Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/147

Rh to prolong into a lasting peace but which soon broke down in a new war. The wars were for the most part border forays, in which the country was burned and wasted far and wide, to the injury chiefly of the peasants, upon whom the burden of mediæval warfare mainly fell. "First destroy the land, then the enemy," was the watchword. Booty and ransom were the object as well as military advantages, so that even the contests between knights had their sordid side, so definitely were they directed toward taking profitable prisoners; while feudal notions of honor might cause Richard to put out the eyes of fifteen prisoners and send them to Philip under the guidance of one of their number who had been left one eye, whereupon Philip blinded an equal number of knights and sent them to Richard under the guidance of the wife of one of them, "in order," says his eulogist, "that no one should think he was afraid of Richard or inferior to him in force and courage."

The brunt of the war fell on Normandy and ultimately on the castles which supplied the duchy's lack of natural frontiers. To supplement the great interior fortresses of Caen, Falaise, Argentan, Montfort, and Rouen, Henry I began the organization of a series of fortifications on the southern and eastern borders. Henry II, we are told, improved or renewed nearly all these strongholds, and especially Gisors, the frontier gateway toward France, on which fortress the exchequer