The Collected Works of Hilaire Belloc - Hilaire Belloc

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it is the most convenient entry and has some shelter from a southerly wind; but all that flat sandy coast gave good opportunity for landing from such vessels, and the fleet may have made the Bay of Authie or even the mouth of the Canche. But the choice is not a wide one, for the coast of Ponthieu did not extend beyond the Canche. If the Somme were the point of entry, it has this historical interest: that Harold would then have found himself fated to land at the very point from which William two years later was to sail for the invasion of England. Count Guy seized Harold for ransom, something of a formality, though a formality which was to be of formidable consequence. He takes Harold and his suite to “Belrem”—the place to-day called Beaurain. Here the Tapestry follows Wace very closely, for it is Wace who tells us that Harold was recognised by a fisherman, who sent for Count Guy.

      The capital of Ponthieu was Montreuil, and this castle of Beaurain, of which ruins still stand, was six or seven miles up the river from Montreuil—one passes right beneath it in the railway to-day on one’s way to Hesdin.

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      The last scene in this episode (which ends the first part of the story) is a scene by night in the hall of the castle of Beaurain, where by the light of torches Count Guy and Harold (who have ridden to Beaurain together as men of equal rank though one is being held to ransom) are bargaining—for the word “Parobolant” must refer to the discussion of the ransom.

      To this first series of episodes in the story succeeds the arrival of the Duke of Normandy’s heralds insisting upon the release of Harold because Guy was vassal to William. The advent of these messengers forms the 12th and 13th sections of the design. It is perhaps a guide to the time of year in which all this took place, that on the border below we have the ploughing and the sowing of the spring. There has arisen in connection with these messengers of William’s a considerable and rather futile debate as to the meaning of the little figure who is holding the horses. I take his small size to be merely a piece of perspective, and the word “Turold” to refer to the taller figure on the left, to which it is attached.

      This name Turold will be familiar to the students of Normandy in another famous connection, for it was a Turold (much at this time) who put at the end of “The Song of Roland” his inscription: “This is the end of what Turoldus wrote.”

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      After the arrival of the messengers the next three panels deal with Guy’s reluctant submission to his overlord; then comes the handing over of Harold to William. The Tapestry here closely follows Wace, save in one odd particular—that it reverses the order of the scenes and does not make quite clear the insistence of William; at least, that insistence and the importance of the urgent orders which William sent are not evident to a modern man looking at the document. But there is an element which might have made it clearer to a contemporary, and this is the accoutrement of the messengers. I have spoken about this in another aspect in the Preface. They are presumably men of high position in William’s court, for they bear fully developed heraldic signs upon their shield. It should be remarked, however, that save for shield and lance they are not armoured, and whether to indicate haste or the pacific character which William designed to retain as long as possible in their mission, they are not even helmeted. There is another point in these panels well worth the attention of the modern reader interested in the date of the document. We have in the border beneath an episode of a man fighting a bear, and somewhat to the right an episode which may be the introduction of tropical animals—the larger Felidæ, panthers perhaps. The first subject is certain, the second probable. Now, here (with many other examples in the long border above and below) you have the influence of the bestiaries (that is, the twelfth-century books describing beasts foreign and imaginary), and these, in turn, are the product of the Crusading march. In other words, these details fit in with all the rest of the converging evidence which forbids us to doubt that the document is of a later date than the Conquest itself. The last of this group of panels, the 16th, represents the bringing of Harold to William by Guy, and there follows a most interesting group of not less than ten panels, which form a separate episode in the story, and one which is for many reasons of high historic interest.

      This episode is that of the Breton War, and it is curious to note that the rude though vigorous work of the Bayeux Tapestry tells us more about it than any other authority. The importance of this contrast between the Tapestry and the chroniclers will be at once apparent. It means that some tradition or some lost document ascribed to this somewhat inconclusive expedition into Brittany holds a great place in the story of Harold and his relations with the Conqueror. No one who looks at the Tapestry can doubt for a moment what the point of this episode is. The point is that Harold, joining with William in the expedition, proving of great service, rewarded by William, and in general much more closely bound to the Norman court through this accident than he otherwise might have been, was in all that followed a treacherous friend. The implication is clear. Whoever designed the Tapestry, or furnished the materials from tradition, believed and wanted others to believe that Harold was not only formally a traitor according to the mere rules of feudal society, but also morally and fundamentally one, as having forgotten and abused a close personal tie, the product of armed service. It is evident that in the imagination of contemporaries, and therefore in the tradition which they built up, this march of Harold side by side with William into Brittany colours the whole story.

      Wace has but a few vague lines just telling us that there was such a thing as a fight with Brittany at this moment. If I am not mistaken, William of Poitiers is the only chronicler who gives us anything like an account, and even so his account is absurdly short and undetailed, though it tallies, both as to the places mentioned and as to the episodes with the Tapestry. The Breton Chronicle, I believe, says nothing about it.

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      It is also interesting to note the attempt at portraiture in the case of William. The round bullet head and square shoulders of the Gaul (the slight and distant strain of Scandinavian blood seems to have influenced neither his soul nor his body) are emphasized in this first introduction of him, and it is possible so to emphasize the portrait because he is so represented in this early part of the series neither

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