Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/524

 fruitless than the former; the brothers parted in greater anger than ever. The Duke went back to Rouen; the King again took up his head-quarters at Eu.

Again on Norman soil, William began to practise the arts which had stood him in such stead in his former enterprise on the duchy. He hired mercenaries; he gave or promised money or lands to such of the chief men of Normandy as were willing to forsake the allegiance of Robert; he quartered his knights both in the castles which he had hitherto held, and in those which he won to himself by these means. Some of these last were very far from Eu. It shows how successful were the arts of Rufus, how wide was the disaffection against Robert, when we find castles, far away from one another, far away from the seat of William's power in eastern Normandy, but hemming in the lands in the Duke's obedience on two dangerous frontiers, garrisoned by the King's troops. We are reminded of the revival of Henry's power in the Côtentin when we read that the castle of La Houlme, at the junction of the two rivers Douve and Merderet, lying south-east from Valognes and nearly east from Saint Saviour, was now held for William. So was another stronghold in quite another quarter, not far from the Cenomannian border, the castle of Argentan on the upper course of the Orne, to the south of the great forest of Gouffers. Two