CHAPTER XIII. From the end of the ninth to the end of the tenth century, two families were, in French history, the representatives and instruments of the two systems thus confronted and conflicting at that epoch, the imperial which was falling and the feudal which was rising. After the death of Charlemagne, his descendants, to the number of ten, from Louis the debonair to Louis the sluggard, strove obstinately, but in vain, to maintain the unity of the empire and the unity of the central power. In four generations, on the other hand, the descendants of Robert the Strong climbed to the head of feudal France. The former, though German in race, were imbued with the maxims, the traditions, and the pretensions of that Roman world which had been for a while resuscitated by their glorious ancestor, and they claimed it as their heritage. The latter preserved, at their settlement upon Gallo-Roman territory, Germanic sentiments, manners, and instincts, and were occupied only with the idea of getting more and more settled, and greater and greater in the new society which was little by little being formed upon the soil, one by the barbarians, their forefathers. Louis the ultramarine and Lothair were not, we may suppose, less personally brave than Robert the Strong and his son Eudes. But when the Northmen put the Frankish dominions in peril, it was not to the descendants of Charlemagne, not to the Emperor Charles the Fat, but to the local and feudal Chieftain, to Eudes, Count of Paris, that the population turned for salvation, and Eudes it was who saved them. In this painful parturation of French monarchy, one fact deserves to be remarked, and that is, the lasting respect attached, in the minds of the people, to the name and the reminiscences of the Carolingian rule, notwithstanding its decay. It was not alone the luster of that name, and of the memory of Charlemagne which inspired and prolonged this respect, a certain instinctive feeling about the worth of hereditary monarchy, as an element of stability and order already existed amongst the populations, and glimpses thereof were visible amongst the rivals of the royal family in the hour of its dissolution. It had been consecrated by religion, the title of anointed of the Most High was united, in its case, to that of lawful error. Why did Hugh the Great, Duke of France, in spite of favorable opportunities and very palpable temptations, abstain perseveringly from taking the crown, and leave it tottering upon the heads of Louis the Ultramarine and Lothair? Why did his son, Hugh Capay himself, wait for his election as king, until Louis the Sluggard was dead, and the Carolingian line had only a collateral and discredited representative? In these hesitations and lingerings of the great feudal chieftains, there is a forecast of the authority already vested in the principle of hereditary monarchy, at the very moment when it was about to be violated, and of the great part which would be played by that principle in the history of France. At last the day of decision arrived for Hugh Capay. There is nothing to show that he had conspired to hasten it, but he had foreseen the probability of it, and if he had done nothing to pave the way for it, he had held himself so far as he was concerned in readiness for it. During a trip which he made to Rome in 981, he had entered into kindly personal relations with the emperor, Otto II, king of Germany, the most important of France's neighbors, and the most disposed to meddle in her affairs. In France, Hugh Capay had formed a close friendship with Aldebaran, Archbishop of Rem, the most notable and most able of the French prelates. The event showed the value of such a friend. On the twenty-first of May, 987, King Louis V died without issue, and, after his up-sequies, the grandees of the kingdom met together at Sennlis. We will hear Barola text of a contemporary witness, Riker, the only one of the chroniclers of that age who deserves the name of historian, whether for the authenticity of his testimony or the extent and clearness of his narrative. The bishop, he says, took his place, together with the Duke, in the midst of the assembly, and said to them, I come and sit down amongst you to treat of the affairs of the state. Far from me be any design of saying anything but what has for aim the advantage of the common wheel. As I do not see here all the princes whose wisdom and energy might be useful in the government of the kingdom, it seems to me that the choice of a king shall be put off for some time. In order that, at a period fixed upon, all may be able to meet in assembly, and that every opinion, having been discussed and set forth in the face of day, may thus produce its full effect. May it please you, then, all of ye who are here assembled to deliberate, to bind yourselves in conjunction with me by oath to this illustrious Duke, and to promise between his hands not to engage yourselves in any way in the election of a head, and not to do anything to this end until we be reassembled here to deliberate upon that choice. This opinion was well received and approved of by all, oath was taken between the hands of the Duke, and the time was fixed at which the meeting should assemble again. Before the day fixed for reassembling, the last of the descendants of Charlemagne, Charle, Duke of Lower Lorraine, brother of the late King Lothair, and paternal uncle of the late King Louis, went to him in quest of the Archbishop, and thus spake to him about his rights to the throne. All the world knoweth, venerable father, that by hereditary right I ought to succeed my brother and my nephew. I am wanting not that should be required, before all, from those who ought to reign, to wit, birth, and courage to dare. Wherefore am I thrust out from the territory which all the world knows to have been possessed by my ancestors? To whom could I better address myself than to you, when all the supports of my race have disappeared? To whom, bereft as I am of honourable protection, should I have recourse but to you? By whom, if not by you, should I be restored to the honours of my fathers? Please God, things turn out favourably for me and for my fortunes. Rejected, what can become of me safe to be exhibited as a spectacle to all who look on me? Suffer yourself to be moved by some feeling of humanity. Be compassionate towards a man who has been tried by so many reverses. Such language was more calculated to inspire contempt than compassion. The metropolitan, firm in his resolution, gave for answer these few words. Thou hast ever been associated with the perjured, the sacrilegious, and the wicked of every sort, and now thou art still unwilling to separate from them. How cance thou, in company with such men, and by means of such men, seek to attain the sovereign power? And when Charles replied that he must not abandon his friends, but rather gain over others, the bishop said to himself, Now that he possesses no position of dignity, he hath allied himself with the wicked, whose companionship he will not in any way give up. What misfortune it would be for the good if he were elected to the throne! To Charles, however, he made answer that he would do not without the consent of the princes, and so left him. At the time fixed, probably the twenty-ninth or thirtieth of June, nine-eighty-seven, the grandees of Frankish Gaul, who had bound themselves by oath, reassembled at St. Louis. Hugh Capay was present with his brother, Henry of Burgundy, and his brother-in-law, Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy. The majority of the direct vassals of the crown were also there. Foul-cris-nerre, the black, Count of Anjou, Udès, Count of Blois, Chartres, and Tour, Bluchard, Count of Vingt-mi, and Corbi, Gautier, Count of Vexine, and Hugh, Count of Main. Hugh Counts came from beyond the Loire, and some of the lords in the north, amongst others Arnauf II, Count of Flanders, and the lords of Vermandoise were likewise missing. When those present were in regular assembly, Archbishop Adelheron, with the ascent of Duke Hugh, thus spake unto them, Louis of blessed memory, having been taken from us without leaving issue, it hath become necessary to engage seriously in seeking who may take his place upon the throne, to the end that the common wheel remain not in peril, neglected, and without a head. That is why on the last occasion we deemed it useful to put off this matter, in order that each of ye might come hither and submit to the assembly the opinion with which God should have inspired him, and that from all those sentiments might be drawn what is the general will. Here be we assembled, let us then be guided by our wisdom and our good faith, to act in such sort that hatred stifles not reason, and affection distort not truth.  But if we examine this question, the throne is not acquired by hereditary right, and we be bound to place at the head of the kingdom none but him, who hath not only the distinction of corporeal nobility, but hath honour to recommend him and magnanimity to rest upon. We read in the annals that to emperors of illustrious race, whom their own latches caused to fall from power, succeeded others, at one time similar, at another different. But what dignity could we confer on Charles, who hath not honour for his guide, who is enfeebled by lethargy, and who finally hath lost head so far that he hath no shame in serving a foreign king, and in misuniting himself to a woman taken from the rank of the knights, his vassals. How could the Poussaint duke, brook that a woman issuing from a family of his vassals should become queen, and have dominion over him? How could he walk behind her, whose equals and even superiors bend the knee before him, and place their hands beneath his feet? Examine carefully into the matter, and consider that Charles hath been rejected more through his own fault than that of others. Decide ye rather for the good than the ill of the common wheel. If ye wish it, make Charles sovereign. If ye hold to its prosperity, crown Hugh, the illustrious duke. Let attachment to Charles seduce nobody, and let hatred towards the duke distract nobody from the common interest. Give us, then, for our head the duke, who has deeds, nobility, and troops to recommend him, the duke in whom ye will find a defender not only of the common wheel, but also of your private interests. Thanks to his benevolence ye will have in him a father, who hath had recourse to him, and hath not found protection, who that hath been torn from the care of home hath not been restored thereto by him. This opinion, having been proclaimed and well received, duke Hugh was unanimously raised to the throne, crowned on the first of July by the Metropolitan and the other bishops, and recognized as king by the Gauls, the Britons, the Normans, the Aquitanians, the Goths, the Spaniards, and the Gascones. Surrounded by the grandees of the kingdom, he passed decrees and promulgated laws according to royal custom, regulating successfully and disposing of all matters. That he might deserve so much good fortune, and under the inspiration of so many prosperous circumstances he gave himself up to deep piety. Wishing to have a certainty of leaving after his death and heir to the throne, he conferred with his grandees, and after holding counsel with them he first sent a deputation to the Metropolitan of Rim, who was then at Orléans, and subsequently went himself to see him touching the association of his son Robert, with himself upon the throne. The archbishop, having told him that two kings could not be regularly created in one in the same year, he immediately showed a letter sent by Borrell, Duke of Inner Spain, proving that the Duke requested help against the barbarians. The Metropolitan, seeing advantage was likely to result, ultimately yielded to the king's reason. And when the grandees were assembled at the Festival of our Lord's Nativity to celebrate the coronation, Hugh assumed the purple, and he crowned solemnly in the Basilica of Saint Croix his son Robert amidst the acclamations of the French. Thus was founded the dynasty of the Capetians, under the double influence of German manners and feudal connections. Amongst the ancient