§ 2. William’s Wars with France. 1053–1060

There is something half romantic, half grotesque, about the details of this campaign. Yet the substance of the tale comes from contemporary writers, and the whole story is eminently characteristic of William, and indeed of his people. No people of warriors were ever more ready than the Normans to exchange, whenever need called for the exchange, the skin of the lion for that of the fox.^[456] Assuredly neither William the Bastard nor Robert Wiscard was at all lacking in any form of courage; but it was, after all, their craft rather than their courage which set them so high |Illustration of William’s character.| above the rest of the world. It is quite possible that seven years may have abated somewhat of that impetuous energy of early youth with which William spurred across the plain of Val-ès-dunes to smite the rebel of Bayeux |His policy.| with his own hand.^[457] He may have learned—perhaps from the teaching of King Henry himself^[458]—that it is not always the duty of a general to thrust himself forward wherever danger happens to be keenest. But it is certain that, twelve years later, William was as ready as he had ever been for deeds of the highest personal prowess, whenever personal prowess was the surest way to success. The difference between William and most men of his age was that he had now learned that it was no mark of wisdom or of courage to run risks which might be avoided, or to jeopard his own life and the lives of his followers, when the same object might be gained by easier means. He had, by this time at least, learned to rise above the follies of mere chivalry, above the mere senseless love of giving and taking blows without an object. Nor had he a spark of that impetuous patriotism which led the nobler soul of Harold to deem no shame so great as the shame of leaving a rood of English ground to be harried by the stranger. We may acquit William of all wanton oppression; we may fully believe that the sufferings of his people roused his indignation.^[459] But he could stifle that indignation; he could stand calmly by and behold their sufferings, if he thought that he could gain his object better by biding his time and letting the |Vein of pleasantry in the Norman character.| enemy for a while work his wicked will. And, mingled with all this, there is a certain element of grim merriment, a delight in a joke spoken or acted, which runs through the whole career of the Conqueror. It needed a ready wit to send Roger of Toesny, or any other man, to the top of a tree or of a rock to announce in the dead of the night that the French had been cut to pieces at Mortemer. Here again William is only a representative of his people. A touch of pleasantry, however rough, runs through most Norman sayings and doings. We may be sure that the messenger, whoever he was, thoroughly enjoyed his errand and entered into its spirit. And the policy of William in this campaign, whatever we think of it in any other light, had at least, as his policy commonly had, the merit of success. Most princes of his time would have sought eagerly for a pitched battle. Most of the few princes who might have shrunk from a pitched battle would have been unable to form any intelligible military plan of any other kind. William, evidently seconded by men who understood him, knew how to win victories without fighting. His dominions were invaded by two powerful armies at once. He laid his plans; he bode his time. One army was cut to pieces with hardly the loss of a Norman life. The other was hurried out of the land without so much as striking a blow.

King Henry seems by this time to have had enough of Norman warfare for a while. We hear vaguely of hostilities still going on,^[460] but there is only one act on either side of which we meet with any distinct mention. This is the fortification by the Duke of a post which was intended to check for the future such incursions as his southern march had just undergone. The time had not yet come for William again to demand that fortress of Tillières of which Henry had so unfairly dispossessed him in the early days of his reign.^[461] But he now raised a counter-fortress within his own dominions, which was expressly designed to act as a check on Tillières itself.^[462] This was at Breteuil on the Iton, a tributary of the Eure, near the wood of its own name, in the Diocese of Evreux, not far |It is entrusted to William Fitz-Osbern.| from Ralph of Toesny’s castle and abbey of Conches. The castle was built, and was committed to the trusty care of William Fitz-Osbern.^[463]

At last the King sought for peace. His main object was to bring about the redemption of the many French captives who were still lingering in Norman prison-houses. The knights were at last set free on paying their ransoms, but their harness remained as the prey of the victors.^[464] |William authorized to make conquests at the expense of Anjou.| A more remarkable article of the peace was that by which the King engaged not to interfere with any conquests which William had made, or might make, at the expense of the Count of Anjou. Henry indeed seems to have done more, and to have promised William the regular feudal investiture of any such possible conquests.^[465] This agreement seems to amount almost to proof positive that Geoffrey had not had any share in the late invasion of Normandy. It was seemingly as a punishment for his defection that his possessions were now openly offered to the Norman. Before long we shall again find Henry and Geoffrey allied against William, but just at this moment we must look upon King and Duke as once more allies against the Angevin Count.

