iam able to achieve the Conquest of England were, if not formed, at
least trained and developed, by the events of his reign in his own
Duchy. Succeeding with a very doubtful title, at once bastard and minor,
it is wonderful that he contrived to retain his ducal crown at all; it
is not at all wonderful that his earlier years were years of constant
struggle within and without his dominions. He had to contend against
rivals for the Duchy, and against subjects to whom submission to any
sovereign was irksome. He had to contend against a jealous feudal
superior, who dreaded his power, who retained somewhat of national
dislike to the Danish intruders, and who, shut up in his own Paris,
could hardly fail to grudge to any vassal the possession of the valley
and mouth of the Seine. William, in short, before he conquered England,
had to conquer both Normandy and France. And such was his skill, such
was his good luck, that he found out how to conquer Normandy by the help
of France, and how to conquer France by the help of Normandy. The King
of the French acted as his ally against his rebellious vassals, and
those rebellious vassals changed into loyal subjects when it was needful
to withstand the aggressions of the King of the French.

The principal stages in this warfare are marked by two battles, the
sites of which are appropriately placed on the two opposite sides of the
Seine. At Val-es-dunes William of Normandy and Henry of France overcame
the Norman rebels.[14] Afterwards, when Henry had changed his policy,
the Normans smote the French with a great slaughter at Mortemer, neither
of the contending princes being personally present. Val-es-dunes, we
must confess the fact, was in truth a victory of the Roman over the
Teuton. It was by the aid of his French overlord that William chastised
into his obedience the sturdy Saxons of the Bessin and the fierce Danes
of the Cotentin. The men of the peninsula boasted, in a rhyme which is
still not forgotten in the neighbourhood of the fight, how

De Costentin partit la lance
Qui abastit le roy de France.

For King Henry, successful in the general issue of the day, had his own
personal mishaps in the course of the battle, and to have overthrown the
King of the French was an exploit which supplied the vanquished with
some little consolation.

The scene of this battle is fitly to be found in the true Normandy, but
towards its eastern frontier. It must not be forgotten th