Vexin. It is true indeed that the war of Maine was far from being really ended, but Rufus seems at this stage to have thought little of the efforts of the man whom he had bidden to do his worst against him. Nor was there anything this year in England, as there was the year before, to draw off the King’s attention from continental affairs. Scotland was quiet under a king of his own naming; Magnus did not really threaten England; the Welsh border might be left to Robert of Bellême or those whom he had left in charge. All that we can do is to record this singular break-down of a great force, without being able fully to explain it. One remark may be made. Illustration of William’s character. Men of the temper of Rufus often get simply weary of undertakings which bring little success, and in which there is nothing to call forth any special point of personal vengeance or personal honour. Rufus claimed the Vexin; but his heart does not seem to have been set on its possession, as it clearly was set on the possession of Le Mans. There was no one on the French border who had stung him personally to the quick as Helias had done. The want of success in the joint undertaking of the two Williams is certainly hard to understand; but we can quite understand how William of England and Normandy might, in sheer disgust, throw up an undertaking in which he did not at once succeed. When he was once more wounded in the most sensitive part, he was, as we shall presently see, all himself again.

§ 4. The Gemót of 1099.

William, master of Le Mans, but hardly to be called master of Maine, and assuredly not master of the Vexin, stayed in Normandy during the winter which followed the double war in those regions. The time of his absence is spoken of as a time of special oppression in England, a time when the exactions of Flambard and his fellows grew worse and worse, on account of the great sums which had to be sent over the sea for the King’s wars.[622] William keeps Christmas in Normandy. 1098–1099. The Christmas feast was again kept in Normandy, in what city or castle we are not told, but such incidental notices as we have seem to point to Rouen as his usual head-quarters when he was in the duchy. He came back to England in time for the Easter feast; the feast implies the assembly; Easter Gemót. April 10, 1099. but we have no account of its doings; there was no longer in England either an Anselm to afford subjects for discussion or an Eadmer to report the debates. Whitsun Gemót in the new hall at Westminster. May 10, 1099. The next festival was of greater importance, if only on account of the place where it was held, a place ever-memorable in the history of England from that day to this. “At Pentecost the King William held his court for the first time in the new building at Westminster.”[623]

Buildings of William Rufus. The architectural works of William Rufus form a marked feature in his reign; but the place which they hold in the national annals is singular. They are set down among the grievances of that unhappy time. They are reckoned among national grievances. Besides the bad weather, which was not the Red King’s fault, and the bad harvests which were deemed to be in some measure his fault, there were the unrighteous taxes and the other forms of unlaw which were directly his fault; Various grievances. lastly there were the great buildings which are set down as not the least among his ways of oppressing the people. Complaints in 1096, We have heard some of the wails which the Chronicler sends up year by year. The year of the purchase of Normandy was a year when the land was pressed down by manifold gelds and by a heavy time of hunger.[624] in 1097. The next year, the year of Anselm’s going, was a year of signs in the heavens, and of ungelds and unweather below.[625] Signs and wonders in 1098. The next year, the year of Maine, the year of the Vexin, the year of Anglesey, had also its physical wonders. In the summer a pool at Finchampstead in Berkshire was said to have welled up blood.[626] At Michaelmas the heaven seemed well-nigh all night as if it were burning.[627] Bad weather of 1098. That was a very grievous year, through manifold ungeld and through mickle rains that all the year never stopped; and—​what came home to those who could look back to the bright days of the Golden Borough—​well-nigh all tilth in the marsh-land died out.[628] The great buildings in London. 1097. Such are the mournful voices to which we listen year by year; but in the central year of the three another grievance is added. “Eke many shires that with work to London belonged were sorely harassed through the wall that they wrought around the Tower, and through the bridge that well nigh all flooded away was, and through the King’s hall-work that man in Westminster wrought, and many men therewith harassed.”[629]

