and succor one another whenever occasion offered; 15, 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; 16, 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 hinderance such as the body and courage of a single man might tackle; 17, that they would never take wage or pay from any foreign prince; 18, 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; 19, 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; 20, that they would never offer violence to dame or damsel, though they had won her by deeds of arms, against her will and consent; 21, that, being challenged to equal combat, they would not refuse, without wound, sickness, or other reasonable hinderance; 22, 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; 23, that if they made a vow to acquire any honor, they would not draw back without having attained either it or its equivalent; 24, 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 uttermost the promised ransom, or return to prison, at the day and hour agreed upon, on pain of being proclaimed infamous and perjured; 25, that on re-turning 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; 26, 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 relations of mankind; and their influence was employed in directing towards the accomplishment of such duties, towards the integrity of such relations, the ideas 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 warlike 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 the matter 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 knight-hood, this institution of an essentially warlike 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 warlike, 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 springtide 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:
I.
Amend your lives, ye who would fain The order of the knights attain; Devoutly watch, devoutly pray;
From pride and sin, O, turn away! Shun all that’s base; the Church defend; Be the widow’s and the orphan’s friend; Be good and Leal; take nought by might; Be bold and guard the people’s right;– This is the rule for the gallant knight.
II.
Be meek of heart; work day by day; Tread, ever tread, the knightly way; Make lawful war; long travel dare; Tourney and joust for lady fair; To everlasting honor cling,
That none the barbs of blame may fling; Be never slack in work or fight; Be ever least in self’s own sight;– This is the rule for the gallant knight.
III.
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 ear to their precepts turn; The prowess of the valiant learn; That ye may do things great and bright, As did great Alexander hight;–
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 epochs in history, one of those wherein we encounter most crimes and violence; wherein the public peace was most incessantly troubled; and wherein the greatest licentiousness in morals prevailed. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that side by side with these gross and barbarous morals, this social disorder, there existed knightly morality and knightly 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 contrasts 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 every-day actions; the heroes of Homer seem 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 and Christianity together which produced the two great and glorious events of those times, the Norman conquest of England and the Crusades.
CHAPTER XV.—-CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE NORMANS.
At the beginning of the eleventh century, Robert, called “The Magnificent,” the fifth in succession from the great chieftain Rollo who had established the Northmen in France, was duke of Normandy. To 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 thereto.” 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. Not only was it a child of eight years of age to whom Duke Robert, at setting out on his pious pilgrimage, was leaving Normandy; but this child had been pronounced bastard by the duke his father at the moment of taking him for his heir. Nine or ten years before, at Falaise, his favorite 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 Harlette or Harleve, 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 strait-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 1027 the name of his glorious ancestor, William Longsword, the son and successor of Rollo. The child was reared, according to some, in his father’s palace, “right honorably as if he had been born in wedlock,” but, according to others, in the house of his grandfather, the tanner; and one of the neighboring burgesses, as he saw passing one of the principal Norman lords, William de Bellesme, 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 (Gulielmus Notlzus). He showed himself to be none the less susceptible on this point when in 1048, during the siege of Alencon, the domain of the Lord de Bellesme, 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 bra-very!” After an assault several of the besieged were taken prisoners; and 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, Gilbert Crespon, count of Brionne; and the strong castle of Vaudreuil, 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 suzerain, Henry 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 Mussulman emir 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 Bithynia, where he was buried in the basilica of St. Mary–an honor, says the chronicle, which had never been accorded to anybody.
From 1025 to 1042, during William’s minority, Normandy was a prey 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 Alain 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. Henry I., king of France, being ill-disposed at 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 dioceses; 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 clays and two nights, any violence became allowable, any crime might recommence.
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 on a little heap of straw, he had wriggled about and drawn together the straw with his hands, insomuch that the midwife said, “By my faith, this child beginneth full young to take and heap up: I know not what he will not do when he is grown.” At a little later period, when a burgess of Falaise drew the attention of the Lord William de Bellesme to the gay and sturdy lad as he played amongst his mates, the fierce vassal muttered between his teeth, “Accursed 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 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 country, he was moved, in consequence, to fits of violent irritation, which, however, he learned instinctively to bide, “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 1042, he demanded to be armed knight, and to fulfil 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 cit 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 casque 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 minatory 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 fief the countships of Vernon and Brionne. In 1044 the young duke was at Valognes; when suddenly, at midnight, one of his trustiest servants, Golet, 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 is 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 Falaise as a place of safety. There 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 Falaise than at Valognes; he started off at once, repaired to Poissy, where Henry I., king of France, was then residing, and claimed, as vassal, the help of his suzerain against traitors. Henry, who himself was brave, was touched by this bold confidence, and promised his young vassal effectual support. William returned to Normandy, summoned his lieges, and took the field promptly. King Henry joined him at Argence, with a body of three thousand men-at-arms, and a battle took place on the 10th of August, 1047, at Val des Dunes, three leagues from Caen. It was very hotly contested. King Henry, unhorsed by a lance-thrust, ran a risk of his life; but he remounted and valiantly returned to the melley. William dashed in wherever the fight was thickest, showing himself everywhere as able in command as ready to expose himself. A Norman lord, Raoul de Tesson, held aloof with a troop of one hundred and forty knights. “Who is he that bides yonder motionless?” asked the French king of the young duke. “It is the banner of Raoul de Tesson,” answered William; “I wot not that he hath aught 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. Thinking better of it, and perceiving William from afar, he pricked towards him, and taking off his glove 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 hasted to contribute thereto. It was decisive: and William the Bastard returned to Val des Dunes really duke of Normandy.
He made vigorous but not cruel use of his victory. He demolished his enemies’ 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 concocter of the plot, Guy of Burgundy. He took from him the countships of Vernon and Brionne, 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 kindliness, 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 Anjou, being ambitious and turbulent beyond the measure of his power, got embroiled with the king his suzerain, and war broke out between them. The duke of Normandy went to the aid of King Henry and made his success certain, which cost the duke the fierce hostility of the count of Anjou 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 ambuscade laid for him by Geoffrey Martel he lost some of his best knights, “whereat he was so wroth,” says a chronicle, “that he galloped down with such force upon Geoffrey, and struck him in such wise with his sword that he dinted his helm, cut through his hood, lopped off his car, and with the same blow felled him to 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 honor, and to the promotion of his greatness. Baldwin the Debonnair, 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. Matilda refused, saying, “I would rather be veiled nun than given in marriage to a bastard.” 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 splendor of his fame and power. Some years later, being firmly established in Normandy, dreaded by all his neighbors, 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 privily to Lille, 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 under foot, and did beat her soundly. Then he strode forth from the chamber, leaped 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 a while, 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 withal, asked his daughter wherefore she had so lightly accepted the marriage she had aforetime 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 emprise, 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 a romantic and untruthlike fable, some believe themselves to have discovered, in divers 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, Brihtric Meaw, 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 Gerbod, patron of the church of St. Dertin, 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 Rheims, Pope Leo IX., on political grounds rather than because of a prohibited degree 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 Rouen with great pomp; but this ecclesiastical veto weighed upon his mind, and he sought some means of getting it taken off. A learned Italian, Lanfranc, a juris-consult of some fame already, whilst travelling in France and repairing from Avranches to Rouen, was stopped near Brionne 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 neighboring monastery, but lately founded by a pious Norman knight retired from the world. Lanfranc was received in it, became a monk of it, was elected its prior, attracted to it by his learned teaching a host of pupils, and won therein his own great renown whilst laying the foundation for that of the abbey of Bee, which was destined to be carried still higher by one of his disciples, St. Anselm. Lanfranc 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 Lanfranc to be driven from the monastery and banished from Normandy, and even, it is said, the dependency which he inhabited as prior of the abbey, to be burned. The order was executed; and Lanfranc 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 favorite diversion, William, with his retinue, happened to cross the road which Lanfranc 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 Lanfranc, let him stay, and sent him back with a present to his abbey. A little while afterwards Lanfranc 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 Caen, for women, the abbey of the Holy Trinity; and William, for men, that of St. Stephen. Lanfranc was the first abbot of the latter; and when William became king of England, Lanfranc was made archbishop of Canterbury and primate of the Church of England, as well as privy counsellor 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 contemporaries, princes and peoples, new proofs of his ability and power. Henry I., king of France, growing more and more disquieted at and jealous of the duke of Normandy’s ascendency, secretly excited against him opposition and even revolt in his dominions. These dealings led to open war between the suzerain and the vassal, and the war concluded with two battles won by William, one at Mortemer near Neuchatel in Bray, the other at Varaville near Troarrh “After which,” said William himself, “King Henry never passed a night tranquilly on my ground.” In 1059 peace was concluded between the two princes. Henry I. died almost immediately afterwards, and on the 25th of August, 1060, his son Philip 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, reentered Normandy for the purpose of holding at Caen, 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 bell should be rung in all parishes to warn every one to prayer, and house-closing, and no more running about the streets.”
The passion for orderliness in his dominion 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 this beautiful countship; not without some opposition on the part of the inhabitants, nor without suspicion of having poisoned his rival, Walter, count of Vexin. 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.
From the time of Rollo’s settlement in Normandy, the communications of the Normans with England had become more and more frequent, and important for the two countries. The success of the invasions of the Danes in England in the tenth century, and the reigns of three kings of the Danish line, had obliged the princes of Saxon race to take refuge in Normandy, the duke of which, Richard I., had given his daughter Emma in marriage to their grandfather, Ethelred II. When, at the death of the last Danish king, Hardicanute, the Saxon prince Edward ascended the throne of his fathers, he had passed twenty-seven years of exile in Normandy, and he returned to England “almost a stranger,” in the words of the chronicles, to the country of his ancestors; far more Norman than Saxon in his manners, tastes, and language, and surrounded by Normans, whose numbers and prestige under his reign increased from day to day. A hot rivalry, nationally as well as courtly, grew up between them and the Saxons. At the head of these latter was Godwin, count of Kent, and his five sons, the eldest of whom, Harold, was destined before long to bear the whole brunt of the struggle. Between these powerful rivals, Edward the Confessor, a pacific, pious, gentle, and undecided king, wavered incessantly; at one time trying to resist, and at another compelled to yield to the pretensions and seditions by which he was beset. In 1051 the Saxon party and its head, Godwin, had risen in revolt. Duke William, on invitation, perhaps, from King Edward, paid a brilliant visit to England, where he found Normans everywhere established and powerful, in Church as well as in State; in command of the fleets, ports, and principal English places. King Edward received him “as his own son, gave him arms, horses, hounds, and hawking-birds,” and sent him home full of presents and hopes. The chronicler, Ingulf, who accompanied William on his return to Normandy, and remained attached to him as private secretary, affirms that, during this visit, not only was there no question, between King Edward and the duke of Normandy, of the latter’s possible succession to the throne of England, but that never as yet had this probability occupied the attention of William.
