§ 3. The War of Maine. 1060–1064

The main interest of this period of William’s reign gathers round his great conquest of the Cenomannian County and City. But before we enter on the narrative of that campaign, a few events in the internal history of his Duchy may be usefully cleared out of the way.

William was already beginning to show himself, in the words of the English Chronicler, beyond measure stark to all who withstood his will.^[528] The unrestrained exercise |Banishment of various Norman nobles.| of power seems to have wrought its usual bad effect. We now begin to find a prince who had hitherto been distinguished for clemency to rebellious enemies meting out, to say the least, somewhat hasty sentences against some of the chief men of his dominions. We presently find him giving ground for suspicions, unfounded as they doubtless were, that he had learned to stoop to the base trade of the poisoner.^[529] Several of his nobles were banished about this time, and every account seems to describe them as banished without just cause, through the false accusations of envious persons. Among these false accusers Roger of Montgomery and his wicked wife Mabel stand pre-eminent.^[530] The first recorded victim was Ralph of Toesny, whom we have seen as, according to one account, the bearer of the news of the defeat of Mortemer to the French King.^[531] He was banished; but he must have returned within a few years, and he had his share in the Conquest of England. We may say the same of Hugh of Grantmesnil, one of the joint founders of Saint Evroul.^[532] The banishment of Arnold of Escalfoy is not wonderful, as both he and his uncle Robert seem to have ventured on open rebellion. They seem even to have taken the Angevin side against their country, either in the wars which have been already described, or in some of the border skirmishes which no doubt still continued. Robert defended his castle against |Mysterious death of Robert the son of Geroy. 1060.| the Duke, and he died by a strange and suspicious death in the year which carried off King Henry and Count Geoffrey. He sat one day in a merry mood by his winter fire with his wife Adelaide, a kinswoman of the Duke. She had four apples in her hand; he snatched two from her in jest; he |Adventures and death of Arnold of Escalfoy. 1063.| ate of them and died.^[533] His nephew Arnold succeeded him, and for three years he carried on a devastating warfare in the neighbourhood of Lisieux.^[534] He then made peace with the Duke, on condition of going to the wars in Apulia.^[535] After a while he returned, but only to die by poison administered to him through the plots of the ruthless daughter of William Talvas.^[536]

Another person who now fell under the Duke’s displeasure was Robert of Grantmesnil, brother of Hugh, and co-founder, and now himself Abbot, of Saint Evroul. He was now deposed and banished by William. I forbear to enter on the interminable details of the negotiations for his restoration, from which I shrank at an earlier stage of my Norman history.^[537] But two points are of importance. It is made a distinct charge against William that he ventured to depose a churchman without the sentence of any ecclesiastical Synod, and seemingly without any form of trial at all.^[538] One account also distinctly says that the Duke’s motive was hostility to Robert’s family.^[539] It is hard to judge on such slight evidence; but it is to be noticed, on the one hand, that William’s special panegyrist is silent on the whole subject of these banishments, and on the other that William’s ecclesiastical government is the part of his character in which we should least readily look for an unworthy motive.

The fortunes of an Abbot bring us once more within the ecclesiastical circle. In the year after King Henry’s death, in a Synod held at Caen by the Duke’s authority, and attended by Bishops, Abbots, and Barons, it was ordered that a bell should be rung every evening, at hearing of which prayer should be offered, and all people should get within their houses and shut their doors.^[540] This odd mixture of piety and police seems to be the origin of the famous and misrepresented curfew. Whatever was its object, it was at least not ordained as any special hardship on William’s English subjects.

