Duchy of Normandy

“ Great stone castles were beginning to appear at all the chief places in Normandy, and when Duke Richard had succeeded Harold Blacktooth we find that the Duchy was assuming an ordered existence internally. The feudal system had then reached its fullest development, and the laws established by Rollo were properly administered. With the accession of Hugh Capet to the throne of France, Normandy had become a most loyal as well as powerful fief of the crown. The tenth century witnessed also an attempt on the part of the serfs of the Duchy to throw off something of the awful grip of the feudal power. ”

“ The most Teutonic part of Normandy was the one part which had a real grievance to avenge on Englishmen; in their land, and in their land alone, had Englishmen, for a moment in the days of Æthelred, shown themselves as invaders and ravagers. But before the men of the Côtentin could show themselves as avengers at Senlac, they had first to be themselves overthrown at Val-ès-dunes. Before William could conquer England, he had first to conquer his own duchy by the aid of France. ”

“ While every other man in the metropolis of Normandy was giving and taking blows, the lord of Normandy, in mere personal prowess one of the foremost soldiers in his duchy, was smuggled out of his capital as one who could not be trusted to let his blows fall in the right place. ”

“ In Normandy, significantly, we find none of those communal revolts which meet us throughout the north of France and even as near as LeMans; the towns are always subject to the ultimate authority of the duke, whose domanial rights were considerable even in the episcopal cities and who favored those forms of urban development which strengthened the military resources of the duchy. ”

“ He ruled his duchy wisely and well, and it flourished greatly under him. He promoted learned men from other countries, above all two men who lived to play a greater part in England than in Normandy. These were Lanfranc from Pavia in Italy and Anselm from Aosta in Burgundy. They were both monks of the newly-founded monastery of Bec in Normandy, which was at this time a nursery of famous men. The Duke married Matilda, daughter of Baldwin Count of Flanders, by whom he had several daughters and, for the present, three sons, Robert, Richard, and William. ”

“ It is impossible to form anything like a complete picture of the state of the defences of the duchy upon the eve of the English invasion. Robert of Bellême and William of Mortain, by far the most powerful of the duke’s supporters, were still in undisputed possession of their hereditary Norman dominions. ”

“ The castles of Normandy were always open to the duke, and William the Conqueror had maintained garrisons of his own in the most important of them, to insure the obedience of their holders. The first move that was made by the barons of Normandy, on the news of William's death, was to expel these garrisons and to substitute others of their own. The example was set by Robert of Bellême, the holder of a powerful composite lordship on the south-west border and partly outside the duchy. ”

“ One part of the duchy in short was altogether Romance in speech and manners, while more or less of Teutonic character still clave to the other.33 So now Teutonic Normandy rose against Duke William, and Romance Normandy was faithful to him. The nobles of the Bessin and Côtentin made league with William’s cousin Guy of Burgundy, meaning, as far as one can see, to make Guy Duke of Rouen and Evreux, and to have no lord at all for themselves. ”

“ In Normandy one cannot help seeing that a power has been at work bringing a new Northern element into the country, and that there has been a great growth in every way since Rolf came with his vikings and besieged the city of Jumièges. Now the dukedom that he formed is one of the foremost of its day, able to stand on equal ground with the royal kingdom and duchy of France, for Robert's homage is only the homage of equals and allies. Normandy is the peer of Burgundy and of Flanders, and every day increases in strength, in [Pg116] ambition, in scholarship and wealth. ”

“ But in earlier times the maintenance of feudal relations between Normandy and France was less dependent upon the personal loyalty of the reigning duke. Occasionally, the king of France will confirm the grants of land with which the duke of Normandy endowed some religious house; he may, as we have seen, claim the right of wardship over a duchy during a minority. Also, it should not be forgotten that in the case of the dukes between Richard I. and Robert I. the traditional alliance between Normandy and the Capetian dynasty disguised the practical autonomy of the former. ”

“ During the succeeding unfortunate reign, this castle shared, in 1450, the fate of all the other British possessions in Normandy; and, like most of the rest, it offered but a feeble resistance to the victorious arms of France. A few days' siege was sufficient to induce its garrison, of two hundred men, to surrender, what the contemporary historians admit to have been one of the finest and strongest places in the duchy. St. Sauveur, from this time, is no longer celebrated in history, as a fortress ”

“ He is the greatest vassal of the French crown, a vassal more powerful than the overlord whose invasions of his duchy he has had to drive back.
These invasions of Normandy by the King of the French and his allies fall into two periods. At first Henry appears in Normandy as the supporter of Normans in open revolt against their duke. But revolts are personal and local; there is no rebellion like that which was crushed at Val-ès-dunes, spreading over a large part of the duchy. In the second period, the invaders have no such starting-point. There are still traitors; there are still rebels ”

“ But open war did not begin at once. William contented himself for some months with sending over troops to occupy castles in the north-eastern portion of Normandy, which were opened to him by barons who were favourable to his cause or whose support was purchased. The alarm of Robert was soon excited by these defections, and he appealed to his suzerain, King Philip I of France, for aid. If the policy of ruling in Normandy was natural for the English king, that of keeping kingdom and duchy in different hands was an equally natural policy for the French king. ”

“ Only because the duke was strong at home could he hope to be strong abroad, only because he was master of an extraordinarily vigorous, coherent, and well-organized state in Normandy could he attempt the at first sight impossible task of conquering a kingdom and the still greater task of organizing it under a firm government. We must take account, not only of the weakness of England, but also of the strength of Normandy, stronger than any of its continental neighbors, stronger even than royalty itself. ”