It is very doubtful whether William had said nothing upon the subject to King Edward at that time; and it is certain, from William’s own testimony, that he had for a long while been thinking about it. Four years after this visit of the duke to England, King Edward was reconciled to and lived on good terms with the family of the Godwins. Their father was dead, and the eldest son, Harold, asked the king’s permission to go to Normandy and claim the release of his brother and nephew, who had been left as hostages in the keeping of Duke William. The king did not approve of the project. “I have no wish to constrain thee,” said he to Harold: “but if thou go, it will be without my consent: and, assuredly, thy trip will bring some misfortune upon thee and our country. I know Duke William and his crafty spirit; he hates thee, and will grant thee nought unless he see his advantage therefrom. The only way to make him give up the hostages will be to send some other than thyself.” Harold, however, persisted and went. William received him with apparent cordiality, promised him the release of the two hostages, escorted him and his comrades from castle to castle, and from entertainment to entertainment, made them knights of the grand Norman order, and even invited them, “by way of trying their new spurs,” to accompany him on a little warlike expedition he was about to undertake in Brittany. Harold and his comrades behaved gallantly: and he and William shared the same tent and the same table. On returning, as they trotted side by side, William turned the conversation upon his youthful connection with the king of England. “When Edward and I,” said he to the Saxon, “were living like brothers under the same roof, he promised, if ever he became king of England, to make me heir to his kingdom; I should very much like thee, Harold, to help me to realize this promise; and be assured that, if by thy aid I obtain the kingdom, whatsoever thou askest of me, I will grant it forthwith.” Harold, in surprise and confusion, answered by an assent which he tried to make as vague as possible. William took it as positive. “Since thou dost consent to serve me,” said he, “thou must engage to fortify the castle of Dover, dig a well of fresh water there, and put it into the hands of my men-at-arms; thou must also give me thy sister to be married to one of my barons, and thou must thyself espouse my daughter Adele.” Harold, “not witting,” says the chronicler, “how to escape from this pressing danger,” promised all the duke asked of him, reckoning, doubt-less, on disregarding his engagement; and for the moment William asked him nothing more.
But a few days afterwards he summoned, at Avranches according to some, and at Bayeux according to others, and, more probably still, at Bonneville-sur-Touques, his Norman barons; and, in the midst of this assembly, at which Harold was present, William, seated with his naked sword in his hand, caused to be brought and placed upon a table covered with cloth of gold two reliquaries. “Harold,” said he, “I call upon thee, in presence of this noble assemblage, to confirm by oath the promises thou didst make me, to wit, to aid me to obtain the kingdom of England after the death of King Edward, to espouse my daughter Adele, and to send me thy sister to be married to one of my people.” Harold, who had not expected this public summons, nevertheless did not hesitate any more than he had hesitated in his private conversation with William; he drew near, laid his hand on the two reliquaries, and swore to observe, to the best of his power, his agreement with the duke, should he live and God help. “God help!” repeated those who were present. William made a sign; the cloth of gold was removed, and there was discovered a tub filled to the edge with bones and relies of all the saints that could be got together. The chronicler-poet, Robert Wace, who, alone and long afterwards, recounts this last particular, adds that Harold was visibly troubled at sight of this saintly heap; but he had sworn. It is honorable to human nature not to be indifferent to oaths even when those who exact them have but small reliance upon them, and when he who takes them has but small intention of keeping them. And so Harold departed laden with presents, leaving William satisfied, but not over-confident.
When, on returning to England, Harold told King Edward what had passed between William and himself, “Did I not warn thee,” said the king, “that I knew William, and that thy journey would bring great misfortunes upon thyself and upon our nation? Grant Heaven that those misfortunes come not during my life!” The king’s wish was not granted. He fell ill; and on the 5th of January, 1066, he lay on his couch almost at the point of death. Harold and his kindred entered the chamber, and prayed the king to name a successor by whom the kingdom might be governed securely. “Ye know,” said Edward, “that I have left my kingdom to the Duke of Normandy; and are there not here, among ye, those who have sworn to assure his succession?” Harold advanced, and once more asked the king on whom the crown should devolve. “Take it, if it is thy wish, Harold,” said Edward; “but the gift will be thy ruin; against the duke and his barons thy power will not suffice.”–Harold declared that he feared neither the Norman nor any other foe. The king, vexed at this importunity, turned round in his bed, saying, “Let the English make king of whom they will, Harold or another; I consent;” and shortly after expired. The very day after the celebration of his obsequies, Harold was proclaimed king by his partisans, amidst no small public disquietude, and Aldred, archbishop of York, lost no time in anointing him.
William was in his park of Rouvray, near Rouen, trying a bow and arrows for the chase, when a faithful servant arrived from England, to tell him that Edward was dead and Harold proclaimed king. William gave his bow to one of his people, and went back to his palace at Rouen, where he paced about in silence, sitting down, rising up, leaning upon a bench, without opening his lips and without any one of his people’s daring to address a word to him. There entered his seneschal William de Bretenil, of whom “What ails the duke?” asked they who were present. “Ye will soon know,” answered he. Then going up to the duke, he said, “Wherefore conceal your tidings, my lord? All the city knows that King Edward is dead; and that Harold has broken his oath to you, and had himself crowned king.” “Ay,” said William, “it is that which doth weigh me down.” “My lord,” said William Fitz-Osbern, a gallant knight and confidential friend of the duke, “none should be wroth over what can be mended: it depends but on you to stop the mischief Harold is doing you; you shall destroy him, if it please you. You have right; you have good men and true to serve you; you need but have courage: set on boldly.” William gathered together his most important and most trusted counsellors; and they were unanimous in urging him to resent the perjury and injury. He sent to Harold a messenger charged to say, “William, duke of the Normans, doth recall to thee the oath thou swarest to him with thy mouth and with thy hand, on real and saintly relics.” “It is true,” answered Harold, “that I swore, but on compulsion; I promised what did not belong to me; my kingship is not mine own; I cannot put it off from me without the consent of the country. I cannot any the more, without the consent of the country, espouse a foreigner. As for my sister, whom the duke claims for one of his chieftains, she died within the year; if he will, I will send him the corpse.” William replied without any violence, claiming the conditions sworn, and especially Harold’s marriage with his daughter Adele. For all answer to this summons Harold married a Saxon, sister of two powerful Saxon chieftains; Edwin and Morkar. There was an open rupture; and William swore that “within the year he would go and claim, at the sword’s point, payment of what was due to him, on the very spot where Harold thought himself to be most firm on his feet.”
And he set himself to the work. But, being as far-sighted as he was ambitious, he resolved to secure for his enterprise the sanction of religious authority and the formal assent of the Estates of Normandy. Not that he had any inclination to subordinate his power to that of the Pope. Five years previously, Robert de Grandmesnil, abbot of St. Evroul, with whom William had got embroiled, had claimed to re-enter his monastery as master by virtue solely of an order from Pope Nicholas II. “I will listen to the legates of the Pope, the common father of the faithful,” said William, “if they come to me to speak of the Christian faith and religion; but if a monk of my Estates permit himself a single word beyond his place, I will have him hanged by his cowl from the highest oak of the nearest forest.” When, in 1000, he denounced to Pope Alexander II. the perjury of Harold, asking him at the same time to do him justice, he made no scruple about promising that, if the Pope authorized him to right himself by war, he would bring back the kingdom of England to obedience to the Holy See. He had Lanfranc for his negotiator with the court of Rome, and Pope Alexander II. had for chief counsellor the celebrated monk Hildebrand, who was destined to succeed him under the name of Gregory VII. The opportunity of extending the empire of the Church was too tempting to be spurned, and her future head too bold not to seize it whatever might be the uncertainty and danger of the issue; and in spite of hesitation on the part of some of the Pope’s advisers, the question was promptly decided in accordance with William’s demand. Harold and his adherents were excommunicated, and, on committing his bull to the hands of William’s messenger, the Pope added a banner of the Roman Church and a ring containing, it is said, a hair of St. Peter set in a diamond.
The Estates of Normandy were less easy to manage. William called them together at Lillebonne; and several of his vassals showed a zealous readiness to furnish him with vessels and victual and to follow him beyond the sea, but others declared that they were not bound to any such service, and that they would not lend themselves to it; they had calls enough already, and had nothing more to spare. William Fitz-Osbern scouted these objections. “He is your lord, and hath need of you,” said he to the recalcitrants; “you ought to offer yourselves to him, and not wait to be asked. If he succeed in his purpose, you will be more powerful as well as he; if you fail him, and he succeed without you, he will remember it: show that you love him, and what ye do, do with a good grace.” The discussion was keen. Many persisted in saying, “True, he is our lord; but if we pay him his rents, that should suffice: we are not bound to go and serve beyond the seas; we are already much burdened for his wars.” It was at last agreed that Fitz-Osbern should give the duke the assembly’s reply; for he knew well, they said, the ability of each. “If ye mind not to do what I shall say,” said Fitz-Osbern, “charge me not therewith.” “We will be bound by it, and will do it,” was the cry amidst general confusion. They repaired to the duke’s presence. “My lord,” said Fitz-Osbern, “I trow that there be not in the whole world such folk as these. You know the trouble and labor they have already undergone in supporting your rights; and they are minded to do still more, and serve you at all points, this side the sea and t’other. Go you before, and they will follow you; and spare them in nothing. As for me, I will furnish you with sixty vessels, manned with good fighters.” “Nay, nay,” cried several of those present, prelates and barons, “we charged you not with such reply; when he hath business in his own country, we will do him the service we owe him; we be not bound to serve him in conquering another’s territory, or to go beyond sea for him.” And they gathered themselves together in knots with much uproar.
“William was very wroth,” says the chronicler, “retired to a chamber apart, summoned those in whom he had most confidence, and by their advice called before him his barons, each separately, and asked them if they were willing to help him. He had no intention, he told them, of doing them wrong, nor would he and his, now or hereafter, ever cease to treat with them in perfect courtesy; and he would give them, in writing, such assurances as they were minded to devise. The majority of his people agreed to give him, more or less, according to circumstances; and he had everything reduced to writing.” At the same time he made an appeal to all his neighbors, Bretons, Manceaux, and Angevines, hunting up soldiers wherever he could find them, and promising all who desired them lands in England if he effected its conquest. Lastly he repaired in person, first to Philip I., king of France, his suzerain, then to Baldwin V., count of Flanders, his father-in-law, asking their assistance for his enterprise. Philip gave a formal refusal. “What the duke demands of you,” said his advisers, “is to his own profit and to your hurt; if you aid him, your country will be much burdened; and if the duke fail, you will have the English your foes forever.” The count of Flanders made show of a similar refusal; but privately he authorized William to raise soldiers in Flanders, and pressed his vassals to follow him. William, having thus hunted up and collected all the forces he could hope for, thought only of putting them in motion, and of hurrying on the preparations for his departure.