This was the light in which three great works of building on which Englishmen of later days learned to look with national pride were looked on by the men of the time when they were wrought. We hear the cry of the Hebrew in the brick-field toiling to rear up the treasure-cities of the Pharaohs. Earlier parallels. We hear the cry of the Roman plebeian, as the proud Tarquin constrained him to give the sweat of his brow to fence in the seven hills with walls or to burrow beneath the ground to lay the foundations and turn the arches of the great sewer.[630] So it was in the days of the Red King with the Tower of London, the bridge of London, the hall of Westminster. Abuse of the old law. We may believe that, as so often happened, the old law of England was turned to purposes of oppression. The repair of bridges and fortresses was the universal burthen on the Englishman’s eðel, the duty which he owed, not to a personal lord, but to the commonwealth of which he was a member.[631] In one case at least we know that the defences of the local capital were laid by local law upon the people of the whole shire.[632] What was law at Chester would seem from the words of the Chronicler to have been law in London also. There were certain “shires that with work to London belonged.” William Rufus may therefore have been quite within the letter of the ancient law in calling on the people of certain shires to contribute in money or labour to any works which were needed for either the Tower or the bridge of London. But it is clear that this is the kind of law which opens the way to a great amount of oppression in detail, and that the law itself supplies temptations to extort more than the law gives. The bridge and the Tower. The bridge at least was an useful work, and if the men of London thought that the Tower stood by their walls rather to overawe them than to defend them, that was an argument which could not be openly brought forward. Question as to the hall. But it is by no means clear whether the ancient law about bridges and fortresses could be stretched so as to take in works at the King’s palace. Anyhow the burthen laid on the people was frightfully oppressive, and those who felt the burthen bitterly complained. And, if we rightly understand the Chronicler, the grievance of building the bridge was doubled by a flood which swept away the unfinished work, and made it needful to build it over again.[633]

Thus, amid the toils and groans of the people, three mighty works arose, to hand down the name of William Rufus to after ages as a great builder. While Rufus was harrying the land of Maine, a land which but for him might have remained peaceful and happy under a righteous ruler, while he was striving in vain to bring the heights of Chaumont and Montfort under his power, the people of a large part of England were giving their strength and their money to make London put on a new face, to make all things ready for the time when the King should again come to his island kingdom to wear his crown in or hard by its greatest city. Growth of the greatness of London. All these works point, among other things, to the steady growth of the greatness of London. The city had grown fast in importance during the whole century which was now drawing to an end, and at no time faster than during Harold’s nine months of little stillness.[634] Relations of London and Winchester. London had become the city of the King; Winchester was left to be the city of the Old Lady.[635] The attractions of the New Forest drew the Conqueror, specially after the death of Eadgyth, back again to the old West-Saxon capital; but this preference of Winchester as the head-quarters of sport in no way checked the advance of London as the real head of the kingdom. Harsh as may have been the means by which the Red King raised his great buildings, richly as he and they may have earned the curses of his subjects at the time, we can say nothing against either the taste or the policy which led him to the defence and the adornment of the great city and of the palace which lay under its shadow.

The wall round the Tower. Notwithstanding any momentary checks, the works went on and prospered. The great tower of Gundulf—​strange work for the meek follower of Anselm—​was fenced in with a surrounding wall. London Bridge. The river was spanned by its first stone bridge, that long range of narrow arches, itself a thickly-peopled city over the stream, of which the last traces vanished in our own early days. Westminster Hall. But above all there now arose that famous hall of Westminster whose name has come to be another name for the law of England. Strange founder for such a pile might seem the prince whose reign was before all others the reign of unlaw. Its two founders. And yet it was not wholly unfitting that the Prytaneion of England should first arise at the bidding of William the Red, and should take a new form at the bidding of a later king in whose days unlaw was again mighty. Its architecture. The great hall arose at the bidding of Rufus, in the stern and solemn form of the art of his day—​the day, be it remembered, of William of Saint-Calais and the choir of Durham—​with its low massive walls, its two ranges of pillars and arches, far removed, we may be sure, from the graceful forms which had been at Spalato and which were to be again at Oakham, but standing firm in their strength, bearing the full impress of the style whose leading feature is that of simple, changeless, abiding, rest.[636] Recasting by Richard the Second. At the bidding of Richard of Bourdeaux the walls were cased, and pierced with windows of forms unknown in the days of the Red King; his pillars and arches were swept away; the central space and its aisles were thrown into a single body; the timber roof of wondrous span and wondrous workmanship leaped boldly from wall to wall, with a daring which might have pleased the swelling pride of Rufus himself. Thus, at the word of two despotic kings, arose the pile which may claim, no less than its neighbours, Saint Peter’s chapter-house and Saint Stephen’s chapel, to be the chosen home of English freedom. For in England law has ever grown out of unlaw. The despotism of Normans and of Tudors only paved the way for the outbursts of freedom in the thirteenth century and in the seventeenth; a reforming Henry dogged the steps alike of Rufus and of Richard. Legal position of the reign of Rufus. And if from one side the reign of Rufus was a reign of unlaw, from another side it was a reign of overmuch law. It saw the beginning of those legal subtleties, that web woven by the wicked skill of Flambard, which makes the Red King’s day a marked epoch in legal history. His reign bridges the space between the days when we had laws but when we had no lawyers, and the days when lawyers had grown so many and so subtle that the true ends of law were sometimes forgotten among them. History of the hall. If from one side the hall of Westminster has been one of the cradles of English freedom, from another side it has been the special home of that form of unlaw by which men have been sent to a wrongful doom under the outward forms of justice. Of all that is good and bad in the history of the law of England the hall of Rufus is the material embodying. Within no other building reared by the hand of man has so great a share of English history been wrought.

