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accusations of heresy a more powerful instrument of vengeance and of gain, than in the discovery and denunciation of incest, which had been hitherto its most potent and lucrative engine.

King Robert suffered equally from the tyranny of the clergy and from that of his second wife, Constance. She induced her husband to place the crown on the head of her eldest son, Hugh. Upon his death she preferred her third son, Robert, to his brother Henry. The king, however, felt the prudence as well as justice of securing the succession to Henry; which did not prevent both sons from rebelling against him. When King Robert died in 1031, they disputed the succession; Robert aided by the Count of Champagne, Henry by the Duke of Normandy. The latter was the most powerful, and by his aid Henry I. was recognised as King, his brother Robert obtaining the duchy of Burgundy.

There is no one of the great feudal families of France, the history of whose chiefs and exploits would not be far more interesting than those of the monarchs of France in the eleventh century. Power and action were to be found at Rouen, at Chartres, or at Troyes, not in Paris. The Duke of Normandy especially led and represented the spirit of the age, to which the Capets seemed strangers. A Duke Richard of Normandy conducted or furnished that military force which maintained King Robert, not only on the throne of Paris, but in the suzerainty of Burgundy. His son, another Duke Richard, marched across France in the later years of King Robert, to avenge his own wrong on the person of a Count of Chalons-sur-Soane, whom he overcame and humbled. So that it was really the Norman Duke more than the French King, whose ascendancy was recognised even to the borders of Lorraine. Duke Richard had a younger brother, Robert, who rebelled, and who began by standing a siege in Falaise. Unable to maintain himself there, he feigned submission,

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and in token of it, invited his brother, the duke, with his chief followers, to a banquet In consequence of eating of its meats, the duke and the other guests died, an event which gave Normandy to Robert, and assigned him, in popular estimation and parlance, the name of Robert the Devil.

If the mode which he employed for acquiring sovereignty gained him such a title, the way in which he wielded it, procured him the more honourable one of Robert the Magnificent. Having first humbled such of his own barons or neighbours as denied his authority, Robert came forward as the patron and support of weak princes against the strong, who sought to despoil them. Thus he protected Henry of France against the Count of Champagne, Baldwin of Flanders against his rebellious son. And he endeavoured also to aid the cause of two young Anglo-Saxon princes against Canute the Dane, who had deprived them of their heritage. Canute scouted the demand, and Robert, in revenge, prepared the first naval expedition in the ports of Normandy against the kingdom of England. It failed at the time, but it commenced the relations of the Norman dukes with the Anglo-Saxon royal family, and set the example of turning such relations to account by the aid of a military force.

The birth of chivalry is generally assigned to this period, the middle of the eleventh century. The chronicles of Robert the Magnificent show him to have been imbued with the spirit, in ever espousing the cause of the weak. This, one of the noblest characteristics of chivalry, was, no doubt, owing to the preaching of the clergy, who first directed their efforts to the same end. Unable to accomplish it save by the warrior's sword, they contrived to introduce ceremonies and vows into the profession of arms. This made knighthood a religious as well as a feudal ceremony. In blessing the weapon and mail of the youth who for the first time

wielded or wore them, they enjoined an oath, by which he promised to be humane as well as pious. Whilst this union of devotion, and even asceticism, became the spirit of northern chivalry, the southern blended the warrior's duty with softer sentiments. The poet, in lieu of the priest, drew up its code, and presided over its festivities. Devotion and enthusiasm, instead of being exclusively paid to monastic objects, were turned to the worship of the female sex, and to the idealising of it, so as to render it a meet object of poetic and chivalric adoration. Such a peculiar and attractive view of sentiment and ideal of heroism could not prevail in one region, without exercising vast influence over the other. And although the north long resisted, and mingled its sombre colours with the bright tints of the south, the amatory sentiment joined to the devotional prevailed throughout Europe, and aided immensely in raising the social position of the weaker sex.