Whilst, in obedience to his orders, the whole expedition, troops and ships, were collecting at Dives, he received from Conan II., duke of Brittany, this message: “I learn that thou art now minded to go beyond sea and conquer for thyself the kingdom of England. At the moment of starting for Jerusalem, Robert, duke of Normandy, whom thou feignest to regard as thy father, left all his heritage to Alain, my father and his cousin: but thou and thy accomplices slew my father with poison at Vimeux, in Normandy. Afterwards thou didst invade his territory because I was too young to defend it; and, contrary to all right, seeing that thou art a bastard, thou hast kept it until this day. Now, therefore, either give me back this Normandy which thou owest me, or I will make war upon thee with all my forces.” “At this message,” say the chronicles, “William was at first somewhat dismayed; but a Breton lord, who had sworn fidelity to the two counts, and bore messages from one to the other, rubbed poison upon the inside of Conan’s hunting-horn, of his horse’s reins, and of his gloves. Conan, having unwittingly put on his gloves and handled the reins of his horse, lifted his hands to his face, and the touch having filled him with poisonous infection, he died soon after, to the great sorrow of his people, for he was an able and brave man, and inclined to justice. And he who had betrayed him quitted before long the army of Conan, and informed Duke William of his death.”
Conan is not the only one of William’s foes whom he was suspected of making away with by poison: there are no proofs; but contemporary assertions are positive, and the public of the time believed them, without surprise. Being as unscrupulous about means as ambitious and bold in aim, William was not of those whose character repels such an accusation. What, however, diminishes the suspicion is that, after and in spite of Conan’s death, several Breton knights, and, amongst others, two sons of Count Eudes, his uncle, attended at the trysting-place of the Norman troops and took part in the expedition.
Dives was the place of assemblage appointed for fleet and army. William repaired thither about the end of August, 1066. But for several weeks contrary winds prevented him from putting to sea; some vessels which made the attempt perished in the tempest; and some of the volunteer adventurers got disgusted, and deserted. William maintained strict discipline amongst this multitude, forbidding plunder so strictly that “the cattle fed in the fields in full security.” The soldiers grew tired of waiting in idleness and often in sickness. “Yon is a mad-man,” said they, “who is minded to possess himself of another’s land; God is against the design, and so refuses us a wind.”
About the 20th of September the weather changed. The fleet got ready, but could only go and anchor at St. Valery at the mouth of the Somme. There it was necessary to wait several more days; impatience and disquietude were redoubled; “and there appeared in the heavens a star with a tail, a certain sign of great things to come.” William had the shrine of St. Valery brought out and paraded about, being more impatient in his soul than anybody, but ever confident in his will and his good fortune. There was brought to him a spy whom Harold had sent to watch the forces and plans of the enemy; and William dismissed him, saying, “Harold hath no need to take any care or be at any charges to know how we be, and what we be doing; he shall see for himself, and shall feel before the end of the year.” At last, on the 27th of September, 1066, the sun rose on a calm sea and with a favorable wind; and towards evening the fleet set out. The Mora, the vessel on which William was, and which had been given to him by his wife, Matilda, led the way; and a figure in gilded bronze, some say in gold, representing their youngest son, William, had been placed on the prow, with the face towards England. Being a better sailer than the others, this ship was soon a long way ahead; and William had a mariner sent to the top of the mainmast to see if the fleet were following. “I see nought but sea and sky,” said the mariner. William had the ship brought to; and, the second time, the mariner said, “I see four ships.” Before long he cried, “I see a forest of masts and sails.” On the 29th of September, St. Michael’s day, the expedition arrived off the coast of England, at Pevensey, near Hastings, and “when the tide had ebbed, and the ships remained aground on the strand,” says the chronicles the landing was effected without obstacle; not a Saxon soldier appeared on the coast. William was the last to leave his ship; and on setting foot on the sand he made a false step and fell. “Bad sign!” was muttered around him; “God have us in His keeping!” “What say you, lords?” cried William: “by the glory of God, I have grasped this land with my hands; all that there is of it is ours.”
[Illustration: Normans landing on English Coast—-353]
With what forces William undertook the conquest of England, how many ships composed his fleet, and how many men were aboard the ships, are questions impossible to be decided with any precision, as we have frequently before had occasion to remark, amidst the exaggerations and disagreements of chroniclers. Robert Wace reports, in his Romance of Rou, that he had heard from his father, one of William’s servants on this expedition, that the fleet numbered six hundred and ninety-six vessels, but he had found in divers writings that there were more than three thousand. M. Augustin Thierry, after his learned researches, says, in his history of the _Conquest of England by the Normans,_ that “four hundred vessels of four sails, and more than a thousand transport ships, moved out into the open sea, to the sound of trumpets and of a great cry of joy raised by sixty thousand throats.” It is probable that the estimate of the fleet is pretty accurate, and that of the army exaggerated. We saw in 1830 what efforts and pains it required, amidst the power and intelligent ability of modern civilization, to transport from France to Algeria thirty-seven thousand men aboard three squadrons, comprising six hundred and seventy-five ships of all sorts. Granted that in the eleventh century there was more haphazard than in the nineteenth, and that there was less care for human life on the eve of a war; still, without a doubt, the armament of Normandy in 1066 was not to be compared with that of France in 1830, and yet William’s intention was to conquer England, whereas Charles X. thought only of chastising the dey of Algiers.
Whilst William was making for the southern coast of England, Harold was repairing by forced marches to the north in order to defend, against the rebellion of his brother Tostig and the invasion of a Norwegian army, his short-lived kingship thus menaced, at two ends of the country, by two formidable enemies. On the 25th of September, 1066, he gained at York a brilliant victory over his northern foe; and, wounded as he was, he no sooner learned that Duke William had on the 29th pitched his camp and planted his flag at Pevensey, than he set out in haste for the south. As he approached, William received, from what source is not known, this message: “King Harold hath given battle to his brother Tostig and the king of Norway. He hath slain them both, and hath destroyed their army. He is returning at the head of numerous and valiant warriors, against whom thine own, I trove, will be worth no more than wretched curs. Thou passest for a man of wisdom and prudence; be not rash, plunge not thyself into danger; I adjure thee to abide in thy intrenchments, and not to come really to blows.” “I thank thy master,” answered William, “for his prudent counsel, albeit he might have given it to me without insult. Carry him back this reply: I will not hide me behind ramparts; I will come to blows with Harold as soon as I may; and with the aid of Heaven’s good will I would trust in the valor of my men against his, even though I had but ten thousand to lead against his sixty thousand.” But the proud confidence of William did not affect his prudence. He received from Harold himself a message wherein the Saxon, affirming his right to the kingship by virtue of the Saxon laws and the last words of King Edward, summoned him to evacuate England with all his people; on which condition alone he engaged to preserve friendship with him, and all agreements between them as to Normandy. After having come to an understanding with his barons, William maintained his right to the crown of England by virtue of the first decision of King Edward, and the oaths of Harold himself. “I am ready,” said he, “to uphold my cause against him by the forms of justice, either according to the law of the Normans or according to that of the Saxons, as he pleases. If, by virtue of equity, Normans or English decide that Harold has a right to possess the kingdom, let him possess it in peace; if they acknowledge that it is to me that the kingdom ought to belong, let him give it up to me. If he refuse these conditions, I do not think it just that my people or his, who are not a whit to blame for our quarrel, should slay one another in battle; I am ready to maintain, at the price of my head against his, that it is to me and not to him that the kingdom of England belongs.” At this proposition Harold was troubled, and remained a while without replying; then, as the monk was urgent, “Let the Lord God,” said he, “judge this day betwixt me and William as to what is just.” The negotiation continued, and William summed it all up in these terms, which the monk reported to Harold in presence of the English chieftains: “My lord, the duke of Normandy biddeth you do one of these things: give up to him the kingdom of England, and take his daughter in marriage, as you sware to him on the holy relics; or, respecting the question between him and you, submit yourself to the Pope’s decision; or fight with him, body to body, and let him who is victorious and forces his enemy to yield have the kingdom.” Harold replied, “without opinion or advice taken,” says the chronicle, “I will not cede him the kingdom; I will not abide by the Pope’s award; and I will not fight with him.” William, still in concert with his barons, made a farther advance. “If Harold will come to an agreement with me,” he said, “I will leave him all the territory beyond the Humber, towards Scotland.” “My lord,” said the barons to the duke, “make an end of these parleys; if we must fight, let it be soon; for every day come folk to Harold.” “By my faith,” said the duke, “if we agree not on terms to-day, to-morrow we will join battle.” The third proposal for an agreement was as little successful as the former two; on both sides there was no belief in peace, and they were eager to decide the quarrel once for all.
Some of the Saxon chieftains advised Harold to fall back on London, and ravage all the country, so as to starve out the invaders. “By my faith,” said Harold, “I will not destroy the country I have in keeping; I, with my people, will fight.” “Abide in London,” said his younger brother, Gurth: “thou canst not deny that, perforce or by free will, thou didst swear to Duke William; but, as for us, we have sworn nought; we will fight for our country; if we alone fight, thy cause will be good in any case; if we fly, thou shalt rally us; if we fall, thou shalt avenge us.” Harold rejected this advice, “considering it shame to his past life to turn his back, whatever were the peril.” Certain of his people, whom he had sent to reconnoitre the Norman army, returned saying that there were more priests in William’s camp than warriors in his own; for the Normans, at this period, wore shaven chins and short hair, whilst the English let hair and beard grow. “Ye do err,” said Harold; “these be not priests, but good men-at-arms, who will show us what they can do.”
On the eve of the battle, the Saxons passed the night in amusement, eating, drinking, and singing, with great uproar; the Normans, on the contrary, were preparing their arms, saying their prayers, and “confessing to their priests–all who would.” On the 14th of October, 1066, when Duke William put on his armor, his coat of mail was given to him the wrong way. “Bad omen!” cried some of his people; “if such a thing had happened to us, we would not fight to-day.” “Be ye not disquieted,” said the duke; “I have never believed in sorcerers and diviners, and I never liked them; I believe in God, and in Him I put my trust.” He assembled his men-at-arms, and setting himself upon a high place, so that all might hear him, he said to them, “My true and loyal friends, ye have crossed the seas for love of me, and for that I cannot thank ye as I ought; but I will make what return I may, and what I have ye shall have. I am not come only to take what I demanded, or to get my rights, but to punish felonies, treasons, and breaches of faith committed against our people by the men of this country. Think, moreover, what great honor ye will have to-day if the day be ours. And bethink ye that, if ye be discomfited, ye be dead men without help; for ye have not whither ye may retreat, seeing that our ships be broken up, and our mariners be here with us. He who flies will be a dead man; he who fights will be saved. For God’s sake, let each man do his duty; trust we in God, and the day will be ours.”
