§ 5. Comparison between France, England, and Normandy

The influence which the Norman Duke exercised on this great change is carefully kept out of sight by the French historians; yet we cannot doubt that the Norman writers are, this time at least, fully justified in attributing to their sovereign a most important share in the work. Everything leads us to believe that Richard took a leading |Personal share of Richard.| personal share in the revolution, and it is quite certain that, but for the policy which Richard followed, that revolution never could have taken place. It was the alliance between Normandy and France which determined the fate of the Carolingian dynasty. And thus we are led back to the proposition with which I started at an earlier stage |The Norman settlement made Gaul French.| of this Chapter, that it was the settlement of the Scandinavians in Gaul which definitively made Gaul French. They settled just at the point of transition, when the old German state of things was beginning to give way to the new French state of things. The influence of the new comers, notwithstanding their own Teutonic blood and speech, was thrown altogether into the French scale. The Normans became French, because a variety of circumstances brought them more within the range of French influences than of any other. The connexion between Rolf and the Carolingian dynasty was something purely political, or rather personal; Rolf had done homage and sworn oaths to King Charles, and to King Charles he stuck against all pretenders. But the main object of his successors was to bring Normandy within the pale of Christianity and civilization, in such shapes as Christianity and civilization bore immediately before their eyes. This object they naturally sought by establishing a connexion with their nearest neighbours; their standard of language and manners was set by the French court of Paris, not by the German court of Laon or by the more distant, the more purely Latin, courts of Poitiers and Toulouse. The Normans thus became Frenchmen, and, with the zeal of new proselytes, they became first and foremost in everything that is characteristically French. The earliest and best productions of the new-born French |French ideas take root in Normandy.| language were the work of Norman poets. All the ideas which were then growing up in France, ideas which it is hard to express otherwise than by the vague and misleading names of feudalism and chivalry, took firm root in Normandy, and there brought forth their most abundant fruit. Had Normandy remained Danish, the Scandinavian settlement would have been a most important diversion on behalf of the Teutonic element; Romance Paris would have been in a manner hemmed in between two Teutonic lands. And if the Scandinavian settlement had never taken place at all, the French developement would at least have lost the decisive support which it gained from the enlistment of such fresh and vigorous disciples. It was the Normans, I repeat, who made Gaul French; it was the Normans who made French Paris the capital of Gaul, and who gave |The position of Normandy established by the Capetian revolution.| Gaul the French lord of Paris for her King. On the other hand, it was the Capetian revolution which gave Normandy her definite position in Gaul and in Europe. Hitherto, in the minds and mouths of good Frenchmen, and most likely of good Germans also, the Normans were still simply the Pirates, and their sovereign the Duke of the Pirates. Their presence was endured, because they were too strong to be got rid of; but the half-heathen Danish intruders were still hateful to the princes and people of Latin and Christian Gaul. With the election of Hugh Capet all was changed. The firmest ally and supporter of the new dynasty could no longer be looked on as an outcast or as an enemy. The old question as to the relation between Normandy and the Kings of Laon was buried for ever. Whatever relations had hitherto existed between the Duke of the Normans and the King of the West-Franks, there was no doubt that the Duke of the Normans was the vassal, the most powerful and the most loyal vassal, of the Duke of the French, and the Duke of the French and the King of the West-Franks were now one and the same person. Normandy was now thoroughly naturalized; the doubtful position which it had held in Carolingian times passed altogether away; it became the mightiest and noblest among the fiefs of |Comparatively friendly relations between the duchy and the crown.| the Capetian crown. And for a long while the relations between the duchy and the crown remained, on the whole, friendly. It was not till later days, till Normandy was under the sway of her greatest Duke, that the old hostility broke out afresh, and that King Henry of Paris showed himself as eager as King Lewis of Laon to dispossess the prince and people who cut off himself and his city from the mouth of the Seine. Up to the days of Henry and William the good understanding between France and Normandy was seldom broken. And, even counting the wars of Henry and William, we shall find that, considering the power of the vassal and his close neighbourhood to his lord, hostilities between Rouen and Paris were not specially frequent. The rebellions of Hugh the Great alone against the Kings whom he had set up and put down would probably be found to be more in number than the wars between France and Normandy, from the commendation of Richard to Hugh to the day when England and Normandy alike were merged in the vast dominions of the princes of Anjou.