We now come to that great acquisition of William’s arms and policy which ranks in the annals of his reign next to the Conquest of England itself. The various fortunes, the takings and the retakings, of the city of Le Mans and its County, form a constantly recurring subject throughout the remaining history of William and of his sons. And the object struggled for was worthy of the |Old Norman claims over Maine.| struggle. The land and city over which William was now about to extend his long dormant claims was a prize which became one of the proudest jewels in his continental coronet. The Duke of the Normans, even the King of the English, thought it no scorn to add to those loftier titles a third which dated from this earlier conquest. |Beginning of Norman aggrandizement on the Continent.| As Prince or Count of the Cenomannians, William began the first of those stages of continental aggrandizement, which, before another century had passed, extended the sway of the sovereign of England and Normandy from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees, and made him master of the mouths of the Loire and the Garonne no less than of those of the Seine and the Thames. The work had been begun by the conquest of Domfront and Ambrières; it was now to be extended over the whole of the land which lies between |History of Maine.| Normandy and Anjou. A long history, princely, municipal, and episcopal, forms the annals of the Cenomannian |The ancient Cenomanni in Gaul and Italy.| state and city. The Cenomannian tribe^[541] was illustrious in the earliest legendary history of Gaul; it shares with the Senones the credit of that ancient colonization in Italy which brought Rome so near to her downfall.^[542] But it had no part in the actual beleaguering of Rome by the Senonian |Their close connexion with Rome.| Brennus. The Cenomanni beyond the Alps were ever found among the faithful allies of Rome, just as their mother state remains to this day proud of the relics of Roman dominion. Even during the storm of the Hannibalian War, the Cenomanni remained faithful to the Republic.^[543] Their metropolis is perhaps less prominent in the pages of Cæsar than we might have looked for; still the name |The Cenomanni of Gaul support Vercingetorix.| of the tribe occurs among those who sent their contingents to the host of Vercingetorix.^[544] Under the Roman domination, we are told that Cenomannia was among the first parts of Gaul to receive the Christian faith, and the local |Early preaching of Christianity.| legend traces that line of Bishops which became so famous in after days up to the very days of the Apostles. |Succession of Bishops of Le Mans.| In the days of Nerva and Trajan the Cenomannian Church was founded by Saint Julian, whose name still lives as the patron of the cathedral of Le Mans. Unlike most of his |Legend of Saint Julian.| apostolic brethren, the crown of martyrdom was not destined for him. He died in peace, having fully organized the local Church, and having been aided in all things by his convert the local Prince Defensor.^[545] In this last mythical personage we of course see a personification of the Defensores Civitatis, the local Tribunes, under the later |Special ecclesiastical and popular elements in the history of Maine.| Roman and early Frankish rulers.^[546] This early friendship between the Bishop and the local magistrate not inaptly prefigures a state of things with which William himself had to contend. The vast power of the local Church sometimes combined with the popular element of the city to |Maine under the Frankish Kings; a march against Bretons and Northmen.| withstand the more distant sovereign.^[547] I pass lightly over the days of the Merwings and the early Karlings. In those times the name of Cenomannia, city and district, appears over and over again, as a post of importance, an outpost against Breton enemies and afterwards against Scandinavian invaders.^[548] It was not uncommonly placed in the hands of members of the royal house.^[549] But these intermediate times do less to illustrate the events with which we are immediately concerned than the history or legends of the earliest days. These last, mythical as they may be, are at least happily invented to adorn the beginnings of a state which so long remained at once so intensely Roman and so intensely ecclesiastical.

The history of Maine and Le Mans with which we are immediately concerned begins in the tenth century. We have |Alleged grants to Rolf, 924; to Hugh the Great, 924; and to Geoffrey Grisegonelle, 978?| seen^[550] that the Norman Dukes put forward some shadow of a claim to Maine by virtue of a grant in the days of King Rudolf, at the same time that Rolf obtained his second grant, that of the district of Bayeux.^[551] But the chronicler who records this fact records also a grant of earlier date, but within the same year, to Hugh the Great of Paris.^[552] A grant to Geoffrey Grisegonelle of Anjou is also, on no less authority than that of Count Fulk Nerra himself, attributed, by some strange confusion of chronology, to King |Maine part of the Duchy of France.| Robert.^[553] On the whole, there can be little doubt that Maine formed a part of the great Duchy of France, and there is still less doubt as to the rivalry and hatred which reigned between the Angevin Counts and the dynasty which we find established in Maine towards the end of |Rivalry of the Counts and Bishops.| the tenth century. There is as little doubt as to the position of the local Bishops, always at variance, sometimes at war, with the local Counts, but keeping up a close connexion both with the King and with the |Count David. 922–970?| Counts of Anjou. I do not presume to decide whether the Hugh, the David, and the Hugh-David, whom we |955–1015?| hear of as reigning in Maine in the course of the tenth century, and as claiming a descent from Charles the Great, were really one prince, or two, or three.^[554] But there is no doubt that a Hugh, whether surnamed after the Hebrew King or not, was reigning late in the tenth and early in the eleventh century, and that he was the father of |Sainfred Bishop of Le Mans. 960–994.