[Illustration: William the Conqueror reviewing his Army—-357]
The address was too long for the duke’s faithful comrade, William Fitz-Osborn. “My lord,” said he, “we dally; let us all to arms and forward, forward!” The army got in motion, starting from the hill of Telham or Heathland, according to Mr. Freeman, marching to attack the English on the opposite hill of Senlac. A Norman, called Taillefer, “who sang very well, and rode a horse which was very fast, came up to the duke. ‘My lord,’ said he, ‘I have served you long, and you owe me for all my service: pay me to day, an it please you; grant unto me, for recompense in full, to strike the first blow in the battle.’ ‘I grant it,’ quoth the duke. So Taillefer darted before him, singing the deeds of Charlemagne, of Roland, of Oliver, and of the vassals who fell at Roncesvalles.” As he sang, he played with his sword, throwing it up into the air and catching it in his right hand; and the Normans followed, repeating his songs, and crying, “God help! God help!” The English, intrenched upon a plateau towards which the Normans were ascending, awaited the assault, shouting, and defying the foe.
The battle, thus begun, lasted nine hours, with equal obstinacy on both sides, and varied success from hour to hour. Harold, though wounded at the commencement of the fray, did not cease for a moment to fight, on foot, with his two brothers beside him, and around him the troops of London, who had the privilege of forming the king’s guard when he delivered a battle. Rudely repulsed at the first charge, some bodies of Norman troops fell back in disorder, and a rumor spread amongst them that the duke was slain; but William threw himself before the fugitives, and, taking off his helmet, cried, “Look at me; here I am; I live, and by God’s help will conquer.” So they returned to the combat. But the English were firm; the Normans could not force their intrenchrnents; and William ordered his men to feign a retreat, and all but a flight. At this sight the English bore down in pursuit: “and still Norman fled and Saxon pursued, until a trumpeter, who had been ordered by the duke thus to turn back the Normans, began to sound the recall. Then were seen the Normans turning back to face the English, and attacking them with their swords, and amongst the English, some flying, some dying, some asking mercy in their own tongue.” The struggle once more became general and fierce. William had three horses killed under him; “but he jumped immediately upon a fresh steed, and left not long unavenged the death of that which had but lately carried him.” At last the intrenchments of the English were stormed; Harold fell mortally wounded by an arrow which pierced his skull; his two brothers and his bravest comrades fell at his side; the fight was prolonged between the English dispersed and the Normans remorselessly pursuing; the standard sent from Rome to the duke of Normandy had replaced the Saxon flag on the very spot where Harold had fallen; and, all around, the ground continued to get covered with dead and dying, fruitless victims of the passions of the combatants. Next day William went over the field of battle; and he was heard to say, in a tone of mingled triumph and sorrow, “Here is verily a lake of blood!”
There was, long after the battle of Senlac, or Hastings, as it is commonly called, a patriotic superstition in the country to the effect that, when the rain had moistened the soil, there were to be seen traces of blood on the ground where it had taken place.
Having thus secured the victory, William had his tent pitched at the very point where the standard which had come from Rome had replaced the Saxon banner, and he passed the night supping and chatting with his chieftains, not far from the corpses scattered over the battle-field. Next day it was necessary to attend to the burial of all these dead, conquerors or conquered. William was full of care and affection towards his comrades; and on the eve of the battle, during a long and arduous reconnoissance which he had undertaken with some of them, he had insisted upon carrying, for some time, in addition to his own cuirass, that of his faithful William Fitz-Osbern, who he saw was fatigued in spite of his usual strength; but towards his enemies William was harsh and resentful. Githa, Harold’s mother, sent to him to ask for her son’s corpse, offering for it its weight in gold. “Nay,” said William, “Harold was a perjurer; let him have for burial-place the sand of the shore, where he was so madly fain to rule.” Two Saxon monks from Waltham Abbey, which had been founded by Harold, came, by their abbot’s order, and claimed for their church the remains of their benefactor; and William, indifferent as he had been to a mother’s grief, would not displease an abbey. But when the monks set about finding the body of Harold, there was none to recognize it, and they had recourse to a young girl, Edith, Swan’s-neck, whom Harold had loved. She discovered amongst the corpses her lover’s mutilated body; and the monks bore it away to the church at Waltham, where it was buried. Some time later a rumor was spread abroad that Harold was wounded, and carried to a neighboring castle, perhaps Dover, whence he went to the abbey of St. John, at Chester, where he lived a long while in a solitary cell, and where William the Conqueror’s second son, Henry I., the third Norman king of England, one day went to see him and had an interview with him. But this legend, in which there is nothing chronologically impossible, rests on no sound basis of evidence, and is discountenanced by all contemporary accounts.
[Illustration: Edith discovers the Body of Harold—-360]
Before following up his victory, William resolved to perpetuate the remembrance of it by a religious monument, and he decreed the foundation of an abbey on the very field of the battle of Hastings, from which it took its name, Battle Abbey. He endowed this abbey with all the neighboring territory within the radius of a league, “the very spot,” says his charter, “which gave me my crown.” He made it free of the jurisdiction of any prelate, dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of the soldiers of Gaul, and ordered that there should be deposited in its archives a register containing the names of all the lords, knights, and men of mark who had accompanied him on his expedition. When the building of the abbey began, the builders observed a want of water; and they notified William of the fact. “Work away,” said he: “if God grant me life, I will make such good provision for the place that more wine shall be found there than there is water in other monasteries.”
It was not everything, however, to be victorious, it was still necessary to be recognized as king. When the news of the defeat at Hastings and the death of Harold was spread abroad in the country, the emotion was lively and seemed to be profound; the great Saxon national council, the Wittenagemote, assembled at London; the remnants of the Saxon army rallied there; and search was made for other kings than the Norman duke. Harold left two sons, very young and not in a condition to reign; but his two brothers-in-law, Edwin and Morkar, held dominion in the north of England, whilst the southern provinces, and amongst them the city of London, had a popular aspirant, a nephew of Edward the Confessor, in Edgar surnamed Atheliny (the noble, the illustrious), as the descendant of several kings. What with these different pretensions, there were discussion, hesitation, and delay; but at last the young Edgar prevailed, and was proclaimed king. Meanwhile William was advancing with his army, slowly, prudently, as a man resolved to risk nothing and calculating upon the natural results of his victory. At some points he encountered attempts at resistance, but he easily overcame them, occupied successively Romney, Dover, Canterbury, and Rochester, appeared before London without trying to enter it, and moved on Winchester, which was the residence of Edward the Confessor’s widow, Queen Editha, who had received that important city as dowry. Through respect for her, William, who presented himself in the character of relative and heir of King Edward, did not enter the place, and merely called upon the inhabitants to take the oath of allegiance to him and do him homage, which they did with the queen’s consent. William returned towards London and commenced the siege, or rather investment of it, by establishing his camp at Berkhampstead, in the county of Hertford. He entered before long into secret communication with an influential burgess, named Ansgard, an old man who had seen service, and who, riddled with wounds, had himself carried about the streets in a litter. Ansgard had but little difficulty in inducing the authorities of London to make pacific overtures to the duke, and William had still less difficulty in convincing the messenger of the moderation of his designs. “The king salutes ye, and offers ye peace,” said Ansgard to the municipal authorities of London on his return from the camp: “’tis a king who hath no peer; he is handsomer than the sun, wiser than Solomon, more active and greater than Charlemagne,” and the enthusiastic poet adds that the people as well as the senate eagerly welcomed these words, and renounced, both of them, the young king they had but lately proclaimed. Facts were quick in responding to this quickly produced impression; a formal deputation was sent to William’s camp; the archbishops of Canterbury and York, many other prelates and laic chieftains, the principal citizens of London, the two brothers-in- law of Harold, Edwin and Morkar, and the young king of yesterday, Edgar Atheling himself, formed part of it; and they brought to William, Edgar Atheling his abdication, and all the others their submission, with an express invitation to William to have himself made king, “for we be wont,” said they, “to serve a king, and we wish to have a king for lord.” William received them in presence of the chieftains of his army, and with great show of moderation in his desires. “Affairs,” said he, “be troubled still; there be still certain rebels; I desire rather the peace of the kingdom than the crown; I would that my wife should be crowned with me.” The Norman chieftains murmured whilst they smiled; and one of them, an Aquitanian, Aimery de Thouars, cried out, “It is passing modest to ask soldiers if they wish their chief to be king: soldiers are never, or very seldom, called to such deliberations: let what we desire be done as soon as possible.” William yielded to the entreaties of the Saxon deputies and to the counsels of the Norman chieftains but, prudent still, before going in person to London, he sent thither some of his officers with orders to have built there immediately, on the banks of the Thames, at a point which he indicated, a fort where he might establish himself in safety. That fort, in the course of time, became the Tower of London.
When William set out, some days afterwards, to make his entry into the city, he found, on his way to St. Alban’s, the road blocked with huge trunks of trees recently felled. “What means this barricade in thy domains?” he demanded of the abbot of St. Alban’s, a Saxon noble. “I did what was my duty to my birth and mission,” replied the monk: “if others, of my rank and condition, had done as much, as they ought to and could have done, thou hadst not penetrated so far into our country.”
On entering London after all these delays and all these precautions, William fixed, for his coronation, upon Christmas-day, December 25th, 1066. Either by desire of the prelate himself or by William’s own order, it was not the archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, who presided, according to custom, at the ceremony; the duty devolved upon the archbishop of York, Aldred, who had but lately anointed Edgar Atheling. At the appointed hour, William arrived at Westminster Abbey, the latest work and the burial-place of Edward the Confessor. The Conqueror marched between two hedges of Norman soldiers, behind whom stood a crowd of people, cold and sad, though full of curiosity. A numerous cavalry guarded the approaches to the church and the quarters adjoining. Two hundred and sixty counts, barons, and knights of Normandy went in with the duke. Geoffrey, bishop of Coutanees, demanded in French, of the Normans, if they would that their duke should take the title of King of the English. The archbishop of York demanded of the English, in the Saxon tongue, if they would have for king the duke of Normandy. Noisy acclamations arose in the church and resounded outside. The soldiery, posted in the neighborhood, took the confused roar for a symptom of something wrong, and in their suspicious rage set fire to the neighboring houses. The flames spread rapidly. The people who were rejoicing in the church caught the alarm, and a multitude of men and women of every rank flung themselves out of the edifice. Alone and trembling, the bishops with some clerics and monks remained before the altar and accomplished the work of anointment upon the king’s head, “himself trembling,” says the chronicle. Nearly all the rest who were present ran to the fire, some to extinguish it, others to steal and pillage in the midst of the consternation. William terminated the ceremony by taking the usual oath of Saxon kings at their coronation, adding thereto, as of his own motion, a promise to treat the English people according to their own laws and as well as they had ever been treated by the best of their own kings. Then he went forth from the church King of England.
