Northern Gaul was at this time divided in very unequal proportions between the King and several vassal princes more powerful than himself. Of Southern Gaul |Practical independence of Aquitaine.| it is hardly needful to speak; of Aquitaine we hear just enough to show that the lands north and south of the Loire were aware of each other’s existence, and that a nominal connexion was held to exist between them. The Aquitanian princes now and then stooped to pay a nominal homage to the King of the West-Franks; otherwise the South moved in a world of its own, a world which was very slightly touched by the revolutions of Laon, Rouen, or Paris. It must always be remembered that the royal city was Laon, a city close upon the Lotharingian frontier, in a district where the Teutonic speech still lingered.[273] |The King’s domain.| The royal domain took in only Laon, Compiègne, and a small territory about those towns. Through the election of Rudolf, ducal Burgundy was brought into a temporary connexion with the crown, but that connexion lasted no longer than the reign of Rudolf himself. To |Lotharingia; explanation of its continual revolutions.| the east and north-east of the royal dominions lay Lotharingia, the border land, ever fluctuating in its allegiance between the Eastern and Western kingdoms. But all its fluctuations follow one unvarying principle, namely that its inhabitants preferred the rule of a Karling to that of any one else, but that, when no Karling was to be had, they preferred the rule of a |Germany.| German to that of a Frenchman. Beyond Lotharingia lay the Eastern Francia, the Teutonic Kingdom, now rapidly rising into greatness under the vigorous Kings |The Saxon Kings.| of the Saxon house. Deeming themselves the true successors of Charles, speaking his tongue and crowned in his royal city, the Saxon Kings already aspired to reunite the scattered fragments of his Empire. Within the Western |Arnulf of Flanders.| Kingdom we find three chief princes, Arnulf of Flanders, Herbert of Vermandois, and Hugh of Paris. The Flanders of those days, it should be remembered, reached far to the south of any border which Flanders has had for some centuries past. Calais, Boulogne, and Arras were all Flemish, and in those days Flemish still meant Low-Dutch. Ponthieu was a frontier district, with a Count of its own, whose homage was disputed between Flanders and Normandy. Of the present sovereign of Flanders it is enough to say that his actions show him to have been |Herbert of Vermandois.| capable of any crime. To the south of Flanders lay Vermandois, governed by the faithless, unprincipled Herbert, himself of Carolingian descent, but the greatest of all sinners against Carolingian royalty; the gaoler, most likely the murderer, of Charles the Simple. His one object was to extend by any means his comparatively narrow territories. More powerful than any other Western prince, far more powerful than his nominal King, was the lord of the Western Francia, the Duke of the French, |The Duchy of France.| Hugh the Great of Paris. His dominions took in the greater part of central Gaul north of the Loire, but, since the establishment of the Norman duchy, they nowhere |Ducal Burgundy.| reached to the sea. Ducal Burgundy need hardly be mentioned; on the death of Rudolf, Duke and King, the duchy was split into several parts, a large share |Archbishopric of Rheims.| falling to the lot of Hugh himself. Along with these temporal principalities we might almost reckon the metropolitan see of Rheims, whose Primate, alone among Western bishops, made some faint approach to the position of the princely prelates of Germany. This great and wealthy church constantly formed an apple of discord among the temporal powers which surrounded it. The rival princes were always striving, sometimes to thrust their nominees into the archbishopric, sometimes to appropriate to themselves the estates of the see. A large share of the history of the times is taken up with disputes about the succession to the archbishopric, which sometimes take the form of ecclesiastical synods, sometimes that of temporal campaigns and sieges. In the end the temporal importance of the see was greatly lessened through the loss of several of its most valuable possessions, |Hugh the Great.| among them the famous lordship of Coucy. Among all these princes Hugh of France stands out the foremost, alike from the extent of his dominions and from the peculiarity of his personal position. The nephew of King Odo, the son of King Robert, the father of King Hugh, the brother-in-law of King Rudolf, King Æthelstan, and King Otto himself, the Duke of the French never would be himself a King. He had no scruple against making |His Policy.| war on the King, none against robbing him of his dominions, none against assuming a complete control over his actions and even keeping him in personal bondage. He had no scruple even against transferring his allegiance from one King to another, against becoming a vassal of the Eastern instead of the Western crown. But if he went thus far, he would go no further; he would always have a King over him, if only to show how much greater he was than any King; but a King he himself never would be. Three times at least he might easily have mounted the throne; but he always declined the glittering bauble that lay within his grasp. In all this there seems something like a guiding principle; and even in other respects, faithless and ambitious as Hugh was, he was distinctly better than some of his fellows. It is some slight comfort to find that a man who was honoured with the hand of a sister of Æthelstan was at least not stained with any such frightful crimes as those which have handed down the names of Arnulf and Herbert to everlasting shame.[274]