| the better known Count Herbert. He had great disputes with Bishop Sainfred of the house of Belesme, a Prelate of whom the chronicler of the Cenomanniam Bishops draws |Fulk Nerra overruns Maine. 987–994?| no favourable picture.^[555] He is charged with wasting the revenues of his see in grants to Fulk of Anjou and to Burchard Count of Vendôme, in order to gain their help against the nearer enemy.^[556] It was perhaps through the instigation of the Prelate that Fulk invaded Maine, and brought the land and its ruler into vassalage, if not into |Hugh escapes from Tillières. 996–1015.| actual subjection.^[557] Hugh appears also as an enemy of Normandy, as an ally of Odo of Chartres in an attempt on Tillières, and as escaping only by a mean disguise from the pursuit of its valiant defenders.^[558] This must have been towards the end of his days, as the foundation of Tillières |Herbert Wake-Dog Count 1015–1036.| comes within the reign of Richard the Good. The enmity between the temporal and spiritual chiefs of Maine went on during the reign of Hugh’s famous son Herbert, and |Avesgaud Bishop 994–1036.| during the long episcopate of Avesgaud, the nephew and successor of Sainfred, and like him a member of the border |Herbert wars with the House of Belesme.| house of Belesme.^[559] With that house, a house loyal to neither of its lords and terrible to all its neighbours, Count Herbert had much warfare, and we have come across more than one incidental mention of those wars, as affording scope for the valour and faithfulness of the house of Geroy.^[560] The impression given by these stories is that the mighty Lords Marchers found the Cenomannian |He disputes with Bishop Avesgaud.| Count at least their match. The ecclesiastical historian implies that this warfare began by William of Belesme coming to the help of his brother the Bishop. It is certain that Avesgaud had constantly to contend against Count Herbert both by temporal and by spiritual arms, and that he called in against him the help both of spiritual and of temporal allies. At one time we find him defending the stronghold of La Fertè Bernard^[561] against the Count, who could dislodge him only by the help of a Breton |Fulbert of Chartres excommunicates Herbert.| force obtained from Count Alan.^[562] At another time he called in the help of the holy Bishop Fulbert of Chartres, the great letter-writer of the age, who, on what principle of ecclesiastical law it is not easy to see, addressed an epistle of excommunication to the Count of Maine, which brought about a temporary peace.^[563] But Herbert was not afraid to measure himself against a much more dangerous enemy. It was in warfare against Fulk of Anjou, whose authority he cast aside, that he won his surname of |His name of Wake-Dog, from his nightly raids against Anjou.| Wake-Dog.^[564] So constant were the nightly raids of Count Herbert that, not only in the open country, in the flat land of Anjou, but in the fortified towns of the province, nay in the city itself, in Black Angers on its steep by the Mayenne, men and dogs were ever on the alert, and ventured not to slumber.^[565] These exploits must belong to the later years of his reign; for, at its beginning, |His share in the battle of Pontlevois. 1016.| we find him acting as an ally or vassal of Anjou at the battle of Pontlevois against Odo of Chartres.^[566] Indeed the Angevin writers allow that the victory on their side was in a great measure owing to the courage and conduct of |Fulk imprisons Herbert at Saintes. 1026–1028.| Herbert and his followers.^[567] Ten years later, we find Fulk, according to the approved custom of his house, dealing with Herbert much as his son dealt with Theobald of Chartres and with William of Aquitaine.^[568] He beguiled him into a visit at Saintes, and there kept him in ward two years till he agreed to the hard conditions on which liberty was offered.^[569] After an active reign of twenty-one years, Herbert died. His daughter Biota became the wife of Walter of Mantes, the elder son of Drogo and |Hugh. (1035–1051).| Godgifu, and nephew of King Eadward of England.^[570] His young son Hugh succeeded him in the County of Maine, |Regency of Herbert Bacco.| seemingly under the guardianship of a great uncle, Herbert Bacco.^[571] Bishop Avesgaud died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and was succeeded in the almost hereditary Bishoprick |Gervase Bishop. 1036–1058.| by his nephew Gervase.^[572] This Prelate was the godfather of the young Count, and he is described as his defender against his faithless uncle as well as the defender |He commends the Bishoprick to Geoffrey of Anjou.| of the rights of his own see.^[573] He took one step however than which none could be more fatal, and one which illustrates the peculiar position of the Bishoprick. It would seem that, after all the grants that had been made of the temporal sovereignty of Maine, the royal rights over the Church of Le Mans were still in the hands of the King. Whether he held them strictly as King, or as Duke of the French, was now no longer a practical question.^[574] In either case the Bishop still held, not of the local Count but of his overlord at Paris. In short, throughout the territories which had formed part of the Duchy of France, the surrender of the royal rights, especially in ecclesiastical matters, was by no means so complete as it was in the great Duchies north and south of the royal dominions.^[575] The Count of Anjou or of Maine did not, after all, possess the same undivided and uninterrupted sovereignty within his own states which belonged to the Duke of the Normans. Bishop Gervase, a vassal of the King, unable to defend himself against his neighbour the Count or the Count’s guardian, receiving no help from his own lord, petitioned the King to grant the royal rights over the see, the rights of advocacy and |Herbert Bacco driven out and Hugh restored.| patronage, to the Count of Anjou for life.^[576] The grant was made; greater strife than before arose between the Bishop and the guardian uncle; a popular movement, headed by the Prelate, expelled Herbert Bacco, and restored the young Count Hugh to his lawful rights.