One of the causes which produced this in the south was the greater prevalence of life in towns, and the admixture of classes which was its consequence. Social intercourse increased: even the lords of châteaux saw more of each other. And as the country became settled, it furnished ampler revenues to exchange for the luxuries of the East or the productions of the town. The castle found its amusements, not only in tournays and martial exercise, but also in the songs or stories of poets and reciters. The noble classes themselves undertook this profession, cultivated the gay science, and blended the attributes of the troubadour with those of the knight these found their best patrons in noble. ladies, who, especially in the south, inherited landed property and rank. It was thus that gallantry came to combat asceticism, and to substitute passion and poetry for rudeness and monasticity. We shall find, hereafter, how this secularising and worldly tendency so far weaned the southerns from the Church, at least of Rome, that it

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CHAP. awakened the vindictiveness of the Popes, and produced disastrous consequences to the land. If the peculiar religious tenets and freedom fostered by the first development of the southern intellect was destined to perish, it was not so with the social sentiment. The admixture of gallantry and chivalry, which survived the sombre period of the crusades, settled down into the modern code and universal though unwritten institution of gentility, which still gives the law to European society, and its tone to the educated mind. Another result of this impulse to intellect, to converse and to poetry, was the formation and perfection of the French tongue; divided at first into two distinct dialects, the langue d'oc and the langue d'oil; the former containing a far larger element of the Latin, and the latter being the most perfect amalgamation of the language of north and south; thereby fitted to be, what it has ever proved, the most convenient medium between the races of the two extremities of Europe.

When Henry of France had been upon the throne some years, the puissant support of Normandy failed him, Robert the Devil, or the Magnificent, setting forth on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, from which he never returned. Normandy devolved upon his son William the Bastard, son of a tanner's daughter, Harlette of Falaise, who, for some years a minor, could offer neither aid nor umbrage to the King of France. Fortunately for the latter, Eudes of Champagne was slain in battle about the same time, and his large possessions divided. Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou, and son of Foulques Nerra, became the most puissant Lord of France, and Henry, of course, sought and happily obtained his protection. The Emperor Conrad was then the great rival of France and of its king, to whom the Lorrainers at one time offered themselves. On Henry's declining to engage in such a contest, Eudes of Champagne took it up and disputed Swiss Burgundy with Conrad, and was the

champion of French interests against German supremacy. When he failed, France had but to succumb, and the German Emperor established his undisputed suzerainty, not only in Lorraine but over a considerable part of Burgundy, besides compelling Baldwin of Flanders to do homage to him as emperor, and to cease his connexion with France. The weakness of Henry presented for the time a permanent bar to the extension of French suzerainty northwards.

During the minority of the Duke of Normandy, the sons of Eudes of Champagne threatened King Henry, and got possession of Eudes, the king's eldest imbecile brother, in order to use his pretensions as a pretext for war. Henry implored the succour of Geoffrey Martel, Duke of Anjou, promising him the county of Tours or Touraine in recompense; that chieftain defeated the Champainers, took one of them prisoner, put the other to flight, and thus united the possession of Tours to that of Anjou.

Henry thought to make use of the same puissant Angevin to counterbalance the power and ambition of the Duke of Normandy as this prince rose to manhood. But William the Bastard proved too strong for Geoffrey. The latter having seized Domfront, William hastened to lay siege to it; whilst so engaged he heard that the fortress of Alençon was ill-guarded, and might be surprised. He hurried thither, accomplished the capture, and hanged the garrison, after having cut off their feet and hands, in retaliation for their taunting him with being descended from a tanner. Somewhat later a more direct quarrel arose between Henry and William, in consequence of the Count of Arques, whom the latter had exiled, being sustained and abetted by the lieges of Henry. They enabled him to reseize Arques, William besieged it; the French were proceeding to its succour, when the Normans surprised and defeated them. Henry himself was at the head of the main army; but when

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