We will pursue no farther the life of William the Conqueror: for henceforth it belongs to the history of England, not of France. We have entered, so far as he was concerned, into pretty long details, because we were bound to get a fair understanding of the event and of the man; not only because of their lustre at the time, but especially because of the serious and long-felt consequences entailed upon France, England, and, we may say, Europe. We do not care just now to trace out those consequences in all their bearings; but we would like to mark out with precision their chief features, inasmuch as they exercised, for centuries, a determining influence upon the destinies of two great nations, and upon the course of modern civilization.
As to France, the consequences of the conquest of England by the Normans were clearly pernicious, and they have not yet entirely disappeared. It was a great evil, as early as the eleventh century, that the duke of Normandy, one of the great French lords, one of the great vassals of the king of France, should at the same time become king of England, and thus receive an accession of rank and power which could not fail to render more complicated and more stormy his relations with his French suzerain. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, from Philip I. to Philip de Valois, this position gave rise, between the two crowns and the two states, to questions, to quarrels, to political struggles, and to wars which were a frequent source of trouble in France to the government and the people. The evil and the peril became far greater still when, in the fourteenth century, there arose between France and England, between Philip de Valois and Edward III., a question touching the succession to the throne of France and the application or negation of the Salic law. Then there commenced, between the two crowns and the two peoples, that war which was to last more than a hundred years, was to bring upon France the saddest days of her history, and was to be ended only by the inspired heroism of a young girl who, alone, in the name of her God and His saints, restored confidence and victory to her king and her country. Joan of Arc, at the cost of her life, brought to the most glorious conclusion the longest and bloodiest struggle that has devastated France and sometimes compromised her glory.
Such events, even when they are over, do not cease to weigh heavily for a long while upon a people. The struggles between the kings of England, dukes of Normandy, and the kings of France, and the long war of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for the succession to the throne of France, engendered what historians have called “the rivalry between France and England;” and this rivalry, having been admitted as a natural and inevitable fact, became the permanent incubus and, at divers epochs, the scourge of French national existence. Undoubtedly there are, between great and energetic neighbors, different interests and tendencies, which easily become the seeds of jealousy and strife; but there are also, between such nations, common interests and common sentiments, which tend to harmony and peace. The wisdom and ability of governments and of nations themselves are shown in devoting themselves to making the grounds of harmony and peace stronger than those of discord and war. Anyhow common sense and moral sense forbid differences of interests and tendencies to be set up as a principle upon which to establish general and permanent rivalry, and, by consequence, a systematic hostility and national enmity. And the further civilization and the connections between different people proceed with this development, the more necessary and, at the same time, possible it becomes to raise the interests and sentiments which would hold them together above those which would keep them asunder, and to thus found a policy of reciprocal equity and of peace in place of a policy of hostile precautions and continual strife. “I have witnessed,” says M. Guizot, “in the course of my life, both these policies. I have seen the policy of systematic hostility, the policy practised by the Emperor Napoleon I. with as much ability and brilliancy as it was capable of, and I have seen it result in the greatest disaster France ever experienced. And even after the evidence of its errors and calamities this policy has still left amongst us deep traces and raised serious obstacles to the policy of reciprocal equity, liberty, and peace which we labored to support, and of which the nation felt, though almost against the grain, the justice and the necessity.” In that feeling we recognize the lamentable results of the old historic causes which have just been pointed out, and the lasting perils arising from those blind passions which hurry people away, and keep them back from their most pressing interests and their most honorable sentiments.
In spite of appearances to the contrary, and in view of her future interests, England was, in the eleventh century, by the very fact of the conquest she underwent, in a better position than France. She was conquered, it is true, and conquered by a foreign chieftain and a foreign army; but France also had been, for several centuries previously, a prey to conquest, and under circumstances much more unfavorable than those under which the Norman conquest had found and placed England. When the Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Saxons, and the Normans themselves invaded and disputed over Gaul, what was the character of the event? Barbarians, up to that time vagabonds or nearly so, were flooding in upon populations disorganized and enervated. On the side of the German victors, no fixity in social life; no general or anything like regular government; no nation really cemented and constituted; but individuals in a state of dispersion and of almost absolute independence: on the side of the vanquished Gallo-Romans, the old political ties dissolved; no strong power, no vital liberty; the lower classes in slavery, the middle classes ruined, the upper classes depreciated. Amongst the barbarians society was scarcely commencing; with the subjects of the Roman empire it no longer existed; Charlemagne’s attempt to reconstruct it by rallying beneath a new empire both victors and vanquished was a failure; feudal anarchy was the first and the necessary step out of barbaric anarchy and towards a renewal of social order.
It was not so in England, when, in the eleventh century, William transported thither his government and his army. A people but lately come out of barbarism, conquered, on that occasion, a people still half barbarous. Their primitive origin was the same; their institutions were, if not similar, at any rate analogous; there was no fundamental antagonism in their habits; the English chieftains lived in their domains an idle, hunting life, surrounded by their liegemen, just as the Norman barons lived. Society, amongst both the former and the latter, was founded, however unrefined and irregular it still was; and neither the former nor the latter had lost the flavor and the usages of their ancient liberties. A certain superiority, in point of organization and social discipline, belonged to the Norman conquerors; but the conquered Anglo- Saxons were neither in a temper to allow themselves to be enslaved nor out of condition for defending themselves. The conquest was destined to entail cruel evils, a long oppression, but it could not bring about either the dissolution of the two peoples into petty lawless groups, or the permanent humiliation of one in presence of the other. There were, at one and the same time, elements of government and resistance, causes of fusion and unity in the very midst of the struggle.
We are now about to anticipate ages, and get a glimpse, in their development, of the consequences which attended this difference, so profound, in the position of France and of England, at the time of the formation of the two states.
In England, immediately after the Norman conquest, two general forces are confronted, those, to wit, of the two peoples. The Anglo-Saxon people is attached to its ancient institutions, a mixture of feudalism and liberty, which become its security. The Norman army assumes organization on English soil according to the feudal system which had been its own in Normandy. A principle of authority and a principle of resistance thus exist, from the very first, in the community and in the government. Before long the principle of resistance gets displaced; the strife between the peoples continues; but a new struggle arises between the Norman king and his barons. The Norman kingship, strong in its growth, would fain become tyrannical; but its tyranny encounters a resistance, also strong, since the necessity for defending themselves against the Anglo-Saxons has caused the Norman barons to take up the practice of acting in concert, and has not permitted them to set themselves up as petty, isolated sovereigns. The spirit of association receives development in England: the ancient institutions have maintained it amongst the English landholders, and the inadequacy of individual resistance has made it prevalent amongst the Norman barons. The unity which springs from community of interests and from junction of forces amongst equals becomes a counter-poise to the unity of the sovereign power. To sustain the struggle with success, the aristocratic coalition formed against the tyrannical kingship has needed the assistance of the landed proprietors, great and small, English and Norman, and it has not been able to dispense with getting their rights recognized as well as its own. Meanwhile the struggle is becoming complicated; there is a division of parties; a portion of the barons rally round the threatened kingship; sometimes it is the feudal aristocracy, and sometimes it is the king that summons and sees flocking to the rescue the common people, first of the country, then of the towns. The democratic element thus penetrates into and keeps growing in both society and government, at one time quietly and through the stolid influence of necessity, at another noisily and by means of revolutions, powerful indeed, but nevertheless restrained within certain limits. The fusion of the two peoples and the different social classes is little by little attaining accomplishment; it is little by little bringing about the perfect formation of representative government with its various component parts, royalty, aristocracy, and democracy, each invested with the rights and the strength necessary for their functions. The end of the struggle has been arrived at; constitutional monarchy is founded; by the triumph of their language and of their primitive liberties the English have conquered their conquerors. It is written in her history, and especially in her history at the date of the eleventh century, how England found her point of departure and her first elements of success in the long labor she performed, in order to arrive, in 1688, at a free, and, in our days, at a liberal government.
France pursued her end by other means and in the teeth of other fortunes. She always desired and always sought for free government under the form of constitutional monarchy; and in following her history, step by step, there will be seen, often disappearing and ever re-appearing, the efforts made by the country for the accomplishment of her hope. Why then did not France sooner and more completely attain what she had so often attempted? Amongst the different causes of this long miscalculation, we will dwell for the present only on the historical reason just now indicated: France did not find, as England did, in the primitive elements of French society the conditions and means of the political system to which she never ceased to aspire. In order to obtain the moderate measure of internal order, without which society could not exist; in order to insure the progress of her civil laws and her material civilization; in order even to enjoy those pleasures of the mind for which she thirsts so much,– France was constantly obliged to have recourse to the kingly authority and to that almost absolute monarchy which was far from satisfying her even when she could not do without it, and when she worshipped it with an enthusiasm rather literary than political, as was the case under Louis XIV. It was through the refined rather than profound development of her civilization, and through the zeal of her intellectual movement, that France was at length impelled not only towards the political system to which she had so long aspired, but into the boundless ambition of the unlimited revolution which she brought about and with which she inoculated all Europe. It is in the first steps towards the formation of the two societies, French and English, and in the elements, so very different, of their earliest existence, that we find the principal cause for their long-continued diversity in institutions and destinies.
“In 1823, forty-seven years ago, after having studied,” says M. Guizot, “in my Essays upon a Comparative History of France and England, the great fact which we have just now attempted to make clearly understood, I concluded my labor by saying, ‘Before our revolution, this difference between the political fates of France and England might have saddened a French-man: but now, in spite of the evils we have suffered and in spite of those we shall yet, perhaps, suffer, there is no room, so far as we are concerned, for such sadness. The advances of social equality and the enlightenments of civilization in France preceded political liberty; and it will thus be the more general and the purer. France may reflect, without regret, upon any history: her own has always been glorious, and the future promised to her will assuredly recompense her for all she has hitherto lacked.’ In 1870, after the experiences and notwithstanding the sorrows of my long life, I have still confidence in our country’s future. Never be it forgotten that God helps only those who help themselves and who deserve his aid.”
CHAPTER XVI.—-THE CRUSADES, THEIR ORIGIN AND THEIR SUCCESS.