^[577] The Prelate’s next business was to seek, like Jehoiada of old, a wife for the prince whom he had taken under his |Marriage of Hugh.| guardianship. He found one in the sister of Count Theobald,^[578] the widow of that Count Alan of Britanny whom we have seen die of poison while besieging a Norman castle.^[579] The marriage was supposed to be in some way dangerous to the interests of the Count of Anjou, and Martel now poured forth his whole wrath upon the |Bishop Gervase imprisoned by Geoffrey Martel. 1044–1051.| Bishop who had advised it. By some of his usual tricks, he gained possession of the Bishop’s person, and kept him in prison for seven years. As was usual with the prisoners of an Angevin Count, he had the option of obtaining his liberty by the surrender of some part of his possessions. The ransom demanded by Geoffrey was the surrender of a strong castle which was valiantly defended by the |His liberation demanded by the Council of Rheims. 1049.| Bishop’s soldiers.^[580] A demand of the Council of Rheims for the liberation of the Prelate had no effect on the obdurate mind of Geoffrey.^[581] Gervase seems all this while to have looked forward to deliverance through his godson, we can hardly say his sovereign, the Count of Maine. But at last he heard that Hugh was dead, |Geoffrey Martel occupies Le Mans. 1051–1061.| that Geoffrey had taken possession of Le Mans, that the citizens had received him joyfully, and had driven out the widow and children of Hugh.^[582] Gervase now thought it was time to yield; he gave up his castle, |Release of Gervase; he takes refuge in Normandy. 1061.| but even now he only obtained his freedom on condition of never setting foot in his own city during Geoffrey’s life-time.^[583] Banished in this way, he sought for shelter at the court of the Duke of the Normans.^[584] It does not seem that William actively interfered on his behalf, but he gave him an honourable reception, and retained him as his guest, till a prospect was opened to the homeless Prelate of obtaining at once a higher and a more peaceful position |Gervase Archbishop of Rheims.| among the Prelates of Gaul. While Gervase tarried in Normandy, the primatial see of Rheims became vacant by the death of its Archbishop Guy. Gervase now obtained the first place among the Prelates and Princes of the Parisian Kingdom, and it fell to his lot to pour the oil of Remigius and Hlodwig on the head of the youthful Philip.^[585]

The affairs of Normandy and Maine have now become directly connected, and the connexion between the two countries becomes closer at every moment. The death of Geoffrey seemed to open to Herbert a chance of recovering the dominions which he had never possessed.^[586] The years during which Le Mans was occupied by Geoffrey had been spent by the widow and children of Hugh in some part of |Herbert’s three sisters.| Germany.^[587] Besides Herbert, Hugh had three daughters, whose marriages and betrothals are of no small moment in the history. One, Gersendis, was first married to Theobald of Chartres.^[588] By him she was divorced, and this divorce |Gersendis, married, 1st, to Theobald of Chartres; 2nd, to Azo of Liguria.| was one of the many irregularities in that way which called down the censures of Pope Leo and the Fathers of Rheims.^[589] She then made a more splendid alliance beyond the Alps. She became the second wife of the famous Azo, Marquess of Este and Liguria, renowned in his own day for his wealth, his good fortune, and for attaining, though not till long after the marriage and the death of Gersendis, the age of a hundred years.^[590] By his first wife Cunegund he became the ancestor of the House of Brunswick, and the children of Gersendis of Maine produced the long line of Lords, Marquesses, and Dukes of Ferrara and Modena. How this marriage affected the history of Maine, of Normandy, and of England, we shall Another sister mother of Helias of La Flèche. |Another sister mother of Helias of La Flèche.| see at a later stage. Another sister married John of La Flèche, and by him became the mother of three sons. One of them bore the familiar Teutonic name of Gilbert; the two others were honoured with the patriarchal appellations of Enoch and Elijah, and the bearer of the last name, under the modified form of Helias or Helie, plays an important |Margaret.| part in the history of the next generation.^[591] Margaret, the other daughter, who must have been many years younger than Gersendis, and of whose beauty and virtues we read rapturous descriptions, was still unmarried.^[592] Herbert now |Herbert applies to Duke William. 1061.| addressed himself to the Duke of the Normans. William’s own days of trial and persecution were now over; he had come forth honourably out of all his difficulties; he had smitten all his enemies at home and abroad; he was now well fitted to appear either as a protector or as a conqueror. Moreover he was actually in possession of part of the Cenomannian County; all his conquests up to this time, Domfront, Ambrières, and the Rock of Mabel,^[593] had been made at what might be called the expense of Herbert himself. There was no great chance of recovering them from the prince who had so vigorously clutched the straw at the moment of his birth,^[594] and who in his later days as firmly refused to take off his clothes before he went to bed. But, at any rate, more might be gained by way of submission |He commends himself to William.| than by way of aggression. Herbert therefore commended^[595] himself to William; he became his man; he engaged to hold Maine as a fief of Normandy, according to the ancient grant which Rolf had received from King Rudolf.^[596] Special terms, all favourable to the lord, were attached to the |Terms of the homage; William to have Maine, if Herbert died childless, and Margaret to marry Robert.| homage. If Herbert died childless, Duke William’s lordship was to be converted into immediate sovereignty; the Duke of the Normans was to become the Count of the Cenomannians.^[597] But, in order that the principality might still remain to the descendants of its ancient lords, Herbert’s sister Margaret was to be given in marriage to William’s young son Robert.^[598] William himself would thus be the only interloper; Robert would reign in right of his wife, and in the next generation, a descendant, if only in the female line, of Herbert Wake-Dog would again rule upon the steep of Le Mans.^[599]