It was in William’s earlier days of good service to his overlord that he had first carried his arms, and extended his dominion, beyond the range of hills which seems to form the natural southern frontier of Western Normandy. In his first campaign against the Angevin he had added or restored to his Duchy the Cenomannian fortress of |Domfront.| Domfront,^[466] a prize which was no unworthy instalment of the nobler and more distant prize in the same region which was, before many years, to fall into his hands. That first campaign, William’s first deed of prowess beyond the bounds of his own Duchy, had made him master of a fortress which men deemed impregnable, and of a district which, as his earliest conquest, he no doubt looked on with special affection. That part of the ancient Cenomannian Diocese and County which surrounds the hill of Domfront has remained to this day an integral portion of the Norman land. The southern bulwark of William’s Duchy was now the proud fortress by the Varenne, the town which, still largely girded by its ancient walls, abides to this day perched on its ancient eyrie, and has not, like so many greater cities, descended into the plain below. The shattered donjon,^[467] reared, like that of his own Falaise, on wild and craggy rocks, looks forth on the wilder and heath-crowned rocks of a rival height, whose distorted strata bear witness to the struggles and revolutions of days before man had yet appeared on earth. The fortress won by the terror of his name, once an outpost threatening the Norman border, was now the surest guard of the Norman heights to the north, the most threatening menace to that boundless plain, broken by gentler hills, which stretched away over the disputed land of Maine towards the home of the hostile Angevin. Around the hill lay the thickly wooded land, rich in the silvan sports so dear to William’s heart, the land which the Hammer of Anjou had yielded without a stroke to the youthful lord of Normandy. Lower down the stream stood what was now his furthest outpost, his own creation |Ambrières.| of Ambrières, another donjon on a height, hard by the point where the Varenne joins the greater stream of the Mayenne. The shattered walls of that donjon still bear the impress of William’s age, though the district in which it stands is no longer entitled to the honours of the Norman name.

Domfront then had passed irrevocably into William’s hands, but Ambrières was still, in some way or other, a |Its former occupation by William, [1049];| subject of contention. There seems no doubt that William had occupied and fortified the post in the earlier campaign.^[468] Possibly it had been since that time taken and dismantled by Geoffrey; possibly the post was to be made stronger and more extensive, with a view to further conquests in the same direction. At all events, works of some kind at |its present rebuilding or strengthening.| Ambrières, whether works of mere strengthening or of construction from the ground, were just now an object on which William’s mind was eagerly set. His first act after the conclusion of the peace with France, at the very meeting—was it a meeting with the King in person?—at which the peace was signed, was to summon all the chief military tenants of Normandy to appear within forty days to help in carrying on the needful works at Ambrières.^[469] A message to the same effect was sent to Count Geoffrey. |William’s challenge to Geoffrey Martel.| The Duke of the Normans would, on the fortieth day, appear at Ambrières with his force and take possession of his fortress.^[470] The prospect of so terrible a neighbour struck dread into the heart of the nearest vassal of Anjou, |Geoffrey of Mayenne;| Geoffrey, Lord of Mayenne, a town on the lower course of the river from which it takes its name, and which was, a few years later, to be the scene of one of William’s |his counsel to Geoffrey Martel.| boldest exploits.^[471] The Lord of Mayenne poured his forebodings into the ears of his own lord at Angers. If the Normans were allowed to take possession of Ambrières, nothing but ravage and utter destruction would be the fate of the Angevin lands. The heart of Count Geoffrey was lifted up, and he bade his namesake of Mayenne cast him aside as a base and shameful lord, if he allowed the threats of the Norman to be carried |William at Ambrières.| out in act.^[472] The appointed day came; the Duke appeared at Ambrières; the works, of whatever nature, were begun.^[473] News came that Geoffrey Martel was |Geoffrey’s delay.| on his march. William waited a while, but the enemy came not, and provisions began to fail. Great and small began to complain of the lack of food; and no doubt, in Normandy as well as in England, men were much more ready to fight than to remain under arms without fighting.^[474] |William garrisons the castle, and goes away.| The Duke therefore left a garrison in Ambrières, and retired with the remainder of his army, bidding them hold themselves in readiness to assemble again at a moment’s notice.^[475] It would have been foolhardiness indeed to have shut himself up without any adequate cause |Geoffrey and his allies come to Ambrières.| within the walls of a border fortress. But, if the Norman historian is to be believed, the Norman Duke’s back was no sooner turned^[476] than the Angevin Count and his allies came hastening to the siege of the stronghold of Ambrières. |William of Aquitaine.| With Count Geoffrey came his lord, as he is called^[477]—at all events his step-son—Peter, now William, Count of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine.^[478] He came perhaps to avenge the ignominious flight of his brother from Moulins;^[479] but with him came another chief in whose heart many an old enmity must have been choked, many a bitter remembrance must have been handed over to forgetfulness, before he could consent to take service in the same host as Geoffrey. |Odo of Britanny.| Yet so it was; a Breton prince, Odo, the uncle of the reigning Count Conan,^[480] came to fight under the Angevin banner |They besiege Ambrières.| against the common enemy at Rouen. The three princes attacked the castle of Ambrières with all the resources known to the military art of the time. An attempt at a storm was beaten back by the defenders. The archers shot their arrows, the petraria hurled its stones, the ram was dashed against the wall, but all was in vain.^[481] Meanwhile the news of the siege, and of the gallant resistance of the |Return of William.| garrison, was borne to Duke William. He collected his troops with all speed, and hastened, with such haste as he knew how to use when haste was needed,^[482] to the relief of |Flight of the besiegers.| Ambrières. At his mere approach, we are told, the three allied Counts took to flight.^[483] The Lord of Mayenne was less lucky; he was carried off as a prisoner into the |Homage of Geoffrey of Mayenne.| furthest parts of Normandy, and he was not released till he had acknowledged himself the man of Duke William.^[484]