The close connexion between Norman and French history, the way in which we may say that Normandy created France and that France created Normandy, must be my excuse for dwelling at an apparently disproportionate length on some subjects which are only indirectly connected with English history. In order thoroughly to understand the Norman Conquest of England, it is almost as needful to have a clear view of the condition and earlier history of Normandy as it is to have a clear view of the condition and earlier history of England. And such a clear view of Norman affairs cannot be had without constant references to French, and occasional references to German, history. And the notices of French history which are needed for this end may serve to illustrate English history |Contrast between the political condition of England and of Gaul.| in another way. The contrast between the political condition of England and that of the Western Kingdom is most striking, even at this early time. Looked at superficially, there is a certain likeness between the two. In both cases, a King of narrow limited power stands at the head of a body of princes, some of whom, in extent of dominion, might almost—on the mainland not only almost but altogether—rank as his peers. But when we come to look more narrowly into the matter, we shall see that the likeness is only superficial. In truth there is very little real likeness at all; and if we admitted a stronger likeness than there is, if we admitted that the two countries had accidentally met at the same point, still their meeting would have been wholly accidental, because the two countries were |England tending to unity, Gaul to division.| moving in exactly opposite directions. England was directly tending to unity; Gaul was directly tending to division. In the long run indeed the division to which Gaul was tending paved the way for a closer unity than England has ever reached; but, at the moment, it was |In England Princes had sunk into Governors;| to division that Gaul was directly tending. The English kingdom was formed by the gradual union of many distinct states; to independent Kings had succeeded dependent Kings, and to dependent Kings had succeeded Ealdormen appointed by the King and his Witan. Great and powerful as was an English Ealdorman, he still was not a sovereign, not even a dependent or vassal sovereign; he ruled only with a delegated authority; the King was supreme, and the Ealdorman was only a governor sent by |in Gaul governors had grown into princes.| him. In Gaul the process was directly opposite. Local governors who, under the first Carolingian Kings and Emperors, had been simple lieutenants of the sovereign, had gradually grown into hereditary princes, who at most went through the decent ceremony of receiving their dominions as a grant from a King who could not withhold them. The Dukes, Counts, and Marquesses of France, of Flanders, of Aquitaine, of Septimania, of Barcelona, had in this way grown into sovereigns. Starting from the position of an English Ealdorman, they had won the formal position, and more than the practical independence, of a vassal King of Wales or Scotland. Normandy was a real fief from the beginning; the grant to Rolf was the exact parallel of the grant to Guthrum; but during the second half of the tenth century the dominions of Rolf were ruled by a native sovereign of his own blood, while the dominions of Guthrum were administered by |Difference of the limitations on the power of the King in England and in Gaul.| Ealdormen appointed by the English King. Again, the power of the King was narrowly limited in both kingdoms, but it was limited in altogether different ways. The power of the King of the English was limited, because he could do no important act without the consent of his Witan. The power of the King of the West-Franks was limited, because he was shorn of all direct authority beyond the narrow limits of Laon and Compiègne. The King of the English, in the exercise of such authority as the law gave him, was obeyed in every corner of his kingdom. The King of the West-Franks did as he chose in his own city of Laon; at Paris and Rouen, at Poitiers and Toulouse, he received only such measures of obedience as the sovereigns of those capitals chose to yield to him. |No regular National Assembly in Gaul.| No regular assembly constantly meeting, like our Witenagemót, had authority over the whole land, and kept the whole land bound together. We read of conferences of princes; but they are rarely held, except for some great and extraordinary occasion like the election of a King. An assembly, meeting yearly or oftener, to sanction the ordinary acts of the King and to pass laws binding on the whole kingdom, was something utterly unknown.

