savageness to the reaction from fear. He probably had called his cowardice caution. His success settled the character of Normandy, which became, or rather continued to be, a French country; and its people were Normans, the result of a liberal mixture of many races, from whom were to issue the rulers of many lands. The combat of the Pré de la Bataille took place just four generations before Hastings, and had its issue been different the current of history might have run in a very different direction from that in which it has set for eight centuries; but the consequences of such a change "must be left to that superhuman knowledge which the schoolmen call media scientia, and which consists in knowing all that would have happened had events been otherwise than they have been." The question at issue was whether the Normans should live as Frenchmen or disappear; and William's triumph secured the ascendency of the Romane party, who alone could establish Normandy. When his son, Richard sans Peur, became chief of the Normans, A. D. 943, Normandy was a power in Europe, and virtually a free state, for its rulers were "independent as the kings of France, whose superiority they acknowledged, but whose behests they never held themselves bound to obey."

The Normans soon made themselves felt in Europe. They became the foremost of Christian communities, and were distinguished in arts and arms and letters. They were the politest people of their time, and in their manners and modes of life they presented strong contrasts to the general coarseness of the period in which they flourished. Their valor seemed to increase with their culture; and if they were admired by the few because of their intellectual superiority, they were dreaded by the many because of their dauntless bravery and the energy and success which characterized their military exploits. Though often fighting at great odds, they were rarely defeated. They furnished the most distin

guished adventurers of an adventurous age. There is nothing more romantic than the history of the Norman family of Hauteville, which sent forth a number of men whose exertions in Southern Europe had great effect in the eleventh century. Foremost of his countrymen in courage and capacity was the adventurer Robert de Hauteville, better known as Robert Guiscard, substantially the founder of that Neapolitan kingdom which we have seen absorbed into the new kingdom of Italy. His daughter married a son of one of the Byzantine Emperors, who was dethroned; and Robert was thus enabled to enter on a series of Eastern conquests, which would have ended in the taking of Constantinople had not imperative circumstances compelled him to return to Italy. A few years later he resumed his Oriental schemes, but died before he could complete them, and when everything promised him success. Had a Norman dynasty been established at Constantinople, at the close of the eleventh century, by so able a man as Robert Guiscard, it is probable the Lower Empire would have renewed its life, and that the Normans would have become as influential in the East as their contemporary conquest of England had. made them in the West. The feudal system, of which they were the great masters, might as easily have been introduced into Greece as it was into England, and with the effect of producing an order of men who would have proved themselves more than a match for any force that the Mussulman could have brought against the new nation. There would have been a regular flow of Normans and other hardy adventurers to Byzantium, and the Turks never would have been allowed to cross the Hellespont to establish themselves in Europe, and would have been fortunate had they been able to keep the Normans from crossing the Hellespont to establish themselves in Asia. Thousands of those fanatics who were so soon to cover the Syrian sands with their

bones, as Crusaders, would have been attracted to Greece, and would have done Christendom better service there than ever they were allowed to render it under the Godfreys and Baldwins and Raymonds, the Louises and Richards and Fredericks, who piously fought for the redemption of the Redeemer's sepulchre. Indeed the Holy Sepulchre could best have been freed from infidel pollution by operations from Greece, had Greece renewed her life under a dynasty worthy of the Greeks of old; and Asia, the Land of Light, might have been relieved from the thick darkness under which it has so long labored, had Norman genius and Norman valor been authoritatively employed to direct the Christian populations of the East, reinforced by the surplus adventurers of the West, against the Mussulmans. The West might have liquidated its debt to the East, by restoring Christianity to it.

All this was on the cards, had Robert Guiscard lived a few years longer, and he was one of many sons of a poor and petty Norman baron, and superior to thousands of his countrymen only in the circumstance that he was more favored by Fortune. We are not to judge of what might have been effected by a Norman dynasty in Greece by the miserable failure of that Latin empire of which Greece was the scene in the thirteenth century, and which grew out of the capture of Constantinople by the French and the Venetians.

That empire had not the elements of success in it; and it was established too late, and on foundations too feeble, to meet the demands of the time. Its founders lacked that legislative capacity with which the Normans were so liberally endowed. Though we cannot subscribe in full to Mr. Acton Warburton's enthusiastic estimate of the Norman race, we believe him to be substantially correct in what he says of their legislative genius. He dwells with unction on the strong tendency to institutions that ever characterized them. This tendency, he observes, strongly indicates "the profound