When William succeeded his father, Normandy was at war with France; that is, it was at war with Herbert of Vermandois and Hugh of Paris, and with Rudolf of Burgundy, their King of the West-Franks. But Rolf, and after him William, acknowledged no King but the imprisoned Charles. From him Rolf had received his lands; to him Rolf had done homage; to him William repeated that homage on the earliest opportunity, and he never did homage to Rudolf till the death of Charles left the Burgundian Duke without a competitor for the |926–928.| kingly title. Peace was made and peace was again confirmed, without any acknowledgement of the usurper’s claim. It was not till three years later, when Charles |After Charles’s death William does homage to Rudolf. 933.| was dead, and when Rudolf, by his victory at Limoges, had shown himself worthy to reign, that William, seemingly of his own act and deed and without any special circumstances calling for such a course, did homage to Rudolf,[275] and received from him a grant of the maritime Britanny. |Rudolf’s grant of Britanny.| This grant most likely carried with it both a general confirmation of the superiority of Normandy over Britanny and a special confirmation of the transfer of Avranches and Coutances to the immediate dominion of the Norman Duke. Meanwhile Hugh and Herbert were running their usual course; it is hardly the duty of an English, or even of a Norman, historian to reckon up the number of times that they transferred their allegiance from Charles to |Herbert does homage to Henry. 931.| Rudolf and from Rudolf to Charles. It is of more importance to mark that Herbert, at a moment when Rudolf and Hugh were both at war with him, did not scruple to transfer his allegiance to the Eastern King |Rudolf dies. 936.| Henry.[276] At last Rudolf died, and now a most important change took place. It might not be very clear what was the use of a King, if his vassals, several of them more powerful than himself, might rebel against him and make war on him at pleasure. Still, though all the princes were agreed in allowing to the King the smallest possible amount of territory and power, none of the princes was |Diet of election for the new King.| prepared to do without a King altogether. A Diet of election was held, of which some most remarkable details are preserved.[277] The prime mover in the whole matter was Hugh the Great. He might himself have become a candidate; all central and southern Gaul, his own duchy |Central and Southern Gaul favours Hugh; the Eastern part favours Lewis.| and the lands beyond the Loire, sought to confer the crown upon him. But the Eastern part of the kingdom, where there still lingered some traces of Teutonic blood and speech, some feelings of reverence for the blood of the great Emperor, favoured the election of Lewis the son of Charles, who was now living under the protection of his |Hugh declines the crown and procures the election of Lewis.| English uncle. Hugh, according to his invariable policy, declined the crown for himself. He already enjoyed the reality of kingship, and he shrank with a superstitious dread from a title which had brought little gain to his uncle and his brother-in-law and still less to his own father. It was on the motion of the Duke of the French that the assembly agreed to elect Lewis as King of the |Embassy to Æthelstan. 936.| West-Franks, and to send an embassy to Æthelstan to ask for the restoration of his nephew to the throne of his fathers. The embassy passed over into England, and found the King at York.[278] It was the year before Brunanburh, when the presence of Æthelstan was doubtless specially called for in his northern dominions. The ambassadors spoke in the name of Duke Hugh and of all the chief men of the Gauls, and prayed for Lewis to be their |Negotiations between Æthelstan and Hugh.| King. Æthelstan, somewhat doubtful of their good faith,[279] demanded oaths and proposed a further conference. The King of the English hastened to the coast of Kent, and the Duke of the French to the coast of Flanders, not far from Boulogne. Fire signals were exchanged on each side, the materials being found in the wooden houses which lined the shores.[280] Let us hope that, whatever Hugh or Arnulf may have done, Æthelstan at least made good the loss to his subjects. Several English Bishops and Thegns passed over, having at their head Oda, Bishop of the Wilsætas or of Ramsbury, afterwards the famous Primate.[281] Before Æthelstan would trust his nephew across the sea, he demanded satisfactory oaths from the assembled princes; otherwise he would give Lewis one of his own kingdoms, where he might reign safely and prosperously.[282] This was no empty boast; the Emperor of Britain had kingdoms to bestow, lower indeed in rank, but safer and more powerful, than the nominal royalty of Laon. The princes of Gaul swore as they were bidden; but it was agreed that the Duke of the French should be the chief adviser, or rather the protector and guardian, of the new King.[283] Lewis crossed the sea; he landed in the realm which was now his, he sprang on his horse,[284] and rode on amid the cheers of |Lewis crowned King. 936.| his new subjects. He went to his royal city of Laon, where he was consecrated King by Artald Archbishop of Rheims; he then went with his guardian on an expedition into Burgundy, more to his guardian’s profit than to his own.[285] He then visited his powerful vassal at Paris; but in the next year, safe on the rock of Laon, he threw off |He declares his independence of Hugh. 937.| the yoke; he declared his independence of Duke Hugh, and sent for his mother Eadgifu, seemingly to take Hugh’s place as his chief counsellor.[286]
