NATURE OF THE NORMAN SETTLEMENT. 195 from the 997. systematic devastation at the hands of the Wikings, large CHAP. IV. districts may have stood almost as empty and uncultivated as if such regular extirpation or expulsion had taken place. But it is certain that, a hundred years after the Conquest, Evidence there was a peasantry at once oppressed enough and peasant powerful enough to rise in systematic revolt.1 Though revolt. 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. Pro- Probable bably the landowners, great and small, were almost uni- position of versally of Scandinavian descent, while the remnant of in the the original population was reduced to a state of serfdom. It is certain that there is nothing in English history at all analogous to this insurrection till we come to the great peasant revolt of the fourteenth century. This difference seems to point to a wholly different condition of the lower orders in the two countries. As regards the language of Vestiges Normandy, the Danish tongue has utterly vanished out of Danish the land; it had vanished out of the greater part of the land language. 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.2 In Northern Gaul, just as in Eastern England, many a place lost its name, and received a new name from its new Scandinavian 1 See further on in this Chapter. * See Palgrave, i. 700; Lappenberg's Anglo-Norman Kings, 97; and, more at large, Depping, ii. 339. Such names as Dieppedal (Deep dale), Caudebec (Cold beck) are good examples. In forming local names from the proper names of men, the familiar Danish by often appears under the form of bauf; but it is more usual to couple the Danish name with a French ending. Haqueville, for instance, auswers to the English Haconby. the races country. of the CHAP. IV. lord. not an 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 remnants either of the Danish speech of Rolf and his followers or 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 account. On the absence of such information one illusabsolute trious inquirer1 has grounded a theory that Normandy had Monarchy. no Assembly, no Parliament, no Estates of any kind, but that the Duke, Marquis, 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 remained 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 the free institutions which were common to them with all the other branches of the common stock. And I think I can discern evidence enough that an assembly of some sort was frequently 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 process would have required in England. At the same time I fully admit that to ascertain Instances of the action of the States. 1 Palgrave, ii. 68, 259. 2 Dudo, 76 D. "Quo nomine vester Senior fungitur? Responderunt, Nullo, quia æqualis potestatis sumus.' " 3 Several examples are collected by Lappenberg, p. 19. The dealings of the Assembly touching the abdication of Rolf are given at large by Dudo, 90 D, et seqq. So in 85 B. we read, "Jura et leges sempiternas voluntate Principum sancitas et decretas plebi indixit." NORMANDY NOT AN ABSOLUTE MONARCHY. 197 the exact constitution of the Norman Assembly at this CHAP. IV. early time would be still more difficult than to ascertain the exact constitution of an English Witenagemót. The little light which we have may perhaps enable us to infer that it assumed an aristocratic character almost from the beginning, and that, unlike perhaps every other assembly of the kind, it contained no ecclesiastical members.1 tachment We must remember that we are now in the very thick Rolf's atof the struggle between the two dynasties of Paris and to the Laôn. The Norman stepped in as if sent to be the fated Carolingian party. 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 destruction, just as we shall see that a change of policy in his successors finally decided the same controversy the other way. It must be End of the remembered that, in the year of Rolf's settlement, the in Ger Karlings Carolingian line came to an end in the Eastern Kingdom. many. But the border land of Lotharingia, the traditional seat Lotharinof Carolingian loyalty, refused to acknowledge the new gia atKing Conrad, and presently transferred its allegiance to itself to the single Karling who still retained the royal title. The Simple. power of Charles was thus directly strengthened to the East, while it was indirectly strengthened by the cession to the Northmen in the West. This increase of power on the part of Charles may not unlikely have led to the conspiracy which soon broke out against him, and which led Robert of to the election of Robert, Duke of the French or Count Paris choof Paris, as an opposition King. In the wars which fol- 922. lowed, Charles rested to a great extent on the arms of the 1 See Depping, ii. 128, 129. 