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Updated: June 29, 2025
The actual projection northward from the coast of the Bessin or Calvados is not very great. It is the long coast to the west, the coast which looks out on the Norman islands, the coast which forms a right angle with the Breton coast by the Mount of Saint Michael, which really gives the land its peninsular air.
I hold this village of you under the Count de Bessin. Tell me, boldly, what you need; I will help you as I would help myself."
The King and his allies sought to wrest from William the western part of Normandy, the older and the more thoroughly French part. No attack seems to have been designed on the Bessin or the Cotentin. William was to be allowed to keep those parts of his duchy, against which he had to fight when the King was his ally at Val-es-dunes.
"As I think," said the canon, "you will find my lord duke either in the shipyard of Barfleur, or the shooting-ground of archers at Valognes hard by." It was then to Valognes, beyond the river Douve, that we were next to ride, and we would pass on the way my uncle's castle of St Sauveur, where mine ancestors had been settled since they were lords of the Bessin.
It was by the aid of his French overlord that William chastised into his obedience the sturdy Saxons of the Bessin and the fierce Danes of the Côtentin. The men of the peninsula boasted, in a rhyme which is still not forgotten in the neighbourhood of the fight, how De Costentin partit la lance Qui abastit le roy de France.
To this end the lords of the Bessin and the Cotentin revolted, their leader being Neal, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur in the Cotentin. We are told that the mass of the people everywhere wished well to their duke; in the common sovereign lay their only chance of protection against their immediate lords. But the lords had armed force of the land at their bidding.
"Thou dost not know me, Nigel de Bessin," he said, "but I know thee already, and with many another stood this day in yonder antechamber and heard thy words to Geoffroy. Now, those words I loved to hear, and I have been in a struggle since I heard thee, the one part of me saying, 'Save this lad, and the other part counselling me to let thee die. But I am here to save thee." "Yea! yea!"
"Then how darest thou," said he, hotly, "to come hither in this habit?" "If thou but knewest the greatness of the perils of our brethren, how they are near being murdered by savage men, thou wouldst forgive me, father. But I bear a name none need fear to own I am Nigel de Bessin, and mine uncle its vicomte, would vouch for me, were he here "
This gentleman had doubly derogated from his rightful station; for he had amassed a fortune of nearly a million of francs as purveyor to the armies of the king at the time of the war in Hanover. "The word of Mademoiselle de Champignelle's character was well known in the Bessin, that beautiful region of Lower Normandy near Bayeux, where the family lived.
This was the young Duke's first introduction to serious warfare; but he had tougher work than this to go through before his career was over. To the east of Caen stretches a somewhat dreary country, which forms a striking contrast to the rich meadows and orchards of the Bessin, while it in no way approaches to the wildness of the sterner portions of the Côtentin.
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