§ 2. Settlement and Reign of Rolf. 911–927

The history of the ravages of the Northmen within the Empire, and of their final settlement in Northern Gaul, reads like the tale of their ravages and settlements in our own island told again. Their incursions into the two countries were often closely connected. The same armies and the same leaders are often heard of in Britain and in Gaul, and each country drew a certain advantage from the sufferings of the other. Each often enjoyed a season of comparative rest while the other was undergoing some unusually fearful devastation. The two stories are nearly the same, except that the Gaulish part of the tale especially reads, so to speak, like one long reign of Æthelred from the very beginning. There is nothing at all answering to our long succession of great and victorious Kings from Ælfred onwards. That such was the case was not wholly the fault of the princes who reigned in any part of the Empire. The power of the great Charles had kept the heathen in awe, but it is not granted to every man to |The progress of the Danes favoured by the divisions in the Empire,| be a Charles or even an Æthelstan. When the great Emperor was gone, when the terror of his name was forgotten, ceaseless internal divisions made his Empire an easy prey. Those divisions were themselves inevitable, but they brought with them their inevitable consequences; the land lay open, almost defenceless, before the enemy. Indeed the divisions were actually more fatal because they |and by the partial unity which it retained.| were not complete; the very amount of unity which the Empire still kept proved a further source of weakness. The Empire did not at once split up into national kingdoms, divided by ascertained boundaries, each of them actuated by a national feeling and capable of national resistance to an invader. The state of things was not unlike the elder state of things in the days of the tyrants or provincial Emperors. In those days each ambitious general gave himself out as Cæsar and Augustus; he aspired to the whole Empire, and he held such portions of it as he could win and keep. So now every King was a King of the Franks, ready to hold so much of the common Frankish realm as he could win and keep. Between potentates of this kind there could hardly be either the same formal alliances, or the same sort of international good understanding, which may exist between really distinct nations, each of which is assured of its own position. None of the rival Kings could feel sure that any other King would help him against the common enemy. None of them could feel sure that some other King might not seize the opportunity of a Danish inroad to deprive him of his kingdom, or even that he might not league himself with the heathen invaders against him. It followed therefore that the invaders never encountered the whole strength of the Empire, that they seldom encountered the whole strength even of any one of its component kingdoms. The Carolingian princes, as far as mere vigour and ability goes, have been grossly and unfairly depreciated. The truth is that most of them were men of by no means contemptible natural gifts, but that they were, partly by their own fault, partly by force of circumstances, placed in a position in which they could not use their real vigour and ability to any good purpose. Thus the whole second half of the ninth century is taken up with almost uninterrupted incursions of the Scandinavian pirates on the whole coast of both the Eastern |Position of Germany,| and the Western kingdoms. Germany indeed, owing to the inland position of the greater part of her territory, remained comparatively unscathed. She suffered far more from the Magyars than she suffered from the Northmen. Still the whole Saxon and Frisian coast was as cruelly ravaged as any other part of Europe, and the great rivers afforded the heathens the means of making their way far |Gaul,| into the interior of the country. The Western Kingdom, with its far greater extent of sea-board, suffered far more |and Italy.| severely than the Eastern. Even the Mediterranean coasts of Burgundy and Italy were not wholly spared, though in those seas the Northman was less to be dreaded than the Saracen. In all these countries we find the same kind of devastations which we find in England. In the course of the history, we come across many noble examples of |Instances of resistance to the invaders.| local resistance to the invaders, and several examples of considerable victories gained over them. But we nowhere find any such steady check put to their progress as marks the first half of the tenth century in England. That is to say, no Carolingian prince had the means, even if he had the ability, to carry out the vigorous policy of Eadward the Elder. Yet it would be unjust to withhold their due share of honour from several kings and princes who at |Victory of Arnulf, 891;| least did what they could. The Emperor Arnulf in the |of Lewis, 881.