Germans royal airship was generally confined to one in the same family, but election was often joined with airship, and had more than once thrust the latter aside. Hugh Capet was head of the family which was the most illustrious in his time, and closest to the throne, on which the personal merits of Counts Eudes and Robert had already twice seated it. He was also one of the greatest chieftains of feudal society, Duke of the country which was already called France, and Count of Paris, of that city which Clovis, after his victories, had chosen as the center of his dominions. In view of the Roman, rather than Germanic pretensions of the Carolvingian heirs, and of their admitted decay, the rise of Hugh Capet was the natural consequence of the principal feats, as well as of the manners of the period, and the crowning manifestation of the new social conditions in France, that is, feudalism. Accordingly the event reached completion and confirmation without any great obstacle. The Carolvingian, Charles of Lorraine, vainly attempted to assert his rights, but after some gleams of success he died in 992, and his descendants fell, if not into obscurity, at least into political insignificance. In vain again did certain feudal lords, especially in southern France, refuse for some time their adhesion to Hugh Capet. One of them, Adalbert, Count of Paragord, has remained almost famous for having made to Hugh Capet's question, who made the Count, the proud answer, who made the King? The pride, however, of Count Adalbert had more bark than bite. Hugh possessed intelligence and patient moderation, which, when a position is once acquired, is the best pledge of continuance. Several facts indicate that he did not underestimate the worth and range of his title of King. At the same time, that by getting his son Robert crowned with him, he secured for his line the next succession, he also performed several acts which went beyond the limits of his feudal domains, and proclaimed to all the kingdom the presence of the King. But those acts were temperate and wise, and they paved the way for the future without anticipating it. Hugh Capet confined himself carefully to the sphere of his recognized rights as well as of his effective strength, and his government remained faithful to the character of the revolution which had raised him to the throne, at the same time that it gave warning of the future progress of royalty independently of and over the head of feudalism. When he died on the twenty-fourth of October, nine ninety-six, the crown, which he hesitated, they say, to wear on his own head, passed without obstacle to his son Robert, and the course which was to be followed for eight centuries under the government of his descendants by civilization in France began to develop itself. It has already been pointed out, in the case of Adelbaran, Archbishop of Rem, what part was taken by the clergy in this second change of dynasty, but the part played by it was so important and novel that we must make a somewhat more detailed acquaintance with the real character of it and the principal actor in it. When in seven-fifty-one, Pep in the short became king in the place of the last Merovingian, it was, as we have seen, Pope Zachary who decided that it was better to give the title of king to him who really exercised the sovereign power than to him who bore only its name. Three years later, in seven-fifty-four, it was Pope Stephen II who came over to France to anoint King Pepin, and forty-six years afterward, in eight-hundred, it was Pope Leo III who proclaimed Charlemagne Emperor of the West. On the papacy, then, on the accession of the Carlovingians came the principal decision and steps. Their reciprocal services rendered one to the other by the two powers, and still more, perhaps, the similarity of their maxims as to the unity of the empire, established between the papacy and the Carlovingians strong ties of gratitude and policy, and accordingly, when the Carlovingian dynasty was in danger, the court of Rome was grieved and troubled. It was hard for her to see the fall of a dynasty for which she had done so much, and which had done so much for her. Far then, from aiding the accession of the new dynasty, she showed herself favourable to the old, and tried to save it without herself becoming too deeply compromised. Such was, from nine-eighty-five to nine-ninety-six, the attitude of Pope John XVI at the crisis which placed Hugh Capay upon the throne. In spite of this policy on the part of the papacy, the French church took the initiative in the event and supported the new dynasty. The Archbishop of Rem affirmed the right of the people to accomplish a change of dynasty, and anointed Hugh Capay and his son Robert. The accession of the Capetians was a work independent of all foreign influence and strictly national, in church as well as state. The authority of Adelbaran was of great weight in the matter, as Archbishop he was full of zeal and at the same time of wisdom in ecclesiastical administration. Engaging in politics he shoaled boldness in attempting a great change in the state, and ability in carrying it out without precipitation as well as without hesitation. He had for his secretary and teacher a simple priest of Avern, who exercised over this enterprise an influence more continuous and still more effectual than that of his Archbishop. Gerber, born at Uralac, and brought up in the Monastery of Saint Giraud, had, when he was summoned to the directorate of the school at Rem's, already made a trip to Spain, ended Rome, and won the esteem of Pope John XIII and of the Emperor Otto II, and had thus a close view of the great personages and great questions ecclesiastical and secular of his time. On his establishment at Rem he pursued a double course with a double end. He was fond of study, science, and the investigation of truth, but he also had a taste for the sphere of politics and of the world. He excelled in the art of instructing, but also in the art of pleasing, and the address of the courtier was in him united with the learning of the doctor. His was a mind lofty, broad, searching, prolific, open to conviction, and yet inclined to give way, either from calculation or attraction, to contrary ideas, but certain to recur under favorable circumstances to its original purpose. There was in him almost as much changeableness as zeal for the cause he embraced. He espoused, and energetically supported, the elevation of a new dynasty and the independence of the Roman Church. He was very active in the cause of Hugh Capay, but he was more than once on the point of going over to King Lothair or to the pretender Charles of Lorraine. He was, in his time, even more resolutely than Boussé in the seventeenth century, the defender and practicer of what have been called the liberties of the Gallican Church, and in 992 he became, on this ground, Archbishop of Rem. But after having been interdicted in 995 by Pope John the from the exercise of this Episcopal functions in France, he obtained, in 998 from Pope Gregory V, the Archbishopric of Ravenna in Italy, and the favor of Otto III, was not unconnected in 999 with his elevation to the Holy See, which he occupied for four years, with the title of Sylvester II, whilst putting in practice, but with moderation and dignity, Maxim's very different from those which he had supported fifteen years before as a French bishop. He became, at this later period of his life, so much more estranged from France in that he was embroiled with Hugh Capet's son and successor, King Robert, whose quantum preceptor he had been, and of whose marriage with Queen Bertha, widow of Ude's count of boys, he had honestly disapproved. In 995, just when he had been interdicted by Pope John the 16th from his functions as Archbishop of Rem, Gérbert wrote to the Abbot and Brethren of the Monastery of St. Giraud, where he had been brought up, and now farewell to your holy community, farewell to those whom I knew in old times, or who were connected with me by blood, if they still survive any whose names, if not their features, have remained upon my memory. Not that I have forgotten them through pride, but I am broken down, and if it must be said, changed by the ferocity of barbarians, what I learned in my boyhood I forgot in my youth, what I desired in my youth I despised in my old age. Such are the fruits thou hast borne for me, O pleasure. Such are the joys afforded by the honours of the world. Believe my experience of it, the higher the great are outwardly raised by glory, the more cruel is their inward anguish. Length of life brings, in the soul of the ambitious, days of hearty undeception, but it does not discourage them from their course of ambition. Gérbert was, amongst the ambitious, at the same time one of the most exalted in point of intellect, and one of the most persistent, as well as restless, in attachment to the affairs of the world. Chapter 14 The Capetians to the Time of the Crusades Part 1 From 996 to 1108 the first three successors of Hugh Capay, his son Robert, his grandson Henry I, and his great-grandson Philip I, sat upon the throne of France, and during this long space of one hundred and twelve years the kingdom of France had not soothed to say any history. They were ruled out by virtue of the feudal system between a multitude of princes, independent, isolated, and scarcely sovereigns in their own dominions, keeping up anything like frequent intercourse only with their neighbours, and loosely united by certain rules or customs of assillage, to him amongst them who bore the title of king. The France of the 11th century existed in little more than name. Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Poitou, Anjou, Flanders, and Nivernays were the real states and peoples, each with its own distinct life and history. One single event, the Crusade, united towards the end of the century, those scattered sovereigns and peoples in one common idea and one combined action. Up to that point then let us conform to the real state of the case and faithfully trace out the features of the epoch, without attempting to introduce a connection and a combination which did not exist. And let us pass briefly in review of the isolated events and personages which are still worthy of remembrance and which have remained historic without having belonged exactly to a national history. Amongst events of this kind, one, the Conquest of England in 1066, by William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, was so striking and exercised so much influence over the destinies of France that in the incoherent and disconnected picture of this 11th century particular attention must first be drawn to the consequences, as regarded France, of that great Norman enterprise. After the sagacious Hugh Capay, the first three Capetians, Robert, Henry I and Philip I, were very mediocre individuals, in character as well as intellect, and their personal insignificance was one of the causes that produced the emptiness of French history under their sway. Robert lacked neither physical advantages nor moral virtues. He had a lofty figure, says his biographer Helgott, archbishop of Bourse, hair smooth and well arranged, a modest eye, a pleasant and gentle mouth, a tolerably furnished beard and high shoulders. He was versed in all the sciences, philosopher enough and an excellent musician, and so devoted to sacred literature that he never passed a day without reading the Psalter and praying to the Most High God together with St. David. He composed several hymns which were adopted by the Church, and during a pilgrimage he made to Rome, he deposited upon the altar of St. Peter his own Latin poem set to music. He often went to the Church of Saint Denis, clad in his royal robes and with his crown on his head, and there he conducted the singing at Matins, Mass, and Vespers, chanting with the monks and himself calling upon them to sing. When he sat in the Consistory he voluntarily styled himself the bishop's client. Two centuries later St. Louis proved that the virtues of the saint are not incompatible with the qualities of the king, but the former cannot form a substitute for the latter and the qualities