Читать книгу History of France from the Earliest Times (Vol. 1-6) - Guizot François - Страница 31

The address was too long for the duke’s faithful comrade, William Fitz-Osborn. “My lord,” said he, “we dally; let us all to arms and forward, forward!” The army got in motion, starting from the hill of Telham or Heathland, according to Mr. Freeman, marching to attack the English on the opposite hill of Senlac. A Norman, called Taillefer, “who sang very well, and rode a horse which was very fast, came up to the duke. ‘My lord,’ said he, ‘I have served you long, and you owe me for all my service: pay me to day, an it please you; grant unto me, for recompense in full, to strike the first blow in the battle.’ ‘I grant it,’ quoth the duke. So Taillefer darted before him, singing the deeds of Charlemagne, of Roland, of Oliver, and of the vassals who fell at Roncesvalles.” As he sang, he played with his sword, throwing it up into the air and catching it in his right hand; and the Normans followed, repeating his songs, and crying, “God help! God help!” The English, intrenched upon a plateau towards which the Normans were ascending, awaited the assault, shouting, and defying the foe.

The battle, thus begun, lasted nine hours, with equal obstinacy on both sides, and varied success from hour to hour. Harold, though wounded at the commencement of the fray, did not cease for a moment to fight, on foot, with his two brothers beside him, and around him the troops of London, who had the privilege of forming the king’s guard when he delivered a battle. Rudely repulsed at the first charge, some bodies of Norman troops fell back in disorder, and a rumor spread amongst them that the duke was slain; but William threw himself before the fugitives, and, taking off his helmet, cried, “Look at me; here I am; I live, and by God’s help will conquer.” So they returned to the combat. But the English were firm; the Normans could not force their intrenchrnents; and William ordered his men to feign a retreat, and all but a flight. At this sight the English bore down in pursuit: “and still Norman fled and Saxon pursued, until a trumpeter, who had been ordered by the duke thus to turn back the Normans, began to sound the recall. Then were seen the Normans turning back to face the English, and attacking them with their swords, and amongst the English, some flying, some dying, some asking mercy in their own tongue.” The struggle once more became general and fierce. William had three horses killed under him; “but he jumped immediately upon a fresh steed, and left not long unavenged the death of that which had but lately carried him.” At last the intrenchments of the English were stormed; Harold fell mortally wounded by an arrow which pierced his skull; his two brothers and his bravest comrades fell at his side; the fight was prolonged between the English dispersed and the Normans remorselessly pursuing; the standard sent from Rome to the duke of Normandy had replaced the Saxon flag on the very spot where Harold had fallen; and, all around, the ground continued to get covered with dead and dying, fruitless victims of the passions of the combatants. Next day William went over the field of battle; and he was heard to say, in a tone of mingled triumph and sorrow, “Here is verily a lake of blood!”

There was, long after the battle of Senlac, or Hastings, as it is commonly called, a patriotic superstition in the country to the effect that, when the rain had moistened the soil, there were to be seen traces of blood on the ground where it had taken place.

Having thus secured the victory, William had his tent pitched at the very point where the standard which had come from Rome had replaced the Saxon banner, and he passed the night supping and chatting with his chieftains, not far from the corpses scattered over the battle-field. Next day it was necessary to attend to the burial of all these dead, conquerors or conquered. William was full of care and affection towards his comrades; and on the eve of the battle, during a long and arduous reconnoissance which he had undertaken with some of them, he had insisted upon carrying, for some time, in addition to his own cuirass, that of his faithful William Fitz-Osbern, who he saw was fatigued in spite of his usual strength; but towards his enemies William was harsh and resentful. Githa, Harold’s mother, sent to him to ask for her son’s corpse, offering for it its weight in gold. “Nay,” said William, “Harold was a perjurer; let him have for burial-place the sand of the shore, where he was so madly fain to rule.” Two Saxon monks from Waltham Abbey, which had been founded by Harold, came, by their abbot’s order, and claimed for their church the remains of their benefactor; and William, indifferent as he had been to a mother’s grief, would not displease an abbey. But when the monks set about finding the body of Harold, there was none to recognize it, and they had recourse to a young girl, Edith, Swan’s-neck, whom Harold had loved. She discovered amongst the corpses her lover’s mutilated body; and the monks bore it away to the church at Waltham, where it was buried. Some time later a rumor was spread abroad that Harold was wounded, and carried to a neighboring castle, perhaps Dover, whence he went to the abbey of St. John, at Chester, where he lived a long while in a solitary cell, and where William the Conqueror’s second son, Henry I., the third Norman king of England, one day went to see him and had an interview with him. But this legend, in which there is nothing chronologically impossible, rests on no sound basis of evidence, and is discountenanced by all contemporary accounts.