| East, the young King Lewis in the West, gained glorious and, for the moment, important victories over the invaders, and the triumph of Lewis is commemorated in one of the earliest surviving efforts of High-German poetry. The great siege of Paris and its defence by Odo have already been spoken of as among the determining causes which led in the end to the change of dynasty. But such victories were, after all, mere momentary checks; they delivered one part of the country at the expense of another, and the evil went on till it was gradually cured by various indirect |The ravages cease as the Northmen settle and become French.| means. As in England, the Northmen gradually changed from mere plunderers into conquerors and settlers. Instead of ravaging the whole country, they occupied portions of it. Thus they gradually changed, not only into members of the general commonwealth of Christendom but into Frenchmen, distinguished from other Frenchmen only by the large share of their inborn Scandinavian vigour which |No attempt at political conquest, as in England.| they still kept. As the North became more settled and Christianized, as it began to form a political system of its own, the mere piratical incursions gradually ceased, but the attempt at a complete conquest of the whole country, which was successfully tried in England, was never attempted in Gaul. No King of all Denmark or of all Norway ever tried to displace a King of the West-Franks and to reign in his stead over his kingdom. The insular position of Britain, the original kindred between Danes and Englishmen, the actual occupation of so large a portion of the country by earlier Danish settlers, all helped to make such a design possible in England, while even the powers of Swegen or Cnut could hardly have succeeded in carrying out such a scheme in Gaul.

The Northmen settled largely in Gaul, but they nowhere occupied any such large unbroken sweep of territory as that which became the Denalagu in England. No such large extent of coast lay so invitingly open to them, and it does not appear that there was any one Danish invasion of Gaul on so great a scale as the great Danish invasion of England under Ingwar and Hubba. The Danish settlements in Gaul were therefore scattered, while in England they were continuous. The Danes in England therefore, though they gradually became Englishmen, still kept on a distinct local existence and local feelings, and they continued to form a distinct and important element in the country. But the Danish settlers in Gaul, holding a district here and a district there, sank much more completely into the general mass of the inhabitants. Some of these settlements were a good way inland, like Hasting’s settlement at Chartres. Ragnald too occupied, at least for a while, the country at the mouth of the Loire. But these settlements led to no permanent results. One alone among the Scandinavian settlements in Gaul was destined to play a real part in history. This was the settlement of Rolf or Rollo at Rouen.

This settlement, the kernel of the great Norman Duchy, had, I need hardly say, results of its own and an importance of its own which distinguish it from every other Danish colony in Gaul. But it is well to bear in mind that it was only one colony among several, and that, when the grant was made, it was probably not expected to be more lasting or more important than the others. But, while the others soon lost any distinctive character, the Rouen settlement lasted; it grew, it became a power in Europe, and in Gaul it became even a determining power. It is perhaps the unexpected developement of the Rouen settlement, together with the peculiar turn which Norman policy soon took, which accounts for the bitterness of hatred with which the Northmen of Rouen are spoken of by the French writers down to at least the end of the tenth century. By that time they had long been Christian in faith and French in speech, and yet the most truly French writer of the age can never bring himself to speak of them by any other name than that of the Pirates. To this feeling we see nothing at all analogous in English history. We see traces of strong local diversities, sometimes rising into local jealousies, between the Danes in England and their Anglian and Saxon neighbours; but there is nothing to compare with the full bitterness of hatred which breathes alike in the hostile rhetoric of Richer and in the ominous silence of the discreet Flodoard.