Whether Herbert ever obtained actual possession of his new fief does not certainly appear. If he did, his enjoyment |Herbert dies childless. 1063.| of it was very short. Within two years he died, and died childless. By the terms of the treaty, Maine now passed to William. According to Norman accounts, Herbert’s last breath was spent in asserting the rights of the Norman Duke, and in exhorting his friends and subjects to seek for no other as their lord. Almost forestalling the words of the English Chronicler, he warned them that the yoke of William would be light to those who accepted |Unwillingness of Maine to submit to William.| it willingly, but heavy indeed to those who dared to withstand him.^[600] But the mass of the people of city and county were of another mind. They doubted the lightness of the Norman yoke in any case.^[601] And the treaty between Herbert and William had sacrificed the rights of several members of Herbert’s family. Herbert had, as he hoped, secured the succession to the descendants of one of his sisters. But no such descendants were in being; Robert and Margaret were not married, nor seemingly even betrothed, at the time of his death. There was therefore no sort of security that, if William were once admitted, the County would ever return to the descendants of its ancient lords. Then again, though Herbert had left no male heir, he had kinsfolk in the female line whose rights were as good as those of the unborn posterity of Margaret. We read of no movements at this time on behalf either of the Marquess of Liguria or of the Lord of La Flèche, the claims of both |The patriotic party assert the rights of Walter and Biota.| of whom were pressed in after times. But a strong party, the patriotic party, as it would seem, throughout the province, asserted the rights of Herbert’s aunt Biota and of her husband Walter of Mantes, the nephew of Eadward of England. The city was held for them by several of the chief lords of the country, among whom we hear specially of Hubert of Saint-Susanna, and of Geoffrey of Mayenne, of whom we have already heard in the wars between Anjou and Normandy.^[602] The citizens seem to have been on the same side. Of the Bishop, for once in Cenomannian history, we hear nothing. The line of Bishops of the fierce house of Belesme had come to an end, and the line of eminent Prelates appointed under |Bishop Vulgrin. 1058–1059.| Norman rule had not yet begun. The reigning Bishop Vulgrin was a good, prudent, and peaceful monk, whose monastic virtues had been proved by his reform of the Abbey of Saint Sergius without the walls of Angers,^[603] and whose chief object at Le Mans was to rebuild the church of Saint Julian on a greater scale.^[604] In this revolution then the ecclesiastical power seems to have been neutral, while nobles and citizens were united for Count Walter and against the Norman.

A struggle therefore could not be avoided. William was the least likely of all men tamely to give up either a real or a fancied right, or even to pass by a decent pretext for extending his power. Maine was to be conquered. But William was no more disposed to hurry in |His measures at home.| the business of conquest than in any other business. He began by healing a few wounds at home. It was now that he called back from banishment Hugh of Grantmesnil and Ralph of Toesny,^[605] men whose offences were very doubtful, and whose services in the war were likely to be useful. It was now also that he made that agreement with Arnold of Escalfoy, by which that turbulent spirit |His plans for the campaign.| was sent off to the wars in Apulia.^[606] The plan of the campaign was thoroughly characteristic. William saw that the prize must be his in the long run. Maine alone could not resist Normandy, and Walter’s chance of finding allies was just now not great. William’s panegyrist tells us—and we have no reason to doubt the fact—that he was anxious to win his conquest with the least possible amount of bloodshed.^[607] It was a policy still more obvious to forbear to destroy or damage a noble city which he designed to be one of the chief jewels of his coronet. And it was only reasonable military foresight to avoid the risk of a rash attack on a strong fortress which might be won in |He determines to harry the country and to keep the attack on the city for the last.| another way.^[608] The city was the main object; we see throughout that the capital was in a special manner the head of the province, that Le Mans was Maine in a sense in which Rouen certainly was not Normandy.^[609] The city then was reserved by William to be the last object of attack. But the city was strongly defended by Geoffrey of Mayenne, whom Walter had made his chief adviser, and who seems to have been equally in the confidence of the citizens.^[610] A hasty attack might have seriously jeoparded the success of William’s plans. His course therefore was to impoverish, and at the same time to frighten, the besiegers by a systematic harrying of the whole country. Vineyards, fields, detached houses, were everywhere |The country gradually subdued.| ravaged; the smaller fortified posts of the province were taken one by one; garrisons were left wherever they were called for by the scheme of the campaign;^[611] the capital was left to be devoured the last. This mode of warfare gradually wore out the patience, as it weakened the resources, of the defenders of the city. At last, when well nigh every other fortress of Maine had come into |The city reduced to surrender.| William’s hands,^[612] the citizens were reduced to submit to a surrender, and William found himself in a position to enter the city at whose possession he had been so long aiming, as a conquest won without a battle or a siege.

