cter of commonwealth, checked the progress of William by the most
determined opposition that he met with in the course of his insular
conquest. Le Mans, conquered before William crossed the sea, threw off
his yoke when he was master of the island as well as of the mainland.
Had the men either of the island or of the mainland been capable of any
enlarged political combinations, England and Maine would have done
wisely to unite their forces against the common enemy. And it is just
possible that those obscure dealings of Earl Harold with the powers of
Gaul, which are dimly alluded to by the biographer of Eadward, may have
had some object of this kind. But, if so, nothing practical came of
them. Maine and England did nothing to help one another. In fact, when
Maine was won back to William's obedience, the work was largely done by
English hands, and those the hands of men who, there is some reason to
think, had Hereward himself as their captain. The actual relations
between England and Maine in the eleventh century were thus the exact
opposite of what they ought to have been. Englishmen appeared on the
mainland as the ravagers and conquerors of a district whose people ought
to have been their closest allies. Still even this kind of negative
relation does establish a kind of connexion between Maine and England.
Above all, it establishes a special analogy between the English city
which withstood the Conqueror, and the Gaulish city which revolted
against him, in the name of the same principle which a century later was
to do such great things among the cities of Lombardy.

The moment then of greatest interest in the history of the Cenomannian
city is the moment of its short-lived republican independence. In the
case of Le Mans, as in the case of Exeter, we should be well pleased if
we knew more of the exact form of commonwealth which it was proposed to
establish, and, above all, of the relations which were to be maintained
between the city and the surrounding districts. Most likely nothing of
the kind was ever put into shape. The commonwealth of Le Mans and the
commonwealth of Exeter both sprang into being in a moment of patriotic
enthusiasm, when the city and the surrounding districts were fully
united in a vigorous effort against the common enemy. How the two were
to get on together in more settled times they most likely did not stop
to think. What we do know is that the citizens of Le Mans made a
_commune_, that the people of