The lasting character of his work at once proves that the founder of the Rouen colony was a great man; but he is a great man who must be content to be judged in the main by the results of his actions. The authentic history of Rolf, Rollo, or Rou, may be summed up in a very short space. We have no really contemporary narrative of his actions, unless a few meagre and uncertain entries in some of the Frankish annals may be thought to deserve that name. I cannot look on the narrative of our one Norman writer, put together, from tradition and under courtly influence, a hundred years after the settlement, as at all entitled to implicit belief. Even less faith is due to Northern Sagas put together at a still later time. The French authors again are themselves not contemporary, and their notices are exceedingly brief. I therefore do not feel myself at all called upon to narrate in detail the exploits which are attributed to Rolf in the time before his final settlement. He is described as having been |Earlier exploits of Rolf. 876–911?| engaged in the calling of a wiking both in Gaul and in Britain for nearly forty years before his final occupation of Rouen, and he is said to have entered into friendly relations with a King Æthelstan in England. This Æthelstan has been confounded, in the teeth of all chronology, with our great Æthelstan, but it is clear that the person intended is Guthrum-Æthelstan of East-Anglia. In all this there is nothing improbable, but we can hardly look upon it as certain. And the exploits attributed to Rolf are spread over so many years, that we cannot help suspecting that the deeds of other chieftains have been attributed to him, perhaps that two leaders of the same name have been confounded. Among countless expeditions in Gaul, Britain, and Germany, we find Rolf charged with an earlier visit to Rouen, with a share in the great siege of Paris, and with an occupation or destruction of Bayeux. But it is not till we have got some way into the reign of Charles the Simple, not till we have gone through several years of the tenth century, that Rolf begins clearly to stand out as a personal historic |Rolf in possession of Rouen. 911.| reality. He now appears in possession of Rouen, or of whatever remains of that city had outlived his former harryings. From that starting-point he attacked Chartres. |Defeat of Rolf at Chartres. 911.| Beneath the walls of that city he underwent a defeat at the hands of the Dukes Rudolf of Burgundy and Robert of Paris, which was attributed to the wonder-working powers of the great local relic, the under-garment of the Virgin. But this victory, like most victories over the Northmen, had no lasting effect. Rolf was not dislodged from Rouen, nor was his career of havoc and conquest at all seriously checked. But, just as in the case of Guthrum in England, his evident disposition to settle in the country suggested an attempt to change him from a wasting enemy into a |Peace of Clair-on-Epte. 912.| peaceable neighbour. The Peace of Clair-on-Epte was the fellow of the Peace of Wedmore, and King Charles and Duke Robert of Paris most likely had the Peace of Wedmore before their eyes. |Comparison with the Peace of Wedmore.| A definite district was granted to Rolf, for which he became the King’s vassal; he was admitted to baptism, and received the King’s natural daughter in marriage. And, just as in the English case, the territory granted was not part of the King’s immediate dominions. No part of Wessex was granted to Guthrum; he was merely confirmed in the possession of the lands which he had already conquered at the expense of the |Advantage of the cession to the Crown.| other English kingdoms. Ælfred, as I have already shown, though he lost as an over-lord, gained as an immediate sovereign by the closer incorporation of a large part of Mercia with his own kingdom. Charles also gained by the settlement of Rolf, though certainly not in the same direct way. His immediate territories were not increased, but they were at least not diminished; the grant to Rolf was made at the cost, not of the Frankish |The cession made at the expense of the Duchy of Paris.| King at Laon but of the French Duke at Paris. The district ceded to Rolf was part of the great Neustrian march or duchy which had been granted to Odo of Paris, and which was now held by his brother Duke Robert. Rouen was thus, from the very beginning, something taken away from Paris, and which cut off Paris from the sea. Still the Parisian duchy was not so utterly broken up as the kingdoms of Northumberland, East-Anglia, and Mercia had been; the King had therefore no opportunity of annexing any part of the dominions of Robert, as Ælfred had of annexing a large part of the dominions of Burhred. Still Charles was strengthened indirectly. Duke Robert had to yield to manifest destiny. He had lost Rouen, and his only way to keep Paris was to enter into friendly relations with the new lord of Rouen. |Prominent agency of Duke Robert.| Robert was therefore the chief mover in the whole business; he was Rolf’s godfather at his baptism and gave him his own Christian name. The Duke thus made the most of his loss; but to the King the transaction was a distinct gain. He got two vassals instead of one, two vassals whose relations to one another were likely to be dangerous, and between whom it might often be easy to play off one against the other. Events soon proved that the King had gained a far more faithful vassal in the new proselyte to Christianity and French culture than he already possessed in the turbulent and dangerous lord of Paris. At a later time we shall find the relations between Laon, Rouen, and Paris altogether changed; but for a while the Northmen of the Seine were the firmest support |The Normans the chief support of Charles the Simple.| of the Carolingian throne. During all the later warfare of the reign of Charles the Simple, Rolf clave steadily to the cause of the lord whose man he had become. The Duke of Rouen had no object in opposing the King of Laon, while, by supporting him, he might easily gain an increase of territory at the expense of his nearer neighbours.