of the king were to seek in Robert. He was neither warrior nor politician. There is no sign that he ever gathered about him to discuss affairs of state, the Laic barons together with the bishops, and when he interfered in the wars of the great feudal lords, notably in Burgundy and Flanders, it was with but little energy and too but little purpose. He was hardly more potent in his family than in his kingdom. It has already been mentioned that, in spite of his preceptor Gerbert's advice, he had espoused Bertha, widow of Ude's, Count of Bloy, and he loved her dearly, but the marriage was assailed by the Church on the ground of kinship. Robert offered resistance, but afterwards gave way before the excommunication pronounced by Pope Gregory V, and then espoused Constance, daughter of William Chelfare, Count of Toulouse, and forthwith, says the chronicler Raoul Gleber, were seen pouring into France and Burgundy, because of this queen, the most vain and most frivolous of all men, coming from Aquitaine and Avern. There were outlandish and outrageous equally in their manners and their dress, in their arms and the appointments of their horses. Their hair came only half-way down their head. They shaved their beards like actors. They wore boots and shoes that were not decent, and, lastly, neither fidelity nor security was to be looked for in any of their ties. Alack! That nation of Franks, which was want to be the most virtuous, and even the people of Burgundy, too, were eager to follow these criminal examples, and before long they reflected only too faithfully to the depravity and infity of their models. The evil amounted to something graver than a disturbance of court fashions. Alack had by Constance three sons, Hugh, Henry, and Robert. First the eldest, and afterwards his two brothers, maddened by the bad character and tyrannical exactions of their mother, left the palace, and with due to Drucks and Burgundy, abandoning themselves in the royal domains and the neighborhood to all kinds of depredations and excesses. Reconciliation was not without great difficulty affected, and indeed peace was never really restored in the royal family. This was everywhere the wish and study of King Robert, but he succeeded better in maintaining it with his neighbors than with his children. In 1006 he was on the point of having a quarrel with Henry II, Emperor of Germany, who was more active in enterprising, but fortunately not less pious than himself. The two sovereigns resolved to have an interview at the Muse, the boundary of their dominions. The question amongst their respective followings was, which of the two should cross the river to seek audience on the other bank, that is, in the other's dominions? This would be a humiliation, it was said. The two learned princes remembered this saying of Ecclesiasticus, the greater thou art, the humbler be thou in all things. The emperor, therefore, rose up early in the morning and crossed with some of his people into the French king's territory. They embraced with cordiality, the bishops as was proper celebrated the sacrament of the mass, and they afterwards sat down to dinner. When the meal was over, King Robert offered Henry immense presence of gold and silver and precious stones, and a hundred horses richly capriousened, each carrying a cuirass and a helmet, and he added that all the emperor did not accept of these gifts would be so much deducted from their friendship. Henry, seeing the generosity of his friend, took of the whole only a book containing the Holy Gospel, set with gold and precious stones, and a golden amulet, wherein was a tooth of St. Vincent, priest and martyr. The emperors likewise accepted only two golden cups. Next day King Robert crossed with his bishops into the territories of the emperor, who received him magnificently, and after dinner offered him a hundred pounds of pure gold. The king and his turn accepted only two golden cups, and after having ratified their pact of friendship they returned each to his own dominions. Let us add to this summary of Robert's reign some facts which are characteristic of the epic. In AD 1,000, in consequence of the sense attached to certain words in the sacred books, many Christians expected the end of the world. The time of expectation was full of anxieties, plagues, famines, and diverse accidents, which then took place in diverse quarters, were an additional aggravation. The churches were crowded, penances, offerings, absolutions, all the forms of invocation and repentance multiplied rapidly, a multitude of souls in submission or terror prepared to appear before their judge. And after what catastrophes? In the midst of what gloom or of what light? These were fearful questions of which men's imaginations were exhausted in forestalling the solution. When the last day of the tenth and the first of the eleventh centuries were passed it was like a general regeneration. It might have been said that time was beginning over again, and the work was commenced of rendering the Christian world worthy of the future. Only in Italy and Gaul, says the chronicler Raoul Gleber, men took in hand the reconstruction of the Basilicas, although the greater part had no need thereof. Christian people seemed to buy one with another which should erect the most beautiful. It was as if the world, shaking itself together and casting off its old garments, would abduct itself with the white robes of Christ. Christian art, in its earliest form of the Gothic style, dates from this epic, the power and riches of the Christian church, in its different institutions, received at this crisis of the human imagination a fresh impulse. Other facts, some lamentable and some salutary, began about this epic to assume in French history a place which was destined before long to become an important one. Piles of faggots were set up, first at Orléans and then at Toulouse for the punishment of heretics. The heretics of the day were Manichaeans. King Robert and Queen Constance sanctioned by their presence this return to human sacrifices offered to God as a penalty inflicted on mental offenders against his word. At the same time a double portion of ire blazed forth against the Jews. What have we to do, it was said, with going abroad to make war on Muslims. Have we not in the very midst of us the greatest enemies of Jesus Christ? Amongst Christians acts of oppression and violence on the part of the great against the small became so excessive and so frequent that they excited in country parts, particularly in Normandy, insurrections which the insurgents tried to organize into permanent resistance. In several counties of Normandy, says William of Jumein, all the peasants, mating and conventicals, resolved to live according to their own wills and their own laws, not only in the heart of the forests, but also on the borders of the rivers and without care for any established rights. To accomplish this design, these mobs of madmen elected each two deputies who were to form at the central point and assembly charged with the execution of their decrees. So soon as the Duke, Richard II, was informed thereof, he sent a large body of armed men to suppress this audacity in the country parts, and to disperse this rustic assembly. In execution of his orders, the deputies of the peasantry and many other rebels were forthwith arrested, their feet and hands were cut off, and they were sent home thus mutilated to deter their fellows from such enterprises and to render them more prudent for fear of worse. After this experience the peasants gave up their meetings and returned to their plows. This is a literal translation of the monkish chronicler, who was far from favourable to the insurgent peasants, and was more for applauding the suppression than justifying the insurrection. The suppression, though undoubtedly effectual for the moment, and in the particular spots it reached, produced no general or lasting effect. About a century after the cold recital of William Jemeg, a poet chronicler, Robert Weiss, in his Romance of Rue, a history inverse of Rallo and the first dukes of Normandy, related the same facts with far more sympathetic feeling and poetical colouring. The lords do us not but ill, he makes the Norman peasants say. With them we have, nor gain, nor profit, from our labours. Every day is for us a day of suffering, toil and weariness. Every day we have our cattle taken from us for road work and forest service. We have plants and grievances, old and new exactions, pleas and processes without end, money pleas, market pleas, road pleas, forest pleas, mill pleas, blackmail pleas, watch and ward pleas. There are so many provosts, bailiffs and sergeants, that we have not one hour's peace. Day by day they ruin us down, seize our movables, and drive us from our lands. There is no security for us against the lords, and no pact is binding with them.  Are we not men even as they are? Have we not the same stature, the same limbs, the same strength for suffering? All we need is courage. Let us then bind ourselves together by an oath. Let us swear to support one another, and if they will make war on us, have we not, for one night, thirty or forty young peasants, nimble and ready to fight with club, with boar spear, with arrow, with axe, and even with stones if they have not weapons? Let us learn to resist the knights, and we shall be free to cut down trees, to hunt and fish after our fashion, and we shall work our will in flood and field and wood. Here we have no longer the short account and severe estimate of an indifferent spectator. It is the cry of popular rage and vengeance reproduced by the lively imagination of an angered poet. Undoubtedly the Norman peasants of the twelfth century did not speak of their miseries with such descriptive ability and philosophical feeling as were lent to them by Robert Ways. They did not meditate the democratic revolution of which he attributes to them the idea and almost the plan, but the deeds of violence and oppression against which they rose were very real, and they exerted themselves to escape by reciprocal violence from intolerable suffering. Then state those alternations of demagogic revolt and tyrannical suppression which have so often ensanguined the land and put in peril the very foundations of social order. Insurrections became of so atrocious a kind that the atrocious chastisements with which they were visited seemed equally natural and necessary. It needed long ages, a repetition of civil wars and terrible political shocks, to put an end to this brutal chaos which gave birth to so many evils and reciprocal crimes, and to bring about amongst the different classes of the French population equitable and truly human relations. So quick spreading and contagious is evil amongst men and so difficult to extirpate in the name of justice and truth. However, even in the midst of this cruel egotism and this gross unreason of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the necessity from a moral and social point of view of struggling against such disgusting irregularities made itself felt, found zealous advocates. From this epoch are to be dated the first efforts to establish, in different parts of France, what was called God's peace, God's truce. The words were well chosen for prohibiting at the same time oppression and revolt, for it needed nothing less than law and the voice of God to put some restraint upon the barbarous manners and passions of men, great or small, lord or peasant. It is the peculiar and glorious characteristic of Christianity to have so well understood the primitive and permanent evil in human nature, that it fought against all the great iniquities of mankind and exposed them in principle, even when, in point of general practice, it neither hoped nor attempted to sweep them away. Bishops, priests, and monks were, in their personal lives and in the councils of the church, the first propagators of God's peace or truce, and in more than one locality they induced the Laic lords to follow their lead. In eleven sixty-four, Hugh II, Count of Rhodes, in concert with his brother Hugh, Bishop of Rhodes, and the notables of the district, established the peace in the Diocese of