The fame of William was no doubt widely spread by this series of successful exploits and stratagems, and his direct influence was distinctly increased by his receiving the homage of the Count of Ponthieu in one direction and |Extension of his frontier towards Anjou.| of the Lord of Mayenne in another. It would seem also that this was the time when William made, in conformity with the licence granted him by King Henry,^[485] a further acquisition of Cenomannian territory at the cost of the Count of Anjou. It was not unimportant to him to extend his power as far as might be in the district through |1049.| which he had, six years before, made his famous night-march from Domfront to Alençon.^[486] At a short distance west of Alençon, and south-west of the episcopal town of Seez, the Sarthon, a small tributary of the Sarthe, was the boundary between Normandy and Maine. The Duke now took possession of a point beyond the frontier stream; a castle and town arose, which were entrusted to the care of Roger of Montgomery. It lay in the near neighbourhood of the hereditary possessions of his wife, and from her the new bulwark of Normandy was honoured or disgraced by the name of the Rock of Mabel.^[487]

The strength of William’s enemies seems to have been nearly exhausted by their late efforts, or else their courage was chilled by the ill success of their arms. For three years Normandy saw neither rebellion nor foreign war. William thus had time to devote himself either to the prosecution of his vengeance, or to the vindication of ecclesiastical discipline, in the deposition of his uncle the |1055.| Primate Malger.^[488] This took place in the same year as the campaign of Ambrières. After that date, besides the Duke’s quarrel and reconciliation with Lanfranc,^[489] there is nothing to recount till, three years later, we come to another, and the last, invasion of Normandy by the combined |Last French and Angevin invasion. August, 1058.| forces of France and Anjou. Geoffrey, the old enemy, was, we are told, ever ready to strike a blow at Normandy,^[490] and no doubt the memory of his late losses rankled in his mind. Another great expedition was planned and carried out. In August, when the corn was on the ground,^[491] the King and the Count entered Normandy in the quarter most convenient for a junction of French and Angevin forces, in William’s own County of Hiesmes.^[492] Their design was a systematic plundering expedition through all Normandy west of the Seine. They were to pass through the district of Hiesmes into the land of Bayeux and Caen; then they were to cross the Dive and, after harrying Auge and the district of Lisieux, to return home with their plunder.^[493] Above all things, they were to reach the sea in the districts both west and east of the Dive, and to show that the upstart Duke of the Pirates could no |William’s scheme of defence. He waits at Falaise till the enemy reach the Dive.| longer keep his liege lord barred up in an inland prison. The scheme was laid, and one half of it was carried out. William determined not to attack the invaders on their entrance into his Duchy. His plan was to wait for a favourable moment when he might smite them on their return, gorged with the plunder of his subjects, and no doubt with their discipline and their energy not a little relaxed. He gathered his knights, not indeed for immediate action; he gave orders for the strengthening of castles and the cleansing of their fosses; and then, leaving the open country exposed to the ravages of the enemy, he waited in his own stronghold of Falaise for the moment which |Advance and ravages of the French.| he knew would not fail soon to come.^[494] The French and Angevin host entered Normandy, and passed through the land burning and plundering in the usual fashion. They took the town of Hiesmes, which gave its name to the County. They then marched on to Saint Peter on the Dive; they occupied the whole town, and the King was lodged at the great Abbey, then in all the freshness of its new foundation by the pious Lescelina of Eu.^[495] They then struck westward, ravaging the whole Bessin; but the city itself, as well as the various castles of the district, seems to have remained untouched. The sea-coast especially, the land of William’s faithful Hubert, was harried as far as the mouth of the Seule. The enemy then marched in a |Caen as yet unfortified.| south-easterly direction to Caen. That town was growing in importance, but as yet it neither contained anything which could withstand the attacks of an enemy nor anything which was likely to remain to later days as a memorial of his visit. Caen was as yet undefended by walls or castle;^[496] the foundations of the two great Abbeys which are its chief glory were as yet not laid. Whatever Caen then consisted of, it was certainly sacked, most likely burned. King Henry and Count Geoffrey had now successfully carried out one half of their scheme of ravage. They had now to cross the Dive, and to carry fire and sword into the other half of the doomed region.

