Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/297

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the good will, or at least the neutrality, of the French King. This was a state of things which could have happened only during the few years when different sons of the Conqueror ruled in England and in Normandy. Whenever England and Normandy were united, whether by conquest or by inheritance, the old strife between France and Normandy led England into the struggle. But at the present moment an alliance between England and France against Normandy was as possible as any other political combination. And the arts of Rufus secured, if not French alliance, at least French neutrality. But either alliance or neutrality was in its own nature destructive of itself. Let either Normandy win England or England win Normandy, and the old state of things again began. The union of England and Normandy meant enmity between England and France, an enmity which survived their separation. Friendly dealings between William and Philip were a step towards the union of England and Normandy, and thereby a step towards that open enmity between England and France which began under Rufus himself and which lasted down to our fathers' times. The bribe which Philip took at Eu has its place in the chain of events which led to Bouvines, to Crécy, and to Waterloo.

But while things were thus, unknown to the actors in them, taking a turn which was permanently to affect the history of mankind, the immediate business of the time went on as before in the lands of Northern Gaul. In Normandy that immediate business was mutual destruction—civil war is too lofty a name; in Maine it was deliverance from the Norman yoke. I am not called on to tell in detail the whole story of every local strife between one Norman baron and another, not even in those