Before following up his victory, William resolved to perpetuate the remembrance of it by a religious monument, and he decreed the foundation of an abbey on the very field of the battle of Hastings, from which it took its name, Battle Abbey. He endowed this abbey with all the neighboring territory within the radius of a league, “the very spot,” says his charter, “which gave me my crown.” He made it free of the jurisdiction of any prelate, dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of the soldiers of Gaul, and ordered that there should be deposited in its archives a register containing the names of all the lords, knights, and men of mark who had accompanied him on his expedition. When the building of the abbey began, the builders observed a want of water; and they notified William of the fact. “Work away,” said he: “if God grant me life, I will make such good provision for the place that more wine shall be found there than there is water in other monasteries.”

It was not everything, however, to be victorious, it was still necessary to be recognized as king. When the news of the defeat at Hastings and the death of Harold was spread abroad in the country, the emotion was lively and seemed to be profound; the great Saxon national council, the Wittenagemote, assembled at London; the remnants of the Saxon army rallied there; and search was made for other kings than the Norman duke. Harold left two sons, very young and not in a condition to reign; but his two brothers-in-law, Edwin and Morkar, held dominion in the north of England, whilst the southern provinces, and amongst them the city of London, had a popular aspirant, a nephew of Edward the Confessor, in Edgar surnamed Atheliny (the noble, the illustrious), as the descendant of several kings. What with these different pretensions, there were discussion, hesitation, and delay; but at last the young Edgar prevailed, and was proclaimed king. Meanwhile William was advancing with his army, slowly, prudently, as a man resolved to risk nothing and calculating upon the natural results of his victory. At some points he encountered attempts at resistance, but he easily overcame them, occupied successively Romney, Dover, Canterbury, and Rochester, appeared before London without trying to enter it, and moved on Winchester, which was the residence of Edward the Confessor’s widow, Queen Editha, who had received that important city as dowry. Through respect for her, William, who presented himself in the character of relative and heir of King Edward, did not enter the place, and merely called upon the inhabitants to take the oath of allegiance to him and do him homage, which they did with the queen’s consent. William returned towards London and commenced the siege, or rather investment of it, by establishing his camp at Berkhampstead, in the county of Hertford. He entered before long into secret communication with an influential burgess, named Ansgard, an old man who had seen service, and who, riddled with wounds, had himself carried about the streets in a litter. Ansgard had but little difficulty in inducing the authorities of London to make pacific overtures to the duke, and William had still less difficulty in convincing the messenger of the moderation of his designs. “The king salutes ye, and offers ye peace,” said Ansgard to the municipal authorities of London on his return from the camp: “ ’tis a king who hath no peer; he is handsomer than the sun, wiser than Solomon, more active and greater than Charlemagne,” and the enthusiastic poet adds that the people as well as the senate eagerly welcomed these words, and renounced, both of them, the young king they had but lately proclaimed. Facts were quick in responding to this quickly produced impression; a formal deputation was sent to William’s camp; the archbishops of Canterbury and York, many other prelates and laic chieftains, the principal citizens of London, the two brothers-in- law of Harold, Edwin and Morkar, and the young king of yesterday, Edgar Atheling himself, formed part of it; and they brought to William, Edgar Atheling his abdication, and all the others their submission, with an express invitation to William to have himself made king, “for we be wont,” said they, “to serve a king, and we wish to have a king for lord.” William received them in presence of the chieftains of his army, and with great show of moderation in his desires. “Affairs,” said he, “be troubled still; there be still certain rebels; I desire rather the peace of the kingdom than the crown; I would that my wife should be crowned with me.” The Norman chieftains murmured whilst they smiled; and one of them, an Aquitanian, Aimery de Thouars, cried out, “It is passing modest to ask soldiers if they wish their chief to be king: soldiers are never, or very seldom, called to such deliberations: let what we desire be done as soon as possible.” William yielded to the entreaties of the Saxon deputies and to the counsels of the Norman chieftains but, prudent still, before going in person to London, he sent thither some of his officers with orders to have built there immediately, on the banks of the Thames, at a point which he indicated, a fort where he might establish himself in safety. That fort, in the course of time, became the Tower of London.

