s; and Norman influence on that life, and over those events, was
materially aided by the earlier action of the Danish invaders of
England. The difference between the Northmen in France and the Northmen
in England was this: the former, to a very great extent, became
Frenchmen, while the latter did not become Englishmen. The former, from
Northmen, became Normans, and took much from the people among whom they
settled. The latter remained Northmen, for the most part, taking little
or nothing from the English, while they bestowed a good deal upon them.
But the Northmen who became Normans underwent changes that rendered it
impossible that the Northmen in England should coalesce with them after
Duke William's victory in 1066. The English Northmen were strongly
attached to individual freedom, as all Northmen were originally; but the
Normans had learned to be feudalists in France, and this necessarily
made foes of men who by blood ought to have been friends. Many of those
who offered the stoutest resistance to the Conqueror were Danes; and it
was not until many years after Hastings that the English Northmen
submitted to the French Normans. The English Northmen, nevertheless,
were of real use to the Normans, by what they had effected long before
the expedition of William was thought of, and when the Normans had not
become the chief champions of feudalism. The immediate effect of Danish
action on William's fortunes, too, was very great. The Saxon Harold was
compelled to fight a battle with the Scandinavian invaders of England
but twenty days before Hastings; and these invaders sought to place a
Danish or Norwegian dynasty on the English throne. Harold was victorious
in his conflict with the Northmen; but the weakness and exhaustion
consequent on the exertions necessary to repel them were among the
leading causes of his failure before the Normans.

The people who gave their name to what is called the Norman Conquest of
England[C] were the most extraordinary race of the Middle Ages. This can
be said of them, too, without subscribing to the extravagant eulogies
of their ardent admirers, who are too much in the habit of speaking of
them in terms that would be misplaced were they applied to Athenians of
the age of Pericles. The simple truth concerning them shows that they
were superior in every respect to all their contemporaries, unless an
exception be made on behalf of the Mussulmans of Spain. The Northmen who
came first upon Southern