§ 5. William’s Negotiations with Foreign Powers

The alliance with Tostig was a mere episode. The banished Earl could only be useful so far as he was likely to make a diversion of which William might take advantage. The Duke’s serious business lay on the continent. He invited soldiers from every quarter; the spoils of England were promised as their reward, and that promise brought abundance of volunteers from all parts of Gaul, from the royal domains, from Britanny, from Poitou and Aquitaine, and from the more distant land of Burgundy.^[876] Some accounts even bring men to William’s muster from the Norman colonies in Southern Italy.^[877] The presence of large bodies of these mercenaries or volunteers from all parts of Romance-speaking Europe is an undoubted fact, and it is |The Conquest not a national Norman enterprise.| one which it is most important to bear in mind. There can be no greater mistake than to look on William’s invasion as a national Norman undertaking, or on his army as consisting wholly of native Normans. We have just seen that it was only as volunteers that William’s own subjects followed him, and as volunteers men of any nation who chose to join him followed him equally. But it is a speaking witness, alike to William’s personal capacity for rule and to the inherent superiority of the Norman national character, that all this mixed multitude should have received a thoroughly Norman impress. The |Norman character impressed on the whole.| spoils of England were offered to all who would come, and from a large part of Europe men flocked eagerly to share them. But the head and the heart of the whole enterprise was Norman. The leaders of the enterprise, the Duke himself and most of the chief commanders, |Few foreign princes served; the mass of the foreign troops mere adventurers.| were Norman. A few princes or men of princely houses, like Eustace of Boulogne and Alan of Britanny, commanded their contingents in person. But the mass of the foreigners were mere adventurers, and we shall find that, when the day of battle came, they served under a Norman commander. We are indeed told that men came from all lands, not only for the sake of plunder, but to maintain the righteous cause of William.^[878] It is likely enough that, when the Papal approval was once given to the enterprise, men pressed, as they did in after years to the Crusade, to atone for past acts of robbery and slaughter by renewing them with the Church’s blessing. But all that redeemed William’s enterprise from being an enterprise of mere brigandage came from the presence of his own subjects. The instinct of mankind is right, after all, in looking on the Conquest as a Norman Conquest. It was the native Normans who were really foremost in the strife, and it was the native Normans who took the firmest root in the conquered land. William’s true strength lay, after all, in the gallant men who could at least boast of the comparatively ennobling motive that they were supporting their native sovereign in the pursuit of his fancied rights.

The share then, numerically a very important share, taken in the expedition by foreign adventurers is beyond all doubt. But the negotiations between William and the neighbouring potentates are involved in no small obscurity and contradiction.^[879] It was William’s manifest interest to obtain, if not the active alliance, at any rate the neutrality of all his neighbours. It was necessary for his purpose to feel as secure as he could make himself that no French or Angevin or Breton invasion of Normandy would take place during his absence. It was also an important subsidiary object to obtain from the neighbouring princes full licence for their subjects to take a share in the enterprise. For these |His embassy to King Henry. Condition of Germany and the Empire. 1056–1066.| objects he sent embassies as far as Germany and Denmark. The great Emperor Henry the Third had been, as I need hardly repeat, the constant ally of England. But he had now been dead ten years, and the childhood and youth of his son, the young King Henry, was a time of distress and confusion for the Teutonic Kingdom. The minority |Comparison between the minorities of William and of Henry the Fourth.| of Henry had been, in many points, a repetition of the minority of William. But there was one marked difference between the German and the Norman period of chaos. William had been constantly exposed to the attacks of traitors, and of foreign enemies who sought to deprive him of his coronet and his life. Henry had not as yet had to fear either foreign invaders or home-bred rebels; he was simply passed to and fro between the hands of several ambitious men who sought to reign in his name. And it is an instructive mark of the difference between the political systems of Germany and Normandy that the men who sought to rule in Henry’s name were almost wholly the great spiritual Princes of the Empire. While still a child, he had been, by |1062.| a mixture of craft and violence, transferred from the care of his mother to that of Hanno Archbishop of Köln,^[880] and |1063.| from the hands of Hanno he had passed into those of another princely churchman, the famous Adalbert of Bremen.^[881] The young King was now perhaps just beginning in some degree to exercise a will of his own. |1065.| He had, in the course of the last year, been girded with |1066.| the sword of knighthood;^[882] and this very year had witnessed the fall of Adalbert and the partial restoration of the power |No mention of the Norman embassy in German writers.| of Hanno.^[883] But, full as the German writers are as to the reign of Henry the Third and the minority of Henry the Fourth, they tell us absolutely nothing as to any relations between the Empire and Normandy.^[884] William is not spoken of by them till after he had obtained the Crown of England.^[885] From Norman sources we seem to hear both of an alliance with the great Emperor himself and of a later alliance entered into during his son’s minority.^[886] Such an alliance in the Emperor’s life-time, ten years or more back, need not have been in any way directed against England. |Possible influence of the Empress Agnes in favour of Normandy.| And an alliance with Normandy during the earliest years of King Henry, while he was still under his mother’s guardianship, might seem no unlikely object of his mother’s policy. The Empress Agnes, it must be remembered, was a member of that house of Poitiers which had suffered so deeply at the hands of Geoffrey of Anjou,^[887] and she might very naturally seek to maintain or to renew a connexion with a power which was the strongest enemy of the enemy of her own family. But, at the time which we have now reached, the power of Agnes had wholly passed away; alliance with Normandy moreover now meant hostility to England; and it is utterly impossible to see what interest either the young King or his successive archiepiscopal advisers could have in supporting the claims of William against the claims of |German help said to be promised to William.| Harold. Our Norman informant however describes Henry as, in high-sounding but somewhat vague terms, committing his Kingdom to an active support to the Norman side.^[888] This again, strange as it sounds, can hardly be sheer invention, though we instinctively suspect exaggeration |Probable state of the case.| in no small degree. It may be enough if we suppose that Henry or his counsellors agreed to put no hindrance in the way of such subjects of the Empire as might choose to join the Norman standard as volunteers.

