The Normans; told chiefly in relation to their conquest of England. Sarah Orne Jewett
clergymen of Normandy, as well as the great conquerors and chieftains. By and by we shall see that he loved to do good, and to do works of mercy, though his people called him William Longsword, and followed him to the wars.
Normandy was wild enough when Rolf came to rule there, but before he died the country had changed very much for the better. He was very careful to protect the farmers, and such laws were made, and kept, too, that robbery was almost unknown throughout the little kingdom. The peasants could leave their oxen or their tools in the [Pg048] field now, and if by chance they were stolen, the duke himself was responsible for the loss. A pretty story is told of Rolf that has also been told of other wise rulers. He had gone out hunting one day, and after the sport, while he and his companions were resting and having a little feast as they sat on the grass, Rolf said he would prove the orderliness and trustiness of his people. So he took off the two gold bracelets which were a badge of his rank, and reached up and hung them on a tree close by, and there they were, safe and shining, a long time afterward, when he went to seek them. Perhaps this story is only a myth, though the tale is echoed in other countries—England, Ireland, and Lombardy, and others beside. At any rate, it gives an expression of the public safety and order, and the people's gratitude to their good kings. Rolf brought to his new home some fine old Scandinavian customs, for his own people were knit together with close bonds in Norway. If a farmer's own servants or helpers failed him for any reason, he could demand the help of his neighbors without paying them, and they all came and helped him gather his harvest. Besides, the law punished nothing so severely as the crime of damaging or stealing from a growing crop. The field was said to be under God's lock, with heaven for its roof, though there might be only a hedge for its wall. If a man stole from another man's field, and took the ripe corn into his own barn, he paid for it with his life. This does not match very well with the sea-kings' exploits abroad, but they were very strict rulers, and very honest [Pg049] among themselves at home. One familiar English word of ours—hurrah—is said to date from Rolf's reign. Rou the Frenchmen called our Rolf; and there was a law that if a man was in danger himself, or caught his enemy doing any damage, he could raise the cry Ha Rou! and so invoke justice in Duke Rolf's name. At the sound of the cry, everybody was bound, on the instant, to give chase to the offender, and whoever failed to respond to the cry of Ha Rou! must pay a heavy fine to Rolf himself. This began the old English fashion of "hue and cry," as well as our custom of shouting Hurrah! when we are pleased and excited.
We cannot help being surprised to see how quickly the Normans became Frenchmen in their ways of living and even speaking. There is hardly a trace of their Northern language except a few names of localities left in Normandy. Once settled in their new possessions, Rolf and all his followers seem to have been as eager for the welfare of Normandy as they were ready to devastate it before. They were proud not of being Norsemen but of being Normans. Otherwise their country could not have done what it did in the very next reign to Rolf's, nor could Rouen have become so much like a French city even in his own lifetime. This was work worthy of his power, to rule a people well, and lift them up toward better living and better things. His vigor and quickness made him able to seize upon the best traits and capabilities of his new countrymen, and enforce them as patterns and examples, with no tolerance of their faults. [Pg050]
From the viking's ships which had brought Rolf and his confederates, all equal, from the Hebrides, it is a long step upward to the Norman landholders and quiet citizens with their powerful duke in his palace at Rouen. He had shared the lands of Normandy, as we have seen, with his companions, and there was a true aristocracy among them—a rule of the best, for that is what aristocracy really means. No doubt there was sin and harm enough under the new order of things, but we can see that there was a great advance in its first duke's reign, even if we cannot believe that all the fine stories are true that his chroniclers have told.
Rolf died in 927, and was a pious Christian according to his friends, and had a lingering respect for his heathen idols according to his enemies. He was an old man, and had been a brave man, and he is honored to this day for his justice and his courage in that stormy time when he lived. Some say that he was forty years a pirate before he came to Normandy, and looking back on these days of seafaring and robbery and violence must have made him all the more contented with his pleasant fields and their fruit-trees and waving grain; with his noble city of Rouen, and his gentle son William, who was the friend of the priests.
Rolf became very feeble in body and mind, and before his death he gave up the rule of the duchy to his son. He lingered for several years, but we hear nothing more of him except that when he lay dying he had terrible dreams of his old pirate days, and was troubled by visions of his slaughtered victims [Pg051] and the havoc made by the long-ships. We are glad to know that he waked from these sorrows long enough to give rich presents to the church and the poor, which comforted him greatly and eased his unhappy conscience. He was buried in his city of Rouen, in the cathedral, and there is his tomb still with a figure of him in stone—an old tired man with a furrowed brow; the strength of his fourscore years had become only labor and sorrow, but he looks like the Norseman that he was in spite of the ducal robes of French Normandy. There was need enough of bravery in the man who should fill his place. The wars still went on along the borders, and there must have been fear of new trouble in the duchy when this old chieftain Rolf had lain down to die, and his empty armor was hung high in the palace hall.
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III.
WILLIAM LONGSWORD.
"For old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago."—Wordsworth.
TOC, INDX Before we follow the fortunes of the new duke, young William Longsword, we must take a look at France and see what traditions and influences were going to affect our colony of Northmen from that side, and what relations they had with their neighbors. Perhaps the best way to make every thing clear is to go back to the reign of the Emperor Charlemagne, who inherited a great kingdom, and added to it by his wars and statesmanship until he was crowned at Rome, in the year 800, emperor not only of Germany and Gaul, but of the larger part of Italy and the northeastern part of Spain. Much of this territory had shared in the glories of the Roman Empire and had fallen with it. But Charlemagne was equal to restoring many lost advantages, being a man of great power and capacity, who found time, while his great campaigns were going on, to do a great deal for the schools of his country. He even founded a sort of normal school, where teachers were fitted for their work, and his daughters were [Pg053] busy in copying manuscripts; the emperor himself was fond of being read to when he was at his meals, and used to get up at midnight to watch the stars. Some of the interesting stories about him may not be true, but we can be sure that he was a great general and a masterly governor and lawgiver, and a good deal of a scholar. Like Rolf, he was one of the men who mark as well as make a great change in the world's affairs, and in whose time civilization takes a long step forward. When we know that it took him between thirty and forty years to completely conquer the Saxons, who lived in the northern part of his country, and we read the story of the great battle of Roncesvalles in which the Basque people won; when we follow Charlemagne (the great Charles, as his people love to call him) on these campaigns which take up almost all his history, we cannot help seeing that his enemies fought against the new order of things that he represented. It was not only that they did not want Charlemagne for their king, but they did not wish to be Christians either, or to forsake their own religion and their own ideas for his.
When he died he was master of a great association of countries which for years yet could not come together except in name, because of their real unlikeness and jealousy of each other. Charlemagne had managed to rule them all, for his sons and officers, whom he had put in command of the various provinces, were all dictated to by him, and were not in the least independent of his oversight. His fame was widespread. Embassies