Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/79

Rh relations were avoided by alliance and friendship based upon common interest. Hugh Capet came to the throne with the support of the Norman duke, and his successors often found their mainstay in Norman arms. Robert the Magnificent on his departure for the East commended his young son to King Henry, and the heir seems to have grown up under the king's guardianship. It was Henry who saved William from his barons in 1047, and it was William that furnished over half the king's soldiers on the campaign against Anjou in the following year. Then, about the middle of the eleventh century, comes a change, for which the growing power and influence of Normandy furnish a sufficient explanation. Henry supported the revolt of William of Arques in 1053 and attempted a great invasion of Normandy in the same year, while in 1058 he burnt and pillaged his way into the heart of the Norman territory. A waiting game and well-timed attacks defeated these efforts at Mortemer and at Varaville, but William refused to follow up his advantage by a direct attack upon his king, whom he continued to treat with personal consideration as his feudal lord. Even after William himself became king, he seems to have continued to render the military service which he owed as duke. By this time, however, the subjection had become only nominal; merely as duke, William was now a more powerful ruler than the king of France, and the Capetian monarchy had to bide its time for more than a century longer.