Amongst the great events of European history, none was for a longer time in preparation or more naturally brought about than the Crusades. Christianity, from her earliest days, had seen in Jerusalem her sacred cradle; it had been, in past times, the home of her ancestors, the Jews, and the centre of their history; and, afterwards, the scene of the life, death, and resurrection of her Divine Founder. Jerusalem became, more and more, the Holy City. To go to Jerusalem, to visit the Mount of Olives, Calvary, and the tomb of Jesus, was, in their most evil days, and in the midst of their obscurity and their martyrdoms, a pious passion with the early Christians. When, under Constantine, Christianity had ascended from the cross to the throne, Jerusalem had fresh attractions for Christian faith and Christian curiosity. Temples covered and surrounded the Holy Sepulchre; and at Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mount Tabor, and nearly all the places which Jesus had consecrated by His presence and His miracles were seen to rise up churches, chapels, and monuments dedicated to the memory of them. The Emperor Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, was, at seventy-eight years of age, the first royal pilgrim to the holy places. After the Pagan revival, vainly attempted by the Emperor Julian, the number and zeal of the Christian visitors to Jerusalem were redoubled. At the beginning of the fifth century, St. Jerome wrote, from his retreat at Bethlehem, that Judea overflowed with pilgrims, and that, round about the Holy Sepulchre, were heard sung, in divers tongues, the praises of the Lord. He, however, gave but scant encouragement to his friends to make the trip. “The court of heaven,” he wrote to St. Paulinus, “is as open in Britain as at Jerusalem;” and the disorder which sometimes accompanied the numerous assemblages of pilgrims became such that several of the most illustrious fathers of the Church, and amongst others St. Augustine and St. Gregory of Nyssa, exerted themselves to dissuade the faithful. “Take no thought,” said Augustine, “for long voyages; go where your faith is; it is not by ship, but by love, that we go to Him who is everywhere.”
Events soon rendered the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult, and for some time impossible. At the commencement of the seventh century, the Greek empire was at war with the sovereigns of Persia, successors of Cyrus and chiefs of the religion of Zoroaster. One of them, Khosroes II., invaded Judea, took Jerusalem, led away captive the inhabitants, together with their patriarch, Zacharias, and even carried off to Persia the precious relic which was regarded as the wood of the true cross, and which had been discovered, nearly three centuries before, by the Empress Helena, whilst excavations were making on Calvary for the erection of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. But fourteen years later, after several victories over the Persians, the Greek emperor, Heraclius, retook Jerusalem, and re-entered Constantinople in triumph with the coffer containing the sacred relic. He next year (in 629) carried it back to Jerusalem, and bore it upon his own shoulders to the top of Calvary; and on this occasion was instituted the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Great was the joy in Christendom; and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem resumed their course.
But precisely at this epoch there appeared an enemy far more formidable for the Christians than the sectaries of Zoroaster. In 622 Mahomet founded Islamism; and some years after his death, in 638, the second of the khalifs, his successors, Omar, sent two of his generals, Khaled and Abou-Obeidah, to take Jerusalem. For to the Mussulmans, also, Jerusalem was a holy city. Mahomet, it was said, had been thither; it was thence, indeed, that he had started on his nocturnal ascent to heaven. On approaching the walls, the Arabs repeated these words from the Koran: “Enter we the holy land which God hath promised us.” The siege lasted four months. The Christians at last surrendered, but only to Omar in person, who came from Medina to receive their submission. A capitulation concluded with their patriarch, Sophronius, guaranteed them their lives, their property, and their churches. “When the draft of the treaty was completed, Omar said to the patriarch, ‘Conduct me to the temple of David.’ Omar entered Jerusalem preceded by the patriarch, and followed by four thousand warriors, followers of the Prophet, wearing no other arms but their swords. Sophronius took him, first of all, to the Church of the Resurrection. ‘Be-hold,’ said he, ‘the temple of David.’ ‘Thou sayest not true,’ said Omar, after a few moments’ reflection; ‘the Prophet gave me a description of the temple of David, and it tallieth not with the building I now see.’ The patriarch then conducted him to the Church of Sion. ‘Here,’ said he, ‘is the temple of David.’ ‘It is a lie,’ rejoined Omar, and went his way, directing his steps towards the gate named Bab-Mohammed. The spot on which now stands the Mosque of Omar was so encumbered with filth that the steps leading to the street were covered with it, and that the rubbish reached almost to the top of the vault. ‘You can only get in here by crawling,’ said the patriarch. ‘Be it so,’ answered Omar. The patriarch went first; Omar, with his people, followed; and they arrived at the space which at this day forms the forecourt of the mosque. There every one could stand upright. After having turned his eyes to right and left, and attentively examined the place, ‘Allah alchbar!’ cried Omar; here is the temple of David, described to me by the Prophet.'”
He found the Sakhra (the rock which forms the summit of Mount Moriah,) and which, left alone after the different destructions of the different temples, became the theme of a multitude of traditions and legends, (Jewish and Mussulman) covered with filth, heaped up there by the Christians through hatred of the Jews. “Omar spread his cloak over the rock, and began to sweep it; and all the Mussulmans in his train followed his example.” (_Le Temple de Jerusalem,_ a monograph, pp. 73-75, by Count Melchior de Vogue, ch. vi.) The Mosque of Omar rose up on the site of Solomon’s temple. The Christians retained the practice of their religion in their churches, but they were obliged to conceal their crosses and their sacred books. The bell no longer summoned the faithful to prayer; and the pomp of ceremonies was forbidden them. It was far worse when Omar, the most moderate of Mussulman fanatics, had left Jerusalem. The faithful were driven from their houses, and insulted in their churches; additions were made to the tribute they had to pay to the new masters of Palestine; they were prohibited from carrying arms and riding on horseback; a girdle of leather, which they might not lay aside, was their badge of servitude; their conquerors brooked not even that the Christians should speak the Arab tongue, reserved for disciples of the Koran; and the Christian people of Jerusalem had not the right of nominating their own patriarch without the intervention of the Saracens.
From the seventh to the eleventh century the situation remained very much the same. The Mussulmans, khalifs of Egypt or Persia, continued in possession of Jerusalem; and the Christians, native inhabitants or foreign visitors, continued to be oppressed, harassed, and humiliated there. At two periods their condition was temporarily better. At the commencement of the ninth century, Charlemagne reached even there with the greatness of his mind and of his power. “It was not only in his own land and his own kingdom,” says Eginhard, “that he scattered those gratuitous largesses which the Greeks call alms; but beyond the seas, in Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, at Jerusalem, at Alexandria, at Carthage, wherever he knew that there were Christians living in poverty, he had compassion on their misery, and he delighted to send them money.” In one of his capitularies of the year 810 we find this paragraph: “Alms to be sent to Jerusalem to repair the churches of God.” “If Charlemagne was so careful to seek the friendship of the kings beyond the seas, it was above all in order to obtain for the Christians living under their rule help and relief. . . . He kept up so close a friendship with Haroun-al- Raschid, king of Persia, that this prince preferred his good graces to the alliance of the sovereigns of the earth. Accordingly, when the ambassadors whom Charles had sent, with presents, to visit the sacred tomb of our divine Saviour, and the site of the resurrection, presented themselves before him, and expounded to him their master’s wish, Haroun did not content himself with entertaining Charles’s request; he wished, besides, to give up to him the complete proprietorship of those places hallowed by the certification of our redemption,” and he sent him, with the most magnificent presents, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. At the end of the same century, another Christian sovereign, far less powerful and less famous, John Zimisces, emperor of Constantinople, in a war against the Mussulmans of Asia, penetrated into Galilee, made himself master of Tiberias, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor, received a deputation which brought him the keys of Jerusalem, “and we have placed,” he says himself, “garrisons in all the district lately subjected to our rule.” These were but strokes of foreign intervention, giving the Christians of Jerusalem gleams of hope rather than lasting diminution of their miseries. However, it is certain that, during this epoch, pilgrimages multiplied, and were often accomplished without obstacle. It was from France, England, and Italy that most of the pilgrims went, and some of them wrote, or caused to be written, an account of their trip,–amongst others the Italian Saint Valentine, the English Saint Willibald, and the French Bishop Saint Arculf, who had as companion a Burgundian hermit named Peter, a singular resemblance in quality and name to the zealous apostle of the Crusade three centuries later. The most curious of these narratives is that of a French monk, Bernard, a pilgrim of about the year 870. “There is at Jerusalem,” says he, “a hospice where admittance is given to all who come to visit the place for devotion’s sake, and who speak the Roman tongue; a church, dedicated to St. Mary, is hard by the hospice, and possesseth a very noble library, which it oweth to the zeal of the Emperor Charles the Great.” This pious establishment had attached to it fields, vineyards, and a garden situated in the valley of Jehosaphat.
But whilst there were a few isolated cases of Christians thus going to satisfy in the East their pious and inquisitive zeal, the Mussulmans, equally ardent as believers and as warriors, carried Westward their creed and their arms, established themselves in Spain, penetrated to the very heart of France, and brought on, between Islamism and Christianity, that grand struggle in which Charles Martel gained, at Poitiers, the victory for the Cross. It was really a definitive victory, and yet it did not end the struggle; the Mussulmans remained masters in Spain, and continued to infest Southern France, Italy, and Sicily, preserving even, at certain points, posts which they used as starting-points for distant ravages. Far then from calming down and resulting in pacific relations, the hostility between the two races became more and more active and determined; everywhere they opposed, fought, and oppressed one another, inflamed one against the other by the double feelings of faith and ambition, hatred and fear. To this general state of affairs came to be added, about the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century, incidents best calculated to aggravate the evil. Hakem, khalif of Egypt from 996 to 1021, persecuted the Christians, especially at Jerusalem, with all the violence of a fanatic and all the capriciousness of a despot. He ordered them to wear upon their necks a wooden cross five pounds in weight; he forbade them to ride on any animal but mules or asses; and, without assigning any motive for his acts, he confiscated their goods and carried off their children. It was told to him one day that, when the Christians assembled in the temple at Jerusalem to celebrate Easter, the priests of the church rubbed balsam-oil upon the iron chain which held up the lamp over the tomb of Christ, and afterwards set fire, from the roof, to the end of the chain; the fire stole down to the wick of the lamp and lighted it; then they shouted with admiration, as if fire from heaven had come down upon the tomb, and they glorified their faith. Hakem ordered the instant demolition of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it was accordingly demolished. Another time a dead dog had been laid at the door of a mosque; and the multitude accused the Christians of this insult. Hakem ordered them all to be put to death. The soldiers were preparing to execute the order when a young Christian said to his friends, “It were too grievous that the whole Church should perish; it were better that one should die for all; only promise to bless my memory year by year.” He proclaimed himself alone to blame for the insult, and was accordingly alone put to death. It is from this story of the historian William of Tyre, that Tasso, in his _Jerusalem Delivered,_ has drawn the admirable episode of Olindo and Sophronia; a fine example, and not the only one, of an act of tyranny and an act of virtue inspiring a great poet with the idea of a masterpiece. “All the deeds of Hakem were without motive,” says the Arab historian Makrisi, “and the dreams suggested to him by his frenzy are incapable of reasonable interpretation.”