The reign of Lewis—Lewis from beyond Sea—is of itself enough to confute the common mistake of believing that the line of Charles the Great ended in a race of imbecile fainéants, like those whom Pippin had set aside.[287] Lewis may be called ambitious, turbulent, and perfidious, but no man was ever less of a fainéant. His life was in truth one of preternatural activity. Early adversity, combined with an education at the hands of glorious Æthelstan, had brought out some very vigorous qualities in his young nephew. If Lewis was ambitious, turbulent, and perfidious, he was but paying off Hugh of Paris and William of Rouen in their own coin. In truth no two positions can well be more unlike one another than the position of |Contrast between the late Karlings and the late Merwings.| the later Karlings and that of the later Merwings. The Duke of the French might now and then put on something of the guise of a Mayor of the Palace, but Pippin and Hugh had very different masters to deal with. The nominal ruler of a vast realm, led about as an occasional pageant and leaving the government of his dominions to an all-powerful minister, is the exact opposite to a King whose domains have shrunk up to the territory of a single city, and who has to spend his life in hard blows to keep that last remnant of his heritage from the ambition of vassals whose territories are far wider than his own. Lewis had to strive in turn against France, Normandy, and Vermandois, and now and then he was able to give each of them nearly as good as they brought. And, small as was the extent of the King’s actual domains, there was still an abiding reverence for the royal name, which breathes in every page of the chroniclers, and which was not without influence even on the minds of the men who fought against him. Still Lewis had constantly to fight for the small remnant of dominion which was left to him. The restless Herbert had to be |938.| driven from a fortress built on the very slope of the King’s |939.| own rock of Laon.[288] The next year we find both William and Hugh in arms against the King in a quarrel arising out of the border disputes of Normandy and Flanders.[289] William was at war with Arnulf, the quarrel between these two great potentates being, if not caused in the first |Affairs of Montreuil. 939.| instance, at any rate aggravated by their differences as to the affairs of a smaller neighbour. This was Herlwin, Count of Montreuil or Ponthieu, whose dominions lay between Normandy and Flanders. Properly he seems to have been a vassal of the Duke of the French,[290] but when his dominions were seized by Arnulf, he got no help from Hugh, while he got very effective help from William. |Montreuil taken by Arnulf and recovered by Herlwin.| By the aid of a Norman force, headed, according to one account, by the Norman Duke himself, Montreuil was recovered, and Herlwin reinstated.[291] But greater powers than any of these were soon to come on the stage. One of them indeed figures in a rather unlooked-for way in the story of Herlwin. When Montreuil was taken by Arnulf, |Herlwin’s wife and children sent to Æthelstan.| the wife and children of the dispossessed Count were sent, of all the people in the world, to King Æthelstan in England. That they should have taken refuge at his court would have been only the natural course of things; but it sounds strange at first that the prisoners should be sent to the King of the English, if not actually as captives in bonds, yet at least as persons over whom some degree of watch was to be kept.[292] The explanation is most likely to be found in the close alliance between Æthelstan and Lewis, possibly also in the kindred between Æthelstan and Arnulf, who was, like Æthelstan, a grandson of Ælfred. Just now Arnulf was the friend, and William |William excommunicated. 939.| the enemy, of Lewis, and William was actually excommunicated by the Bishops in the King’s interest for his harryings of the Flemish territory. That a similar fate fell on Herbert for his aggressions on the lands of the archbishopric of Rheims is less wonderful.[293] Æthelstan soon afterwards again appears as the ally of his nephew, even when ties equally strong might have drawn him towards |Otto the Great, King of the East-Franks. 936.| his nephew’s enemies. King Henry of Germany was now dead, and his son, the great Otto, the brother-in-law of Æthelstan, had succeeded to the throne of the Eastern Franks in the same year in which their common nephew had succeeded to the royalty of the West. After some opposition at the hands of his own brothers, the future restorer of the Empire had received the Frankish diadem in the great Emperor’s minster at Aachen. But the men of border Lotharingia refused to acknowledge another Saxon; there was now again a Karling who was a crowned King; none but that Karling could be their lawful sovereign; the Saxon Duke had been chosen King of Saxony only, because a chief was needed to defend the land against the Slaves, and because the true Carolingian King was at that |The Lotharingians transfer their allegiance from Otto to Lewis. 