When William set out, some days afterwards, to make his entry into the city, he found, on his way to St. Alban’s, the road blocked with huge trunks of trees recently felled. “What means this barricade in thy domains?” he demanded of the abbot of St. Alban’s, a Saxon noble. “I did what was my duty to my birth and mission,” replied the monk: “if others, of my rank and condition, had done as much, as they ought to and could have done, thou hadst not penetrated so far into our country.”

On entering London after all these delays and all these precautions, William fixed, for his coronation, upon Christmas-day, December 25th, 1066. Either by desire of the prelate himself or by William’s own order, it was not the archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, who presided, according to custom, at the ceremony; the duty devolved upon the archbishop of York, Aldred, who had but lately anointed Edgar Atheling. At the appointed hour, William arrived at Westminster Abbey, the latest work and the burial-place of Edward the Confessor. The Conqueror marched between two hedges of Norman soldiers, behind whom stood a crowd of people, cold and sad, though full of curiosity. A numerous cavalry guarded the approaches to the church and the quarters adjoining. Two hundred and sixty counts, barons, and knights of Normandy went in with the duke. Geoffrey, bishop of Coutanees, demanded in French, of the Normans, if they would that their duke should take the title of King of the English. The archbishop of York demanded of the English, in the Saxon tongue, if they would have for king the duke of Normandy. Noisy acclamations arose in the church and resounded outside. The soldiery, posted in the neighborhood, took the confused roar for a symptom of something wrong, and in their suspicious rage set fire to the neighboring houses. The flames spread rapidly. The people who were rejoicing in the church caught the alarm, and a multitude of men and women of every rank flung themselves out of the edifice. Alone and trembling, the bishops with some clerics and monks remained before the altar and accomplished the work of anointment upon the king’s head, “himself trembling,” says the chronicle. Nearly all the rest who were present ran to the fire, some to extinguish it, others to steal and pillage in the midst of the consternation. William terminated the ceremony by taking the usual oath of Saxon kings at their coronation, adding thereto, as of his own motion, a promise to treat the English people according to their own laws and as well as they had ever been treated by the best of their own kings. Then he went forth from the church King of England.

We will pursue no farther the life of William the Conqueror: for henceforth it belongs to the history of England, not of France. We have entered, so far as he was concerned, into pretty long details, because we were bound to get a fair understanding of the event and of the man; not only because of their lustre at the time, but especially because of the serious and long-felt consequences entailed upon France, England, and, we may say, Europe. We do not care just now to trace out those consequences in all their bearings; but we would like to mark out with precision their chief features, inasmuch as they exercised, for centuries, a determining influence upon the destinies of two great nations, and upon the course of modern civilization.

As to France, the consequences of the conquest of England by the Normans were clearly pernicious, and they have not yet entirely disappeared. It was a great evil, as early as the eleventh century, that the duke of Normandy, one of the great French lords, one of the great vassals of the king of France, should at the same time become king of England, and thus receive an accession of rank and power which could not fail to render more complicated and more stormy his relations with his French suzerain. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, from Philip I. to Philip de Valois, this position gave rise, between the two crowns and the two states, to questions, to quarrels, to political struggles, and to wars which were a frequent source of trouble in France to the government and the people. The evil and the peril became far greater still when, in the fourteenth century, there arose between France and England, between Philip de Valois and Edward III., a question touching the succession to the throne of France and the application or negation of the Salic law. Then there commenced, between the two crowns and the two peoples, that war which was to last more than a hundred years, was to bring upon France the saddest days of her history, and was to be ended only by the inspired heroism of a young girl who, alone, in the name of her God and His saints, restored confidence and victory to her king and her country. Joan of Arc, at the cost of her life, brought to the most glorious conclusion the longest and bloodiest struggle that has devastated France and sometimes compromised her glory.