The city into which William had now to make his triumphal entry was one which might have added fresh lustre even to an Imperial diadem. In his day it was a possession which could hardly be overvalued as a strong military post, as the centre of a rich and flourishing province, as a city itself rich and flourishing, according to the standard of those times. To us it is mainly attractive as a spot on which the history of a long series of ages, before and after the days of William, is still legibly written. Le Mans is one of a type of cities which is spread over a great part of Gaul, but to which England, and even Normandy, can present but feeble approaches. A steep hill rises abruptly above the river Sarthe to the west, and somewhat less abruptly above the lower ground to the east. The ground also falls away in the like sort to the south, while the hill is continued in the higher ground to the north, of which it forms the natural termination. The height, therefore, though washed by the river on one side only, does in effect assume a sort of peninsular shape. Like most elevated sites of towns, the rise of the ground is such as would not be remarkable in a hill whose sides were covered with verdure or forest, but it is quite enough to make the post strongly defensible, and to make the streets of the still existing city steep and hard of ascent. |Growth of the Gaulish hill-fort into the Roman, the mediæval, and the modern city.| This point, like so many points of the same kind, had, in unrecorded days, become the site of a Gaulish hill-fort, and the Gaulish hill-fort had, as usual, grown into a Roman city. The name of the universal conquerors still dwells there, and the most ancient quarter of the city is still traditionally known as La vieille Rome. The original Gaulish rampart was, in the later days of the Empire, exchanged, at the bidding of the great Constantine, for a wall of Roman masonry, large portions of which still remain. They show how small a part of the existing town was covered by the famous city of old. The Roman wall still fences in only the higher ground; the fortifications were not brought down to the river till Cenomannia had, in the thirteenth century, been constrained to bow to Paris. Two great monasteries lay, as usual, without the walls. They were placed at the foot of the hill on either side, one of them even lay beyond the river. The growth of the modern city has embraced both, leaving the ancient fortified circuit as a venerable acropolis, retaining its place even now as the ecclesiastical and municipal hearth of the city. To the west the city still presents a stately front to the river. Walls and houses, the dwellings of priests and citizens, still showing, in their rich and early work, the importance of both classes in the Cenomannian state, still rise, stage above stage, up to the highest ridge crowned |The Palace of the Counts.| by the two dominant buildings of the city. To the south-east, on the Roman wall itself, incorporating within itself the very fortifications of the elder Empire, stood, and still stands, the palace of the ancient rulers, the Hughs |The Cathedral.| and the Herberts of Cenomannia. In the north-east corner of the original city, rose the Minster of Saint Julian, the cathedral church of that famous Bishoprick. That soaring apse, which the glories even of Beauvais and Amiens can hardly surpass, had not as yet demanded the sacrifice of that portion of the ancient rampart which hindered the full developement of the mighty temple. Even the stately nave, so strangely attached to the later and loftier choir, itself one of the works in which the builders of the twelfth century aimed most successfully at reproducing the gorgeous foliage of Rome and Corinth, had not as yet assumed its present shape. But the earlier temple out of which it was as it were hewn, whose masonry bespeaks, not the deliberate imitation, but the immemorial retention of Roman forms, was a work of William’s age, and its earliest portions were probably slowly rising at the |William’s “Joyeuse Entrée” at Le Mans.| time of William’s conquest.^[613] The stern and massive portal which still forms its principal approach, may well have been the one through which the procession swept, which went forth singing hymns and swinging censers, to welcome the prince who had won the city without shedding the blood of friend or foe.^[614] With equal joy, real or pretended, men of all ranks in the city went forth to greet the conqueror; shouts of applause met the ear of William as he entered; men knelt as he drew near, and hailed the Duke of the Normans as the lawful lord of Le Mans. |Walter consents to the surrender.| Walter, putting the best face upon the matter, agreed to the surrender with apparent willingness. William had neither motive nor temptation to further harshness. He took peaceful possession of his conquest, but he took care to guard it after the ordinary fashion of a Norman conqueror. |William builds a castle near the cathedral.| In the north-western angle of the city, near the point where William, advancing from his own Duchy, had doubtless made his triumphal entry, a Norman donjon now rose in dangerous neighbourhood to the minster and to the dwelling of its Prelate. So near were the two buildings that, in later days, the towers which, as at Exeter and Geneva, formed the finish of the transepts were deemed to be a standing menace to the royal fortress. Of these towers the reign of William’s immediate successor has a strange tale to tell.^[615] They have however left more speaking traces behind them than the fortress which was now the outward trophy of William’s victory. While Le Mans can still boast such splendid remains of the works both of earlier and of later days, the politic devastation of the seventeenth century has left only a few shapeless fragments of wall to bear witness to the former being of the castle with which the Conqueror sought to curb the lofty spirit of the city which was as yet his noblest conquest.^[616]

Le Mans then was won, and with Le Mans the whole Cenomannian land formally passed into the hand of the conqueror.^[617] The rival pretender to the County had given up his claims, for fear, we are told, lest in seeking what was another’s he should lose his own. While the harrying of Maine had been going on, other Norman bands had crossed another part of the frontier, and had carried havoc through Walter’s original possessions of Mantes and Chaumont.^[618] |Death of Walter and Biota.| He and his wife soon disappear from the scene. We have no trustworthy details of their death, but rumour affirmed |William charged with poisoning them.| that both of them died by poison. In the mouths of William’s enemies, rumour further added that the poison was administered to them by William’s order, when they were his guests in his own castle at Falaise. This is one of those occasions on which the remark must be again repeated that the charge of secret poisoning is one which it is easy to bring and hard to disprove. In this case the charge is certainly not brought home to William by any direct evidence. It seems indeed to rest on nothing better than the wild assertions of William’s enemies at a drunken revel.^[619] To stoop to a crime of this kind, which admitted of no defence, and which could be cloked by no self-delusion, seems to me to be quite inconsistent with a character like William’s, in which, among all its darker features, a certain regard to the first principles of morality, a distinct element of the fear of God, was never wholly wanting. I venture therefore to dismiss the tale as simply part of that stock of uncertified scandal of which William’s age was so fruitful.