939.| moment disqualified.[294] The Lotharingians therefore transferred their allegiance from Otto to Lewis. Their first application was rejected; a second, made by the temporal princes of the country—the Bishops clave to Otto—was accepted.[295] A war naturally followed between Lewis and Otto, in which Lotharingia was ravaged by the German King. Lewis was however not without allies. The West-Saxon King stepped in as the champion of his Frankish |The English fleet in the Channel.| nephew against his Old-Saxon brother-in-law; an English fleet appeared in the channel; but in an inland war this naval help could be of little avail, and nothing came of the English intervention beyond the ravage of some parts of the opposite coast.[296] A series of intrigues and backslidings now follow which fairly baffle the chronicler. While Lewis was gaining new subjects to the East, his vassals within his own kingdom almost unanimously forsook |The Western princes do homage to Otto.| him. Not only his old enemies Hugh and Herbert, but the fickle Duke of the Normans, and Arnulf, in whose cause he had himself been so lately warring, all met Otto and transferred their homage from Lewis to him.[297] The motive for this course is not very clear. Otto was indeed a more distant, but he was a far more powerful, over-lord, one far more likely to exercise effective authority over his |Activity of Lewis.| vassals. But the indefatigable Lewis found new friends in Lotharingia; he went into Elsass to a conference with |Lotharingia won and lost.| Hugh of Provence;[298] he drove the partisans of Otto out of Lotharingia, and returned to Laon to chastise a Bishop suspected of treason. These successes were only momentary; Lotharingia was soon recovered by Otto.[299] But the conspiracy of the Western princes against their King was no |William does homage and makes special promises to Lewis. 940.| less transitory. In the year following the general defection William of Normandy changed sides; he met Lewis in the neighbourhood of Amiens; he did homage, and received from the King a fresh grant of his dominions.[300] And he seems to have made something more than the usual promises of allegiance. He is said to have pledged himself either to die in the King’s cause or to restore him to the full exercise of his royal authority.[301] Yet before the year was out William was again in arms, helping Hugh |The princes, William among them, besiege Rheims, and depose Archbishop Artald. 940.| and Herbert in a siege of Rheims.[302] The metropolitan see was disputed between Hugh, a son of Herbert, and Artald, a vigorous champion of the King, who had performed the ceremony of his coronation. Artald was now in possession of the bishopric, and had been endowed by the King with great temporal privileges and with the title of Count.[303] War against the Primate was in every sense war against the King. The city surrendered; Herbert’s Archbishop was admitted; and the conspirators then went a step further in rebellion by besieging the King’s |Hugh and Herbert again do homage to Otto at Attigny. 940.| own city of Laon. Hugh and Herbert presently took a still more daring step by inviting Otto to Attigny, within the acknowledged West-Frankish border, and there renewing their homage to him.[304] With this last transaction William |William renews his homage to Lewis.| had nothing to do; before long we find him again the faithful homager of King Lewis, receiving him with all kingly-state at Rouen, and seemingly bringing with him to their due allegiance, not only his own Breton vassals, but his brother-in-law William of Aquitaine.[305]
We are now drawing near to the end of the troubled career of William Longsword. We here find ourselves involved in such a mass of contradictory statements that I reserve their special examination for another place.[306] |William Longsword murdered by Arnulf. 943.| That William was lured by Arnulf of Flanders to a conference on the island of Picquigny in the Somme, and that he was there murdered by the contrivance of the Flemish prince, there seems no reason to doubt. But as to the motives and circumstances which led to the act, whether Arnulf acted alone or in concert with any of the other Western princes, whether King Otto himself was in any way the unwitting cause of a crime at which his noble heart would have revolted, are questions which I shall |Council of Attigny, held by the two Kings of the Franks as colleagues.| discuss elsewhere. But I cannot, even here, wholly pass by the Council of Attigny, a council at which events took place which one version closely connects with the death of William. Otto was reconciled to Lewis, who had now become his brother-in-law by a marriage with his widowed sister Gerberga, and by Otto’s means the Duke of the French was reconciled to the King. The two Kings then, as colleagues in the administration of one Frankish realm, held a solemn council, at which the great vassals of the Western Kingdom attended. The kings sat side by side; but though the Western King was on his own ground, his Eastern colleague, the truer successor of Charles, the King crowned at Aachen and already no doubt looking to be the Emperor crowned at Rome, took the seat of honour, which, if one tale be true, the Norman alone was found bold enough to challenge for his own immediate lord.