The legendary details of Rolf’s homage to Charles are familiar to every one. It is a well-known tale how Rolf was called on to kiss the feet of his benefactor, how he refused with an oath, how he bade one of his followers to perform the degrading ceremony in his stead, how the rude Northman did indeed kiss the King’s foot, but only by lifting it to his own mouth to the imminent danger of the monarch’s seat on his throne. The tale may rest on a true tradition, or it may be a mere invention of Norman vanity; in either case alike it sets forth the original spirit of the men who were to become the noblest representatives of the system within whose pale they were now entering. |Rolf the vassal of Charles.| But whatever was the exact form of the homage, there can be no reasonable doubt that Rolf became, in the full |Exaggerated claims of independence made| sense of the word, the vassal of King Charles. The interested and extravagant Norman writers constantly assert an entire independence on the part of the colonists |by the Norman writers.| and their chief. The land was granted, but it was granted as a pure allodial possession; the Duke of the Normans, though he did not bear the kingly title, nevertheless held, as a King, the monarchy of the Norman land. If anything, it was King Charles who swore fealty to Rolf rather than Rolf who swore fealty to King Charles. All this we may safely put aside, partly as the deliberate creation of Norman vanity, partly as the inflated rhetoric of an author who was writing as the mere laureate of the Norman court. The historian’s own tale of the homage, with its real or mythical incidents, is of itself enough to upset his constitutional theories. That Rolf did homage is plain enough, and, on Rolf’s death, his successor in the duchy |Little practical submission implied in the homage.| renewed the homage. But I must again repeat the caution how little of real subjection is implied in such vassalage at any time, and how purely nominal it became whenever the lord was weak and the vassal strong. Rolf became King Charles’s man and King Charles became Rolf’s lord; but the obligation, after all, amounted to little more than an obligation of mutual defence; all internal sovereignty over the ceded land passed to Rolf without reserve. In the hands of Charles the Great or of Æthelstan such an over-lordship as this was a reality; in the hands of Æthelred or of Charles the Simple it was a mere name. Yet Rolf undoubtedly proved a really faithful vassal to King Charles. No doubt his interest happily coincided with his duty. Still we can well believe that in a new Christian and a new vassal, and a man evidently disposed honestly to do his duty in his new state of life, the sense of right and wrong, in this as in other respects, may well have been far stronger than it was in Dukes of Paris or Burgundy who had long been used to form and to break such engagements with equal ease.

It must not be thought that the district now granted to |Extent of the territory granted to Rolf.| Rolf took in the whole of the later duchy of Normandy. Rouen was the heart of the new state, which took in lands on both sides of the Seine. From the Epte to the sea was its undoubted extent from the south-east to the north. But the western frontier is much less clearly defined. On the one hand, the Normans always claimed a certain not very well defined superiority over Britanny as part of the original grant. On the other hand, it is quite certain that Rolf did not obtain immediate possession of what was afterwards the noblest portion of the heritage of his |The Bessin and the Côtentin later acquisitions.| descendants. The Bessin, the district of Bayeux, was not won till several years later, and the Côtentin, the peninsula of Coutances, was not won till after the death of Rolf. The district granted to Rolf was doubtless, as in the case of Guthrum, mainly determined by the extent of his actual possessions. If, as is most likely, the Dive was the western boundary, the ceded territory answered to nothing in earlier geography, civil or ecclesiastical. It was larger than the diocese of Rouen; it was very much smaller |No geographical name for the “Terra Northmannorum.”| than the province. As a new division, it had—sharing therein the fate of Germany and France—no recognized geographical name. Its inhabitants were the Northmen, the Northmen of the Seine, the Northmen of Rouen. The land itself was, till near the end of the century, simply the Land of the Northmen, a land capable of indefinite extension. So in Britain the vague description of the Denalagu supplanted the ancient names and boundaries of more than one Old-English kingdom. The title of the chief was as little fixed as the name of his dominions; he is Prince, Duke, Count, Marquess, Patrician, according to the taste of each writer. In the mouths of vigorous and plain-spoken enemies his people are only the Pirates, and himself the leader of the Pirates, down to the end of the century.