The negotiations with Swend of Denmark again rest wholly on Norman authority. We are told that the Danish King promised help to William, which promise he was so far from keeping that he sent a large body of troops to the support of Harold.^[889] With this latter statement I shall deal in its proper place. As for negotiations between William and Swend, they are perfectly possible. |Position and interests of Swend.| But it is hard to see what interest Swend could have had in supporting William. Swend was the cousin of Harold, and, though Godwine had resisted his claims on the English Crown, alliance with him as King of the Danes had always formed part of the Earl’s policy.^[890] If Swend at this time cherished any hopes of the English Crown, the succession of William stood far more directly in the way of those hopes than the succession of Harold. Nothing could be a more complete hindrance to any schemes of the kind than the transfer of the Crown to a wholly alien invader. On the other hand, Swend’s chances were distinctly bettered by the transfer of the Crown to a dynasty of which he might almost count as a member. If then Swend had really determined to interfere in English affairs, we may be sure that his intervention would have been on the side of Harold and not on the side of William. But it is far more probable that the wariest prince in Europe promised neutrality and kept it.

Even the negotiations of William with princes much nearer home are wrapped up in no small obscurity. One manifest object was to insure the safety of his frontier in the direction of Paris. William’s close connexion with Baldwin of Flanders, and the guardianship exercised by Baldwin over the young King Philip, might seem enough to make matters tolerably safe on that side. If Baldwin’s affinity with William did not absolutely secure the co-operation both of France and Flanders, it would at any rate, it might be thought, secure Normandy against all fear of attack from either quarter while her sovereign was engaged in his great enterprise. But, in the only account that we have, Baldwin is not introduced as acting at all in his character of guardian. William goes as |Interview between Philip and William.| his own ambassador to King Philip. The two princes meet at the great Abbey of Saint Germer in the district of Beauvais, a spot within the royal dominions, but only a few miles from the border Norman town of Gournay.^[891] |William offers to hold England as a fief of the French Crown.| William asks for his overlord’s help in his enterprise, and offers, in return for such help, to hold England, no less than Normandy, as a fief of the French Crown.^[892] Philip consults his nobles, who argue, naturally enough, that nothing can be more dangerous to the French Kingdom than any increase of the strength of the Norman Duchy. The offer to hold England in fief does not blind them; William’s vassalage for England will be still more nominal than his |Philip hostile to the enterprise.| vassalage for Normandy.^[893] The answer given is therefore unfavourable; and William leaves the presence of his suzerain with very high words on his lips. Whether this story be literally true or not, it shows how familiar to men’s minds the notion of Commendation, even on the greatest scale,^[894] still was. It shows how little of indignity attached to the vassal’s position, and of how little practical value was the oath of homage. We are presently told that Philip in no way promoted William’s object, but that he rather did all that he |Negotiations with Baldwin of Flanders.| could to hinder it.^[895] Instead of any distinct account of William’s negotiations with his father-in-law, we get only an unintelligible romance.^[896] But the practical issue of both the French and the Flemish negotiations seems plain. Neither Philip nor Baldwin, in their character as sovereigns, gave William any help. It is even probable that Philip, so far as he either had a will of his own or was guided by French counsellors, discouraged William’s enterprise rather than |French and Flemish volunteers in William’s army.| promoted it. But abundance of volunteers from both France and Flanders took service in William’s army. The Flemings, above all, the countrymen of Matilda, pressed eagerly to his standard, and they formed an important element in the Conquest and in the settlement which followed it. Matilda’s son Gerbod,^[897] Gilbert of Ghent,^[898] and Walter of Flanders,^[899] are all names which occur among the conquerors of England, and those of Gerbod and Gilbert will again appear in our history.