William Longsword left one son, Richard, surnamed the Fearless, born of a Breton mother Sprota, who stood, as we have seen, to Duke William in that doubtful position in which she might, in different mouths, be called an honourable matron, a concubine, or a harlot.[307] Her son had been taught both the languages of his country, and he was equally at home in Romance Rouen and in Scandinavian Bayeux.[308] Whether his birth were strictly legitimate or not was a matter of very little moment either in |His doubtful legitimacy little thought of.| Norman or in Frankish eyes. If a man was of princely birth and showed a spirit worthy of his forefathers, few cared to pry over minutely into the legal or canonical condition of his mother. The young Richard had been already, without any difficulty, acknowledged by the Norman and Breton chiefs as his father’s future successor in the duchy,[309] |He is invested with the Duchy by Lewis.| and he now found as little difficulty in obtaining a formal investiture of the fief from his lord King Lewis.[310] In England his minority, for he was only about ten years old, would have been a far greater hindrance to his succession than his doubtful birth. But even in England, within the same century, minors reigned when no better qualified member of the kingly house was forthcoming, and young |Reign of Richard. 943–996.| Richard was the only male descendant of Rolf. The long reign of Richard, reaching over more than fifty years, is one of the most important in the history of Normandy and of France, and it is in his time that we hear of the first direct collision between Normandy and England. And the early part of Richard’s reign is perhaps more crowded with picturesque incidents than any other portion of time |Romantic interest of his early life.| of equal length. The early life of the orphan child, his dangers, his captivity, his escape, his bitter enemies and his faithful friends, the mighty powers which strove for the possession of his person or for influence over his counsels—the tale has all the interest of a complicated romance. Many of the details are doubtless due to the invention of Norman legend-makers; but there is enough in the soberer French and German writers to show that the main outline of the story is trustworthy. But for the purpose of the present sketch, I must set forth the romantic tale of Richard’s childhood only in a greatly abridged shape, and content myself with pointing out those parts of the story which are of political importance.[311]
The year in which William Longsword was murdered was an important year in many ways for the whole of Gaul. It marks in some sort the beginning of a new |Events of the year 943;| epoch. Besides the death of William and the important events which followed upon it, this year was marked by a birth and a death which had no small influence on the |death of Herbert of Vermandois; birth of Hugh Capet.| course of affairs. Herbert of Vermandois, the regicide, the tyrant as he is called, died this year, and died, according to some accounts, in a mysterious and horrible fashion.[312] His dominions were divided among his sons, except some portions which passed into the hands of Hugh of Paris. The royal power thus lost one of its most formidable enemies, while another enemy yet more formidable was still further strengthened. And this year, for the first time, Hugh had a son to be the heir of his greatness. His English wife Eadhild had died childless; but her successor, Hugh’s third wife, Hadwisa, daughter of King Henry and sister of King Otto and Queen Gerberga, now bore him a son, Hugh surnamed Capet, the future King. |Effect of Hugh’s birth on Hugh the Great’s policy.| One can hardly doubt that the birth of his son had an effect on Hugh the Great’s policy. He would not be a King himself, but he would put no hindrance in the way of his son being a King. From this time onwards the contrast between the two dynasties, between the old and the new, between the Frank and the Frenchman, between Laon and Paris, becomes even more sharply marked than before.