Rhodes, and this it is, said the learned Benedictines of the eighteenth century, in the art of verifying dates, which gave rise to the toll of commune-pakes, or paissade, which is still collected in Rougure. King Robert always showed himself favourable to this specific work, and he is the first among the five kings of France, in other respects very different, himself St. Louis, Louis XII, Henry IV, and Louis XVI, who were particularly distinguished for sympathetic kindness and anxiety for the popular welfare. Robert had a kindly feeling for the weak and poor. Not only did he protect them on occasion against the powerful, but he took pains to conceal their defaults, and in his church and at his table he suffered himself to be robbed without complaint, that he might not have to denounce and punish the robbers. Wherefore, at his death, says his biographer, Hel-God, there were great mourning and intolerable grief. A countless number of widows and orphans sorrowed for the many benefits received from him. They did beat their breasts and went to and from his tomb, crying, Whilst Robert was king and ordered all, we lived in peace. We had not to fear. May the soul of that pious father, that father of the Senate, that father of all good, be blessed and saved. May it mount up and dwell for ever, with Jesus Christ, the king of kings. Though not so pious, nor so good as Robert, his son Henry I, and his grandson Philip I, were neither more energetic nor more glorious kings. During their long reigns, the former from ten-thirty one to ten-sixty, and the latter from ten-sixty to eleven-o-eight, no important and well-prosecuted design distinguished their government. Their public life was passed at one time in petty warfare, without decisive results, against such and such vassals, at another in acts of capricious intervention in the quarrels of their vassals amongst themselves. Their home life was neither less irregular nor conducted with more wisdom and regard for the public interest. King Robert had not succeeded in keeping his first wife, Bertha of Burgundy, and his second, Constance of Aquitaine, with her imperious, malevolent, avaricious, meddlesome disposition, reduced him to so abject the state that he never gave a gratuity to any of his servants without saying, Take care that Constance know not of it.  Henry, on being delivered by his mother's death from her tyranny and intrigues, was thrice-married, but his first two marriages with two German princesses, one the daughter of the Emperor Conrad the Salic, the other of the Emperor Henry III, were so far from happy that in 1951 he sent into Russia, to Kiev, in search of his third wife, Anne, the daughter of Tsar Yaroslav the Halt. She was a modest creature who lived quietly up to the death of her husband in ten sixty, and two years afterward, in the reign of her son Philip I, rather than return to her own country, married Raoul, Count of Valois, who put away to marry her, his second wife, Hockney, called Eleanor. The divorce was opposed at Rome before Pope Alexander III, to whom the Archbishop of Rome wrote upon the subject, Our Kingdom is the scene of great troubles. The Queen Mother has espoused Count Raoul, which has mightily displeased the King. As for the lady whom Raoul has put away, we have recognised the justice of the complaints she has preferred before you, and the falsity of the pretext on which he put her away. The Pope ordered the Count to take back his wife. Raoul would not obey and was excommunicated, but he made light of it, and the Princess Anne of Russia, actually reconciled apparently to Philip I, lived tranquilly in France, where, in ten seventy-five, shortly after the death of her second husband, Count Raoul, her signature was still attached to a charter side by side with that of the King, her son. The marriages of Philip I brought even more trouble and scandal than those of his father and grandfather. At nineteen years of age, in ten seventy-two, he had espoused Bertha, daughter of Florence I, Count of Holland, and in ten seventy-eight he had by her the son who was destined to succeed him with the title of Louis the Fat. But twenty years later, ten ninety-two, Philip took a dislike to his wife, put her away and banished her to Montreuse Soumaire, on the ground of prohibited consequently. He had conceived, there is no knowing when, a violent passion for a woman celebrated for her beauty, Bertrand, the fourth wife for three years past of Fouk de Rouen, the brawler, Count of Anjou. Philip, having thus packed off Bertha, sent out for tour, where Bertrand happened to be with her husband. There, in the church of St. John, during the benediction of the baptismal fonts, they entered into mutual engagements. Philip went away again, and a few days afterwards Bertrand was carried off by some people he had left in the neighborhood of Tour, and joined him at Orléans. Nearly all the bishops of France, and amongst others the most learned and respected of them, Yves, Bishop of Charte, refused their benediction to this shocking marriage, and the king had great difficulty in finding a priest to render him that service. Then commenced between Philip and the heads of the Catholic Church, Popes and bishops, a struggle which, with negotiation upon negotiation and excommunication upon excommunication, lasted twelve years, without the kings being able to get his marriage canonically recognized. And though he promised to send away Bertrand, he was not content with merely keeping her with him, but he openly jeered at excommunication and interdicts. "'It was the custom,' says William of Malmesbury, at the places where the king sojourned, for divine service to be stopped, and as soon as he was moving away all the bells began to peal. And then Philip would cry, as he laughed like one beside himself, dust hear my love how they are ringing us out! At last, in 1104, the bishop of Charte himself, wearied by the persistency of the king and by sight of the trouble in which the prolongation of the interdict was plunging the kingdom, wrote to the pope, Pascal II, I do not presume to offer you advice. I only desire to warn you that it were well to show for a while some condescension towards the weaknesses of the man, so far as consideration for his salvation may permit, and to rescue the country from the critical state to which it is reduced by the excommunication of this prince. The pope consequently sent instructions to the bishops of the realm, and they, at the king's summons, met at Paris on the 1st of December 1104. One of them, Lambert, bishop of Eris, wrote to the pope, We sent as a deputation to the king the bishops of John of Orléans and Galan of Paris, charged to demand of him whether he would conform to the clauses and conditions set forth in your letters, and whether he were determined to give up the unlawful intercourse which had made him guilty before God. The king, having answered, without being disconcerted, that he was ready to make atonement to God and the Holy Roman Church, was introduced to the assembly. He came barefooted in a posture of devotion and humility, confessing his sin and promising to purge him of this excommunication by expiatory deeds, and thus by your authority he earned absolution. Then, laying his hands on the book of the holy Gospels, he took an oath, in the following terms, to renounce his guilty and unlawful marriage, Hirkin, thou Lambert, bishop of Eris, who are here in place of the apostolic pontiff, and let the archbishops and bishops here present Harkin unto me. I, Philip, king of the French, do promise not to go back to my sin, and to break off wholly with the criminal intercourse I have heretofore kept up with Bertrand. I do promise that henceforth I will have with her no intercourse or companionship, save in the presence of persons beyond suspicion. I will observe, faithfully and without turning aside, these promises, in the sense set forth in the letters of the pope, and as you understand, so help me God and by these holy Gospels. Bertrand, at the moment of her release from excommunication, took in person the same oath on the holy Gospels. According to the statement of the learned Benedictines, whose studiously examined into this incident, it is doubtful whether Philip I broke off all intercourse with Bertrand. Two years after his absolution, on the 10th of October, 1106, he arrived at Anjir on a Wednesday, says a contemporary chronicler, made by the queen named Bertrand, and was there received by Count Fuchs and all the Anjavines, Cleric and Laic, with great honors. The day after his arrival, on Thursday, the monks of St. Nicholas, introduced by the queen, presented themselves before the queen, and humbly prayed him, in concert with the queen, to countenance, for the salvation of his soul and of the queen and his relatives and friends, all acquisitions made by them and his dominions, or that they might hereafter make, by gift or purchase, and to be pleased to place his seal on their titles to the property, and the king granted their request. CHAPTER XIV. THE CAPITIONS TO THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES, PART II The most complete amongst the chroniclers of the time, Orderic Vitale, says, touching this marriage at Anjir's of Bertrand's two husbands, this clever woman had, by her skillful management, so perfectly reconciled these two rivals, that she made them a splendid feast, got them both to sit at the same table, had their beds prepared, the ensuing night in the same chamber, and ministered to them according to their pleasure. The most judicious of the historians and statesmen of the twelfth century, the Abbey Sugar, that faithful minister of Louis the Fat, who cannot be suspected of favouring Bertrand, expresses himself about her in these terms. This sprightly and rarely accomplished woman, well versed in the art, familiar to her sex, of holding captive the husbands they have outraged, had acquired such an empire over her first husband, the Count of Anjir, in spite of the affront she had put upon him by deserting him, that he treated her with homage as his sovereign, often sat upon a stool at her feet, and obeyed her wishes by a sort of enchantment. These details are textually given as the best representation of the place occupied, in the history of that time, by the morals and private life of the kings. It would not be right, however, to draw therefrom conclusions as to the abasement of Capetian royalty in the eleventh century, with too great severity. There are irregularities and scandals which the great qualities and the personal glory of princes may cause to be not only excused but even forgotten, though certainly the three Capetians who immediately succeeded the founder of the dynasty offered their people no such compensation, but it must not be supposed that they had fallen into the plight of the sluggered Merovingians, or the last Karlovingians, wandering almost without a refuge. A profound change had come over society and royalty in France. In spite of their political mediocrity and their indolent licentiousness, Robert, Henry I, and Philip I were not in the eleventh century in significant personages, without authority or practical influence, whom their contemporaries could leave out of the account. They were great lords, proprietors of vast domains wherein they exercised over the population an almost absolute power. They had, it is true, about them, rivals, large proprietors and almost absolute sovereigns, like themselves, sometimes stronger even, materially, than themselves and more energetic or more intellectually able, whose superiors, however, they remained on two grounds, as Souserons and as Kings. Their court was always the most honoured and their alliance very much sought after. They occupied the first rank in feudal society and a rank unique in the body politic, such as it was, slowly becoming in the midst of reminiscences and traditions of the Jewish monarchy, of barbaric kingship, and of the Roman Empire for a while resuscitated by Charlemagne. French kingship in the eleventh century was sole power invested with the triple character, Germanic, Roman, and religious. Its possessors were at the same time the chieftains