The moment for which William had so long been waiting had at last come. His policy had been in some sort a cruel policy for his Duchy; but it now enabled him to strike a vigorous and decisive blow at the retreating enemy. French warfare in Normandy was destined to be successful only when the banners of King and Duke floated side by side. King Henry had shared in the triumph of Val-ès-dunes; his men had been smitten by William’s men in the ambush of Saint Aubin and in the surprise of Mortemer; he had now himself to feel the might of William’s own |They reach the Dive at Varaville.| hand in the second surprise of Varaville. In their march eastward the French had reached the village of that name, the point which had been chosen for their passage across the Dive into the land of Auge. Varaville, now, and probably then, only a small village, lies north-east of Caen, a little way from the left bank of the old frontier stream. It was an old battle-ground of France and Normandy. On that spot, or at least in that neighbourhood, it was that King Harold of Denmark and King Lewis of France had met face to face; |945.| it was there that the Karling had found his master in the valiant heathen who came to defend the last planted outpost of his race.^[497] And now another King of the French, of another line, of another speech, and another royal city, came to undergo an overthrow yet more ignominious at the hands of a Norman Duke who could now hold his own independently alike of French and of Danish help. Varaville was seemingly an usual point for crossing into the lands on the right bank |Description of the spot.| of the river. The contrast between the two sides of the Dive is here very striking. On the left, the side of Varaville, the land is flat, and it was in those days doubtless a mere marsh. A causeway, which still exists, and which is maintained as a modern road, leads from the village to a point where the stream has for many ages been crossed by a bridge, but which, in the eleventh century, seems to have been known only as a ford.^[498] Here the French army was to pass over to the opposite side, the land of Auge. There, within the original settlement of Rolf, the country is of quite a different character. The right bank of the Dive is backed at a short distance by a range of hills of height considerable enough to form a very marked object in any country not strictly mountainous. They form in fact a bold and picturesque range, stretching right away to the seashore. Over these hills the army had to make its way into the rich land of Lisieux. |The French vanguard crosses the river.| The vanguard, under the command of the King, had already begun to climb the heights, when unexpected sounds from the rearward smote on their ears. From the high ground of Bastebourg,^[499] commanding a view of the whole valley, King Henry turned round only to behold the |William’s march.| utter discomfiture of his host. The Duke of the Normans had laid his plan with all the subtlety of his wily brain, and he was now carrying it out with all the might of his irresistible arm. He had watched the spot, he had watched the hour, which the enemy seem not to have watched, and he came upon them at the very moment when he was able to strike a deadly blow with most effect, and at the same time once more to avoid the necessity of meeting his lord face to face in battle. William knew every movement of the enemy; when the right time was come, he marched forth from Falaise with such troops as he had kept around him, and summoned all the peasantry of the district to join them. They came, armed as they were able to arm themselves, with clubs, darts, anything; no sort of warrior, no sort of weapon, was unfit to bear a part in the enterprise |Battle of Varaville. August, 1058.| which William now designed. He marched in stealth up the valley by Bavent, and reached Varaville in the very nick of time.^[500] The King and his vanguard were, as we have seen, far ahead; the long baggage train, rich with Norman spoil, and the whole rear-guard of the army, were still on the left bank. The tide was flowing in, and it soon became impossible to cross. The French stood in perplexity, one half of the army finding itself utterly cut off from the other half.^[501] In a moment Duke William was upon them. Every weapon known to Norman warfare was at once in its fullest activity; the lance and the sword of the knight on his destrier, the club and dart of the peasant on foot, |First mention of the Norman archers.| were all alike plied against the unlucky Frenchmen. And along with these older arms, we now hear for the first time of another weapon, destined to be, above all others, terrible and deadly upon a more awful field. For the first time in our story, the thunder-shower of the Norman arrows^[502] is heard of as carrying dismay and slaughter among the ranks of the enemy. And no enemy could well be more helpless than those on whom knights, archers, clubmen, were now called on to display their prowess. Encumbered as they were with their baggage train, huddled together on the long, narrow, neglected^[503] causeway, resistance |The French rear-guard cut to pieces.| was almost impossible. A desperate effort carried the foremost among them to the banks of the river; but, except to skilful swimmers, the ford was impassable because of the tide. Multitudes fell into the water and were drowned; the surface of the Dive was soon covered with floating bodies and harness.^[504] Others strove to escape how they might among the ditches and paths of the marshy shore. They cast away their weapons, and blundered on hopelessly through the unknown and treacherous country. The Normans, knowing the ground, followed, and cut them down without mercy. Of the whole rear-guard of the French army not a man is said to have escaped. All were slain, or taken captive, or swept away by the waters.