From this time onwards also we must remark another tendency which was doubtless closely connected with the one just mentioned, and of which we have already seen the beginning. I mean the continued and constantly strengthening influence of Germany, the Eastern Kingdom, in the affairs of the West. The Council of Attigny, with the two Kings of the Franks sitting and acting as colleagues, was but the first of a long series of assemblies of the like kind. It is to Otto that all parties in the Western Kingdom appeal as their natural mediator; the King appeals to him as his natural protector. If the Eastern King receives no formal homage as over-lord, still he is clearly looked on both by Lewis and by Hugh as something more than a mere neighbour and brother. Towards Lewis Otto appears as the senior colleague in a common office; in the language of the elder days of the Empire, the Saxon acts as the Augustus, while the Frank is only the Cæsar.[313] While Otto is absent on distant expeditions, his vice-gerent in Lotharingia, Duke Conrad[314] or Archbishop Bruno, is competent to |From 942 [Attigny] to 973 [death of Otto].| act in his name as moderator of the Western realm. This kind of relation between the two kingdoms lasted during the whole remainder of the reign of Otto the Great, that is, during the rest of the reign of Lewis and during the minority and early reign of his son Lothar. The changed state of things in the days of the two cousins, Otto the Second and Lothar, was undoubtedly one determining cause of the fall of the dynasty of Laon. But there was another determining cause of its fall with which we have more immediately to do. Under Rolf Normandy had stuck faithfully to the King; under William it had fluctuated backwards and |Normandy under Richard attached to France.| forwards between King and Duke. Under Richard, Normandy, becoming every day more French and more feudal, became, both in its policy and through actual feudal ties, permanently attached to the Duke and therefore commonly hostile to the King.
Great disturbances in Normandy followed on the unlooked-for death of William Longsword. A new invasion |New Danish settlement under Sihtric.| or settlement direct from the North seems to have happened nearly at the same time as the Duke’s murder; it may even possibly have happened with the Duke’s consent.[315] At any rate the heathen King Sihtric now |The Danes joined by the heathen party in Normandy.| sailed up the Seine with a fleet, and he was at once welcomed by the Danish and heathen party in the country. Large numbers of the Normans, under a chief named Thurmod, fell away from Christianity, and it appears that |Apostasy of young Richard.| the young Duke himself was persuaded or constrained to join in their heathen worship.[316] In such a state of things |The Christian party in Normandy seek French help.| we can neither wonder at nor blame the Christian party in Normandy if they drew as close as they could to their Christian neighbours, even at some risk to the independence of the duchy. To become subjects either of the King of Laon or of the Duke of Paris was better than to be eaten up by heathen wikings. Nor are we entitled to be unduly hard on either King or Duke for trying to make the most of such an opportunity for recovering |Position of Lewis and Hugh| the ground which they had lost. The Land of the Normans had been given up to Rolf by the joint act of |towards Normandy.| its immediate ruler, the father of the present Duke, and of its over-lord, the father of the present King. The grant had been made on the express condition that the Normans should become members of a Christian and Frankish commonwealth. If heathen invasions were to begin again, and to be powerfully helped by men settled on Gaulish soil, the Norman duchy was serving an object exactly opposite to that for which it was founded. In such a case both Duke and King might well feel themselves justified in getting rid of the nuisance altogether. Feudal ideas also were fast developing, and King Lewis may have already begun to entertain some dim notion that wardship over the fief of a minor vassal was a right |The Christians commend themselves, some to Hugh, some to Lewis.| which of necessity belonged to the lord. In any case, neither Hugh nor Lewis was unwilling to extend his dominions, and at first a large party in the duchy seemed ready to welcome either of them. The Christian Normans were divided between the rival attractions of the King and the Duke. The Duke, nearer and more powerful, could give the most effectual aid at the moment; the King, more distant, would be less dangerous as a permanent protector, and the kingly title still commanded a feeling of deep, if vague and unreasoning, veneration. Some of the Norman chiefs therefore commended themselves to King Lewis and others to Duke Hugh. This choice of different protectors seems to mark a difference of feeling among the Normans themselves;[317] but the relations of King and Duke were just now unusually friendly, and no immediate dissension seems to have arisen between them on this account. It was in this same year, though later than these Norman transactions, that Hugh not only acted as godfather to a daughter of the King, but was confirmed by his new spiritual brother in the possession of the duchies of France |Lewis and Hugh both enter Normandy.| and Burgundy.[318] Hugh entered Normandy; he fought several battles with the heathens and apostates, and was willingly received at Evreux, where the citizens were of |Lewis defeats the heathens and occupies Rouen.| the Christian party.[319] Meanwhile the King marched to Rouen, he gathered what forces he could, seemingly both from among his own subjects and from among the Christian Normans; he fought a battle, he utterly defeated the heathens, he killed Thurmod with his own hand, he recovered the young Duke, and left Herlwin of Montreuil as his representative at Rouen.[320] On a later visit to Rouen, he received the cession of Evreux from Hugh.[321] Herlwin now waged war against Arnulf with some success, for he slew Balzo, the actual murderer of William, and sent his hands as a trophy to the Norman capital.[322] But in the course of the year Hugh contrived to reconcile Arnulf to the King,[323] and the King reconciled Arnulf and Herlwin.
