Mortemer battle field.

of Mortemer.

1035-1054 senting Mortemer, are standing immediately beneath that grim grey Donjon tower. The Normans diligently dogged the enemy, and when the day emerged from the night, which the French had passed in drunken debauchery, so often euphemized as merriment, they assailed Present state the fortalice and fired the town. The dark, cavernous, antient church exists, in good repair; a score of straggling farmhouses are dotted in the surrounding pastures, and the charred timbers, turned up by the ploughshare, still testify the original extent of the town. Fierce was the conflict commencing with early dawn, "boot and saddle" pealing before the rising of the sun, whilst strife and clangour and clamour resounded throughout the day. The French, thoroughly routed, fled from the field bestrewed with corpses, every pit and dungeon was crowded with captives, and amongst them, the Count of Burgundy, his ransom worth a King's.

2 34. William, however, could not take any personal share in this important conflict. He was employed in blockading King Henry, and the news was fantastically announced to his opponent. During the darkness of the night, bold old Roger de Toeny repaired to the rising ground proclamation Which commanded the French encampment; there he clomb up a tree, and grimly proclaimed to the French their shame and misfortune. And during many generations were the

Roger de Toeny's whimsical

of the

victory.

the

The suddenness of the spectral warning ter- Re French rified King Henry, and he purchased a shuffling retreat, by concluding a discreditable pacification. Special negociations ensued, relating to the liberation of prisoners, whose persons constituted a valuable portion of the plunder. The French King moreover conceded that William should retain whatever profit he could extract or extort from Geoffrey Martel.

1054-5

mits to

William as

his vassal.

8 35. With the Count of Ponthieu, Guy, Guido subor Guido, whose ancestry and pertinacity rendered him the most formidable amongst William's foes, William also made his own terms. His keen conception and prophetic judgment had disclosed to him the advantages which would result to a Duke of Normandy, by obtaining the superiority of that shore, so ample and commanding in its tidal stream.

Guido was now kept hard and fast in the filthy dungeon pit, so often the facile descent into the grave. Here he pined in duresse until he consented to become William's vassal; and, surrendering his County to Normandy's Coronal, was content to receive his territory from the Suzerain's hand.

1035-1054

William's war with Anjou.

The service of a hundred knights must Guido render to the Norman Victor. An enormous burden, ten times the tale claimed from the Norman Duchy by the Capetian Monarchy. High renown resulted to William,—already William the Conqueror. His success was rendered very important by the positive acquisition of the territory, but far more as displaying. to the world, the power which the predestined Lord and Master of England had obtained.

36. William, nevertheless, continued to prepare against further perils from Anjou; folks might already have said that William was born to cut thongs out of other men's hides; but would any man living have jeopardized his own by such unsavory jocularity? King Henry, however, gladly availed himself of the opportunity, by playing off Rollo's descendant against the descendant of Tortulfus. It is worthy of notice, that William did not assert any litigious claim to the Angevine possessions or dependencies. He did not condescend to employ the conventional form of giving his reasons, or lamenting the sad necessity of drawing the sword against Anjou, but he went to war because he wanted Anjou to win that which was not his own; the acquisition he made was an unmitigated Conquest.

William was trying his hand at his tradevery slack and expansive was the feudal bond at this era, the feudal law about as stringent as the jus gentium at the present day; enough

MAINE AND THE MANCEAUX.

239

to ground a demand and justify the thing when 1035-1054 done. This quarrel eventuated into a guerilla of varied fortunes, whereby William made that acquisition scarcely less prized in after times by the Norman Sovereigns, than the English realm, the County of Maine.

County of

ancient cele

Glorious was the ancestry of the Manceaux, Maine, and they prided themselves upon their antient brity thereof. deeds. Triumphant in the Capitol, Rome herself had quailed before them. Were not their achievements prominent in the history of the world? It was the Cenomanenses who had subjugated Cisalpine Gaul-it was the Cenomanenses who founded Trent, where the Teutonic dialect comes in collision with the Roman tongue. - It was the Cenomanenses whose circling ploughshare traced the ramparts of Crema.-It was the Cenomanenses who had founded desponding Mantua, and fated Cremona.-It was the Cenomanenses who had triumphed over the towering Bergamo, -the Pergamus of Cisalpine Gaul. It was the Cenomanenses who re-peopled Brescia of mystic mythology, and torrent-divided Verona. Nay, had not Cæsar himself quailed before these energetic conquerors?

Maine became distinguished in ecclesiastical history at a very early period of the Church. Hence came Clement, the successor of St. Peter, and sent forth by him to visit Saint Dionysius, who was the Apostle of that region, and the first Bishop of the Mans. Clinging to the Roman

VOL. III.

R

1035-1054 institutions, Maine retained her civic identity, and constituted a member of the Armorican Commonwealth. In the subsequent era, Maine, according to the traditionary pride of her people, asserted her independence and identity, though locked in-may we say enclaved-by the kingdom of Clovis. A Count of Maine, bearing the title of "Defensor," succeeded to the antient Magistrate, continuing to exercise his authority under the supremacy of the Masters of the world.

The defensor of Maine.

Herbert
Eveille-Chien.

An elective functionary was he indeed, prior to the domination of the Franks: an elective Magistrate he continued until a comparatively recent period, and the privileges guaranteed by the grim old Merovingian Sovereigns Childebert and Clothaire, confirmed the antient right, grounded upon the immemorial usage which had prevailed.

Towards the decline of the Carlovingian Empire, the increasing ascendency of the system conventionally denominated feudality, effaced the more archaic jurisdictions, and we hear of a Count David, whom local historians claim as the great Emperor's descendant. His reign, which, if faith be placed in the enchorial chronicles, endured more than half a century, enabled him to consolidate his authority.

37. A son of this ruler was our old acquaintance Herbert Eveille-Chien, or, adopting the expression for which even the Monkish Chronicler apologises, Evigilans Canem. In many