William the Conqueror | Page 6

Mondays and
Tuesdays as well as on Thursdays and Fridays.
It was in the year 1047 that William's authority was most dangerously
threatened and that he was first called on to show in all their fulness the
powers that were in him. He who was to be conqueror of Maine and
conqueror of England was first to be conqueror of his own duchy. The
revolt of a large part of the country, contrasted with the firm loyalty of
another part, throws a most instructive light on the internal state of the
duchy. There was, as there still is, a line of severance between the
districts which formed the first grant to Rolf and those which were
afterwards added. In these last a lingering remnant of old Teutonic life
had been called into fresh strength by new settlements from
Scandinavia. At the beginning of the reign of Richard the Fearless,
Rouen, the French-speaking city, is emphatically contrasted with
Bayeux, the once Saxon city and land, now the headquarters of the
Danish speech. At that stage the Danish party was distinctly a heathen
party. We are not told whether Danish was still spoken so late as the
time of William's youth. We can hardly believe that the Scandinavian
gods still kept any avowed worshippers. But the geographical limits of
the revolt exactly fall in with the boundary which had once divided
French and Danish speech, Christian and heathen worship. There was a
wide difference in feeling on the two sides of the Dive. The older
Norman settlements, now thoroughly French in tongue and manners,
stuck faithfully to the Duke; the lands to the west rose against him.
Rouen and Evreux were firmly loyal to William; Saxon Bayeux and
Danish Coutances were the headquarters of his enemies.
When the geographical division took this shape, we are surprised at the
candidate for the duchy who was put forward by the rebels. William
was a Norman born and bred; his rival was in every sense a Frenchman.
This was William's cousin Guy of Burgundy, whose connexion with

the ducal house was only by the spindle-side. But his descent was of
uncontested legitimacy, which gave him an excuse for claiming the
duchy in opposition to the bastard grandson of the tanner. By William
he had been enriched with great possessions, among which was the
island fortress of Brionne in the Risle. The real object of the revolt was
the partition of the duchy. William was to be dispossessed; Guy was to
be duke in the lands east of Dive; the great lords of Western Normandy
were to be left independent. To this end the lords of the Bessin and the
Cotentin revolted, their leader being Neal, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur in
the Cotentin. We are told that the mass of the people everywhere
wished well to their duke; in the common sovereign lay their only
chance of protection against their immediate lords. But the lords had
armed force of the land at their bidding. They first tried to slay or seize
the Duke himself, who chanced to be in the midst of them at Valognes.
He escaped; we hear a stirring tale of his headlong ride from Valognes
to Falaise. Safe among his own people, he planned his course of action.
He first sought help of the man who could give him most help, but who
had most wronged him. He went into France; he saw King Henry at
Poissy, and the King engaged to bring a French force to William's help
under his own command.
This time Henry kept his promise. The dismemberment of Normandy
might have been profitable to France by weakening the power which
had become so special an object of French jealousy; but with a king the
common interest of princes against rebellious barons came first. Henry
came with a French army, and fought well for his ally on the field of
Val-es-dunes. Now came the Conqueror's first battle, a tourney of
horsemen on an open table-land just within the land of the rebels
between Caen and Mezidon. The young duke fought well and manfully;
but the Norman writers allow that it was French help that gained him
the victory. Yet one of the many anecdotes of the battle points to a
source of strength which was always ready to tell for any lord against
rebellious vassals. One of the leaders of the revolt, Ralph of Tesson,
struck with remorse and stirred by the prayers of his knights, joined the
Duke just before the battle. He had sworn to smite William wherever he
found him, and he fulfilled his oath by giving the Duke a harmless
blow with his glove. How far an oath to do an unlawful act is binding is
a question which came up again at another stage of William's life.

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