If William came back from England looking forward to a future crown, the thought might even then flash across his mind that he was not likely to win that crown without fighting for it.As yet his business was still to fight for the duchy of Normandy.But he had now to fight, not to win his duchy, but only to keep it.For five years he had to strive both against rebellious subjects and against invading enemies, among whom King Henry of Paris is again the foremost.Whatever motives had led the French king to help William at Val-es-dunes had now passed away.He had fallen back on his former state of abiding enmity towards Normandy and her duke.But this short period definitely fixed the position of Normandy and her duke in Gaul and in Europe.At its beginning William is still the Bastard of Falaise, who may or may not be able to keep himself in the ducal chair, his right to which is still disputed.At the end of it, if he is not yet the Conqueror and the Great, he has shown all the gifts that were needed to win him either name.He is the greatest vassal of the French crown, a vassal more powerful than the overlord whose invasions of his duchy he has had to drive back.
These invasions of Normandy by the King of the French and his allies fall into two periods.At first Henry appears in Normandy as the supporter of Normans in open revolt against their duke.But revolts are personal and local; there is no rebellion like that which was crushed at Val-es-dunes, spreading over a large part of the duchy.
In the second period, the invaders have no such starting-point.
There are still traitors; there are still rebels; but all that they can do is to join the invaders after they have entered the land.
William is still only making his way to the universal good will of his duchy: but he is fast making it.
There is, first of all, an obscure tale of a revolt of an unfixed date, but which must have happened between 1048 and 1053.The rebel, William Busac of the house of Eu, is said to have defended the castle of Eu against the duke and to have gone into banishment in France.But the year that followed William's visit to England saw the far more memorable revolt of William Count of Arques.He had drawn the Duke's suspicions on him, and he had to receive a ducal garrison in his great fortress by Dieppe.But the garrison betrayed the castle to its own master.Open revolt and havoc followed, in which Count William was supported by the king and by several other princes.Among them was Ingelram Count of Ponthieu, husband of the duke's sister Adelaide.Another enemy was Guy Count of Gascony, afterwards Duke William the Eighth of Aquitaine.What quarrel a prince in the furthest corner of Gaul could have with the Duke of the Normans does not appear; but neither Count William nor his allies could withstand the loyal Normans and their prince.
Count Ingelram was killed; the other princes withdrew to devise greater efforts against Normandy.Count William lost his castle and part of his estates, and left the duchy of his free will.The Duke's politic forbearance at last won him the general good will of his subjects.We hear of no more open revolts till that of William's own son many years after.But the assaults of foreign enemies, helped sometimes by Norman traitors, begin again the next year on a greater scale.
William the ruler and warrior had now a short breathing-space.He had doubtless come back from England more bent than ever on his marriage with Matilda of Flanders.Notwithstanding the decree of a Pope and a Council entitled to special respect, the marriage was celebrated, not very long after William's return to Normandy, in the year of the revolt of William of Arques.In the course of the year 1053 Count Baldwin brought his daughter to the Norman frontier at Eu, and there she became the bride of William.We know not what emboldened William to risk so daring a step at this particular time, or what led Baldwin to consent to it.If it was suggested by the imprisonment of Pope Leo by William's countrymen in Italy, in the hope that a consent to the marriage would be wrung out of the captive pontiff, that hope was disappointed.The marriage raised much opposition in Normandy.It was denounced by Archbishop Malger of Rouen, the brother of the dispossessed Count of Arques.His character certainly added no weight to his censures; but the same act in a saint would have been set down as a sign of holy boldness.
Presently, whether for his faults or for his merits, Malger was deposed in a synod of the Norman Church, and William found him a worthier successor in the learned and holy Maurilius.But a greater man than Malger also opposed the marriage, and the controversy thus introduces us to one who fills a place second only to that of William himself in the Norman and English history of the time.
