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A widespread belief laid the deed to the charge of the father of the new king. This story might easily be made a ground of national complaint by Normandy against England, and it was easy to infer that Harold had some share in the alleged crime of Godwine. It was easy to dwell on later events, on the driving of so many Normans out of England, with Archbishop Robert at their head.
We agreed that I should send the man back with Ney's corps; and I went off, with the soldier accompanying me. He was a slow-speaking Norman, with plenty of slyness under an appearance of good nature. The Normans are for the most part brave, as I learnt when I commanded the 23rd Chasseurs, where I had five or six hundred of them.
But while he sat at the Easter feast at Fecamp, displaying to Franks, Flemings, and Bretons, as well as to his own Normans, the treasures of Edward's palace at Westminster, and "more English wealth than could be found in the whole estate of Gaul"; while he sat there in his glory, with his young dupes, Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof by his side, having sent Harold's banner in triumph to the Pope, as a token that he had conquered the Church as well as the nation of England; and having founded abbeys as thank-offerings to Him who had seemed to prosper him in his great crime: at that very hour the handwriting was on the wall, unseen by man; and he and his policy and his race were weighed in the balance, and found wanting.
This prelate had the more influence with Edward, inasmuch as though Saxon, he was held to be no enemy to the Normans, and had, indeed, on a former occasion, been deposed from his bishopric on the charge of too great an attachment to the Norman queen-mother Emma . Never in his whole life had Edward been so stubborn as on this occasion.
But this axe had come to him from Canute the Great, who himself, unlike the Danes, small and slight , had supplied his deficiency of muscle by the finest dexterity and the most perfect weapons. Famous had been that axe in the delicate hand of Canute how much more tremendous in the ample grasp of Harold! The Normans stood aghast, and William's face was as pale as the shattered stone.
The Normans remained masters of the field. Harold, the king, was dead, and all his brothers had fallen; Duke William was England's lord. On the very spot where Harold had fallen the conqueror pitched his tent, and as darkness settled over vanquished England he "sate down to eat and drink among the dead." No braver fight had ever been made than that which Harold made for England.
Leaving the sea they turned inland to the mountain region, and with a short stop at Centuripe, to get the magnificent view of Etna, they motored on to Castrogiovanni, a wonderful old town set, like an eagle's nest, on the very crest of a high hill, and full of relics of Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Saracens, and Normans, who had held its fortress in turns.
Rollo assumed the title of Duke of the Normans and introduced the Christian religion among his people. For a considerable time the newcomers kept up their Scandinavian traditions and language. Gradually, however, they appropriated such culture as their neighbors possessed, and by the twelfth century their capital, Rouen, was one of the most enlightened cities of Europe.
Should they show the slightest desire of combining with the majority of their countrymen, these latter will be generous enough to forget the past, and perhaps the others may imitate their predecessors, the Danes, the Normans, and even some of their Cromwellian kin, and become, at last, Hibernis hiberniores.
The Cwens sometimes pass the moors and mountains to invade and plunder the country of the Normans; who likewise sometimes retaliate, by crossing over to spoil their land. In these moors, there are some very large meres or lakes of fresh water, and the Cwenas sometimes carry their small light ships over land into these lakes, and employ them to facilitate their depredations on the Nordmen.
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