Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/270

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the garrison was driven to surrender. If so, the surrender must have been to the Duke's mercy, and the mercy of Duke Robert or of his counsellors was cruel. The Duke, we are told, in his wrath, ordered the eyes of Robert Carrel to be put out. The personal act of the Duke in the case of the rebel leader seems to be contrasted with the sentence of a more regular tribunal of some kind, by which mutilations of various kinds were dealt out to others of the garrison. Yet personal cruelty is so inconsistent with the ordinary character of Robert that we are driven to suppose either that some strong personal influence was brought to bear on the Duke's mind, or else that Robert Carrel had given some unpardonable offence during the course of the siege. But it is worth while to notice the words which seem to imply that the punishment of the other defenders of Saint Cenery was the work of some body which at least claimed to act in a judicial character. We can hardly look as yet for the subtlety of a separate military jurisdiction, for what we should now call a court-martial. That can hardly be thought of, except in the case of a standing body of soldiers, like Cnut's housecarls, with a constitution and rules of their own. But as in free England we have seen the army—that is, the nation in arms—act on occasion the part of a national assembly, so in more aristocratic Normandy the same principle would apply in another shape. The chief men of Normandy were there, each in command of his own followers. If Robert or his immediate counsellors wished that the cruel punishments to be dealt out to the revolted garrison should not be merely their own work,debilitatio membrorum inflicta est ex sententia curiæ."]