It must not be forgotten that all this went on under the eye of the King of the French—and doubtless of his Angevin ally also—who was looking down from the high ground which the vanguard had already reached. Beneath him in full view lay the plain, the causeway, the stream, the marshes, where the work of death was going on. Like Xerxes, Henry beheld his subjects cut in pieces before his eyes; but unlike Xerxes, he was at least eager to go to their help. The Norman poet tells us how the King saw his men speared and shot down, some struggling in the waters, some bound and borne off as captives.^[505] His limbs trembled, his face was hot with rage, he was eager and yet unable to strike a blow or take any step for the rescue of his unfortunate soldiers. In a moment of desperation he proposed to descend the hill, and to seek for some other spot where he might cross the river, and do something at least to avenge, if not to rescue, his rear-guard.^[506] But he had men around him who knew the hopelessness of |His retreat.| such an attempt. Their counsels persuaded him to submit to a fate which he could not resist, and to march with all speed out of the Norman land with the half of his army which was still left to him.

The battle, or rather massacre, of Varaville was the last act of the wars between William and Henry. The King was now growing old, and he might well think that he had had enough of Norman warfare. He presently brought himself to ask for peace, and to offer as its price the restoration of the famous fortress of which he had deprived William in his childhood. The terms were accepted; peace was made, and Tillières, so long lost to Normandy, became |Death of Henry. 1060.| once more a bulwark of the Norman frontier.^[507] Henry did not long survive this happy ending of this long struggle. Two years afterwards he died. His death was attributed to poison, seemingly accidentally administered.^[508] He left his Crown to an heir still under age. The mother of the new |His Russian marriage.| King had been brought from a distant land. Henry saw the difficulty of finding any wife among the princely houses of Western Europe who was not related to him within the forbidden degrees; he was specially warned by the troubles which his father had undergone through his first uncanonical marriage.^[509] He therefore sought for a bride in a land among whose princes there was little fear of any kindred or affinity with a King of the French. He married Anne, the daughter of the Russian Duke Yaroslaf.^[510] The princes of Russia boasted of a connexion with the Emperors of the East;^[511] and the happy ambiguity of the Macedonian name^[512] had led the great dynasty which was founded by a Slavonian groom to identify itself with the ancient Kings of Pella and Edessa. The Russian princess brought with her into France the ancient Macedonian name of Philip, and her son became the first of a long line of Kings, princes, and nobles, through whom a name hitherto unknown to Western Europe became one of |Coronation and accession of Philip the First. 1059–60.| the most renowned in French history. In the last year of his father’s lifetime, the young Philip was, according to several precedents, crowned at Rheims, and the ceremony was attended by most of the great vassals of his Kingdom.^[513] We do not however hear whether the Duke of the Normans so far honoured his youthful overlord as to make one of the illustrious assemblage. But the ties between Normandy and France were now for a time drawn much more closely than before. Henry had chosen the nearest ally of William as the guardian of his son and as the |Baldwin of Flanders Regent of France.| Regent of his Kingdom. During the minority of the young King, the government of the royal domain was placed in the hands of William’s father-in-law, the “mighty Marquess”^[514] of Flanders. Baldwin honourably fulfilled his trust towards France, and we need not say that he kept the peace towards Normandy.^[515]