These and many other similar stories reached the West, spread amongst the Christian people and roused them to pity for their brethren in the East and to wrath against the oppressors. And it was at a critical period, in the midst of the pious alarms and desires of atonement excited by the expectation of the end of the world a thousand years after the coming of the Lord, that the Christian population saw this way opened for purchasing remission of their sins by delivering other Christians from suffering, and by avenging the wrongs of their creed. On all sides arose challenges and appeals to the warlike ardor of the faithful. The greatest mind of the age, Gerbert, who had become Pope Sylvester II., constituted himself interpreter of the popular feeling. He wrote, in the name of the Church of Jerusalem, a letter addressed to the universal Church: “To work, then, soldier of Christ! Be our standard-bearer and our champion! And if with arms thou canst not do so, aid us with thy words, thy wealth. What is it, pray, that thou givest, and to whom, pray, dost thou give? Of thine abundance thou givest a small matter, and thou givest to Him who hath freely given thee all thou possessest; but He will not accept freely that which thou shalt give; for he will multiply thine offering and will pay it back to thee hereafter.” Some years after Gerbert, another great mind, the greatest among the popes of the middle ages, Gregory VII., proclaimed an expedition, at the head of which he would place himself, to go and deliver Jerusalem and the Christians of the East from the insults and the tyranny of the infidels.
Such being the condition of facts and minds, pilgrimages to Jerusalem became, from the ninth to the eleventh century, more and more numerous and considerable. “It would never have been believed,” says the contemporary chronicler Raoul Glaber, “that the Holy Sepulchre could attract so prodigious an influx. First the lower classes, then the middle, afterwards the most potent kings, the counts, the marquises, the prelates, and lastly, what had never heretofore been seen, many women, noble or humble, undertook this pilgrimage.” In 1026, William Traillefer, count of Angouleme; in 1028, 1035, and 1039, Foulques the Black, count of Anjou; in 1035, Robert the Magnificent, duke of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror; in 1086, Robert the Frison, count of Flanders; and many other great feudal lords quitted their estates, or, rather, their states, to go and–not deliver, not conquer, but–simply visit the Holy Land. It was not long before great numbers were joined to great names. In 1054, Liedbert, bishop of Cambrai, started for Jerusalem with a following of three thousand Picard or Flemish pilgrims; and in 1064, the archbishop of Mayence and the bishops of Spire, Cologne, Bamberg, and Utrecht set out on their way from the borders of the Rhine with more than ten thousand Christians behind them. After having passed through Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Thrace, Constantinople, Asia Minor, and Syria, they were attacked in Palestine by hordes of Arabs, were forced to take refuge in the ruins of an old castle, and were reduced to capitulation; and when at last, “preceded by the rumors of their battles and their perils, they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received in triumph by the patriarch, and were conducted, to the sound of timbrels and with the flare of torches, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The misery they had fallen into excited the pity of the Christians of Asia; and, after having lost more than three thousand of their comrades, they returned to Europe to relate their tragic adventures and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.” (_Histoire des Croisades,_ by M. Michaud, t. i. p. 62.)
Amidst this agitation of Western Christendom, in 1076, two years after Pope Gregory VII. had proclaimed his approaching expedition to the Holy Land, news arrived in Europe to the effect that the most barbarous of Asiatics and of Mussulmans, the Turks, after having first served and then ruled the khalifs of Persia, and afterwards conquered the greater part of the Persian empire, had hurled themselves upon the Greek empire, invaded Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, and lately taken Jerusalem, where they practised against the Christians, old inhabitants or foreign visitors, priests and worshippers, dreadful cruelties and intolerable exactions, worse than those of the Persian or Egyptian khalifs.
It often happens that popular emotions, however profound and general, remain barren, just as in the vegetable world many sprouts appear at the surface of the soil and die without having grown and fructified. It is not sufficient for the bringing about of great events and practical results that popular aspirations should be merely manifested; it is necessary, further, that some great soul, some powerful will, should make itself the organ and agent of the public sentiment, and bring it to fecundity by becoming its personification. The Christian passion, in the eleventh century, for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the triumph of the Cross was fortunate in this respect. An obscure pilgrim, at first a soldier, then a married man and father of several children, then a monk and a vowed recluse, Peter the Hermit, who was born in the neighborhood of Amiens, about 1030, had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem “to say his prayers there.” Struck disconsolate at the sight of the sufferings and insults undergone by the Christians, he had an interview with Simeon, patriarch of Jerusalem, who “recognizing in him a man of discretion and full of experience in affairs of the world, set before him in detail all the evils with which the people of God, in the holy city, were afflicted. ‘Holy father,’ said Peter to him, ‘if the Roman Church and the princes of the West were informed, by a man of energy and worthy of belief, of all your calamities, of a surety they would essay to apply some remedy thereto by word and deed. Write, then, to our lord the pope and to the Roman Church, and to the kings and princes of the West, and strengthen your written testimony by the authority of your seal. As for me, I shrink not from taking upon me a task for the salvation of my soul; and with the help of the Lord I am ready to go and seek out all of them, solicit them, show unto them the immensity of your troubles, and pray them all to hasten on the day of your relief.'” The patriarch eagerly accepted the pilgrim’s offer; and Peter set out, going first of all to Rome, where he handed to Pope Urban II. the patriarch’s letters, and commenced in that quarter his mission of zeal. The pope promised him not only support, but active co-operation when the propitious moment for it should arrive. Peter set to work, being still the pilgrim everywhere, in Europe, as well as at Jerusalem. “He was a man of very small stature, and his outside made but a very poor appearance; yet superior powers swayed this miserable body; he had a quick intellect and a penetrating eye, and he spoke with ease and fluency. . . . We saw him at that time,” says his contemporary Guibert de Nogent, “scouring city and town, and preaching everywhere; the people crowded round him, heaped presents upon him, and celebrated his sanctity by such great praises that I remember not that like honor was ever rendered to any other person. He displayed great generosity in the disposal of all things that were given him. He restored wives to their husbands, not without the addition of gifts from himself, and he re-established, with marvellous authority, peace and good understanding between those who had been at variance. In all that he did or said he seemed to have in him something divine, insomuch that people went so far as to pluck hairs from his mule to keep as relics. In the open air he wore a woollen tunic, and over it a serge cloak which came down to his heels; he had his arms and feet bare; he ate little or no bread, and lived chiefly on wine and fish.”
In 1095, after the preaching errantry of Peter the Hermit, Pope Urban II. was at Clermont, in Auvergne, presiding at the grand council, at which thirteen archbishops and two hundred and five bishops or abbots were met together, with so many princes and lay-lords, that “about the middle of the month of November the towns and the villages of the neighborhood were full of people, and divers were constrained to have their tents and pavilions set up amidst the fields and meadows, notwithstanding that the season and the country were cold to an extreme.” The first nine sessions of the council were devoted to the affairs of the Church in the West; but at the tenth Jerusalem and the Christians of the East became the subject of deliberation. The Pope went out of the church wherein the Council was assembled and mounted a platform erected upon a vast open space in the midst of the throng. Peter the Hermit, standing at his side, spoke first, and told the story of his sojourn at Jerusalem, all he had seen of the miseries and humiliations of the Christians, and all he himself had suffered there, for he had been made to pay tribute for admission into the Holy City, and for gazing upon the spectacle of the exactions, insults, and tortures he was recounting. After him Pope Urban II. spoke, in the French tongue, no doubt, as Peter had spoken, for he was himself a Frenchman, as the majority of those present were, grandees and populace. He made a long speech, entertaining upon the most painful details connected with the sufferings of the Christians of Jerusalem, “that royal city which the Redeemer of the human race had made illustrious by His coming, had honored by His residence, had hallowed by His passion, had purchased by His death, had distinguished by His burial. She now demands of you her deliverance . . . men of France, men from beyond the mountains, nations chosen and beloved of God, right valiant knights, recall the virtues of your ancestors, the virtue and greatness of King Charlemagne and your other kings; it is from you above all that Jerusalem awaits the help she invokes, for to you, above all nations, God has vouchsafed signal glory in arms. Take ye, then, the road to Jerusalem for the remission of your sins, and depart assured of the imperishable glory which awaits you in the kingdom of heaven.”
From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and general shout, “God willeth it! God willeth it!” The Pope paused for a moment; and then, making a sign with his hand as if to ask for silence, he continued, “If the Lord God were not in your souls, ye would not all have uttered the same words. In the battle, then, be those your war-cry, those words that came from God; in the army of the Lord let nought be heard but that one shout, ‘God willeth it! God willeth it!’ We ordain not, and we advise not, that the journey be undertaken by the old or the weak, or such as be not suited for arms, and let not women set out without their husbands or their brothers; let the rich help the poor; nor priests nor clerks may go without the leave of their bishops; and no layman shall commence the march save with the blessing of his pastor. Whosoever hath a wish to enter upon this pilgrimage, let him wear upon his brow or his breast the cross of the Lord, and let him, who, in accomplishment of his desire, shall be willing to march away, place the cross behind him, between his shoulders; for thus he will fulfil the precept of the Lord, who said, ‘He that doth not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me.'”
[Illustration: “God willeth it!”—-383]
The enthusiasm was general and contagious, as the first shout of the crowd had been; and a pious prelate, Adhemar, bishop of Puy, was the first to receive the cross from the Pope’s hands. It was of red cloth or silk, sewn upon the right shoulder of the coat or cloak, or fastened on the front of the helmet. The crowd dispersed to assume it and spread it.
Religious enthusiasm was not the only, but the first and the determining motive of the crusade. It is to the honor of humanity, and especially to the honor of the French nation, that it is accessible to the sudden sway of a moral and disinterested sentiment, and resolves, without prevision as well as without premeditation, upon acts which decide, for many a long year, the course and the fate of a generation, and, it may be, of a whole people. We have seen in our own day, in the conduct of populace, national assemblies, and armies, under the impulse not any longer of religious feeling, but of political and social agitation, France thus giving herself up to the rush of sentiments, generous indeed and pure, but without the least forecast touching the consequences of the ideas which inspired them or the acts which they entailed. It is with nations as with armies; the side of glory is that of danger; and great works are wrought at a heavy cost, not only of happiness, but also of virtue. It would be wrong, nevertheless, to lack respect for and to speak evil of enthusiasm: it not only bears witness to the grandeur of human nature, it justly holds its place and exercises its noble influence in the course of the great events which move across the scene of human errors and vices, according to the vast and inscrutable design of trod. It is quite certain that the crusaders of the eleventh century, in their haste to deliver Jerusalem from the Mussulmans, were far from foreseeing that, a few centuries after their triumph, Jerusalem and the Christian East would fall again beneath the yoke of the Mussulmans and their barbaric stagnation; and this future, had they caught but a glimpse of it, would doubtless have chilled their zeal. But it is not a whit the less certain that, in view of the end, their labor was not in vain; for, in the panorama of the world’s history, the crusades marked the date of the arrest of Islamism, and powerfully contributed to the decisive preponderance of Christian civilization.
