ng Englishmen to battle, than in the grandson of AEthelred, born in
Hungary, and fighting alongside of the foreign oppressors whom England
and her King had cast out. And the best and the worst of the warrior
princes and nobles of the time were there on opposite sides. With Duke
Robert came Robert of Belleme, no longer of Shrewsbury or Arundel. With
King Henry came the Count of Maine, Helias of La Fleche.

Orderic witnesses to the presence of Englishmen in the battle. The
contemporary letter-writer only implies it by mentioning others, of whom
he speaks a little scornfully, as well as the men of Bayeux, Avranches,
and Coutances, and the Breton and Mansel allies. When Robert of Torigny
speaks of the "acies Anglorum," he doubtless simply means, according to
a very common form of speech, the force of the King of the English,
whatever they might be, either "genere" or "natione." But all who were
under the King's immediate command had in some sort to become Englishmen
in the hour of battle. Like Brihtnoth and Harold, King Henry stood and
waited for the enemy on foot. So did Randolf of Bayeux and the younger
William of Warren; so did the wary counsellor who had little love for
Englishmen, Robert of Beaumont, Count of Meulan, and presently to be
Earl of Leicester, forefather in the female line of another Earl who
loved them well. Seven hundred horsemen only kept the two flanks of the
infantry. The main body of the horse, Breton and Mansel, stood apart.
King Henry's footmen, perhaps with some little advantage of the ground,
stood as firm in their ranks as the fathers of some of them had stood
forty years before when the lord of Meulan was foremost in the charge
against them. They bore up against every charge of the ducal force till
Count Helias, with his reserve, chose a happy moment and broke in on
their assailants with his horsemen. The lord of Belleme fled for his
life; the Duke of the Normans and the Count of Mortain became the
prisoners of their conqueror and near kinsman.

The prison of Count William was a strait one. Henry might fairly look on
him as a traitor, and it was the general belief that he paid for his
treason with his eyes. Here we may perhaps see the groundwork for the
foolish story that Duke Robert's fate was equally hard. But Henry was
far too wise to commit so useless a crime. The captive Duke spent the
remaining twenty-eight years of his life in this castle, and that,
treated with all honour, but kept under