William the Conqueror | Page 7

victory at Val-es-dunes was decisive, and the French King, whose
help had done so much to win it, left William to follow it up. He met
with but little resistance except at the stronghold of Brionne. Guy
himself vanishes from Norman history. William had now conquered his
own duchy, and conquered it by foreign help. For the rest of his
Norman reign he had often to strive with enemies at home, but he had
never to put down such a rebellion again as that of the lords of western
Normandy. That western Normandy, the truest Normandy, had to yield
to the more thoroughly Romanized lands to the east. The difference
between them never again takes a political shape. William was now
lord of all Normandy, and able to put down all later disturbers of the
peace. His real reign now begins; from the age of nineteen or twenty,
his acts are his own. According to his abiding practice, he showed
himself a merciful conqueror. Through his whole reign he shows a
distinct unwillingness to take human life except in fair fighting on the
battle-field. No blood was shed after the victory of Val-es-dunes; one
rebel died in bonds; the others underwent no harder punishment than
payment of fines, giving of hostages, and destruction of their castles.
These castles were not as yet the vast and elaborate structures which
arose in after days. A single strong square tower, or even a defence of
wood on a steep mound surrounded by a ditch, was enough to make its
owner dangerous. The possession of these strongholds made every
baron able at once to defy his prince and to make himself a scourge to
his neighbours. Every season of anarchy is marked by the building of
castles; every return of order brings with it their overthrow as a
necessary condition of peace.
Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had been schooled
for the rule of men. He had now, in the rule of a smaller dominion, in
warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to be schooled for the
conquest and the rule of a greater dominion. William had the gifts of a
born ruler, and he was in no way disposed to abuse them. We know his
rule in Normandy only through the language of panegyric; but the facts
speak for themselves. He made Normandy peaceful and flourishing,
more peaceful and flourishing perhaps than any other state of the
European mainland. He is set before us as in everything a wise and
beneficent ruler, the protector of the poor and helpless, the patron of
commerce and of all that might profit his dominions. For defensive

wars, for wars waged as the faithful man of his overlord, we cannot
blame him. But his main duty lay at home. He still had revolts to put
down, and he put them down. But to put them down was the first of
good works. He had to keep the peace of the land, to put some cheek on
the unruly wills of those turbulent barons on whom only an arm like his
could put any cheek. He had, in the language of his day, to do justice,
to visit wrong with sure and speedy punishment, whoever was the
wrong-doer. If a ruler did this first of duties well, much was easily
forgiven him in other ways. But William had as yet little to be forgiven.
Throughout life he steadily practised some unusual virtues. His strict
attention to religion was always marked. And his religion was not that
mere lavish bounty to the Church which was consistent with any
amount of cruelty or license. William's religion really influenced his
life, public and private. He set an unusual example of a princely
household governed according to the rules of morality, and he dealt
with ecclesiastical matters in the spirit of a true reformer. He did not,
like so many princes of his age, make ecclesiastical preferments a
source of corrupt gain, but promoted good men from all quarters. His
own education is not likely to have received much attention; it is not
clear whether he had mastered the rarer art of writing or the more usual
one of reading; but both his promotion of learned churchmen and the
care given to the education of some of his children show that he at least
valued the best attainments of his time. Had William's whole life been
spent in the duties of a Norman duke, ruling his duchy wisely,
defending it manfully, the world might never have known him for one
of its foremost men, but his life on that narrower field would have been
useful and honourable almost without a drawback. It was the fatal
temptation of princes, the temptation to territorial aggrandizement,
which enabled him fully to show