Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/585

Rh NORMANDY 539 of the province of Tours. The land thus marked out took in the districts of Caux, Talou, Rouen, Evreux, Lisieux, Bayeux (Bessin), Avranches, and Coutances (Cotentin, pagus Constantinus), with the greater part of the Hiesmois and about half the Vexin. This last was often a disputed ground between Normandy and France. But the main feature of the country is its sea-coast and its great river. A glance at the map (Plate XIII., vol. ix.) will show that the coast of Normandy, long as it seems, is little more than the mouth of the Seine. To the west that mouth is guarded by the peninsula of Coutances, the Danish land which, it has been remarked, is the only peninsula in Europe, besides the older Danish land, which points to the north. To the west this peninsula presents a bold front to the Atlantic, forming with the Breton coast a bay in which lie the Norman islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, and some smaller ones. Normandy, in fact, was the seaboard of France in the strict sense, the coast lying between Britanny on the one side and Flanders on the other. It is that part of the Continent which lies most directly opposite Britain. The Norman duchy, in short, as long as it had an independent being, was inter posed between England and France ; and in that position lies the key to its whole history. The chief city of the duchy was always the ecclesiastical metropolis of Rouen (Rothomagus), the great city of the lower Seine. It is to be noticed that Rouen, like the cities of southern Gaul, keeps its own local na*me and has not taken the name of a tribe. Evreux, Seez, Bayeux, Lisieux, Avranches, preserve tribe names. The name Constantia or Coutances belongs of course to the later Roman nomen clature of imperial times. Other towns which figure in Norman history, as Caen, Falaise, Alengon, are of later origin. Havre de Grace dates only from the 16th century, long after the loss of Norman independence. In the divisions of modern France, Normandy answers to the departments of Lower Seine (cap. Rouen), Eure (cap. Evreux), Orne (cap. Alenc,on), Calvados (cap. Caen), Manche (cap. St Lo), and to the modern dioceses of Rouen, Evreux, Seez, Bayeux, and Coutances. The boundaries of Rouen and Evreux have been changed ; Lisieux has been joined to Bayeux, and Avranches to Coutances. The archbishop of Rouen still keeps the title of primate of Normandy ; otherwise the name of the duchy has gone out of formal use. It must be remembered that the land to which the Northmen thus permanently gave their name was only one of several Scandinavian settlements in Gaul, though it was the greatest and the only lasting one. Nor was the whole of the land which became the Norman duchy occupied at once. The whole second half of the 9th century was largely taken up in both Gaul and Britain with Scandinavian inroads, which in both countries led to important Scandinavian settlements. Settlement in Britain came first, and the great settlement in Gaul seems to have been made after its model. By the peace of Wedmore, Alfred found his own West- Saxon kingdom untouched and indeed enlarged. But a large part of England, over which he claimed at most a vague external supremacy, was left to the Danish invaders. Their king embraced Christianity, and, like his English predecessors, accepted a formal West-Saxon supremacy. A variety of later causes made the history of the Scandinavian settle ment in England to differ widely from that of the Scandi navian settlement in Gaul ; but in their beginnings the two are exactly alike. The smaller Scandinavian settle ments, those of Hasting at Chartres, of Ragnald at the mouth of the Loire, had no historical importance. The settlement of Rolf at Rouen grew into the duchy of Normandy. The treaty of Clair-on-Epte followed the model of that of Wedmore. The Scandinavian invader embraced Christianity, and he became the man of the king of the Western kingdom. But he received no part of the king s immediate territory. His settlement was made wholly at the cost of the duke of the French. The only difference was that the duke of the French still went on reigning at Paris, though no longer at Rouen, while the English dynasties of Mercia, East Anglia, and Deira came alto gether to an end. But the two settlements are exactly alike in this, that the converted Northman becomes the man of the king, though the settlement is not made at the cost of the king s immediate dominions. In both cases the king is strengthened, though in different ways. The West-Saxon king received an actual increase of im mediate territory in the shape of that part of Mercia which formed the lordship of ^Ethelred and vEthelflsed. The Carolingian king received no increase of territory, but his position was distinctly bettered when the great and threatening duchy of France was split into the two rival duchies of France and Normandy. That Normandy was cut off from France in the strict sense, from the duchy of the house of Paris, is a point in its history which must always be remembered. It is the key to that abiding rivalry between France and Normandy which was inherent in the position and history of the two lands. No moment ary policy on the part of their rulers could ever get over it. It lived on in truth to become no unimportant element in the general history of Europe. The close connexion which arose between Normandy and England handed on to England the inheritance of rivalry which had first begun between France and Normandy, an inheritance which England kept in its fulness for ages after its separation from Normandy. It is likely enough con sidering the position of the two kingdoms, we may call it certain that, had a separate state of Normandy never existed, a rivalry between England and France would have arisen out of some other cause. As a matter of fact, it was out of the older rivalry between France and Normandy that it did arise. The settlement of Clair-on-Epte and the beginning of Settle- the Norman state are commonly placed in the year 912. ment There seems some reason to think that it may have hap-Si irc pened a few years later. There is no thoroughly trust worthy account. The writers in the Western kingdom plainly say as little as they can about the matter ; they disliked the very name of the &quot;pirates,&quot; as the Normans are called by Richer of Rheims down to the end of the century and beyond it. The earliest writer on the Norman side is Dudo, dean of St Quentin, who wrote late in the century, a rhetorical writer of the courtly school. But there is no doubt that the chief of the Scandinavian set tlers was Rolf (in various spellings), known in Latin as Rolf. Rollo and in French as Rou, a viking leader to whom many earlier exploits, real or mythical, are attributed. He received, as a grant from Charles the Simple, king of Carolingia or the Western kingdom, a tract of land of which Rouen was the centre and head, a tract certainly stretching as far as the Epte to the east, most likely stretching as far as the Dive to the west. It is an im portant part of the case that, though the land was cut off from the duchy of France, yet the grant was a grant from the king and not from the duke of the French, and that the king and not the duke received Rolf s homage. The two princes were presently at war, Robert, duke of the French, having been elected as opposition -king in 922. Rolf seems to have stuck faithfully to his own lord, King Charles, alike against Robert and against Robert s son Hugh, called the Great, and the king, Rudolf of Burgundy, whom Hugh set up. The Normans were thus at war with France almost from the moment of their settlement,