And yet, when we see how narrow was the immediate dominion, how small were the available resources, of the later Karlings, it strikes us with wonder throughout the whole history to see how much influence, how much real power, they still kept. The King, however many enemies may be in arms against him, is always an important person, and he commonly finds an army to bring against the rebel army. We wonder where he got his army, and where he got the resources to set his army in motion. In days when war maintained itself an army was doubtless less costly than it is now, and a victorious army might even enrich its leader. But whence did the armies come? Surely not wholly from the narrow limits of the King’s immediate territory. Nor were they likely to be formed by the spontaneous loyalty of volunteers. The influence of the royal name, the reverence attaching to the blood of the great Emperor, might do a good deal to paralyse the efforts of enemies, but they would hardly of themselves bring distant followers to the royal standard. But the King, if he had few subjects, was not wholly without |The Kings drew support from various quarters.| friends. We find hints that the lesser vassals often found it their interest to support the King against the encroachments of the great Dukes. We find that in a war with one rebellious potentate he was often supported by the rivals of that potentate, and that his more distant vassals helped him against those who were more formidable to them than he was. We find also that he could especially rely on the help of those Bishops who, holding directly of the crown, were clothed with the character of ecclesiastical princes. And in the later and more peaceful |Increase of the royal power under Lothar.| times of Lothar and Hugh Capet, the King appears far more clearly than before in the character of an effective head of the kingdom. We read more commonly of consultations with the other princes, and we see the King, by common consent, wielding the forces of all his vassals, including those of the Duke of the French himself. The wily Hugh no doubt saw that it was his interest to strengthen in every way the power and reputation of the crown which he meant one day to place on his own brow. Altogether we may doubt whether the practical power of the later Carolingian Kings was not really quite as great |Power of the crown not immediately increased by the change of dynasty.| as that of the early Capetians. The power of the crown rested mainly on influence and prescription, and influence and prescription were not on the side of the Parisian dynasty. The immediate territorial dominion of the Parisian Kings was no doubt much larger than that of the later Karlings; Paris and Laon together were far greater than Laon by itself. But the connexion between the crown and the great vassals seems to have been distinctly weakened by the change of dynasty. The descendants of Robert and Hugh did not command the hereditary respect which attached to princes sprung from the blood of Charles and Pippin. Some disputed and outlying fiefs were altogether lost to the kingdom, and the King’s sphere of action was far more strictly confined than before to the lands north of the Loire. Lotharingia and the Spanish March fell away; the connexion with Flanders gradually weakened; Aquitaine scarcely acknowledged even a nominal dependence. Assemblies and conferences of the whole kingdom, rare before, seem now to go wholly out of use. Even the vassals north of the Loire, even the former vassals of the Parisian duchy, seem to have less connexion with the crown than heretofore. In fact the French Duke lost by becoming King, just as the German King lost by becoming Emperor. As Duke he had been a less dignified, but he had been a more effectual, over-lord. The Parisian Dukes themselves had done more than all the rest of the world to set forth and strengthen the doctrine that the immediate vassals of a King were entitled to practical sovereignty. Thus, while England was getting more and more united, Gaul was getting more and more divided. Under other circumstances, the Western realm might very easily have changed, step by step, from a kingdom into |Isolation in France led to closer union.| a confederation, just as Germany did. But as it was, the very isolation into which the several parts of the kingdom now fell proved in the end the path to an unity such as England never has seen, such as we trust England never may see. Utter isolation paved the way for utter centralization. In England, as the different parts of the realm became more closely united, all shared in a common national freedom, without any complete sacrifice of local and municipal independence. In Gaul the crown annexed, one by one, all the dominions of its own vassals and such of the dominions of its neighbours as came within its reach. Thus the whole kingdom knew no will but that of the King. Widely as a modern English Parliament differs from an ancient Witenagemót, the one has grown out of the other by gradual developement, without any sudden change. In France and throughout Gaul the ancient Teutonic assemblies died out altogether, |1302.| and the comparatively modern States General came into being as an original device of Philip the Fair.