Of Rolf’s internal government, of the laws and institutions of the new state, of the details of the settlement of the country, we know absolutely nothing. Norman tradition sets Rolf before us as the mirror of princes, as the type of that class of ruler which that age most valued, the stern, speedy, impartial, minister of justice. But we may judge of the reign of Rolf from its results. What Normandy became shows plainly enough that its first prince must have been a worthy forerunner of our own Cnut. Once settled in the land, he seems to have become as eager for its welfare as he had before been for its devastation. He must have promoted the general adoption, not only of the religion, but of the speech and manners of his neighbours. Otherwise Normandy could never have played the part which it did play even in the next reign, nor could his capital have become so thoroughly French as it was within a short time after his |No records of early Norman history.| death. But of the early institutions and early internal history of Normandy all records have perished, or, more probably, no records ever existed. We have no chronicles, no charters, nothing whatever to guide us but the results. |The settlement probably analogous to the Danish settlement in England.| From such indications as we have we may perhaps infer that the settlement was, on the whole, of much the same kind as the Danish settlement in England. We cannot conceive any systematic extirpation or expulsion of the older inhabitants, such as accompanied the English Conquest of Britain. At the same time we can well believe that, after so many years of systematic havoc at the hands of the wikings, large districts may have stood almost as empty and untilled as if such systematic |Evidence from the peasant revolt. 997.| extirpation or expulsion had taken place. But it is certain that, a hundred years after the conquest, there was a peasantry at once oppressed enough and powerful enough to rise in a well-organized revolt. Though in Normandy, as in England, the condition of the private settlers is likely to have gradually sunk, still we cannot believe that any descendants of the original conquerors could, in so short a time, have been brought down to such utter bondage. These peasants must have been mainly the descendants of the original Gauls, with whatever intermixture of Roman and Teutonic elements the successive conquests of the country had brought with them. |Probable position of the races in the country.| Probably the landowners, great and small, were almost universally of Scandinavian descent, while the remnant of the original population had been brought down to a state of serfdom. It is certain that there is nothing in English history at all answering to this insurrection till we come to the great revolt of the villains of the fourteenth century. This difference seems to point to a wholly different condition of the lower orders in the two countries. |Vestiges of the Danish language.| As regards the language of Normandy, the Danish tongue has utterly vanished out of the land; it had vanished out of the greater part of the land even before we reach any contemporary records; still considerable vestiges, strangely disguised as they are, may to this day be made out in the local nomenclature. In Northern Gaul, just as in Eastern England, many a place lost its name, and took a new name from its new Scandinavian lord. Here and there also we find descriptive names, meaningless in French, but which are, with a slight effort, intelligible in English. These may, according to their geographical position, be either remnants of the Danish speech of Rolf and his followers or remnants of the speech of an earlier Teutonic settlement in part of the country of which I shall presently have to speak. Of the early political condition of the duchy we have absolutely no |Normandy not an absolute monarchy.| account. On the absence of such information one illustrious inquirer has grounded a theory that Normandy had no assembly, no Parliament, no Estates of any kind, but that the Duke, Marquess, Patrician, or whatever he is to be called, ruled without any restraint on his personal will. I confess that I find it impossible to accept a theory so utterly repugnant to the analogy of every other Teutonic people. If there be any truth in Norman tradition, the followers of Rolf, as long as they stayed on ship-board, acknowledged no lord, and professed principles of the most extreme democratic equality. However this may be, it is not likely that, as soon as they were settled on land, they should at once cast away those free institutions which were common to them with all the |Instances of the action of the States.| other branches of the common stock. And there is evidence enough to show that an assembly of some kind was often consulted from the very beginnings of the Norman state, and especially that the transfer of the ducal crown from one prince to another was effected with much the same forms as the same change would have called for in England. At the same time I fully admit that to fix the exact constitution of the Norman assembly at this early time would be still harder than to fix the exact constitution of an English Witenagemót. The little light which we have may perhaps enable us to infer that it put on an aristocratic character almost from the beginning. It has also been supposed that, unlike perhaps every other assembly of the kind, it contained no ecclesiastical members; but if this was the case in the earlier days of the duchy, the rule had clearly been relaxed before the reign of the great William.