One enemy had however still to be brought into subjection before William could boast that he was undisputed master of the whole Cenomannian land. Geoffrey of Mayenne, the brave defender of Le Mans, seems to have refused to have any share in the surrender of the city; he had withdrawn so as not to be a witness of William’s triumphal entry; he had been often summoned, but he had neglected every summons, to appear and do a vassal’s duty to his new sovereign.^[620] Such an enemy was one of whom it was manifestly fitting to make an example. Call him rebel or patriot as we will, Geoffrey of Mayenne was the sort of man with whom it did not suit William’s purposes to put up with for a moment. If the Duke knew when to delay, he also knew when to hasten. He had won Le Mans without a blow; he had gained his point more easily by bringing a gradual process of terror and distress to bear on the minds of its defenders. No such process would answer with a single determined enemy. It was for the new Lord of Maine to show, once for all, that no man in his |William besieges Mayenne. 1063.| new dominion could resist him with impunity. The Duke therefore led his forces at once against Geoffrey’s town and fortress of Mayenne.^[621] The castle was strong, and men deemed an assault to be an hazardous undertaking.^[622] But the prince to whom Domfront and Alençon and Arques had yielded, who had himself carried the bulwarks of his own Falaise by sheer strength of onslaught,^[623] was not to be baffled by works which were at least not stronger than |Description of the place.| those of so many famous fortresses. The position of the castle of Mayenne is one which bears more likeness to that of Alençon^[624] than to that of Falaise or Domfront. It is no Gaulish hill-fortress which has grown by degrees into a Roman and into a modern city. The town of Mayenne stands on both sides of the river from which it takes its name, a river of far greater width than the maternal beck at Falaise or even than the Varenne at Domfront. It may well be that the light craft of the Northmen, who so long harassed the shores and islands of the Loire and its tributaries, may have made their way even to this inland post. At all events, the main point in the fortification of Mayenne was to secure the river. The town covers the steep slopes on either side, and the right^[625] bank of the stream still washes the walls of the castle. No buildings now remain which can have witnessed the wars of William and Geoffrey, but the later castle evidently occupies the ancient site. A noble range of bastions rising above the stream, a miniature as it were of the mighty pile of dark and frowning Angers, contrasts well with the steep and narrow streets of the town itself, with the varied and eccentric outline of the great church of Our Lady, and with the thick woods which still overshadow the river close up to the buildings of the town. The greater part of the modern town lies on the right bank, and in William’s time, when Mayenne was less a town than a military post, it was doubtless this part alone, as in the elder Angers, that was encompassed by a wall.^[626] But the date of the church of Saint Martin beyond the river shows that, as at Angers, the opposite shore must, at this time, or soon after, have become the site of a populous suburb. To a modern and non-military eye, the site of Mayenne, which could easily be commanded from the higher ground above, does not seem so formidable as that of other places which had yielded to William’s arms; but it must be remembered that, before the invention of cannon, a fortress did not suffer as it now does by being open to the missiles of the enemy. No more striking instance of this difference can be found than in the long resistance which William himself met with before the river fortress of Brionne.^[627] At all events, Mayenne is spoken of as a post well defended by the river on one side and by both nature and art on the other, and which was looked on as almost hopeless to carry by |Difficulties of the siege.| assault. Horse and foot, lances, swords, and arrows, the ram and the catapult themselves, were all, we are told, deemed useless.^[628] Famine alone could be looked to for the reduction of the impregnable fortress.^[629] One only hope of |The Normans fire the town.| immediate success presented itself. Fire at least was at hand, and fire was a weapon with which the Normans were always ready. By the Duke’s order, flaming materials of some sort were hurled over the walls of the town.^[630] As ever happened among the wooden houses of those times, the flames spread fast, and did their work fully as well as the sword.^[631] The defenders of the town walls and town gates left their posts to rescue, as far as might be, their own houses and goods. The Normans rushed in with a loud and joyful shout. The spoils were abundant; horses, arms, household stuff of every kind, were found in plenty. And all was, by |The castle surrenders. Probable absence of Geoffrey.| the liberality of the Duke, given up to his soldiers.^[632] The town was thus taken, and the next day the castle surrendered.^[633] This speedy surrender, as well as some other expressions of our historian, might lead us to think that Geoffrey himself was not present in person.^[634] Of his |His later history. 1073–1098.| immediate fate we hear nothing; but, thirty years later, either himself, or perhaps a son of the same name, again played an important part in Cenomannian history.^[635] The town was restored by William;^[636] a garrison was left in the castle; the Duke and his army went home rejoicing,^[637] and the few who still ventured to hold up their heads against him within his new dominions soon submitted.^[638]