Such events, even when they are over, do not cease to weigh heavily for a long while upon a people. The struggles between the kings of England, dukes of Normandy, and the kings of France, and the long war of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for the succession to the throne of France, engendered what historians have called “the rivalry between France and England;” and this rivalry, having been admitted as a natural and inevitable fact, became the permanent incubus and, at divers epochs, the scourge of French national existence. Undoubtedly there are, between great and energetic neighbors, different interests and tendencies, which easily become the seeds of jealousy and strife; but there are also, between such nations, common interests and common sentiments, which tend to harmony and peace. The wisdom and ability of governments and of nations themselves are shown in devoting themselves to making the grounds of harmony and peace stronger than those of discord and war. Anyhow common sense and moral sense forbid differences of interests and tendencies to be set up as a principle upon which to establish general and permanent rivalry, and, by consequence, a systematic hostility and national enmity. And the further civilization and the connections between different people proceed with this development, the more necessary and, at the same time, possible it becomes to raise the interests and sentiments which would hold them together above those which would keep them asunder, and to thus found a policy of reciprocal equity and of peace in place of a policy of hostile precautions and continual strife. “I have witnessed,” says M. Guizot, “in the course of my life, both these policies. I have seen the policy of systematic hostility, the policy practised by the Emperor Napoleon I. with as much ability and brilliancy as it was capable of, and I have seen it result in the greatest disaster France ever experienced. And even after the evidence of its errors and calamities this policy has still left amongst us deep traces and raised serious obstacles to the policy of reciprocal equity, liberty, and peace which we labored to support, and of which the nation felt, though almost against the grain, the justice and the necessity.” In that feeling we recognize the lamentable results of the old historic causes which have just been pointed out, and the lasting perils arising from those blind passions which hurry people away, and keep them back from their most pressing interests and their most honorable sentiments.

In spite of appearances to the contrary, and in view of her future interests, England was, in the eleventh century, by the very fact of the conquest she underwent, in a better position than France. She was conquered, it is true, and conquered by a foreign chieftain and a foreign army; but France also had been, for several centuries previously, a prey to conquest, and under circumstances much more unfavorable than those under which the Norman conquest had found and placed England. When the Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Saxons, and the Normans themselves invaded and disputed over Gaul, what was the character of the event? Barbarians, up to that time vagabonds or nearly so, were flooding in upon populations disorganized and enervated. On the side of the German victors, no fixity in social life; no general or anything like regular government; no nation really cemented and constituted; but individuals in a state of dispersion and of almost absolute independence: on the side of the vanquished Gallo-Romans, the old political ties dissolved; no strong power, no vital liberty; the lower classes in slavery, the middle classes ruined, the upper classes depreciated. Amongst the barbarians society was scarcely commencing; with the subjects of the Roman empire it no longer existed; Charlemagne’s attempt to reconstruct it by rallying beneath a new empire both victors and vanquished was a failure; feudal anarchy was the first and the necessary step out of barbaric anarchy and towards a renewal of social order.

It was not so in England, when, in the eleventh century, William transported thither his government and his army. A people but lately come out of barbarism, conquered, on that occasion, a people still half barbarous. Their primitive origin was the same; their institutions were, if not similar, at any rate analogous; there was no fundamental antagonism in their habits; the English chieftains lived in their domains an idle, hunting life, surrounded by their liegemen, just as the Norman barons lived. Society, amongst both the former and the latter, was founded, however unrefined and irregular it still was; and neither the former nor the latter had lost the flavor and the usages of their ancient liberties. A certain superiority, in point of organization and social discipline, belonged to the Norman conquerors; but the conquered Anglo- Saxons were neither in a temper to allow themselves to be enslaved nor out of condition for defending themselves. The conquest was destined to entail cruel evils, a long oppression, but it could not bring about either the dissolution of the two peoples into petty lawless groups, or the permanent humiliation of one in presence of the other. There were, at one and the same time, elements of government and resistance, causes of fusion and unity in the very midst of the struggle.

We are now about to anticipate ages, and get a glimpse, in their development, of the consequences which attended this difference, so profound, in the position of France and of England, at the time of the formation of the two states.