of the conquerors of the soil, the successors of the Roman emperors and of Charlemagne, and the Laic delegates and representatives of the God of the Christians. Whatever were their weaknesses and their personal shortcomings, they were not the mere tuturaries of a power and decay, and the kingly post was strong and full of blossoms, as events were not slow to demonstrate. And as with the kingship, so with the community of France in the eleventh century, in spite of its dislocation into petty, incoherent, and turbulent associations, it was by no means in decay. Irregularities of ambition, hatreds and quarrels amongst neighbours and relatives, outrages on the part of princes and peoples were incessantly renewed. But energy of character, activity of mind, indomitable will and zeal for the liberty of the individual were not wanting, and they exhibited themselves passionately and at any risk, at one time by brutal and cynical outbursts, which were followed occasionally by firmant repentance and expiation, at another by acts of courageous wisdom and disinterested piety. At the commencement of the eleventh century, William III, count of Portier and Duke of Aquitaine, was one of the most honoured and most potent princes of his time. All the sovereigns of Europe sent embassies to him as their leader. He every year made, by way of devotion, a trip to Rome, and was received there with the same honours as the Emperor. He was fond of literature, and gave up to reading the early hours of the night, and scholars called him another messenis. Unaffected by these worldly successes, he intermingled with so much toil and so many miscalculations. He refused the crown of Italy, when it was offered to him at the death of the Emperor Henry II, and he finished, like Charles V, some centuries later, by going and seeking in a monastery isolation from the world and repose. But in the same domains, and at the end of the same century, his grandson, William VII, was the most vagabondish, disillute and violent of princes, and his morals were so scandalous that the Bishop of Portier, after having warned him to no purpose, considered himself forced to excommunicate him. The Duke suddenly burst into the church, made his way through the congregation's sword in hand, and seized the prelate by the hair, saying, Thou shalt give me absolution or die. The Bishop demanded a moment for reflection, profited by it to pronounce the form of excommunication, and, forthwith, bowing his head before the Duke, said, and now strike. I love thee not well enough to send thee to paradise, answered the Duke, and he confined himself to depriving him of his sea. For fury the Duke of Aquitaine sometimes substituted insolent mockery. Another Bishop of Anguém, who was quite bald, likewise exhorted him to mend his ways. I will mend, quote the Duke, when Thou shalt comb back thy hair to thy pate. Another great lord of the same century, Fouc, the black, count of Anjou, at the close of an able and glorious lifetime, had resigned to his son Geoffrey Martel the administration of his countship. The son, as haughty and harsh towards his father as towards his subjects, took up arms against him, and bade him lay aside the outward signs, which he still maintained, of power. The old man in his wroth recovered the vigor and ability of his youth, and strove so energetically and successfully against his son that he reduced him to such subjugation as to make him do several miles crawling on the ground, says the Chronicle, with a saddle on his back, and to come and prostrate himself at his feet. When Fouc had his son thus humbled before him, he spurned him with his foot, repeating over and over again nothing but, Thou art beaten, Thou art beaten. I, beaten, said Geoffrey, but by thee only, because Thou art my father. To any other I am invincible. The anger of the old man vanished at once. He now thought only how he might console his son for the affront put upon him, and he gave him back his power, exhorting him only to conduct himself with more moderation and gentleness towards his subjects. All was inconsistency in contrast with these robust, rough, misty souls. They cared little for belying themselves when they had satisfied the passion of the moment. The relations existing between the two great powers of the period, the Laic lords and the monks, were not less bitter or less unstable than amongst the Laics themselves, and when artifice, as often happened, was employed, it was by no means to the exclusion of violence. About the middle of the twelfth century, the Abbey of Tornas, in Burgundy, had at Luhan's a little port where it collected salt tax, whereof it every year distributed the receipts to the poor during the first week in Lent. Girard, Count of Macon, established a light toll a little distance off. The monks of Tornas complained, but he took no notice. A long while afterwards he came to Tornas with a splendid following and entered the Church of St. Philiburne. He had stopped all alone before the altar to say his prayers, when a monk, cross in hand, issued suddenly from behind the altar, and placing himself before the Count, How hast thou the audacity, he said, to enter my monastery and mine house, thou that dost not hesitate to rob me of my dues? And taking Girard by the hair, he threw him on the ground and belabored him heavily. The Count, stupefied and contrite, acknowledged his injustice, took off the toll that he had wrongfully put on, and not content with this reparation, sent to the Church of Tornas a rich carpet of golden and silken tissue. In the middle of the eleventh century, Adam or the second, by Count of Limoges, had in his city a quarrel of quite a different sort with the monks of the Abbey of St. Martial. The Abbey had fallen into great looseness of discipline and morals, and the by-count had at heart its reformation. To this end he entered into concert, at a distance, with Hugh, abbot of Clooney, at that time the most celebrated and the most respected of the monasteries. The abbot of St. Martial died. Mark sent for some monks from Clooney to come to Limoges, lodged them secretly near his palace, repaired to the Abbey of St. Martial after having had the chapter convoked, and called upon the monks to proceed at once to the election of a new abbot. A lively discussion upon this point arose between the by-count and the monks. "'We are not ignorant,' said one of them to him, that you have sent for brethren from Clooney in order to drive us out and put them in our places, but you will not succeed. The by-count was furious, seized by the sleeve the monk who was in veying, and dragged him by force out of the monastery. His fellows were frightened and took to flight, and Adamar immediately had the monks from Clooney sent for, and put them in possession of the Abbey. It was a roughianly proceeding, but the reform was popular in Limoges and was affected. These trifling matters are faithful samples of the dominant and fundamental characteristic of French society during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, the true epic of the Middle Ages. It was chaos, and fermentation within the chaos, the slow and rough, but powerful and productive fermentation of unruly life. In ideas, events, and persons there was a blending of the strongest contrasts.  The authority of religious creeds at one time was on the point of extinction, yet at another shone forth gloriously in opposition to the arrogance and brutality of mundane passions. It was profound, and yet here and there, in the very heart of the mental darkness, gleamed bright centres of movement and intellectual labour. It was the period when Abelard, anticipating freedom of thought and of instruction, drew together upon Mount St. Genevieve thousands of hearers anxious to follow him in the study of the great problems of nature and of the destiny of men and the world. And far away from this throng, in the solitude of the Abbey of B., St. Anselm was offering to his monks a Christian and philosophical demonstration of the existence of God, faith seeking understanding, fetus, quorans, intellectuals, as he himself used to say. It was the period, too, when, distressed at the lisentiousness which was spreading throughout the church, as well as lay society, two illustrious monks, St. Bernard and St. Norbert, not only went preaching everywhere, reformation of morals, but laboured at and succeeded in establishing for monastic life a system of strict discipline and severe austerity. Lastly, it was the period when, in the Laic world, was created and developed the most splendid fact of the Middle Ages, knighthood, that noble soaring of imaginations and souls towards the ideal of Christian virtue and soldierly honour. It is impossible to trace in detail the origin and history of that grand fact which was so prominent in the days to which it belonged, and which is so prominent still in the memories of men. But a clear notion ought to be obtained of its moral character and its practical worth. To this end a few pages shall be borrowed from Guiseaux's history of the Civilization in France. Let us first look on the admission of a knight, such as took place in the twelfth century. We will afterwards see what rules of conduct were imposed on him, not only according to the oaths which he had to take on becoming a knight, but according to the idea formed of knighthood by the poets of the day, those interpreters not only of actual life, but of men's sentiments also. We shall then understand without difficulty what influence must have been exercised in the souls and lives of men by such sentiments and such rules, however great may have been the discrepancy between the nightly ideal and the general actions and passions of contemporaries. The young man, the Asquire who aspired to the title of knight, was first stripped of his clothes and placed in a bath which was symbolical of purification. On leaving the bath he was clothed in a white tunic which was symbolical of purity, and a red robe which was symbolical of the blood he was bound to shed in the service of the faith, and a black sagam or close-fitting coat which was symbolical of the death which awaited him, as well as all men. Thus purified in clothes, the candidate observed for four and twenty hours a strict fast. When evening came he entered church, and there passed the night in prayer, sometimes alone, sometimes with a priest and sponsors who prayed with him. Last day his first act was confession. After confession the priest gave him the Communion. After the Communion he attended a mass of the Holy Spirit, and generally a sermon touching on the duties of knights and of the new life he was about to enter on. The sermon over the candidate advanced to the altar with the knight's sword hanging from his neck. This the priest took off, blessed, and replaced upon his neck. The candidate then went and knelt before the Lord who was to arm him night. To what purpose, the Lord asked him, do you desire to enter the order? If to be rich, to take your ease and to be held in honour without doing honour to knighthood, you are unworthy of it, and would be, to the order of knighthood you received, what the seminiacal clerk is to the prelacy. On the young man's reply, promising to acquit himself well of the duties of knight, the Lord granted his request. Then drew near knights and sometimes ladies to reclothe the candidate in all his new array, and they put on him the burrs, the hubbock, or coat of mail, the curis, the armlets and gauntlets, and the sword. He was what was then called a dubbed, that is, adopted, according to Ducange. The Lord rose up, went to him, and gave him the accolade or accolé, three blows with the flat of the sword on the shoulder or nape of the neck, and sometimes a slap with the palm of the hand on the cheek, saying, In the name of God, St. Michael and St. George, I make thee knight. And he sometimes added, Be valiant, bold, and loyal. The young man, having been thus armed to-night, had his helmet brought to him. A horse was led up for him, he leaped on its back, generally without the help of the stirrups, and caracold about, brandishing his lance and making his short flesh. Finally he went