-

sentiment of perpetuity, inherent in the Norman mind, to which everything was valueless that shared not in some degree its own enduring character. Abhorrent alike of despotism and license, they imparted this love of institutions wherever they came. In their days the world was passing through a fierce ordeal. A stern necessity lay on the whole system of things, a necessity which may be expressed in this brief formula, the sword. In their several missions, if I may so speak, the Normans were forced to use the appointed instrument of the hour; but the readiness with which the sword was sheathed, the facility with which the soldier changed into the citizen, shows how deeply they felt that a state of hostilities, bloodshed, and disorder could not be the normal condition of man. And so we see them pass at once from the battle-field to the council-chamber. The fierce warrior of yesterday is the thoughtful legislator of to-day. The first interval of repose was ever employed in devising means for giving stability to their acquisitions, and a constitutional form to the society in which they were to be vested. Among the Teutons, such a task was never referred to the wisdom of any one leader, however successful, — any oligarchy of chiefs, however eminent. From time immemorial, the provisions from which their laws were derived, and on which their societies were based, were the emanations of free public opinion. Their armies were triumphant, because the soldier yielded up his will implicitly to his general; their societies were vigorous and stable, because, when the soldier became a citizen, he resumed that will again. No sooner had conquest and peace transmuted the army into a society, than the dominant sentiment appeared, the sentiment of rational independence, resulting, as the community formed, in liberal institutions."* Had this legislative spirit been applied to Greece at the close of the eleventh

* Rollo and his Race; or, Footsteps of the Normans, Vol. II. pp. 107–109.

century, the effect would have been to create there a powerful nation; and the Crescent never would have triumphed over the Cross in that land from which the West has drawn so much that is of the highest value in all its processes of intellectual culture.

There is a reverse to this picture of the Normans. They had some very bad qualities, for they had no higher claims to perfection than is found in the case of any other people. Mr. James Augustus St. John, speaking of the Norman princess Emma, who married the English Ethelred, says, after admitting her great personal beauty, that "her mental qualities were very far from corresponding with the charms of her person. Like all other Normans, she was greedy of gold, ambitious, selfish, voluptuous, and in an eminent degree prone to treachery."* This may stand for a portrait of the whole Norman race. Nor does it detract from their aristocratical spirit that they were ever fond of money, or from their chivalrous spirit that they were faithless when they supposed treachery would best promote their interests. Aristocracies are always money-seekers, and often money-grubbers; and they plunder all whom they have the power to spoil. Alieni appetens is ever their motto, but sui profusus does always go with it. The American slavocracy were the aristocracy of this country, and they were far more "greedy of gold" than ever "Yankees" have been. Treachery is common to the chivalrous classes, and the history of chivalry is full of instances of its display by men who claimed a monopoly of honor. Our Southern "chivalry" were unfaithful to every compact they made, and it was their infidelity that brought about their fall. The dangers that now

* What Sir F. Palgrave says of the famous son of Robert Guiscard is applicable generally to the Normans : "Bohemond was affectionate and true to father, wife, and children, pleasant, affable, and courteous yet wrapped up in selfishness, possessed by insatiate ambition and almost diabolical cruelty, proud and faithless, but in spite of all these vices so seductive as to command the admiration even of

threaten the country exist only because the party vanquished in the late civil war are bent upon breaking the terms on which they were admitted to mercy. They are fond of calling themselves Normans, though we have not heard much of their Norman origin since their Hastings went against them; but in respect to treachery and cruelty, and disregard of the rights of the poor and the helpless, they are the match of all the barons of Normandy.

The

The Normans were often cruel, and some of their modes of punishing their defeated enemies — blinding them, and cutting off their feet and hands, and inflicting on them the most degrading of mutilations - might lead one to suppose they were of Eastern origin, were not such practices traceable to the Northmen. These practices imply a grossness of mind that is much at war with the common notion of the gentleness and cultivation of the Norman nobles. They were noted for their craft, their spirit of intrigue, and their readiness to get possession of the property of others by any and all means. most unscrupulous modern devotee of Mammon would be ashamed of deeds that never disturbed the placid egotism of men who considered themselves the flower of humanity and the salt of the earth, — and whose estimate of themselves has seldom been called in question. The fairer side of their conduct with regard to money is visible in their sensible encouragement of "business" in all the forms which it then knew. "Annual Mercantile Fairs," says Sir F. Palgrave, "were accustomed in Normandy. Established by usage and utility, ere recognized by the law, their origin bespake a healthy energy. Foreign manufacturers were welcomed as settlers in the Burghs, the richer the better. No grudge was entertained against the Fleming; and the material prosperity of the country and the briskness of commerce carried on in all the great towns, proves that the pack-horses could tramp along the old Roman roads with

the commercial spirit was indigenous.

The Danes and the folk of Danish blood were diligent traders. The greed of gain unites readily with desperate bravery. When occasion served, Drake would deal like a Dutchman. Any mode of making money enters into facile combination with the bold rapacity of the Flibustier." There was much material prosperity in Normandy at the close of the tenth century, or less than a hundred years after Rollo had established himself and his followers on French soil. The burgher class throve amazingly, and were the envy of all who knew their condition; and their military skill and valor were as famous as their success in the industrial arts, and their wealth, which was its consequence. Free they were, or they would have been neither rich nor valiant. The peasantry, too, were a superior people, who enjoyed much freedom, and who exhibited their bravery whenever there was call for its exhibition, facts which show that they must have been well governed, and which tend to elevate our conception of the merits of their rulers.

