Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/302

 *



told more. A state of things is revealed to us which we are not used to in the history of Normandy. Rouen appears for a moment as something like an independent commonwealth, though an enemy might call it a commonwealth which seemed to be singularly bent on its own destruction. The same municipal spirit which we have seen so strong at Exeter and at Le Mans shows itself now for a moment at Rouen. We may be sure that under the rule of William the Great no man had dreamed of a commune in the capital of Normandy. His arm, we may be sure, had protected the men of Rouen, like all his other subjects, in the enjoyment of all rights and privileges which were not inconsistent with his own dominion. But in his day Rouen could have seen no demagogues, no tyrants, no armies in civic pay, no dealings of its citizens with any prince other than their own sovereign. But the rule of William the Great was over; in Robert's days it may well have seemed that the citizens of so great a city were better able to rule themselves, or at all events that they were entitled to choose their own ruler. When the arts of Rufus, his gifts and his promises, began to work at Rouen in the same way in which they had worked on the castles of the eastern border, his agents had to deal, not with a prince or a lord, but with a body of citizens under the leadership of one of whom one doubts whether he should be called a demagogue or a tyrant. We seem to be carried over two hundred and forty years to the dealings of Edward the Third with the mighty brewer of Ghent. The Artevelde of Rouen was Conan—the name suggests a Breton origin—the son of Gilbert surnamed Pilatus. He was the richest man in the city; his craft is not told us; but we must always remember that a citizen was not necessarily a trader. His wealth