out of church and caracold about in the open, at the foot of the castle, in the presence of the people eager to have their share in the spectacle. Such was what may be called the outward and material part in the admission of knights. It shows a persistent anxiety to associate religion with all the phases of so personal an affair. The sacraments, the most august feature of Christianity, are mixed up with it, and many of the ceremonies are, as far as possible, assimilated to the administration of the sacraments. Let us continue our examination. Let us penetrate to the very heart of knighthood, its moral character, its ideas, the sentiments which it was the object to impress upon the knight. Here again the influence of religion will be quite evident. The knight had to swear to twenty-six articles. These articles, however, did not make one single formula, drawn up at one in the same time and altogether. They are a collection of oaths required of knights at different epics, and in more or less complete fashion from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. The candidates wore, one, to fear, reverence, and serve God religiously, to fight for the faith with all their might, and to die a thousand deaths rather than ever renounce Christianity, two, to serve their sovereign prince faithfully, and to fight for him and fatherland right valiantly, three, to uphold the rights of the weaker, such as widows, orphans, and damsels, in fair quarrel, exposing themselves on that account according as need might be, provided it were not against their own honour or against their king or lawful prince, four, that they would not injure any one maliciously, or take what was another's, but would rather do battle with those who did so, five, that greed, pay, gain, or profit should never constrain them to do any deed, but only glory and virtue, six, that they would fight for the good and advantage of the common wheel, seven, that they would be bound by and obey the orders of their generals and captains who had a right to command them, eight, that they would guard the honour, rank and order of their comrades, and that they would neither by arrogance nor by force commit any trespass against any one of them, nine, that they would never fight in companies against one, and that they would eschew all tricks and artifices, ten, that they would wear but one sword, unless they had to fight against two or more, eleven, that in turny or other sport of contest they would never use the point of their swords, twelve, that being taken prisoner in attorney they would be bound on their faith and honour to perform in every point the conditions of capture, besides being bound to give up to the victors their arms and horses, if it seemed good to take them, and being disabled from fighting in war or elsewhere without their leave, thirteen, that they would keep faith involubly with all the world, and especially with their comrades, upholding their honour and advantage wholly in their absence, fourteen, that they would love and honour one another, and aid and succour one another whenever occasion offered, fifteen, that having made vow or promise to go on any quest or novel adventure they would never put off their arms, save for the night's rest, sixteen, that in pursuit of their quest or adventure they would not shun bad and perilous passes, nor turn aside from the straight road for fear of encountering powerful knights or monsters or wild beasts or other hindrance such as the body and courage of a single man might tackle, seventeen, that they would never take wage or pay from any foreign prince, eighteen, that in command of troops of men at arms they would live in the utmost possible order and discipline, and especially in their own country where they would never suffer any harm or violence to be done, nineteen, that if they were bound to escort Dame or Damsel they would serve her, protect her, and save her from all danger and insult, or die in the attempt, twenty, that they would never offer violence to Dame or Damsel, though they had won her by deeds of arms against her will and consent, twenty one, that being challenged to equal combat they would not refuse, without wound, sickness, or other reasonable hindrance, twenty two, that having undertaken to carry out any enterprise they would devote to it night and day unless they were called away for the service of their king and country, twenty three, that if they made a vow to acquire any honour they would not draw back without having attained either it or its equivalent, twenty four, that they would be faithful keepers of their word and pledged faith, and that having become prisoners in fair warfare they would pay to the utter most the promised ransom, or return to prison, at the day and hour agreed upon, on pain of being proclaimed infamous and perjured, twenty five, that on returning to the court of their sovereign they would render a true account of their adventures, even though they had sometimes been worsted, to the king and the registrar of the order, on pain of being deprived of the order of knighthood, and twenty six, that above all things they would be faithful, courteous, and humble, and would never be wanting to their word for any harm or loss that might accrue to them. It is needless to point out that in this series of oaths, these obligations imposed upon the knights, there is a moral development very superior to that of the Laic society of the period. Moral notions so lofty, so delicate, so scrupulous, and so humane, emanated clearly from the Christian clergy. Only the clergy thought thus about the duties and the relation of mankind, and their influence was employed in directing towards the accomplishment of such duties, towards the integrity of such relations, the idea and customs engendered by knighthood. It had not been instituted with so pious and deep a design, for the protection of the weak, the maintenance of justice, and the reformation of morals. It had been, at its origin and in its earliest features, a natural consequence of feudal relations and war-like life, a confirmation of the bonds established and the sentiments aroused between different masters in the same country, and comrades with the same destinies. The clergy promptly saw what might be deduced from such a fact, and they made of it a means of establishing more peacefulness in society, and in the conduct of individuals a more rigid morality. This was the general work they pursued, and if it were convenient to study them out more closely, we might see, in the canons of councils from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, the church exerting herself to develop more and more in this order of knighthood, this institution of an essentially war-like origin, the moral and civilizing character of which a glimpse has just been caught in the documents of knighthood itself. In proportion as knighthood appeared more and more in this simultaneously war-like, religious and moral character, it more and more gained power over the imagination of men, and just as it had become closely interwoven with their creeds, it soon became the ideal of their thoughts, the source of their noblest pleasures. Poetry, like religion, took hold of it. From the eleventh century onwards, knighthood, its ceremonies, its duties, and its adventures, were the mine from which the poets drew in order to charm the people, in order to satisfy and excite at the same time that yearning of the soul, that need of events more varied and more captivating, and of emotions more exalted and more pure than real life could furnish. In the springtime of communities poetry is not merely a pleasure and a pastime for a nation. It is a source of progress. It elevates and develops the moral nature of men at the same time that it amuses them and stirs them deeply. We have just seen what oaths were taken by the knights and administered by the priests, and now, here, is an ancient ballad by Eustache Deschamps, a poet of the fourteenth century, from which it will be seen that poets impressed upon knights the same duties and the same virtues, and that the influence of poetry had the same aim as that of religion. 1. Amend your lives ye who would feign the order of the knights obtain. Devoutly watch, devoutly pray, from pride and sin, oh, turn away. Shun all that space, the church defend, be the widows and the orphans, friend. Be good and leal, take not by might, be bold and guard the people's right. This is the rule for the gallant knight. 2. Be meek of heart, work day by day, tread ever-tread the nightly way. Make lawful war, long-traveled air, turny and joust for Lady Fair. To everlasting honour cling, that none the barbs of blame may fling. Be never slack in work or fight, be ever leased in self-sown sight. This is the rule for the gallant knight. 3. Love the liege-lord with might and main, his rights above all else maintain, be open-handed just and true, the paths of upright men pursue, no deaf air to their precepts turn, the prowess of the valiant learn, that ye may do things great and bright, as did great Alexander height. This is the rule for the gallant knight. A great deal has been said to the effect that all this is sheer poetry, a beautiful chimera without any resemblance to reality. Indeed, it has just been remarked here that the three centuries under consideration, the Middle Ages, were in point of fact one of the most brutal, most ruffianly epics in history, one of those wherein we encounter most crimes and violence, wherein the public peace was most incessantly troubled, and wherein the greatest lies anxiousness in morals prevailed. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that side by side with these gross and barbarous morals, this social disorder, there existed nightly morality and nightly poetry. We have moral records confronting ruffianly deeds, and the contrast is shocking but real. It is exactly this contrast which makes the great and fundamental characteristic of the Middle Ages. Let us turn our eyes towards other communities, towards the earliest stages, for instance, of Greek society, towards that heroic age of which Homer's poems are the faithful reflection. There is nothing there like the contrast by which we are struck in the Middle Ages. We do not see that at the period and amongst the people of the Homeric poems there was abroad in the air or had penetrated into the imaginations of men any idea more lofty or more pure than their everyday actions. The heroes of Homer seemed to have no misgiving about their brutishness, their ferocity, their greed, their egotism. There is nothing in their souls superior to the deeds of their lives. In the France of the Middle Ages, on the contrary, though practically crimes and disorders, moral and social evils abound, yet men have in their souls and their imaginations loftier and purer instincts and desires. Their notions of virtue and their ideas of justice are very superior to the practice pursued around them and amongst themselves. A certain moral ideal hovers above this low and tumultuous community, and attracts the notice and obtains the regard of men in whose life it is but very faintly reflected. The Christian religion undoubtedly is, if not the only, at any rate the principal cause of this great fact, for its particular characteristic is to arouse amongst men a lofty moral ambition by keeping constantly before their eyes a type infinitely beyond the reach of human nature, and yet profoundly sympathetic with it. To Christianity it was that the Middle Ages owed knighthood, that institution which, in the midst of anarchy and barbarism, gave a poetical and moral beauty to the period. It was feudal knighthood in Christianity together which produced the two great and glorious events of those times, the Norman conquest of England and the Crusades. Volume I of a Popular History of France from the earliest times by François Guizot, translated by Robert Black. CHAPTER XV Conquest of England by the Normans Part I At the beginning of the eleventh century, Robert called the magnificent, the fifth in secession from the great chief d'Enralo, who had established the Northmen in France, was Duke of Normandy. To have the nickname he earned by his nobleness and liberality some chronicles have added another, and call him Robert the Devil. By reason of his reckless and violent deeds of audacity, whether in private life or in warlike expeditions. Hence a lively controversy amongst the learned upon the question of deciding to which Robert to apply the latter epithet. Some persist in assigning it to the Duke of Normandy, others seek for some other Robert upon whom to foist it. However that may be, in 1034 or 1035, after having led a fair life enough from the political point of view, but one full of turbulence and moral irregularity, Duke Robert resolved to undertake, barefooted and staff in hand, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to expiate his sins if God would deign to consent there too. The Norman prelates and barons, having been summoned around him, conjured him to renounce his plan, for to what troubles and perils would not his dominions be exposed without lord or assured successor? By my faith, said Robert, I will not leave ye lordless. I have a young bastard who will grow, please God, and of whose good qualities I have great hope. Take him, I pray you, for lord. That he was not born in wedlock matters little to you. He will be none the less able in battle, or at court, or in the palace, or to render you justice. I make him my heir, and I hold him seized from this present of the whole duchy of Normandy. And they who were present assented, but not without objection and disquietude. There was certainly ample reason for objection and disquietude.  