In the region intermediate between Normandy and Flanders, the cause of William was eagerly taken up by Count Eustace of Boulogne, the brother-in-law of King Eadward. He had, of all men, wrongs, as he would deem them, to avenge on Harold and on England. The chastisement which Godwine had refused to work on the insolent burghers of Dover^[900] might now at last be wrought on them and on their whole race, with the usurping son of the old traitor at their head. Eustace probably needed no invitation to take his share in the enterprise. He came himself, and he induced others to follow the same course. An incidental notice of one of his followers throws some light on the class of men who flocked to William’s banners, and on |Story of Arnold of Ardres.| the rewards which they received. One Geoffrey, an officer of the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer, who had the charge of its possessions in the County of Guisnes, sent his sons Arnold and Geoffrey to the war. A daily pay and various gifts from the Duke were their immediate reward, and in the end they received an establishment of lands both in Essex and in the border shires of Mercia and East-Anglia, under the superiority of their patron Count Eustace.^[901]

But the country from which, next to his own Duchy, William drew most support in his enterprise, was undoubtedly the neighbouring, the nominally vassal, land of Britanny. When we remember the internal dissensions of |State of the country; war against England probably popular in Britanny.| that country, and the way in which a party among the Bretons had supported William against their own sovereign,^[902] this is in no way wonderful. And, though loyalty to a Norman overlord is not likely to have counted for much, another motive may well have worked to fill the Norman host with Breton recruits. The Celtic race has a long memory, and the prospect of waging war in the insular Britain against the Saxon intruder may not have been without charms for the descendants of the Armorican exiles. |Services of Alan Fergant.| Certain it is that the Breton auxiliaries, under Alan Fergant, a cousin of the reigning Count Conan, one of the many sons of his uncle Odo,^[903] played an important part in the conquest of England. Even Dinan, so lately besieged by William, now sent its lord to swell William’s muster.^[904] Helpers came also from more southern regions; Hamon, Viscount of Thouars in the land of Poitou, came at the head of his force, and, as we shall hereafter see, |Volunteers from Anjou, Touraine, &c.; Geoffrey of Chaumont.| was admitted to William’s most intimate counsels.^[905] Angevin auxiliaries we should have been less inclined to look for; but they too are mentioned in our lists.^[906] We find also a warrior from the marchland of Tours and Blois, Geoffrey of Chaumont, a homager of Count Stephen of Chartres. He, as we read in the annals of his house, gave up all his fiefs to Sulpicius of Amboise the husband of his niece, and himself went forth to win new fortunes in England.^[907] |State of Anjou.| Yet one would have thought that the condition of that part of Gaul would just now have afforded scope enough |War between Geoffrey and Fulk Rechin.| for the energies of the most warlike. The two successors of Geoffrey Martel, Geoffrey the Bearded and our historian Fulk Rechin, were now engaged in a war of brother against brother.^[908] It was in this very year that the city of Angers was betrayed^[909] to Fulk, and that Count |Geoffrey betrayed to Fulk. 1066.| Geoffrey was led away as a captive to Chinon,^[910] the fortress overhanging the Vienne, the fortress so famous in the days when Counts of Anjou were also Kings of England, and so famous again when Capetian royalty, banished from its own Paris, found shelter in the lands which had once |Conan of Britanny; his war against Anjou and death. 1066.| been Angevin. In this same year too Conan of Britanny met with his death, and met it, as some said, by the machinations of William.^[911] Strange to say, this suspicion reaches us only from the Norman side. Other authorities, Breton and Angevin, speak only of a war which Conan waged against Anjou, and in which, by whatever means, |Legend of Conan’s death.| he lost his life. It is a Norman writer^[912] who tells us how, when William was preparing for the invasion of England, Conan sent to wish him good luck in his enterprise, but at the same time to demand the cession of Normandy to himself. He, Conan, was the lawful heir of the Duchy; the Bastard could have no right; the Bastard too, with his accomplices, had poisoned Conan’s father Alan, and had, up to that day, usurped the possession of a land which should have been his. If Normandy was not at once surrendered to its lawful prince, Conan would at once assert his rights with his whole force. William, we are told, was somewhat frightened, but God delivered him out of his danger. There was a Breton noble, a chamberlain of Conan, who had sworn fealty to William and to Conan alike, and who had borne the message to William as Conan’s ambassador. He undertook—at whose bidding or from what motive we are not told—to rid the world of his Breton master. He anointed the gloves, the bridle, and the hunting-horn of Conan with poison. The Count was engaged in his Angevin campaign, and was besieging the fortress of Château-Gontier, not far from the Cenomannian border. The defenders had capitulated, and Conan seems to have been in the very act of making his triumphal entry into the town. The Count put on his gloves, he grasped the bridle, and unwittingly raised his hand to his mouth. The poison took effect, and before long Conan was a corpse. The murderer left the Breton army, and brought the news to William. The Duke was now at leisure to give his whole mind to the expedition against England.

