Bretons

Hard-headed and practical, the Norman is not an idealist or a mystic.

Even his religion has a practical flavour, and the Bretons are wont to assert that there has never been a Norman saint.

With the verse of Corneille and the splendid monuments of Romanesque and Gothic architecture before us, no one can accuse the Normans of lack of artistic sense.

Yet here, too, the Norman imagination is inclined to be restrained and severe, realistic rather than romantic.

The Duke of Normandy and the Count of Anjou were both vassals of the King of France, but their relations to each other were those of complete independence, and save for some special agreement or friendship, were normally relations of hostility.

And so, an important part of Norman history has to treat of the struggles with the duchy's neighbours, Flanders on the north, the royal domain on the east, Maine and Anjou to the southward, and Brittany on the west.

Fortunately for Normandy, the Bretons were but loosely organised, while the Flemings, compacted into one of the strongest of the French fiefs, were generally friendly, and the friendship was in this period cemented by William's marriage to Matilda, daughter of the Count of Flanders, one of the few princely marriages of the time which was founded upon affection and observed with fidelity.

With Anjou the case was different.

Brittany had been nominally granted to Rollo by Charles the Simple at the Treaty of Claironnette, but Charles in so doing had granted that over which he had no real power.

The Bretons, proud of their Celtic descent, proud of having escaped the all-embracing empire of Charles the Great, resented this act.

The want of unity between the various provinces had hitherto kept them quiet.

They had perforce submitted to the continued devastations of the Northmen from the sea, who were seeking to carve out dependencies for themselves as Rollo had done, and to the galling yoke of the Norman duke.

The Count of Flanders was not likely to look upon the nest of pirates as they called the Normans with a favorable eye.

Already causes of jealousy had occurred.

Arnulf had offered a refuge to the defeated Breton rebels ten years before, and William in revenge had aided the Count of Ponthieu, whose dominions lay between Normandy and Flanders, and whose country Arnulf had coveted.

Now William was allying himself with the Northmen, who were again stirring and troubling England and Gaul by their renewed incursions.

In that climate, Roger de Breteuil, Earl of Hereford, had already grown restless, his family line having been weakened by a royal rebuke after the failed ten seventy rebellion.

Ralph de Gael himself was a Breton noble who had been granted outlands in Norfolk.

His earldom carried both prestige and suspicion from William's eyes.

So when Ralph's bride, Emma, sister to Roger, the daughter of the influential William FitzOsbern, was about to be wed, their combined disaffection could spark more than just marital discord.

For this fact, the authority of Father Chaucer will be decisive, till we acquire evidence of equal antiquity in favor of other nations.

In old days of the King Arthur, of which the Bretons speken great honour, all was this land fulfilled of fairy.

The elf queen, with higher jolly company, danced full oft in many a gren med.

This was the old opinion as I read.

Across the sea on September 28th, William's armada anchored off the coast of Pevensey, a small port that would become the fulcrum of his invasion.

The Normans had assembled more than 3,000 soldiers along with French men-at-arms and Breton cavalry, all of whom were armed with a mix of spears, shields, and early longbows.

William's generals, experienced from previous campaigns in France, employed a sophisticated plan that hinged on speed and deception.

He sent ahead scouts who reported Harold's movement.

Nevertheless, the purple emperor hated me, and constantly threatened to send Lise back to her dreary flax-spinning.

He was suspicious, too, and when he had gulped down the single glass of cider which proves fatal to the sobriety of most Bretons, he would pound the long, discolored oaken table and roar curses on me, on Yves Trec, and on the Red Admiral.

We were the three objects in the world which he most hated.

Me, because I was a foreigner and didn't care a rap for him and his butterflies, and the Red Admiral because it was a rival entomologist.

Of course, Monsieur Darrell, I have never had the faintest idea that you were the murderer.

The four gendarmes and I walked across the road to the Groix Inn and entered the café.

It was crowded with Bretons, smoking, drinking, and jabbering in half a dozen dialects, all equally unsatisfactory to a civilized ear.

And I pushed through the crowd to where little Max Fortin, the chemist of Quimperlé, stood smoking a vile cigar.

Well, France was not France as we knew it back then, for one thing.

You obviously still have the Bretons of Brittany holding out against, in fact, Roland, historically speaking, Roland.

It's

only a couple of hundred years after Fortigan when the Britons fled to Brittany, which is interesting.

To watch the Welsh once again, even in the lands of France.

Yeah, keep an eye on them.

So it was with Roland and the Bretons.

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