Nine or ten years before at Falaise, his favourite residence, Robert had met, according to some at a people's dance, according to others on the banks of a stream where she was washing linen with her companions, a young girl named Harlett, or Harleeve, daughter of a tanner in the town, where they show to this day, it is said, the window from which the Duke saw her for the first time. She pleased his fancy, and was not more straight-laced than the Duke was scrupulous, and Fulbert, the tanner, kept but little watch over his daughter. Robert gave the son born to him in ten twenty-seven the name of his glorious ancestor, William Longsword, the son and successor of Rallo. The child was reared according to some in his father's palace, right honourably as if he had been born in wedlock, but according to others in the house of his grandfather, the tanner, and one of the neighbouring burgesses, as he saw passing one of the principal Norman lords, William de Melmes, surnamed the Fierce Talvas, stopped him ironically saying, Come in, my lord, and admire your suzerain's son. The origin of young William was in every mouth, and gave occasion for familiar allusions more often insulting than flattering. The epithet Bastard was, so to speak, incorporated with his name, and we cannot be astonished that it lived in history, for in the height of his power he sometimes accepted it proudly, calling himself, in several of his charters, William the Bastard, Gielmas Knudelsus. He showed himself to be none the less acceptable on this point when in ten forty-eight, during the siege of Alsinon, the domain of the lord de Melmes, the inhabitants hung from their walls hides all raw and covered with dirt, which they shook when they caught sight of William, with cries of, plenty of work for the tanner, by the glory of God, cried William, they shall pay me dear for this insolent bravery. After an assault several of the besieged were taken prisoners. He had their eyes pulled out, and their feet and hands cut off, and shot from his siege machines these mutilated members over the walls of the city. Notwithstanding his recklessness and his being engrossed in his pilgrimage, Duke Robert had taken some care for the situation in which he was leaving his son, and some measures to lessen its perils. He had appointed Regent of Normandy, during William's minority, his cousin, Alain V, Duke of Brittany, whose sagacity and friendship he had proved, and he had confided the personal guardianship of the child, not to his mother Harlette, who was left very much out in the cold, but to one of his most trusty officers, J'aubair Crescent, Count of Breon, and the Strong Castle of Vaudrill, the first foundation of which dated back, it was said, to Queen Fredegonde, was assigned for the usual residence of the young Duke. Lastly, to confirm with brilliancy his son's right as his successor to the Duchy of Normandy, and to assure him a powerful ally, Robert took him himself to the court of his Sous-Rain, Henri I, King of France, who recognized the title of William the Bastard, and allowed him to take the oath of allegiance and homage. Having thus prepared as best he could for his son's future, Robert set out on his pilgrimage. He visited Rome and Constantinople, everywhere displaying his magnificence, together with his humility. He fell ill from sheer fatigue whilst crossing Asia Minor, and was obliged to be carried in a litter by four negroes. Go and tell them at home, said he to a Norman pilgrim he met returning from the Holy Land, that you saw me being carried to Paradise by four devils. On arriving at Jerusalem, where he was received with great attention by the Muselman Amir in command there, he discharged himself of his pious vow, and took the road back to Europe. But he was poisoned, by whom or for what motive is not clearly known, at Nicaea in Bithnia, where he was buried in the Basilica of St. Mary, and honors as the Chronicle which had never been accorded to anybody. From 1025 to 1042, during William's minority, Normandy was apprayed to the robber-like ambition, the local quarrels, and the turbulent and brutal passions of a host of petty castle-holders, nearly always at war, either amongst themselves or with the young chieftain whose power they did not fear, and whose rights they disputed. In vain did Duke Ilan of Brittany, in his capacity as regent appointed by Duke Robert, attempt to re-establish order, and just when he seemed on the road to success he was poisoned by those who could not succeed in beating him. Henri I, king of France, being ill disposed at his bottom towards his Norman neighbors and their young Duke, for all that he had acknowledged him, profited by this anarchy to filch from him certain portions of territory. Attacks without warning, fearful murders, implacable vengeance, and sanguinary disturbances in the towns, were evils which became common and spread. The clergy strove with courageous perseverance against the vices and crimes of the period. The bishops convoked councils in their diocese, the laic lords and even the people were summoned to them. The peace of God was proclaimed, and the priests, having in their hands lighted tapers, turned them towards the ground and extinguished them. Whilst the populace repeated in chorus, so may God extinguish the joys of those who refuse to observe peace and justice. The majority, however, of the Norman lords refused to enter into the engagement. In default of peace it was necessary to be content with the truce of God. It commenced on Wednesday evening at sunset and concluded on Monday at sunrise. During the four days and five nights comprised in this interval, all aggression was forbidden. No slaying, wounding, pillaging, or burning could take place. But from sunrise on Monday to sunset on Wednesday, for three days and two nights, any violence became allowable, any crime might recommend. Meanwhile, William was growing up, and the omens that had been drawn from his early youth raised the popular hopes. It was reported that at his very birth, when the midwife had put him unswaddled in a little heap of straw, he had wriggled about and drawn together the straw with his hands, in so much that the midwife said, By my faith this child begineth full young to take and heap up. I know not what he will do when he is grown. At a little later period, when a burgess of filets drew the attention of the Lord William de Belles to the gay and sturdy lad as he played amongst his mates, the fierce facile muttered between his teeth, A cursed be thou of God, for I be certain that by thee mine honors will be lowered. The child on becoming man was handsomer and handsomer, and so lively and spirited that it seemed to all a marvel. Amongst his mates, command became soon a habit with him. He made them form a line of battle, he gave them the word of command, and he constituted himself their judge in all quarrels. At a still later period, having often heard talk of revolts excited against him, and of disorders which troubled the community, he was moved in consequence to fits of violent irritation, which, however, he learned instinctively to hide, and in his child's heart, says the Chronicle, he had welling up all the vigor of a man to teach the Normans to forbear from all acts of irregularity. At fifteen years of age, in ten forty-two, he demanded to be armed to night, and to fulfill all forms necessary for having the right to serve and command in all ranks. These forms were in Normandy by a relic, it is said, of the Danish and pagan customs, more connected with war and less with religion than elsewhere. The young candidates were not bound to confess, to spend a vigil in the church, and to receive from the priest's hands the sword he had consecrated on the altar. It was even the custom to say that he whose sword had been girded upon him by a long-robed cleric was no true knight, but a sit without spirit. The day on which William, for the first time, donned his armor, was for his servants and all the spectators a gala day. He was so tall, so manly in face, and so proud of bearing, that it was a sight both pleasant and terrible to see him guiding his horse's career, flashing with his sword, gleaming with his shield, and threatening with his cask and javelins. His first act of government was a rigorous decree against such as should be guilty of murder, arson, and pillage, but he at the same time granted an amnesty for past revolts, on condition of fealty and obedience for the future. For the establishment, however, of a young and disputed authority there is need of something more than brilliant ceremonies and words partly miniaturi and partly coaxing. William had to show what he was made of. A conspiracy was formed against him in the heart of his feudal court and almost of his family. He had given kindly welcome to his cousin, Guy of Burgundy, and had even bestowed on him as a thief the countships of Vernon and Breone. In 1044 the young Duke was at Vallone, when suddenly at midnight, one of his trustiest servants, Gollay, his fool, such as the great lords of the time kept, knocked at the door of his chamber, crying, Open, open, my Lord Duke, fly, fly, or you are lost. They are armed. They are getting ready to tarry his death. William did not hesitate. He got up, ran to the stables, saddled his horse with his own hands, started off, followed a road called to this day the Duke's way, and reached Vallone's as a place of safety. Fair news came to him that the conspiracy was taking the form of insurrection, and that the rebels were seizing his domains. William showed no more hesitation at Fillet's than at Vallone. He started off at once, repaired to Poissy, where Henri I, King of France was then residing, and claimed as Vassal the help of his Souseran against traitors. Henri, who himself was brave, was touched by this bold confidence, and promised his young Vassal effectual support. William returned to Normandy, summoned his legions, and took to the field promptly. King Henri joined him at Argyns, with a body of three thousand men at arms, and a battle took place on the 10th of August, 1047, at Val d'Édue, three leagues from Caen. It was very hotly contested. King Henri, unhorsed by Lance Thrust, ran a risk of his life, but he remounted and valiantly returned to the Malais. William dashed in whenever the fight was the thickest, showing himself everywhere as able in command, as ready to expose himself. A Norman Lorde, Raoul de Tesson, held aloof with a troop of one hundred and forty knights. Who is he that bids yonder motionless? asked the French king of the young duke. It is the banner of Raoul de Tesson, answered