If such a tale as this was current, it is not wonderful that rumour went on to charge William with having instigated a crime by which he so greatly profited. As to the probabilities of the case, I might almost repeat what I have already said when the same charge was brought against William in the matter of Walter and Biota.^[913] The whole tale, from the threat of Conan onwards, reads like a romance. Did we find it in a hostile Breton or Angevin writer, we should at once set it down as an invention of hostile spite. And does the romance really gain any further authority, because it has found its way into a Norman chronicle? The silence of the hostile writers surely tells more on the other side. Conan, it seems plain, died suddenly during his Angevin expedition; it was easy to attribute the deed to William; it was no less easy to deck out the story with romantic details. That William was a secret poisoner I, for one, do not believe; but an English writer can hardly avoid the remembrance that, while the deaths of Walter and Conan were attributed to William, perhaps in the eleventh, certainly in the twelfth century, it was reserved for the nineteenth century to attribute the death of the Ætheling Eadward to Harold.^[914]

The exact order of all these proceedings it is hopeless to try to fix, and it is equally hopeless to try to fix their relations to the great embassy of all. Negotiations with Counts and Kings were, in the age which was just opening, of less moment than negotiations with the Apostolic throne. And indeed it marks a distinct epoch in the history of European politics, when, for the first time, the occupant of the Apostolic throne was called on to adjudge |Alexander the Second. 1061–1073.| a disputed diadem.^[915] The reigning Pontiff was Anselm of Lucca, who, under the title of Alexander the Second, had succeeded Nicolas; and, after a violent struggle with the |1064.| Anti-pope Cadalous of Parma, he was now in full possession |Influence of Hildebrand.| of the Holy See.^[916] But the ruling genius of the Papacy was already the Archdeacon Hildebrand. He it was who discerned how much the Roman Church might |William’s embassy.| gain by identifying itself with the cause of William. The ambassador of William, Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux,^[917] came and pleaded his master’s cause. He told the tale which had been so often told before, the rights of William, the usurpation and perjury of Harold, the despite done |He asks the Papal approval of his enterprise.| by him to the holy relics. William craved the blessing of the Holy See upon his righteous cause; he offered, we are told, but in vague and ambiguous language, to hold of God and of the Apostle the Kingdom which he hoped |Debate in the Conclave. No advocate sent by Harold.| to win.^[918] The cause was debated in the Conclave, but it was debated after the hearing of one side only. No advocate of England appeared at the bar of Alexander to defend the right of Harold to the Crown which England had given him. It is needless to seek for the English King’s reasons for not appearing to answer the accusation |A defence on Harold’s side would have compromised the rights of his Crown.| of William.^[919] It is enough that, however ready Harold, as a loyal son of the Church, might be to seek spiritual benefits at the threshold of the Apostles, he could not, as a King of the English, allow that any power to give or take away the English Crown was vested anywhere save in the Assembly of the English people. To plead before Alexander would have been to recognize his jurisdiction; it would have been to acknowledge that the Emperor of Britain had a superior |No summons probably sent to Harold.| upon earth. But, before we ask why Harold did not appear, we might perhaps ask whether he was ever summoned to appear, and whether the Roman judgement was not pronounced without so much as an opportunity for defence being allowed to the accused. No writer speaks of any summons as being addressed to the English King; one writer alone hints at the possibility of any hearing |William’s cause opposed by many of the Cardinals.| of the defence.^[920] But the cause of justice did not lack advocates even in the Roman Conclave. When Hildebrand dwelt on the benefits which the Church would gain by accepting the jurisdiction thus laid at its feet, many of the Cardinals rejected his arguments with horror. It was not for the Church to become a partaker in deeds of blood, and to sanction claims which could only be enforced by the slaughter of so many men.