open-hearted, not indifferent to birth or lineage, but never allowing
station or origin, nation or language, to obstruct the elevation of
those whose talent, learning, knowledge, or aptitude gave them their
patent of nobility."[G] The Normans won their fame, as the Romans their
empire, through aid of various races, and by borrowing and assimilating
whatever they found of good among all the peoples with whom they came in
contact,--meaning by good what was useful for the promotion of their
purposes.

The old Northmen in Neustria did not give way without a struggle, not
for existence only, but for victory, of which at one time their prospect
was by no means bad. The Danish party was strong in the time of Rollo,
and it might have established itself over Normandy in the early years of
his son, William I., who deemed his Norman sovereignty lost, and who at
one time showed the white feather in a very unNorman-like manner, and in
quite the reverse fashion to that adopted by Henri IV. at Ivry. At
length he recovered his courage, and, delivering battle, he won a
complete victory, which was ruinous to the vanquished. They were
exterminated, and Riulph, their leader, was captured, and blinded by
William's orders. It is supposed he died under the operation. William's
cruelty is attributed to his earlier cowardice, and it is an old saw
that no one is so cruel as a victorious coward; but cruelty was not so
uncommon a thing in the year 933 that there should be any necessity for
attributing the Norman's savageness to the reaction from fear. He
probably had called his cowardice caution. His success settled the
character of Normandy, which became, or rather continued to be, a French
country; and its people were Normans, the result of a liberal mixture of
many races, from whom were to issue the rulers of many lands. The combat
of the _Pre de la Bataille_ took place just four generations before
Hastings, and had its issue been different the current of history might
have run in a very different direction from that in which it has set for
eight centuries; but the consequences of such a change "must be left to
that superhuman knowledge which the schoolmen call _media scientia_, and
which consists in knowing all that would have happened had events been
otherwise than they have been." The question at issue was whether the
Normans should live as Frenchmen or disappear; and William's triumph
secured the ascendency of the Romane party, who alone c