William. I want not that he hath ought against me. But though he had no personal grievance, Raoul de Tesson had joined the insurgents, and sworn that he would be the first to strike the duke in the conflict. Doing better of it, and perceiving William from afar, he pricked towards him, and taking off his gloves struck him gently on the shoulder, saying, I swore to strike you, and so I am quit, but fear nothing more from me. Thanks, Raoul, said William, be well disposed, I pray you. Raoul waited until the two armies were at grips, and when he saw which way victory was inclined he hastened to contribute there too. It was decisive, and William the Bastard returned to Val d'Édue, really duke of Normandy. He made vigorous but not cruel use of his victory. He demolished his enemy's strong castles, magazines as they were for pillage no less than bulwarks of feudal independence, but there is nothing to show that he indulged in violence towards persons. He was even generous to the chief concoctor of the plot, Guy of Burgundy. He took from him the countships of Vernon and Breon, but permitted him still to live at his court, a place which the Burgundian found himself too ill at ease to remain in. So he returned to Burgundy to conspire against his own eldest brother. William was stern without hatred and merciful without kindness, only thinking which of the two might promote or retard his success, gentleness or severity. There soon came an opportunity for him to return to the King of France the kindness he had received. Geoffrey Martel, duke of Angus, being ambitious and turbulent beyond the measure of his power, got embroiled with the King his Souserin, and war broke out between them. The Duke of Normandy went to the aid of King Henri, and made his success certain, which cost the duke the fierce hostility of the court of Angus and a four years' war with that inconvenient neighbor, a war full of dangerous incidents, wherein William enhanced his character, already great, for personal valor. In an amuse-garde laid for him by Geoffrey Martel he lost some of his best knights, whereat he was so wroth, says Chronicle, that he galloped down with such force upon Geoffrey, and struck him in such wise with his sword, that he dented his helm, cut through his hood, lopped off his ear, and with the same blow felled him to the earth. But the count was lifted up and remounted, and so fled away. William made rapid advances both as prince and as man. Without being austere in his private life he was regular in his habits, and patronized order and respectability in his household, as well as in his dominions. He resolved to marry to his own honour and to the promotion of his greatness. Baldwin the debonair, count of Flanders, one of the most powerful lords of the day, had a daughter, Matilda, beautiful, well-informed, firm in the faith, a model of virtue and modesty. William asked her hand in marriage.  Hurt as he was, William did not give up. He was even more persevering than susceptible, but he knew that he must get still greater and make an impression upon a young girl's imagination by the splendour of his fame and power. Some years later, being firmly established in Normandy, dreaded by all his neighbours, and already showing some foreshadowings of his design upon England, he renewed his matrimonial quest in Flanders. But after so strange a fashion that, in spite of contemporary testimony, several of the modern historians in their zeal, even at so distant a period, for observance of the proprieties, reject as fabulous the story which is here related on the authority of the most detailed account amongst all the chronicles which contain it. A little after that, Duke William had heard how the damsel had made answer. He took of his folk, and went privately to Leel, where the Duke of Flanders and his wife and his daughter then were. He entered into the hall, and passing on, as if to do some business, went into the Countess's chamber, and there found the damsel daughter of Count Baldwin. He took her by the tresses, dragged her round the chamber, trampled her underfoot, and did beat her soundly. Then he strode forth from the chamber, leapt upon his horse, which was being held for him before the hall, struck in his spurs, and went his way. At this deed was Count Baldwin much enraged, and when matters had thus remained awhile, Duke William sent once more to Count Baldwin to parley again of the marriage. The Count sounded his daughter on the subject, and she answered that it pleased her well. So the nuptials took place with very great joy. And after the aforesaid matters, Count Baldwin, laughing with all, asked his daughter wherefore she had so lightly accepted the marriage she had a foretime so cruelly refused. And she answered that she did not then know the Duke so well as she did now. For, said she, if he had not great heart and high in prize, he had not been so bold as to dare come and beat me in my father's chamber. Amongst the historians who treat this story as romantic and untreathlike fable, some believe themselves to have discovered, in diverse documents of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, circumstances almost equally singular as regards the cause of the obstacles met with at first by Duke William, in his pretensions to the hand of Princess Matilda, and as regards the motive for the first refusal on the part of Matilda herself. According to some, the Flemish princess had conceived a strong passion for a noble Saxon, Britic Mew, who had been sent by King Edward the Confessor to the Court of Flanders, and who was remarkable for his beauty. She wished to marry him, but the handsome Saxon was not willing, and Matilda at first gave way to violent grief on that account, and afterwards, when she became Queen of England, to vindictive hatred, the weight of which she made him feel severely. Other writers go still farther and say that, before being sought in marriage by William, Matilda had not fallen in love with a handsome Saxon, but had actually married a Flemish Burgess, named Gerbaud, patron of the Church of St. Derton, at St. Omer, and that she had by him two and perhaps three children, traces of whom recur it is said, under the reign of William, King of England. There is no occasion to enter upon the learned controversies of which these different allegations have been the cause. It is sufficient to say that they have led to nothing but obscurity, contradiction, and doubt, and that there is more moral verisimilitude in the account just given, especially in Matilda's first prejudice against marriage with a bastard, and in her conversation with her father, Count Baldwin, when she had changed her opinion upon the subject. Independently of the testimony of several chroniclers, French and English, this tradition is mentioned, with all the simplicity of belief, in one of the principal Flemish chronicles, and as to the ruffianly gallantry employed by William to win his bride, there is nothing in it very singular, considering the habits of the time, and we meet with more than one example of adventures, if not exactly similar, at any rate very analogous. However that may be, this marriage brought William an unexpected opportunity of entering into personal relations with one of the most distinguished men of his age, and a man destined to become one of his own most intimate advisers. In 1019, at the Council of Rome, Pope Leo IX, on political grounds rather than because of a prohibited decree of relationship, had opposed the marriage of the Duke of Normandy with the daughter of the Duke of Flanders, and had pronounced his veto upon it. William took no heed, and in 1052 or 1053 his marriage was celebrated at Rouran with great pomp, but this ecclesiastical veto waded upon his mind, and he sought some means of getting it taken off. A learned Italian, Lanfrank, a jurist consul of some fame already, whilst travelling in France and repairing from avanches to Rouran, was stopped near Brion by Brigands, who having plundered him, left him, with his eyes bandaged in a forest. His cries attracted the attention of passers-by, who took him to a neighbouring monastery, but lately founded by a pious Norman knight retired from the world. Lanfrank was received in it, became a monk of it, was elected its prior, attracted to it by his learned teachings a host of pupils, and won therein his own great renown whilst laying the foundation for that of the Abbey of B, which was destined to be carried still higher by one of his disciples, St. Anselm. Lanfrank was eloquent, great in dialectics, of a sprightly wit and lively in repartee. Relying upon the Pope's decision, he spoke ill of William's marriage with Matilda. William was informed of this, and in a fit of despotic anger ordered Lanfrank to be driven from the monastery and banished from Normandy, and even it is said, the dependency which he inhabited as a prior of the Abbey to be burned. The order was executed, and Lanfrank set out, mounted on a sorry little horse given him, no doubt by the Abbey. By what chance is not known, but probably on a hunting-party, his favourite diversion, William, with his retinue, happened to cross the road which Lanfrank was slowly pursuing. My Lord said the monk addressing him, I am obeying your orders, I am going away, but my horse is a sorry beast, if you will give me a better one I will go faster. William halted, entered into conversation with Lanfrank, let him stay, and sent him back with a present to his Abbey. A little while afterwards Lanfrank was at Rome, and defended before Pope Victor II, William's marriage with Matilda. He was successful, and the Pope took off the veto on the sole condition that the couple, in sign of penitence, should each found a religious house. Matilda accordingly founded at Cain, for women, the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, and William, for men, that of St. Stephen. Lanfrank was the first Abbey of the Ladder, and when William became King of England, Lanfrank was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and Primate of the Church of England, as well as Privy Counselor of his King. William excelled in the art, so essential to government, of promptly recognizing the worth of men, and of appropriating their influence to himself whilst exerting his own over them. About the same time he gave his co-temporaries, princes and peoples, new proofs of his ability and power. Henri I, King of France, growing more and more disquieted at and jealous of the Duke of Normandy's ascendancy, secretly excited against him opposition and even revolt in his dominions. These dealings led to open war between the Sousaurent and the Vassal, and the war concluded with two battles won by William, one at Mortimer, near Neuchâtel and Bray, the other at Veravel near Tror. After which, said William himself, King Henri never passed a night but tranquilly in my ground. In 1059 peace was concluded between the two princes. Henri I died almost immediately afterwards, and on the 25th of August 1060 his son Philippe I succeeded him, under the regency of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, father of the Duchess Matilda. Duke William was present in state at the coronation of the new King of France, lent him effectual assistance against the revolts which took place in Gascony, re-entered Normandy for the purpose of holding at Cain in 1061, the estates of his duchy, and at that time published the famous decree observed long after him, under the name of the law of curfew, which ordered that every evening the bells should be rung in all parishes to warn everyone to prayer and house-closing and no more running about the streets. The passion for orderliness in his dominions did not cool his ardor for conquest. In 1063, after the death of his young neighbor Herbert II, Count of Maine, William took possession of his beautiful countship, not without some opposition on the part of the inhabitants, nor without suspicion of having poisoned his rival, Walter, Count of Vaccine. It is said that after this conquest William meditated that of Brittany, but there is every indication that he had formed a far vaster design, and that the day of its execution was approaching.