^[921] But in the end the worse reason prevailed. Even in ordinary times, it would have been no more than sound policy to welcome, as far as might be, the advances of a prince like William, who, pious as he might be, had not always shown himself the obedient servant of Rome. His uncanonical marriage,^[922] and one or two other exercises of independence on William’s part,^[923] would not be forgotten. But, far above all these |Policy of Hildebrand.| lesser questions, Rome was already beginning to practise her characteristic arts under their greatest master. Slaughter, robbery, devastation, all the horrors of an unprovoked war against an unoffending nation, were to be held as nothing when the interest of the Roman See was in the other scale. Never before had such an opportunity been offered to the successor of the Fisherman. It was not merely to win greater authority over a single island. The appeal of William to the Papal Court created a precedent by which the Papal Court might claim the disposal of all the Crowns in Christendom. The voice of |Alexander issues a Bull in favour of William.| Hildebrand conquered. The decree went forth which declared Harold to be an usurper and William to be the lawful claimant of the English Crown. It would even seem that it declared the English King and all his followers to be cut off from the communion of the faithful.^[924] William was sent forth as an avenger, to chastise the wrong and perjury of his faithless vassal. But he was also sent forth as a missionary, to guide the erring English into the true path, to teach them due obedience to Christ’s Vicar, and to secure a more punctual payment of the temporal dues of his Apostle.^[925] The cause of the invasion was blessed, and precious gifts were sent as the |His gifts to William.| visible exponents of the blessing. A costly ring was sent containing a relic holier, it may be, than any on which Harold had sworn, a hair of the Prince of the Apostles.^[926] |The consecrated banner.| And with the ring came a consecrated banner, to hallow the cause of fraud and usurpation.^[927] Every help that the |Perversion of the religious sentiment against England.| religious arts of the age could give was bestowed on the man who craved a blessing on the removal of his neighbour’s landmark. Every terror that those religious arts kept in store for the blasphemer and the heretic was hurled against the King whose axe was lifted only to defend his own rights and the rights of his people. The |A Crusade preached against England.| name had not yet been heard; but in truth it was now that the first Crusade was preached, and it was preached by the voice of Rome against the liberties of England.

The diplomacy of William and Lanfranc had thus completely triumphed. The great fabric of deception by which their subtle wits had cheated both themselves and others was now brought to perfection. The cause of William was accepted by the voice of his own Duchy; it was accepted by the public voice of Europe; it was hallowed by the judgement of the common Father of Christendom. At whatever stage in William’s negotiations the final answer from Alexander came, there can be no doubt that, from that moment, his own preparations were more vigorously pressed on, and that recruits pressed more eagerly to his standard. His own hopes and the hopes of his followers now rose higher. It was now not only booty and lands and lordships, English Earldoms for Norman knights and English Bishopricks for Norman priests, that William could offer to those who followed him. To every man, from whatever quarter of the earth, who came to serve under the consecrated banner he could now offer the blessing of the Roman Pontiff and every spiritual gift that the Pontiff’s hand could bestow. Never surely did the world see a more perfect triumph of unrighteous craft than when the invasion of England was undertaken in the name of religion.

The first part then of William’s work was done. We must now return to our own island, threatened as she was by the Norman Duke from the South, threatened, as we shall presently see her, by an enemy hardly less terrible from the quarter whence her older enemies had come. It was the fate of England in this memorable year to be exposed to two invasions at the same moment, and against two invasions at the same moment the heart and arm of Harold himself could not prevail.