912. taches Charles the sen King. Rolf sides with Charles. Robert killed at Soissons. 923. CHAP. IV. Northmen, both Rolf's settled Northmen of the Seine and the Northmen of the Loire, the followers of Ragnald, who had not yet obtained so distinct a local habitation.1 When Robert was killed at Soissons, his son Hugh the Great, as we have seen,2 refused the crown for himself. Satisfied with his title of Duke of the French, he bestowed the title of King of the French on Rudolf, Rudolf of Duke of French Burgundy. Charles was afterwards Burgundy chosen. treacherously seized and imprisoned by Rudolf's fellowImprison- conspirator Herbert Count of Vermandois, in the same fortress in which a later King of France was imprisoned. Peronne. by a later Duke of Burgundy. Rolf's combined policy and loyalty led him to refuse all allegiance to the usurpers. A war of several years followed between him and the French of Paris. The horrors of warfare were not felt mandy and on one side only. The Norman land was twice invaded, and Rolf's fortress of Eu-a fortress famous in the recent history of France-was taken by storm. But these in ment of Charles at 923. 1468. War between Nor France. 923-927. 1 Flod. A. 923. Ragenoldus princeps Nortmannorum qui in fluvio Ligeri versabantur, Karoli frequentibus missis jampridem excitus, Franciam trans Isaram conjunctis sibi plurimis ex Rodomo prædatur." 2 See above, p. 179. 3 The well known Duchy of aftertimes, with Dijon for its capital. This part of ancient Burgundy always retained its connexion with the Kingdom of the West-Franks, while the rest formed the Burgundian Kingdom of Boso. Here Lewis the Eleventh was kept in durance by Charles the Bold, on which Philip of Comines remarks (ii. 7), "Le Roy qui se vid enfermé en ce chasteau (qui est petit) et force archers à la porte, n'estoit point sans doute et se voyoit logé rasibus d'une grosse tour, où un Comte de Vermandois fit mourir un sien predecesseur Roy de France." There is a curious notice of Charles' imprisonment in Thietmar of Merseburg (i. 13. Pertz, iii. 741): "Fuit in occiduis partibus [mark again the way in which countries, having no fixed names, are described or pointed at] quidam Rex, ab incolis Karl Sot, id est stolidus, ironicè dictus, qui ab uno suimet Ducum captus, tenebris includitur carceralibus." Both Thietmar and Widukind (i. 33) attribute to Henry the Fowler a powerful intervention in favour of Charles, which is perfectly possible, but which it is hard to find in the French writers. 5 On the seige of Eu (Auga), see Flodoard, A. 925. Richer, i. 49. ROLF'S FIDELITY TO CHARLES. tion of 924. tion 199 cursions were more than repaid in kind; a large Danegeld CHAP. IV. was more than once paid to Rolf, and levied throughout AcquisiFrance and Burgundy, and the general results of the Maine and war left Rolf in possession of a most important increase Bayeux. of territory. He obtained Maine and the district of Bayeux, together with a more fully recognized superiority over Britanny. Rolf did not long survive these suc- Abdicacesses; the year of his death is uncertain; but it seems [927?] most probable that, by the consent-perhaps at the de- and death [932] mand of the Estates of his principality, he resigned the of Rolf. government in favour of his son William, surnamed Long- William Longsword sword. A change in the policy of Herbert of Vermandois succeeds, had restored Charles to freedom and to some nominal and does homage to measure of authority. The new Prince of the North- Charles. men therefore paid to the true Carolingian King the 927. homage which his father had paid before him, but which he had steadily refused to the Parisian and Burgundian pretenders. Rolf's last The acquisition of the territory which this last war Value of added to the dominions of Rolf was inferior in import-acquisiance only to the original acquisition of Rouen. And it tion. The 1 66 'Per Franciam." Flod. A. 923. "Per Franciam atque Burgundiam." Aquitaine, Lotharingia, Normandy, and Britanny. 2 Flod. A. 924. makes him die in 917, Richer seems (but comThe one certain thing is "Karolus igitur cum Heri * Dudo gives the account in full, p. 90 et seqq. He makes Rolf survive his abdication five years. Florence of Worcester probably by omission or misreading of a letter. pare his two versions) to kill him at Eu in 925. that William did homage to Charles in 927. berto colloquium petit Nortmannorum ad castellum quod Auga vocatur, ibique se filius Rollonis Karolo committit, et amicitiam firmat cum Heriberto." Flod. in A. So Richer, i. 53. |