In England, immediately after the Norman conquest, two general forces are confronted, those, to wit, of the two peoples. The Anglo-Saxon people is attached to its ancient institutions, a mixture of feudalism and liberty, which become its security. The Norman army assumes organization on English soil according to the feudal system which had been its own in Normandy. A principle of authority and a principle of resistance thus exist, from the very first, in the community and in the government. Before long the principle of resistance gets displaced; the strife between the peoples continues; but a new struggle arises between the Norman king and his barons. The Norman kingship, strong in its growth, would fain become tyrannical; but its tyranny encounters a resistance, also strong, since the necessity for defending themselves against the Anglo-Saxons has caused the Norman barons to take up the practice of acting in concert, and has not permitted them to set themselves up as petty, isolated sovereigns. The spirit of association receives development in England: the ancient institutions have maintained it amongst the English landholders, and the inadequacy of individual resistance has made it prevalent amongst the Norman barons. The unity which springs from community of interests and from junction of forces amongst equals becomes a counter-poise to the unity of the sovereign power. To sustain the struggle with success, the aristocratic coalition formed against the tyrannical kingship has needed the assistance of the landed proprietors, great and small, English and Norman, and it has not been able to dispense with getting their rights recognized as well as its own. Meanwhile the struggle is becoming complicated; there is a division of parties; a portion of the barons rally round the threatened kingship; sometimes it is the feudal aristocracy, and sometimes it is the king that summons and sees flocking to the rescue the common people, first of the country, then of the towns. The democratic element thus penetrates into and keeps growing in both society and government, at one time quietly and through the stolid influence of necessity, at another noisily and by means of revolutions, powerful indeed, but nevertheless restrained within certain limits. The fusion of the two peoples and the different social classes is little by little attaining accomplishment; it is little by little bringing about the perfect formation of representative government with its various component parts, royalty, aristocracy, and democracy, each invested with the rights and the strength necessary for their functions. The end of the struggle has been arrived at; constitutional monarchy is founded; by the triumph of their language and of their primitive liberties the English have conquered their conquerors. It is written in her history, and especially in her history at the date of the eleventh century, how England found her point of departure and her first elements of success in the long labor she performed, in order to arrive, in 1688, at a free, and, in our days, at a liberal government.

France pursued her end by other means and in the teeth of other fortunes. She always desired and always sought for free government under the form of constitutional monarchy; and in following her history, step by step, there will be seen, often disappearing and ever re-appearing, the efforts made by the country for the accomplishment of her hope. Why then did not France sooner and more completely attain what she had so often attempted? Amongst the different causes of this long miscalculation, we will dwell for the present only on the historical reason just now indicated: France did not find, as England did, in the primitive elements of French society the conditions and means of the political system to which she never ceased to aspire. In order to obtain the moderate measure of internal order, without which society could not exist; in order to insure the progress of her civil laws and her material civilization; in order even to enjoy those pleasures of the mind for which she thirsts so much—France was constantly obliged to have recourse to the kingly authority and to that almost absolute monarchy which was far from satisfying her even when she could not do without it, and when she worshipped it with an enthusiasm rather literary than political, as was the case under Louis XIV. It was through the refined rather than profound development of her civilization, and through the zeal of her intellectual movement, that France was at length impelled not only towards the political system to which she had so long aspired, but into the boundless ambition of the unlimited revolution which she brought about and with which she inoculated all Europe. It is in the first steps towards the formation of the two societies, French and English, and in the elements, so very different, of their earliest existence, that we find the principal cause for their long-continued diversity in institutions and destinies.

“In 1823, forty-seven years ago, after having studied,” says M. Guizot, “in my Essays upon a Comparative History of France and England, the great fact which we have just now attempted to make clearly understood, I concluded my labor by saying, ‘Before our revolution, this difference between the political fates of France and England might have saddened a French-man: but now, in spite of the evils we have suffered and in spite of those we shall yet, perhaps, suffer, there is no room, so far as we are concerned, for such sadness. The advances of social equality and the enlightenments of civilization in France preceded political liberty; and it will thus be the more general and the purer. France may reflect, without regret, upon any history: her own has always been glorious, and the future promised to her will assuredly recompense her for all she has hitherto lacked.’ In 1870, after the experiences and notwithstanding the sorrows of my long life, I have still confidence in our country’s future. Never be it forgotten that God helps only those who help themselves and who deserve his aid.”