Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/587

Rh NORMANDY 541 we may safely set it down as a time of struggle between the two elements in the land, a time in which things, on the whole, tended to the strengthening of the Christian, French, eastern element, the influence of Rouen and not that of Bayeux. Richard It was the long reign of William s son, Richard the the Fearless, which finally settled the position of Normandy Fearless. an( j ^{^ ^^ no sma il influence on the position of France. We must always remember that Normandy and France were alike vassal states of the Western kingdom, the kingdom of the Carolingian king at Laon, a king who, in all but the moral influence of his kingly dignity, Avas a prince of far smaller power than either of his mighty vassals. Normandy, rent away from France, bound by direct homage to the king at Laon, had hitherto been on the whole an ally of the king who dwelled beyond the dominions of the duke. The fifty years of Richard s reign changed all this. For the events of its early days we are not left wholly to Dudo ; the writers at Rheims tell us enough to show that the division between the heathen and the Christian Normans was still strongly marked. The heathen party, strengthened by a new band of settlers from the North, got hold of the young Richard and persuaded or compelled him to fall back to his heathen worship. Richard was the son of William by a Breton mother, one who stood to his father in that doubtful relation which was called the Danish marriage, and who might be spoken of as wife or concubine at pleasure. At Rheims she bore the harsher name ; yet it is a matter of avowed record that her son was received as his father s successor by King Lewis. But the young duke it is hard not to give him the title, though it is perhaps premature was presently got hold of by the heathen party, who were just then strengthened by a fresh settlement from the North. The Christians sought help both at Laon and at Paris ; king and duke entered the land, seemingly in concert, in two successive years (943, 944). The heathens were defeated ; the king occupied Rouen and the whole Norman land, doubtless with the intention of keeping it. Nothing could better suit the king of Laon than to rule at Rouen as well, and to hem in the duke of Paris on both sides. The Norman writers tell a romantic tale of the escape of young Richard from captivity at Laon. What is more certain is that Normandy soon rose against Lewis, and that, by the help of a Danish leader, in whom the Normans see the famous king Harold Blaatand, the king was defeated and made a prisoner. The policy of Hugh of France now obtains possession of Lewis and a commendation of Richard to himself. Lewis was released on surrendering Laon ; his kingdom was cut down to Compiegne. In 946, in alliance with the Eastern king Otto, the future emperor, Lewis invaded France and Normandy, but the forces of the two kings failed before both Paris and Rouen. These events fixed the position of the Norman duchy for some time. It is not clear whether Richard, along with the other princes, renewed his homage to Lewis; it seems certain that he became the man of the duke of the French. Things are thus turned about ; Rouen, lately friendly to Laon and hostile to Paris, is now friendly to Paris and hostile to Laon. Normandy is the faithful and powerful ally of France under its successive dukes, Hugh the Great and Hugh Capet. The Norman duke is the son-in-law of the elder, the brother-in-law of the younger, of the French princes. It does not appear that Richard ever did homage to King Lothair, the successor of Lewis ; he once at least, France, in 961, appeared in arms against him. At last, in 987, head of ca me the change which united the duchy of France with the au Western kingdom. Hugh of Paris was chosen to succeed to the crown of the last Lewis of Laon. This revolution, so often mistaken for a mere change of dynasty, was in fact the making of a nation. And in the making of that nation the Norman duchy had no small share. The close union between Normandy and France which had been brought about by Hugh the Great had a double result. It made Normandy French; in the end it made Gaul French. Up to this time Carolingia had been a kingdom of many nations and languages. The kings of Laon were still German; they relied on German memories, on the slight German element still left in their kingdom, on the support of the German king beyond the Rhine. The great county of Flanders, stretching much further to the south than the present use of that name, was a land of the Nether-Dutch speech. The Bretons in the extreme west kept the Celtic tongue which they had brought over from the greater Britain. The lands south of the Loire, nominally part of the kingdom, but seldom playing any part in its history, kept their own variety of the Romance speech, and a national spirit altogether distinct from anything in northern Gaul. Most central of all lay the duchy of France, the land of which Paris was the centre and the cradle, the land of the new-born French speech and French nationality. The supremacy of Gaul was not likely to fall either to its Celtic or to its Nether-Dutch element; it might well fall either to its High -Dutch, its French, or its Aqui- tanian element. The close alliance between Hugh and Richard, between France and Normandy, determined to which element it should fall. Had Normandy remained Scandinavian, France, hemmed in between Teutonic Laon and Teutonic Rouen, might never have reached to the head ship of Gaiil. But Richard s French alliance settled the question between French and Scandinavian in Normandy. Normandy, itself become French, turned the balance in Nor- favour of the French element ; it ruled that France should mandy be the head power of Gaul, that the duke of the French and the king of the French should be the same person. The first creation of Normandy, a power shorn off from France and shutting out Paris and the whole duchy from the sea, had been a frightful blow to the French power. But the loss was more than made up when the policy of Hugh the Great won back as an ally what he had lost as a ruler, when he was chosen king by the help of the Norman duke, and when his election as king meant the final estab lishment of France as the leading state of Gaul, of French as its leading speech, of Paris as its ruling city. This good understanding between France and Normandy, at all events between the kings of the French and the dukes of the Normans, lasted through the reign of Richard the Fearless, through the reigns of the second and third Richard and that of Robert, till the accession of Robert s son, William the Bastard, afterwards known as the Con queror and the Great, in 1035. The duke is now the most faithful and the most cherished vassal of the king. His vassalage is not doubtful. If Richard the Fearless, after the recovery of his duchy, no longer acknowledged the supremacy of King Lewis of Laon, he had cordially com mended himself to Duke Hugh of Paris. When the second Hugh became king, it would have been a mere question of words whether the homage of the Norman vassal was due to the French lord in his kingly or in his ducal char acter. More than once during this period the Norman dukes appear as the powerful helpers of the Parisian kings. They date their charters by the years of the kings, and recite the consent of their lords to their grants and other acts. All this is to be carefully noticed, because at a later period of Norman history, the period when Norman history is most closely connected with English history, all is different. Yet English dealings both with France and Normandy began early. In the disputes of the early days of Lewis, his uncles JEthelstan and Eadmund successively interfered on his behalf, and, so far as France and Normandy were