[Illustration: The Four Leaders of the First Crusade—-385]
To religious enthusiasm there was joined another motive less disinterested, but natural and legitimate, which was the still very vivid recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the West by the Mussulman invasions in Spain, France, and Italy, and the fear of seeing them begin again. Instinctively war was carried to the East to keep it from the West, just as Charlemagne had invaded and conquered the country of the Saxons to put an end to their inroads upon the Franks. And this prudent plan availed not only to give the Christians of the West a hope of security, it afforded them the pleasure of vengeance. They were about to pay back alarm for alarm, and evil for evil, to the enemy from whom they had suffered in the same way; hatred and pride, as well as piety, obtained satisfaction.
There is moreover great motive power in a spirit of enterprise and a taste for adventure. Care-for-nothingness is one of man-kind’s chief diseases, and if it plays so conspicuous a part in comparatively enlightened and favored communities, amidst the labors and the enjoyments of an advanced civilization, its influence was certainly not less in times of intellectual sloth and harshly monotonous existence. To escape therefrom, to satisfy in some sort the energy and curiosity inherent in man, the people of the eleventh century had scarcely any resource but war, with its excitement and distant excursions into unknown regions. Thither rushed the masses of the people, whilst the minds which were eager, above everything, for intellectual movement and for knowledge, thronged, on the mountain of St. Genevieve, to the lectures of Abelard. Need of variety and novelty, and an instinctive desire to extend their views and enliven their existence, probably made as many crusaders as the feeling against the Mussulmans and the promptings of piety.
[Illustration: Crusaders on the March—-386]
The Council of Clermont, at its closing on the 28th of November, 1095, had fixed the month of August in the following year, and the feast of the Assumption, for the departure of the crusaders for the Holy Land; but the people’s impatience did not brook this waiting, short as it was in view of the greatness and difficulties of the enterprise. As early as the 8th of March, 1096, and in the course of the spring three mobs rather than armies set out on the crusade, with a strength, it is said, of eighty or one hundred thousand persons in one case, and of fifteen or twenty thousand in the other two. Persons, not men, for there were amongst them many women and children, whole families, in fact, who had left their villages, without organization and without provisions, calculating that they would be competent to find their own way, and that He who feeds the young ravens would not suffer to die of want pilgrims wearing His cross. Whenever, on their road, a town came in sight, the children asked if that were Jerusalem. The first of these mobs had for its head Peter the Hermit himself, and a Burgundian knight called Walter _Havenought_; the second had a German priest named Gottschalk; and the third a Count Emico, of Leiningen, potent in the neighborhood of Mayence. It is wrong to call them heads, for they were really nothing of the kind; their authority was rejected, at one time as tyrannical, at another as useless. “The grasshoppers,” was the saying amongst them in the words of Solomon’s proverbs, “have no king, and yet they go in companies.” In crossing Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the provinces of the Greek empire, these companies, urged on by their brutal passions or by their necessities and material wants, abandoned themselves to such irregularities that, as they went, princes and peoples, instead of welcoming them as Christians, came to treat them as enemies, of whom it was necessary to get rid at any price. Peter the Hermit and Gottschalk made honorable and sincere efforts to check the excesses of their following, which were a source of so much danger; but Count Emico, on the contrary, says William of Tyre, “himself took part in the plunder, and incited his comrades to crime.” Thus, at one time taking the offensive, at another compelled to defend themselves against the attacks of the justly irritated inhabitants, these three immense companies of pilgrims, these disorderly volunteers, with great difficulty arrived, after enormous losses, at the gates of Constantinople. Either through fear or through pity, the Greek emperor, Alexis (or Alexius) Comnenus, permitted them to pitch their camp there; “but before long, plenty, idleness, and the sight of the riches of Constantinople brought once more into the camp license, indiscipline, and a thirst after brigandage. Whilst awaiting the war against the Mussulmans, the pilgrims pillaged the houses, the palaces, and even the churches in the outskirts of Byzantium. To deliver his capital from these destructive guests, Alexis furnished them with vessels, and got them shipped off across the Bosphorus.”
[Illustration: The Assault on St. Jean d’Acre—-386]
Whilst the crusade was commencing under these sad auspices, chieftains of more sense and better obeyed were preparing to give it another character and superior fortunes. Two great and real armies were forming in the north, the centre, and the south of France, and a third in Italy, amongst the Norman knights who had founded there the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, just before their countryman, William the Bastard, conquered England. The first of these armies had for its chief, Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, whom all his contemporaries have described as the model of a gallant and pious knight. He was the son of Eustace II., count of Boulogne, and “the lustre of nobility,” says Raoul of Caen, chronicler of his times, “was enhanced in his case by the splendor of the most exalted virtues, as well in affairs of the world as of heaven. As to the latter, he distinguished himself by his generosity towards the poor, and his pity for those who had committed faults. Furthermore, his humility, his extreme gentleness, his moderation, his justice, and his chastity were great; he shone as a light amongst the monks, even more than as a duke amongst the knights. And, nevertheless, he could also do the things which are of this world, fight, marshal the ranks, and extend by arms the domains of the Church. In his boyhood he learned to be first, or one of the first, to strike the foe; in youth he made it his habitual practice; and in advancing age he forgot it never. He was so perfectly the son of the warlike Count Eustace, and of his mother, Ida de Bouillon, a woman full of piety, and versed in literature, that at sight of him even a rival would have been forced to say of him, ‘For zeal in war, behold his father; for serving God, behold his mother.’ The second army, consisting chiefly of crusaders from Southern France, marched under the orders of Raymond IV., count of Toulouse, the oldest chieftain of the crusade, who still, however, united the ardor of youth with the experience of ripe age and the stubbornness of the graybeard. At the side of the Cid he had fought, and more than once beaten the Moors in Spain. He took with him to the East his third wife, Elvira, daughter of Alphonso VI., king of Castile, as well as a very young child he had by her, and he had made a vow, which he fulfilled, that he would return no more to his country, and would fight the infidels to the end of his days, in expiation of his sins. He was discreet though haughty, and not only the richest but the most economical of the crusader-chiefs: “Accordingly,” says Raoul of Caen, “when all the rest had spent their money, the riches of Count Raymond made him still more distinguished. The people of Provence, who formed his following, did not lavish their resources, but studied economy even more than glory,” and “his army,” adds Guibert of Nogent, “showed no inferiority to any other, save so far as it is possible to reproach the inhabitants of Provence touching their excessive loquacity.”
Bohemond, prince of Tarento, commanded the third army, composed principally of Italians and warriors of various origins come to Italy to share in the exploits and fortunes of his father, the celebrated Robert Guiscard, founder of the Norman kingdom of Naples, who was at one time the foe, and at another the defender, of Pope Gregory VII., and who died in the island of Cephalonia just as he was preparing to attempt the conquest of Constantinople. Bohemond had neither less ambition nor less courage and ability than his father. “His appearance,” says Anna Comnena, “impressed the eye as much as his reputation astounded the mind; his height surpassed that of all his comrades; his blue eyes gleamed readily with pride and anger; when he spoke you would have said he had made eloquence his study; and when he showed himself in armor, you might have believed that he had never done aught but handle lance and sword. Brought up in the school of Norman heroes, be concealed calculations of policy beneath the exterior of force, and, although he was of a haughty disposition, he knew how to be blind to a wrong when there was nothing to be gained by avenging it. He had learned from his father to regard as foes all whose dominions and riches he coveted; and he was not restrained by fear of God, or by man’s opinions, or by his own oaths. It was not the deliverance of the tomb of Christ which fired his zeal or decided him upon taking up the cross; but, as he had vowed eternal enmity to the Greek emperors, he smiled at the idea of traversing their empire at the head of an army, and, full of confidence in his fortunes, he hoped to make for himself a kingdom before arriving at Jerusalem.”
Bohemond had as friend and faithful comrade his cousin Tancred de Hauteville, great-grandson, through his mother, Emma, of Robert Guiscard, and, according to all his contemporaries, the type of a perfect Christian knight, neither more nor less. “From his boyhood,” says Raoul of Caen, his servitor before becoming his biographer, “he surpassed the young by his skill in the management of arms, and the old by the strictness of his morals. He disdained to speak ill of whoever it might be, even when ill had been spoken of himself. About himself he would say nought, but he had an insatiable desire to give cause for talking thereof. Glory was the only passion that moved that young soul; yet was it disquieted within him, and he suffered great anxiety from thinking that his knightly combats seemed contrary to the precepts of the Lord. The Lord bids us give our coat and our cloak to him who would take them from us; whereas the knight’s part is to strip all that remains from him from whom he hath already taken his coat and his cloak. These contradictory principles benumbed sometimes the courage of this man so full of propriety; but when the declaration of Pope Urban had assured remission of all their sins to all Christians who should go and fight the Gentiles, then Tancred awoke in some sort from his dream, and this new opportunity fired him with a zeal which cannot be expressed. He therefore made preparations for his departure; but, accustomed from his infancy to give to others before thinking of himself, he entered upon no great outlay, but contented himself with collecting in sufficient quantity knightly arms, horses, mules, and provisions necessary for his company.”
With these four chieftains, who have remained illustrious in history,– that grave wherein small reputations are extinguished,–were associated, for the deliverance of the Holy Land, a throng of feudal lords, some powerful as well as valiant, others valiant but simple knights; Hugh, count of Vermaudois, brother of Philip I., king of France; Robert of Normandy, called Shorthose, son of William the Conqueror; Robert, count of Flanders; Stephen, count of Blois; Raimbault, count of Orange; Baldwin, count of Hainault; Raoul of Beaugency; Gerard of Roussillon, and many others whose names contemporary chroniclers and learned moderns have gathered together. Not one of the reigning sovereigns of Europe, kings or emperors, of France, England, Spain, or Germany, took part in the first crusade. It was the feudal nation, great and small, castle owners and populace, who rose in mass for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the honor of Christendom.
These three great armies of crusaders got on the march from August to October, 1096, wending their way, Godfrey de Bouillon by Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria; Bohemond by the south of Italy and the Mediterranean; and Count Raymond of Toulouse by Northern Italy, Friuli, and Dalmatia. They arrived one after the other in the empire of the East and at the gates of Constantinople. Godfrey de Bouillon was the first to appear there, and the Emperor Alexis Comnenus learned with dismay that other armies of crusaders would soon follow that which was already so large. It was not long before Bohemond and Raymond appeared. Alexis