We must remember that we are now in the very thick of the struggle between the two dynasties of Laon and Paris. The Norman stepped in as if sent to be the fated arbiter between the two. When Rolf made his settlement, Charles the Simple was the acknowledged King of the West-Franks; from him he received his grant; with him he entered into the mutual engagements of lord and vassal. With him and his dynasty Rolf sided, and he probably saved the Carolingian crown from utter overthrow, just as a change of policy in his successors finally decided the |End of the Karlings in Germany. 912.| same controversy the other way. It must be remembered that, in the year of Rolf’s settlement, the Carolingian line came to an end in the Eastern Kingdom. The East-Frankish Duke Conrad was now raised to the Teutonic throne, and was presently followed by Henry of Saxony. But Lotharingia refused to acknowledge either of the Kings so chosen. The border land appears throughout our history as ever fluctuating between the Eastern and Western kingdoms. But Lotharingian policy was dictated by one intelligible rule, that of unswerving loyalty to the Carolingian house, wherever its representative might be |Lotharingia attaches itself to Charles the Simple.| found. So now Lotharingia transferred its allegiance to the single Karling who still kept the royal title, and acknowledged the King of Laon as its lord. The power of Charles was thus directly strengthened to the East, while it was indirectly strengthened by the grant to the Northmen in the West. This increase of power on the part of Charles probably led to the conspiracy which soon broke out against |Robert of Paris chosen King. 922.| him, and which issued in the election of Robert of Paris as an opposition King. In the wars which followed, Charles |Rolf sides with Charles.| rested to a great extent on the arms of the Northmen, both Rolf’s settled Northmen of the Seine and the Northmen of the Loire, the followers of Ragnald, who had not |Robert killed at Soissons. 923.| yet won so distinct a local habitation. When Robert was killed at Soissons, his son Hugh the Great refused the crown for himself. He was known as Duke of the French, |Rudolf of Burgundy chosen.| and, satisfied with that title, he bestowed the kingly name on his brother-in-law Rudolf, Duke of French Burgundy. |Imprisonment of Charles at Peronne. 923.| Charles was afterwards treacherously seized and imprisoned by Rudolf’s fellow-conspirator Herbert Count of Vermandois, in the same fortress in which in after days a King |1468.| of France was imprisoned by a Duke of Burgundy. Rolf’s combined policy and loyalty led him to refuse all allegiance |War between Normandy and France. 923–927.| to the usurpers. A war of several years followed between him and the French of Paris under Duke Hugh. The horrors of warfare were not felt on one side only. The Norman land was twice invaded, and Rolf’s fortress of Eu, its chief defence on its north-eastern border, was taken by storm. But these incursions were more than repaid in kind; a large Danegeld was more than once paid to Rolf, and was levied throughout France and Burgundy, and the |Acquisition of Maine and Bayeux. 924.| general results of the war left Rolf in possession of a most important increase of territory. He obtained the district of Bayeux; he obtained also a more fully recognized superiority over Britanny, and it is also distinctly asserted that |Abdication [927?] and death [932?] of Rolf.| he obtained a grant of the land of Maine. Rolf did not long survive these successes; the year of his death is uncertain; but it seems most likely that, by the consent—perhaps at the demand—of the estates of his principality, he resigned |William Longsword succeeds, and does homage to Charles. 927.| the government in favour of his son William, surnamed Longsword. A change in the policy of Herbert of Vermandois had restored Charles to freedom and to some nominal measure of authority. The new prince of the Northmen therefore paid to the true Carolingian King the homage which his father had paid before him, but which he had steadily refused to the Parisian and Burgundian pretenders.