There was no such thing as a caste of nobles in Normandy for very many years after that country passed into the hands of the Northmen. About two generations after the death of Rollo, Richard le Bon, one of the most popular of his descendants, set up the standard of exclusion, and created that Norman nobility of which the world has heard so much for eight hundred years. The clergy were too powerful in those days to be much affected by his action, and the burghers were too rich to be put down by a newly created nobility; but the peasantry were greatly injured by the change, as it created an order who were interested in oppressing them. They conspired, and their course bears some resemblance to that of the Fenians of our day. The "Commune" was a word as alarming to Richard le Bon and his nobility as nian was at first to the most bigoted of Orangemen. The Duke employed Raoul, Count of Ivri, to crush the Communists. Raoul was the son of a rich

"Fe

peasant, but he had no sympathy with his father's order. As in modern life the most determined aristocrat is often the man whose origin is the lowest, so was it nine centuries ago, in Normandy. Raoul was a sort of Claverhouse and Jeffreys in one person, and he "enjoyed the sport of dogging the Villainage. He fell upon the Communists; caught them in the very fact,

holding a Lodge, — swearing in new members. Terrible was the catastrophe. No trial vouchsafed. No judge called in. Happy the wretch whose weight stretched the halter. The country was visited by fire and flame; the rebels were scourged, their eyes plucked out, their limbs chopped off, they were burnt alive; whilst the rich were impoverished and ruined by confiscations and fines." Such were the good old times, which never can return, Heaven be praised! Such was the origin of the Norman nobility, destined to become the patricians of the world. The cruelty with which the peasants were treated by the new nobles is a type of the system that ever was pursued by men of "the gentle Norman blood" toward a restless people. "The folk of Normandie" had no mercy on men who disputed, or even called in question, their right to unrestricted dominion.

The Cotentin was the most important part of Normandy, was to Normandy what Normandy was to the rest of Europe. It has been well described as "not merely the physical bulwark of Normandy, but the very kernel of Norman nationality." It now forms a part of the Département de la Manche, and it holds Cherbourg in its bosom, the Cæsaris Burgus of the Romans, which the French imperial historian of the first Cæsar is completing as a defiance to England, thus finishing what was long since begun under the old monarchy. Ages ago-even before the Romans had entered Gaul - what we call Cherbourg is believed to have attracted Gaulish attention because of its marine advantages. It is all but certain that the Romans fortified it. The Normans were children of the sea,

and they did not neglect it. The Normans of the Cotentin were the purest men of their race. They kept up that connection with the ocean from which some other Normans revolted; and they were led from the land to the sea by the same inducement that had sent their ancestors out of Scania, the inability to find food there. "The population," we are assured, was teeming, the sterile land could not feed them, but the roaring surges surrounded them. All loved the sea, and upon the waves, and beyond the waves, they were ever seeking their fortunes. From Hauteville, nigh Coutances, came the conquerors of Apulia and Sicily. And when we call over Battle-Abbey Roll, or search the Domesday record, or trace the lineage of our [the British] aristocracy, we shall find that the lords of these same Cotentin castles, with scarcely an exception, served in the Conqueror's army, or settled in the realm they won." The plain English of which is, that they were the cleverest, the most active, and the most successful robbers of their day and nation.

England was too near Normandy not to be an object of the first interest to the Normans. At the close of the tenth century King Ethelred II. adopted a course that was destined to have the most memorable consequences. Richard le Bon bore himself toward the English much the same as the English of to-day bore themselves toward us in the Secession war. The Danes were then the worst enemies of England, and the Norman government so far anticipated the Palmerstonian policy of neutrality, which consists in favoring the enemies of those whom you hate, as to throw open its ports to the ravagers of Normandy's neighbor. "Without sharing the danger," observes Sir F. Palgrave, Normandy prospered upon the prey which the Danskerman made in England. The Normans were a thriving and moneygetting people. The great fair of Guipry attests their national tendency. The liberal policy of the Dukes is also forcibly illustrated by the remarkable

66

There is something amusing in this extract; for it describes, as it were, and in advance, the state of things that existed during our late war. The Secessionists were our Danes, who, if they did not ravage our lands, cut up our commerce at a fearful rate, and not only found shelter and aid wherever the English flag flies in authority, but were furnished with ships by England and with men to work and to fight them, so that our last sea-fight was won over our old foe on that summer day when the Kearsarge sent the Alabama to look after the old Raven craft of the Northmen that may be lying under the old Norman waters, and did it, too, off the Cotentin shore, just where the conflict between Saxons and Normans began.

King Ethelred, like President Lincoln in the case of the English, was so unreasonable as to complain of the conduct of the Normans; and, again like our lamented chief, he could not find any excuse for piratical action in the fact that "the Normans were a thriving and money-getting people," and supposed they had the right to get money by encouraging robbery. But, unlike the American President, the Saxon king determined to have prompt and ample vengeance - if he could get it. He indulged in as much loud language as was uttered in Vienna last June, when Sadowa was yet an unknown name. He was bent upon vengeance, stern and terrible. Now, vengeance is a commodity that is dear when it is procurable gratis, but sometimes it is not obtainable at any price. And so Ethelred found it, to his cost. Having