Object of the hall. But it was not directly as the dwelling-place either of law or of its opposite that Rufus first reared his hall. It was built rather as a trophy of his own swelling pride. Personal pride of Rufus. The home of the Confessor, the home of the Conqueror, was not stately enough for the Red King. He would be lodged, at least in that special home of kingship, as better became the idea which he had formed of his own greatness. It was the hall of the king, rather than the hall of the kingdom, the centre and crown of his own house, the place for the display of his own splendour, which Rufus sought to call into being. Legends of the hall. When the work was done, other men deemed that it was as great, perhaps greater, than even so great a king could need. But its founder was not satisfied. Nero, when he had finished his Golden House, allowed that he was at last lodged like a man. Rufus, when he had outdone the works of all that had gone before him, hardly deemed that he was lodged like a man in his palace of Westminster. Alleged sayings of Rufus. The new hall, when it was done, was not half so great as he had meant it to be.[637] Some add a wilder saying, that he would build a house on such a scale that the great hall should be but one of its bed-chambers.[638] But the hall, such as it was, vast in the eyes of other men, small in the eyes of its master, was ready for use by the day of the Pentecostal feast. The Whitsun feast. Then the assembly came together; then the accustomed rites were gone through in the West Minster; then the banquet and the council were held, as was wont, under its shadow, in the accustomed place, but within new walls and under a new roof. Within those walls, beneath that roof, men for the first time saw King William of England, lord, as he deemed, of Scotland, Normandy, and Maine, in all his own greatness and glory, in all the greatness and glory of his new work. One feature in that great gathering might indeed have helped to swell his heart even higher than it had ever before been swollen. The crown was, as usual, placed on his head in the minster and worn in the hall. And on that day at least he must have felt that the crown which was placed on his head was in truth an imperial diadem. William the Red was not indeed rowed on the Thames by vassal kings, like Eadgar the Giver-of-peace. But in the pomps of that day he saw a king march before him as his vassal, a king who had received his crown at his own bidding. The sword borne by the King of Scots. When King William of England wore his cynehelm in church and hall, King Eadgar of Scotland, first of his men in rank and honour, bore the sword of state before his lord.[639] Was that day of pride and pomp merely a day of pride and pomp, or were any of the great affairs of William’s kingdom and empire dealt with in the joint presence of the Monarch of Britain and his kingly vassal? One thing only we know; one act alone of that gathering is recorded. But that act is one which has no small fitness as the one act which we know that the Red King did in his new building.

Deaths of bishops and abbots. The hands of Randolf Flambard must have been just then full of work, and the coffers of King William must have been just then well filled with wealth flowing in from the usual sources. Bishops and abbots had for some time been dying most conveniently for the King and his minister. Walkelin of Winchester. January 3, 1098. Within the first few days of the year of Le Mans and Chaumont died the friend, some said the kinsman, of the Conqueror, the Norman Walkelin, the successor of English Stigand in the see of Winchester.[640] Character and acts of Walkelin. Though he had appeared as an adversary of Anselm,[641] though he had once designed to supplant the monks of the Old Minster by secular canons,[642] though he was said to have lessened the revenues of the monks to increase those of the bishopric,[643] he still left behind him a good name in the monastic annals of his church, both for the austerity of his own life and for the affection which he afterwards learned to show to the brethren.[644] Winchester tradition loved to tell of the pious fraud by which he had cajoled the Conqueror out of the whole timber of a great wood towards the rebuilding of his church.[645] The monks take possession of Walkelin’s church. April 8, 1093. It told how, in the year of the King’s temporary penitence, the monks had, in the presence of well-nigh all the prelacy of England, taken possession of the church of Walkelin’s building, and how they had presently gone on to rase to the ground the church of Æthelwald which had been deemed so stately a pile not much more than a hundred years before.[646] Walkelin joint-regent with Flambard. 1097. It told how, when the King set forth for the French war, the Bishop of Winchester was left as joint-ruler of the realm with the mighty chaplain and Justiciar.[647] And it told the last tale, how, when he had barely entered on his new office, on the very Christmas morning, while the holiest rite of Christian worship was going on, The King’s demand for money. Christmas, 1097–1098. the King’s messenger came to demand two hundred pounds without delay. The Bishop, like Anselm, knew that he could raise no such sum without robbery of the Church and oppression of the poor. He prayed that he might be set free from a world of which he was weary. Two days later his prayer was answered; while the Red King warred at Chaumont and Mayet, Randolf Flambard remained sole ruler of England.[648]