“ Why do we allow ourselves to be thus treated? Let us place ourselves beyond their power; we too are men, we have the same limbs, the same height, the same power of endurance, and we are a hundred to one. Let us swear to defend each other; let us be firmly knit together, and no man shall be lord over us; we shall be free from tolls and taxes, free to fell trees, to take game and fish, and do as we will in all things, in the wood, in the meadow, on the water!"
At this time the larger portion of Normandy was what used to be called forest. ”

“ We halt continually on the journey—once, for half-an-hour, literally 'under the lindens'—they are not yet in bloom, but they give out a pleasant perfume into the dreamy air; we are again in the open country, in the atmosphere of old historic Normandy, and bound, slowly it is true, for the birthplace of William the Conqueror; and we can read or sleep at pleasure, as our crazy diligence crawls up and creeps down every hill, and stops at every cottage by the way. ”

“ To a man who was at once king of France and duke of Aquitaine it was comparatively no great matter whether the dominions of Henry I. were to be annexed to those of Geoffrey of Anjou or allied to those of Theobald of Blois. The truest interest of France, however, obviously was that England and Normandy should be divided, one of them being held by each of the two competitors ”

“ Now it is evident that the Dukes of Normandy, when possessed of the crown of England, were incomparably more wealthy, though not in the same proportion more powerful, than the contemporary Kings of France ”

“ His war with William Rufus still dragged on. Disloyal barons continued to desert to the English cause; and twenty Norman castles were said to be in the Red King’s hands. Prince Henry, long firmly established at Domfront, and now backed by the strong arm and the long purse of his older brother, had gained control of ‘a great part of Normandy’; and the ‘soft [90] duke’ had fallen into contempt among his turbulent subjects. Disobedience and disorder were everywhere on the increase, and the unarmed population lacked a protector. ”

“ The power of the duke had been reduced to such a point that hardly any one obeyed him or rendered him the respect due to a prince. Almost all the barons spurned his authority and betrayed the fealty which they owed him, while they ran after the king’s gold and silver and surrendered towns and castles on every side. [120] Yet with all his success, Henry was unable to complete the conquest of Normandy in a single campaign. Even hogsheads may be drained, and the method of waging war with gold and silver, as well as with the sword, had been costly. ”

“ In fact, there was not left one vestige of kingly authority, and Carlovingian rulers were almost as insignificant as their Merovingian predecessors. France had, instead of one great sovereign, one hundred and fifty petty ones!
In A.D. 911 the Northmen were offered the province henceforth known as Normandy, upon condition of their acceptance of the religion and submission to the laws of the realm. Rollo, the disreputable robber-chief, took the oath of fealty to the King of France, his suzerain, and Christian baptism transformed him into respectable, law-abiding Robert, Duke of Normandy. ”

“ It is typical of the national idea in France that Normandy should have "held" of the political centre of the country, probably since the first Gallic confederations were formed, certainly since the organization of the Empire. It is equally typical of the local life of a French province that, thus dependent, Normandy should have strictly preserved its manner and its spirit, and should have readily made war upon the Crown and resisted, as it still resists and will perhaps for ever, the centralizing forces of the national temper. ”

“ I believe it is always expected, that a traveller in France should say something respecting the general aspect of the country and its agriculture. I shall content myself with remarking, that this part of Normandy is marvellously like the country which the Conqueror conquered. When the weather is dull, the Normans have a sober English sky, abounding in Indian ink and neutral tint. And when the weather is fine, they have a sun which is not a ray brighter than an English sun. ”

“ Very few great baronies existed in Normandy formed of contiguous territory and capable of development into independent principalities, and those that did exist were kept constantly in the hands of relatives of the ducal house and under strong control. Political feudalism existed in Normandy in even greater perfection and in a more logical completeness, if we regard the forms alone, its practices and customs, than was usual in the feudal world of that age; but it existed not as the means by which the state was broken into fragments, but as the machinery by which it was governed by the duke. ”

“ The people of Normandy and other French territories under the Norman crown rebelled against Henry. The king, by the aid of the Pope, pacified the discontented people by fair promises, and a peace was made, upon which the king and the prince and a great retinue of nobles went to Normandy, to arrange some very important matters of state. ”

“ By it he became the French King’s vassal for the province we now call Normandy, received the hand of his daughter in marriage, and embraced the Christian faith. And though to the cynical Norman chief his oath of fealty may have been little more than an empty form, and his change of religion but a move in the game, the signing of the treaty of Claire-sur-Epte was, for Neustria, the first streak of dawn. ”

“ Un pays aimé is a good friend, indeed, to whom one may turn in time of strife, and none other than Normandy—unless it be Brittany—has proved itself a more safe and pleasant land for travellers.
When one knows the country well he recognizes many things which it has in common with England. Its architecture, for one thing, bears a marked resemblance; for the Norman builders, who erected the magnificent ecclesiastical edifices in the Seine valley during the middle ages, were in no small way responsible for many similar works in England. ”

“ By their repeated attacks upon Roman territory the Gaulish tribes had brought upon themselves the invasion which, after some stubborn fighting, made their country a province of the Roman Empire. Inter-tribal strife having now ceased, the civilisation of Rome made its way all over the country including that northern portion known as Neustria, much of which from the days of Rollo came to be called Normandy. ”

“ The whole objection seems to have been made for fear that their doubled and extraordinary tribute should be made a precedent, but the duke promptly gave his word of honor that it should not be so, and their estates should not be permanently weighted beyond [Pg285] their ability. The scribes took down the record of the knights and soldiers that each baron had promised, and from this time there was a hum and stir of war-making in Normandy, and that spring there were more women than men in the fields tending the growing crops. ”