The fate of one person has still to be spoken of. The house of the Counts of Maine might seem to have lain under a ban of fate. Herbert, Walter, Biota, had all been swept away.^[639] It may strengthen the belief that William had no hand in their removal when we find that they were soon followed to the grave by a member of the same house whom William had no possible motive to destroy, but rather every possible motive to keep alive. Herbert had died before the marriage of his sister with the Duke’s |Margaret brought from Germany.| son could be carried out. William now sent for her from her German shelter, meaning to bring her up in his own land as the bride of its future sovereign. On account of her youth, the actual marriage was put off for a while, and the fair and pious Margaret was entrusted to the care of discreet persons of both sexes.^[640] Before the time for the |Her death.| marriage came, the bride was no more.^[641] The tale is told of her, as it is told of one of William’s own daughters, that she shrank from the prospect of an earthly bridegroom, and prayed to be released from so hard a necessity.^[642] After her death, as in the case of so many saints, a hair-shirt was found on her, with which, young as she was, she had already learned to bring the flesh into subjection.^[643] The body thus early inured to austerity found its last home in the minster of Fécamp, which, along with other churches of her adopted country, she had already learned to love and honour.^[644]

The conquest of Maine is one of the most important events in the life of William. It stands second only to the Conquest of England. It was in truth William’s first great appearance in the character of the Conqueror, it was a sort of prelude to the still greater work which he had to do beyond the sea. The two events indeed have a direct connexion. William’s rival for the possession of Maine was, if not an English Ætheling, yet the grandson of an English King, a possible, though not a likely, competitor for the English Crown.^[645] But the conquest of Maine connects itself with the conquest of England in a more instructive way than through the fact that Walter of Mantes was the son of a daughter of Æthelred. The |Analogies between the two.| circumstances of the two conquests are strangely alike, and the earlier and lesser success may well have served both as a happy omen and as an actual school for the later and greater enterprise. In each case, William took possession of a land, at once against the will of its inhabitants, and to the prejudice of members of the reigning family. In each case, William trampled alike on hereditary right and on popular election. But in neither ease was it the mere brute force of the sword which he opposed to them. Those wonderful arts by which he deceived others, by which he most likely deceived even himself, in the matter of England, were practised with almost equal skill, though in a narrower field, in the matter of Maine. In the case of Maine, as in the case of England, William contrived to give his claims an aspect of strict legality. In both cases he could allege a bequest of a reigning sovereign; in both cases he could allege an act of homage done by a rival: in both cases a marriage, which in neither case ever took effect, was designed to connect William’s house with the house of the rival who thus became his vassal. The circumstances indeed differed in the two stories; the parts in the two dramas were differently arranged. In the Cenomannian version, the bequest of Eadward and the homage of Harold are both united in the person of Herbert. The part of Harold is therefore divided between Herbert and Walter, or rather between Herbert and the valiant Geoffrey of Mayenne. Such differences will always occur, for no events in history exactly reproduce one another. But in each story we see the bequest, the commendation, the intended marriage. In each the conquest is made to take the shape of a legal claim, which is unavoidably backed by force. In each the conqueror contrives to be received with at least the outward consent of the conquered. The two stories are so like one another that we may be sure that the likeness was present to the keen and busy mind of the hero of both. While winning Maine, William was, beyond all doubt, planning how he might win England. He was feeling his way; he was learning his trade; he was practising his prentice hand in the great arts of diplomacy and invasion. It is therefore not only the mere probable chronological sequence, but a close connexion in the subjects themselves, which leads us directly from William’s Cenomannian conquest to the subject of the last section of the Chapter, to the visit of Earl Harold to the Norman Court, and to the memorable oath, whatever was its exact nature, which he is alleged to have plighted to the Norman Duke.