The same year which beheld the death of King Henry beheld also the death of the most inveterate enemy of Normandy among his great vassals. The Angevin chroniclers significantly cut short the Norman warfare of Geoffrey Martel, a sure sign that, however much Norman vanity may have exaggerated in detail, the general result of the struggle cannot have been greatly misrepresented. |Last days and death of Geoffrey Martel. 1060.| Geoffrey’s last days seem to have been clouded over by ill-success in other quarters. He indeed recovered the city of Nantes from Hoel of Britanny.^[516] But we also read of his being besieged by his step-son, Peter or William of Poitiers, in the castle of Saumur, on the steep which looks down, not on the Varenne or on the Mayenne, but on the mighty Loire itself.^[517] The siege was raised through the sudden death of the Aquitanian prince,^[518] and we hear of no further |His dominions divided between his nephews, Geoffrey and Fulk Rechin.| exploit on the part of Geoffrey of the Hammer. On the day before his death he assumed the monastic habit,^[519] and, as he left no sons, he divided his dominions between the two sons of his sister Hermengarde, the wife of Alberic, Count of the Gatinois. To his namesake Geoffrey, surnamed the Bearded, he left Anjou and Saintogne, while Fulk Rechin, already known to us as one of our authorities for Angevin history, received the city and county of Tours.^[520] Normandy was thus delivered from both her enemies. In her next warfare we shall find her seeking, not merely to defend her borders, but to extend them.

It may be worth notice that the great invasion of Normandy which ended, so disastrously for the French, in the rout of Varaville, happened in the very year in which there is every reason to believe that Earl Harold made his remarkable journey to examine into the political state of Gaul.^[521] His inquiries might perhaps lead him to different conclusions, according as his visit happened before or after the utter discomfiture of Henry and Geoffrey. Yet the campaign of Varaville could do little more than add one more to the many proofs that William was a foe whom no |Harold’s possible negotiations.| enemy could afford to neglect. I have already hinted that the mysterious words of Eadward’s Biographer^[522] might perhaps be taken as implying that Harold sought the friendship, if not the actual alliance, of the King or of some of his great vassals, as a support in case of any hostile movements on the part of Normandy. If this be so, we may see in the almost contemporary deaths of so many French princes a reason why such negotiations bore |Changes in the aspect of Gaul by the deaths of Geoffrey Martel and King Henry.| no fruit. King Henry, Geoffrey Martel, William of Aquitaine, all died within two years after Harold’s journey. By their deaths the political state of Gaul was altogether changed, and changed in a direction altogether favourable to William of Normandy. William of Aquitaine was the only one of the three who had a successor at all likely to act as a check upon any designs of his Norman namesake. Guy, Geoffrey, or William, whichever we are to call the prince who made so hasty a flight from Moulins,^[523] was not likely to cherish much love for William of Normandy, but he seems to have been mainly occupied by wars with Anjou, and by an expedition into Spain, in which last, by some means or other, he was followed by Norman warriors.^[524] In any case his solitary help could be of little service. If Harold hoped to meet any attack on England on the part of William by a diversion in his rear in the form of a joint attack of his continental neighbours, the chance of organizing such a confederacy died with King Henry and Geoffrey Martel. Under the Regency of Baldwin the Court of Paris became the closest ally of Normandy, and the new Count of Anjou seems to have been fully occupied at home. We hear of him chiefly as engaged in asserting certain novel claims over the Abbey of Marmoutiers,^[525] and as having, at the very crisis of the fate of England, to defend his dominions against his brother Fulk.^[526] He was therefore by no means likely to bear a part in any schemes of policy which reached |England’s lack of continental allies.| as far as Britain.^[527] The death of the Emperor Henry a few years earlier had deprived England of another friend. She had in short no continental ally left except Swend of Denmark. I merely throw out these remarks as vague hints on a very obscure subject; but it certainly is striking that the intentionally mystified language of the Biographer should admit of an interpretation which falls in so well with the state of things at the particular moment of Harold’s journey.