I must now return to the more immediate affairs of Normandy. There can be no doubt that the various processes of which I have been speaking, the Christianizing, the Gallicizing, and the feudalizing process, all went on vigorously in Normandy during the reign of Richard the |Growth of the doctrine of nobility.| Fearless. The doctrine of nobility was fast growing; it was taking a form quite different from the ancient relations of eorl and ceorl, quite different from the later relations of thegn and ceorl, as they have been at any time understood in England. Hitherto mere lack of illustrious birth |Humble origin of many princely and noble houses.| did not keep a man back from the highest offices. The legend that Hugh Capet himself was the son of a butcher of Paris, utterly fabulous as it is, marks the popular belief as to the origin of many of the princely houses of the time. The legends of Lyderic the Forester and of Torquatius and Tertullus point to no very lofty origin on the part |Origin of the Norman baronage.| of the princely houses of Flanders and Anjou. So it is in the reign of Richard that we find the beginning of the Norman baronage, and the origin of many of its members was certainly not specially illustrious. Some noble families indeed trace their descent up to old companions of Rolf, such as the house of Harcourt, which claims Bernard the Dane as its patriarch. But the larger part of the Norman nobility derived their origin from the amours or doubtful marriages of the Norman Dukes. Not only their own children, but all the kinsfolk of their wives or mistresses, were carefully promoted by ducal grants or |Children and kinsfolk of Richard.| by advantageous marriages. Thus Sprota, the mother of Richard the Fearless, during the troubles of her son’s early reign married one Asperleng, a rich miller. From this marriage sprang Rudolf Count of Ivry, a mighty man in the reign of his nephew, and also several daughters, who were of course well disposed of in marriage. Richard himself, whose marriage with Emma of Paris was childless, was the father of a large illegitimate or doubtful offspring. Besides undoubted bastards, there was a considerable brood, including Richard, the next Duke, and Emma, the future Lady of the English, who were legitimated by Richard’s marriage with their mother. These were the children of Gunnor, a woman of Danish birth, to whom different stories attribute a noble and a plebeian origin. From these children and from the kinsfolk of Gunnor, all of whom were promoted in one way or another, |Progress of feudal doctrines.| sprang a large part of the Norman nobility. Meanwhile the principles of feudalism were making fast progress both in Normandy and in France. Hugh the Great’s doctrine of commendation, practised on so magnificent a scale between the duchies of Normandy and France, was being everywhere carried out with regard to smaller possessions. Such at least is the natural inference from the general course of events; for it must be remembered that Normandy has in this age absolutely nothing to show in the way of written legislation. The wealth of the clergy |Richard’s grants to the Church.| was also largely increasing. Richard, unlike his father, was munificent in his gifts to the Church, especially to |His foundation of Fécamp. 990.| his new, or rather restored, foundation of Fécamp and to the still more famous house of Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea. The original foundation of Fécamp was for secular canons. It was only in the days of the second Richard that the Benedictine rule was introduced. Fécamp, alone among the great monasteries of the Norman mainland, stands in the land north-east of the Seine; all the rest lie either in the valley of the river or in the true Norman districts to the west of it. Fécamp, like Westminster, Holyrood, and the Escurial, contained minster and palace in close neighbourhood; the spot became a favourite dwelling-place of Richard in his later |Dispute with Æthelred. 991.| days, and it was at last the place of his burial. The last years of his reign present only one important event, a dispute, possibly a war, with the English King Æthelred, a discussion of which I reserve for a place in the next Chapter in my more detailed narrative of English affairs. |Death of Richard. 996.| At last, Richard the Fearless, Duke of the Pirates as he is called to the last by the French historians, died of “the lesser apoplexy,” after a reign of fifty-three years. As with several other princes who play a part in the world for an unusual number of years, one is surprised to find that he was not much older in years than he was. Unlike his enemies, Arnulf and Theobald, whose lives were really prolonged beyond the common span of human existence, Richard the Fearless, or Richard the Old, as he was called to distinguish him from his successor, after all that he had done and undergone, after all the changes that he had wrought and beheld, had lived no longer than sixty-three years.