The acquisition of the territory which this last war added to the dominions of Rolf was inferior in importance only to the original acquisition of Rouen. And it is only on the ground of its being the original acquisition, the beginning and starting-point of the whole settlement, that the possession of Rouen itself can be looked on as more important than the possession of the noble region which |Maine.| was now added to the Land of the Northmen. Maine indeed was the most precarious of all possessions. The struggles for its retention and recovery, the adventures of its gallant Counts and of its no less gallant citizens, form no small part of the later history of the Norman |The Bessin.| duchy. But the acquisition of Bayeux and its territory gave Normandy all that created and preserved the genuine and Norman character; it gave her the cities which are adorned with the noblest works of the days of her independence; it gave her the spot which was to be the earliest home of her mightiest son. Caen, around whose castle and whose abbeys so much of Norman and French history was to centre—Bayeux itself, the see of the mighty Odo, where the tale of the Conquest of England still lives in the pictured history which forms its most authentic record—Cerisy, with its stern and solemn minster, the characteristic work of the Conqueror’s father—Falaise, immortal as the birthplace of the Conqueror himself—all these historic spots lie within the region which the last warfare of the reclaimed wiking had added to the Norman land. |The Saxon colony at Bayeux;| Bayeux itself is a city whose history has an especial claim on the attention of Englishmen. Nowhere, out of the Old-Saxon and Frisian lands, can we find another district of continental Europe which is so truly a brother-land of our own. The district of Bayeux, occupied by a Saxon colony in the latest days of the old Roman Empire, occupied again by a Scandinavian colony as the result of its conquest by Rolf, has retained to this day a character which distinguishes it from every other Romance-speaking |its lasting influence on the district.| portion of the continent. The Saxons of Bayeux kept their name and their distinct being under the Frankish dominion; we can hardly doubt that the Scandinavian settlers found some parts at least of the district still Teutonic, and that nearness of blood and speech exercised over them the same influence which the same causes exercised over the Scandinavian settlers in England. Danes and Saxons were welded together into one Teutonic people, and they kept their Teutonic language and character long after Rouen had become, in speech at least, no less French than Paris. With their old Teutonic speech, the second body of settlers seem to have largely kept their old Teutonic faith. We shall presently find Bayeux the centre of a heathen and Danish party in the duchy, in opposition to Rouen, the centre of the new speech and the new creed. The blood of the inhabitants of the Bessin must be composed of nearly the same elements, mingled in nearly the same proportions, as the blood of the inhabitants of the Danish districts of England. To this day there is no Romance-speaking region of the continent in which an Englishman feels himself so thoroughly at home as in this old Saxon and Danish land. In every part of Normandy, as compared with France or Aquitaine, the Englishman feels himself at home; but in the district of Bayeux he seems hardly to have left his own island. The kindred speech indeed is gone; but everything else remains. The land is decidedly not French; men, beasts, everything, are distinctively of a grander and better type than their fellows in the mere French districts; the general aspect of the land, its fields, its hedges, all have an English look. And no contrast can be greater than that which may be often seen between the tall, vigorous, English-looking, Norman yeoman, out of whose mouth we instinctively feel that the common mother-tongue ought to come, and the French soldier, whose stature, whose colour, whose every feature, proclaims him to be a man of another race, and whose presence proclaims no less unmistakeably that the glory of Normandy has passed away.