Such is the account given by the French writers; the Normans fill up the story with many further details.[324] |Norman version.| They leave out—thereby throwing the greatest doubt upon the trustworthiness of their own story—all about the homage of Richard and the other Normans, all about Sihtric and Thurmod and the deliverance of Normandy by Lewis himself. Lewis, according to them, came of his own accord to Rouen after the death of William, and was received with joy, as he was supposed to have come in order to plan an expedition against the common enemy Arnulf.[325] Still from this point it is just possible to patch the two narratives together, though I confess that I receive every detail which comes clothed in the rhetoric of Dudo with very great suspicion. Lewis then, according to this account, remains at Rouen, and a suspicion gets afloat that he is keeping the young Duke a prisoner, and that he means to seize on Normandy for himself. A popular insurrection follows, which is only quelled by the King producing Richard in public and solemnly investing him |Richard’s detention at Laon.| with the duchy.[326] After this, strange to say, the Norman regents, Bernard the Dane, Oslac, and Rudolf surnamed Torta, are won over by the craft of Lewis to allow him to take Richard to Laon and bring him up with his own children. The King is then persuaded by the bribes of Arnulf to treat Richard as a prisoner, and even to threaten |Richard’s escape.| him with a cruel mutilation.[327] By a clever stratagem of his faithful guardian Osmund, the same by which Lewis himself had been rescued in his childhood from Herbert of Vermandois,[328] Richard is saved from captivity, and carried to the safe-keeping of his great-uncle, Bernard of Senlis. A mass of perfidious and unintelligible diplomacy now follows in the Norman accounts, of which, if it ever happened at all, we get only the results in the French version. The French writers know nothing of the captivity of |Norman invasion of Britanny. 944.| young Richard, and they connect the invasion of Normandy which undoubtedly took place in the next year with certain transactions in Britanny. The Breton princes, Berengar and Alan, were at variance between themselves, a state of things which gave opportunity for a desolating invasion of the Normans, seemingly the heathen or apostate |Lewis invades Normandy in concert with Hugh. 944.| Normans.[329] Lewis now invaded Normandy in concert with Hugh. The Duke had already made peace with the Normans,[330] but he was seduced by the offer of all Normandy beyond the Seine,[331] or at any rate of the district of Bayeux.[332] Lewis accordingly, with Arnulf and Herlwin, and several Bishops of France and Burgundy, entered Normandy and occupied Rouen. We again find a division of parties in the country, some receiving the King and others withstanding him.[333] Hugh meanwhile occupied Bayeux, but Lewis required his confederate to surrender the city to him. The Duke obeyed, but he at once began again to plot against |Dissension between Lewis and Hugh.| his sovereign.[334] He now stirred up several smaller enemies against Lewis, such as Bernard of Senlis, Theobald, Count of Tours, Blois, and Chartres—of whom we shall hear again—the Vermandois princes, and Hugh, his own Archbishop |War at Rheims and elsewhere. 945.| of Rheims. Lewis meanwhile felt himself so safe in Normandy that he employed Norman troops against these various enemies;[335] and when he had made a truce with Hugh and had raised the siege of Rheims, he returned to Rouen, almost as if he intended to make that city his capital and his permanent residence.[336]