time attained to the highest pitch
of military glory. Besides acquiring by arms such a noble territory
in France, besides defending it against continual attempts of the
French monarch and all his neighbours, besides exerting many acts of
vigour under their present sovereign; they had, about this very time,
revived their ancient fame, by the most hazardous exploits, and the
most wonderful successes in the other extremity of Europe. A few
Norman adventurers in Italy had acquired such an ascendant, not only
over the Italians and Greeks, but the Germans and Saracens, that
they expelled those foreigners, procured to themselves ample
establishments, and laid the foundation of the opulent kingdom of
Naples and Sicily [h]. These enterprises of men, who were all of them
vassals in Normandy, many of them banished for faction and rebellion,
excited the ambition of the haughty William, who disdained, after such
examples of fortune and valour, to be deterred from making an attack
on a neighbouring country, where he could be supported by the whole
force of his principality.
[FN [h] Gul. Gemet. lib. 7. cap. 30.]

The situation also of Europe inspired William with hopes that, besides
his brave Normans he might employ against England the flower of the
military force which was dispersed in all the neighbouring states.
France, Germany, and the Low Countries, by the progress of the feudal
institutions, were divided and subdivided into many principalities and
baronies; and the possessors, enjoying the civil jurisdiction within
themselves, as well as the right of arms, acted, in many respects, as
independent sovereigns, and maintained their properties and
privileges, less by the authority of laws than by their own force and
valour. A military spirit had universally diffused itself throughout
Europe; and the several leaders, whose minds were elevated by their
princely situation, greedily embraced the most hazardous enterprises;
and being accustomed to nothing from their infancy but recitals of the
success attending wars and battles, they were prompted by a natural
ambition to imitate those adventurers, which they heard so much
celebrated, and which were so much exaggerated by the credulity of the
age. United, however loosely, by their duty to one superior lord, and
by their connexions with the great body of the community to which they
belonged, they desired to spread their fame each beyond his own
district; and in all assemblies, wheth