On the death of Bishop Walkelin presently followed the deaths of two other heads of great monastic bodies. Death of Turold of Peterborough, and of Robert of New Minster. One was Turold, the martial abbot of Peterborough, of whom we heard in the days of Hereward;[649] the other was Robert of New Minster, he whose staff had been bought for him by his too dutiful son the Bishop of Norwich.[650] And, a few days before the death of Walkelin, another great abbot passed away who was, in a way in which none of those three was, a link with earlier days. Death of Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s. December 29, 1097. Abbot Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s, the skilful leech of King Eadward, if not himself of English birth, had at least received his staff from an English King. His house had been growing in wealth and fame ever since the penitent devotion of Cnut had changed the secular canons of Beadricsworth into the monks of Saint Eadmund’s. We have already heard of Baldwin’s medical skill and of his strivings for the privileges of his church against the East-Anglian bishopric.[651] Acts of Baldwin. Rebuilding of the Church. He won fame also, like other abbots of his day, as the rebuilder of his church, the church which, besides his royal patron, sheltered the relics of the holy abbot Botolf and the valiant ætheling Jurwine.[652] The latest research has added largely to our knowledge of Baldwin and his house, and has brought to light several details which illustrate the reign of the Red King and the characters of some of the chief actors in it. Miracles of Saint Eadmund. Saint Eadmund had long ago begun to work signs and wonders. In King Eadward’s day he had avenged himself on our old friend Osgod Clapa, Osgod Clapa. reverenced at Waltham but not reverenced at Saint Eadmund’s, because he had thrust himself into the holy place with his Danish axe in warlike guise on his shoulder.[653] Bishop Herfast. In the days of the elder William, when the dispute was going on between the abbey and the bishopric, the saint had directly interfered to bring Bishop Herfast to a better mind by a bodily chastisement.[654] He had even appeared, as he had done to the tyrant Swegen,[655] mounted and lance in hand, to smite, and in smiting to reform, a courtier of the Conqueror’s, Randolf by name.[656] But we are more concerned with stories which directly bear on our own history. Robert of Curzon. When Roger Bigod did so much evil in eastern England in the days of the general rebellion, Saint Eadmund did not fail to defend his own lands, and to smite with madness a certain Robert of Curzon to whom the rebel had presumed to grant a manor belonging to the abbey.[657] Completion of the Church. 1094. The King forbids the dedication. We read too how, when the new church was finished, King William, seemingly in the assembly at Hastings, by what caprice is not explained, gave permission for the translation of the martyr, but forbade the dedication of the church.[658] Meanwhile, a rumour, of which we have heard the like more than once, is spread abroad that the body of Saint Eadmund is not really there, and that the precious things which adorned the empty shrine might well be applied to the objects of the King’s warfare. Translation of Saint Eadmund. April 30, 1095. The danger passed away, and, notwithstanding some opposition from Bishop Herbert, a solemn translation, in the presence of Bishop Walkelin of Winchester and of Randolf the chaplain, removed all doubts.[659] Abbot Baldwin survived this triumph two years and a half. His career had been a long and a busy one. In the course of his warfare with the East-Anglian bishops, he had found it needful to visit Rome, and he too, like others, found how great was the strength of gold and silver at the threshold of the Apostles.[660] Baldwin’s relation to the English. He had gone on that journey with English companions, and when he died, during the Christmas feast which followed the departure of Anselm, he was mourned by men of both races.[661]