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KRAJINAG KANALNA Boy Somers MEGA F# #IČKIN, KITOT *****; w9, 1l weary, assures us Mink Muky “Ay'amarad all practical recol. letom in for families of their original Srawing man shrestry. Not one of Mar moblew ever thought of deducing The Unkage from the Heisers or Jarls or Vikings who occupy so conspiru

www place in Florwegian history, not even though the medium of any tradi nomal fable. Poger de Montgomery designated himself as Northmannus Floathunammorum'; but, for all practical purpnaca, Roger was a Frenchman of The Frenchmen, though he might not like to own it. This ancestorial reminscence must have resulted from some peculiar fancy; no Montgomery posapaapit or transmitted any memorial of hta Norman progenitors The very name of Rollo's father, Senex quidam in partibus Daciay' was unknown to Wollo's grandchildren, and it not known. worse than unknown, neglected."

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amor e a muter or a Krmn server for te volle vor tre ines om zo vas DComet ty na BLUSHOTE TOs the pciCater Jola. mnt vich is BULZERVUT. 1273 1911+2). Sars Sir F. Kupee

her ning the Nor we must avis consider the tek a descripte mer than sogna mänce of political relations r CC ce Like William the Conqueror's army, the houts of Role were augmented by adventurers from 10 comes. Rolo exhibited a remarkable Sexility of character; he encouraged settlers from all parts of France and the Gauls and England, and his successors systemat ically obeyed the precedent." Most such adventurers in any age of the world must be of the most ancient of families, the families, to wit, of "robbers and reivers," the enlisted rascality of the earth, but none the worse workmen because their patron is St. Cain. There is a great deal of work to be done that can be done only by such fellows. It is sagely said that the world would be but ill peopled if none but the wise were to marry. It is certain that the world would get forward very slowly if none but the mild and the moral were active in its business. There is an immense amount of business to be accomplished that the mild cannot do, and which the morni will

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not do. How can it be expected of mild men that they should cut human throats, when they cannot be trusted even to stick the sheep which they have no hesitation in eating? How unreasonable it would be to expect moral men to become soldiers, - and the soldier's trade is the only permanent pursuit, save the pursuits of the grave-digger and the hangman, when so exemplary a personage as the great Duke of Wellington gravely said, on his oath and on his honor, that the army is no place for moral and religious men? The felons who flocked to Rollo's standard wellnigh a thousand years ago were recruited from the 'dangerous classes" of those remote days, and were probably as useful in the task of civilizing the world as, according to the assertion of one of the most eminent of English divines and historians, are rough and lawless men in that of Europeanizing Polynesia.*

66

Dr. Lappenberg, whose authority is great in all that relates to the history of the Normans, confirms what is said by Sir F. Palgrave of the ignorance of the North and the indifference to it which characterized the Normans. Speaking of the Norman literature, he observes: "In vain we seek herein imitations of the old Norse poesy, or allusions to the history or customs of Scandinavia. There may, perhaps, exist more resemblance between the heroic sagas of the North and the romances of chivalry of the South of Europe, both having for subjects wonderful adventures, and the praise of heroism and beauty; but from this resemblance it cannot be concluded that the Anglo-Norman poets have borrowed their fictions from the

All remembrance of their national poetry was as completely obliterated among the posterity of the Northmen in France, as if, in traversing the ocean, they had drank of the water of Lethe. This total oblivion of their original home they have in common with the West Goths, who in Castilian poesy have not left the faintest trace of their original manners and opinions. The same remark has been applied to the Vareger, who founded a royal dynasty in Russia, and to whom that country, as a Russian author remarks, is not indebted for a single new idea. The causes are here the same with those that effected a complete oblivion of their mother tongue, namely, their inferior civilization, their intermixture with the natives, their marriages with the women of the country, who knew no other traditions than those of their native land. In Normandy, too, the Christian clergy must have suppressed every memorial of the ancient mythology." Further, "Whatever partiality the Normans may have entertained for history, they nevertheless betrayed an almost perfect indifference for their original country. The historians of Normandy describe the heathen North as a den of robbers. After an interval of two centuries, they knew nothing of the events that had

A History of England under the Norman Kings, etc., pp. 84, 85, and 87. Dr. Lappenberg is emphatic on the subject of the formation of the Norman race through the junction of various races. "Rolf [Rollo] and his companions were like those meteors which traverse the air with incredible swiftness," he says, "and in vanishing leave behind them long streams of fire which the eye gazes on with amazement. The Northmen who settled in Neustria gradually became lost among the French, a mixture of Gauls and Romans, Franks and Bur

Norman skalds. We have not a single gundians, West Goths and Saracens, friends and

proof that they were acquainted with any saga or any skaldic composition.

• Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire; Vol. IV. p. 297, note: "The civilization of barbarians, at least their material cultivation, has been generally more advanced by instructors whose moral superiority was less strongly marked, than where the teachers and the taught have few common sympathies and points of contact. Thus, in our own times, rough whalers and brutal pirates have done more to Europeanize the natives of Polynesia than the missionaries."

VOL. XVIII. —NO. 108.

30

foes, barbarians and civilized nations. Ten sorts of language, and with them, perhaps, as many forms of government, were lost amid this mass of peoples. French and foreigners have visited Normandy in search of some traces of the old Scandinavian colonies, or at least of some testimonial of their long sojourn there, and one or other memorial characteristic of this daring people. All have admired the prosperity of the province, to which the fertility of the soil and its manufactures and commerce have contributed; but vainly have they sought for the original Northmen in the present inhabitants. With the exception of some faint resemblances, they have met with nothing Norsk."- pp. 65, 66.

caused the founder of their ruling family to forsake the North; they did not even know where Denmark and Norway lay. Benoît de Ste More begins his chronicle with a geographic sketch, in which he takes Denmark for Dacia, and places it at the mouth of the Danube, between the extensive countries of the Alani and the Getæ, which are always covered with ice, and surrounded by a chain of mountains." The excellent chronicler's geographical notions seem to have been about as clear as those of Lolah, who tells Katinka that

"6 'Spain 's an island near

Morocco, betwixt Egypt and Tangier." The earliest Norman chroniclers show that the Normans, or rather the Northmen, bore much ill-will toward the French; and this prejudice, it has correctly been said, "probably lasted as long as their Northern physiognomy, their fair hair, and other characteristics whereby they were distinguished from the French." But they soon became the flower of French races, and were regarded as Frenchmen in all the lands to which they were led by their valor, their enterprise, their ambition, and their avarice. They continued to avail themselves of the talents of other races long after Northmen had been converted into Normans, greatly to their own advantage, and considerably to the advantage of others. "Inclination, policy, interest," says Palgrave, "strengthened the impulse given by the diffusion of the Romane speech. Liberality was the Norman virtue.

'Norman talent,' or 'Norman taste,' or 'Norman art,' are expressions intelligible and definite, conveying clear ideas, substantially true and yet substantially inaccurate. What, for example, do we intend when we speak of Norman architecture? Who taught the Norman architect? Ah, when you contemplate the structures raised by Lanfranc or Anselm, will not the reply conduct you beyond the Alps, and lead you to Pavia or Aosta, - the cities where these fathers of the AngloNorman Church were nurtured, their

learning acquired, or their taste informed? Amongst the eminent men who gloriously adorn the Anglo-Norman annals, perhaps the smallest number derive their origin from Normandy. Discernment in the choice of talent, and munificence in rewarding ability, may be truly ascribed to Rollo's successors; open-handed, open-hearted, not indifferent to birth or lineage, but never allowing station or origin, nation or language, to obstruct the elevation of those whose talent, learning, knowledge, or aptitude gave them their patent of nobility."* The Normans won their fame, as the Romans their empire, through aid of various races, and by borrowing and assimilating whatever they found of good among all the peoples with whom they came in contact, meaning by good what was useful for the promotion of their purposes.

The old Northmen in Neustria did not give way without a struggle, not for existence only, but for victory, of which at one time their prospect was by no means bad. The Danish party was strong in the time of Rollo, and it might have established itself over Normandy in the early years of his son, William I., who deemed his Norman sovereignty lost, and who at one time showed the white feather in a very unNorman-like manner, and in quite the reverse fashion to that adopted by Henri IV. at Ivry. At length he recovered his courage, and, delivering battle, he won a complete victory, which was ruinous to the vanquished. They were exterminated, and Riulph, their leader, was captured, and blinded by William's orders. It is supposed he died under the operation. William's cruelty is attributed to his earlier cowardice, and it is an old saw that no one is so cruel as a victorious coward; but cruelty was not so uncommon a thing in the year 933 that there should be any necessity for attributing the Norman's

*The History of Normandy and of England, Vol. I. pp. 704, 705. Lanfranc, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury by the Conqueror, was a native of Pavia, and Anselm, his successor, a native of Aosta.

savageness to the reaction from fear. He probably had called his cowardice caution. His success settled the character of Normandy, which became, or rather continued to be, a French country; and its people were Normans, the result of a liberal mixture of many races, from whom were to issue the rulers of many lands. The combat of the Pré de la Bataille took place just four generations before Hastings, and had its issue been different the current of history might have run in a very different direction from that in which it has set for eight centuries; but the consequences of such a change "must be left to that superhuman knowledge which the schoolmen call media scientia, and which consists in knowing all that would have happened had events been otherwise than they have been." The question at issue was whether the Normans should live as Frenchmen or disappear; and William's triumph secured the ascendency of the Romane party, who alone could establish Normandy. When his son, Richard sans Peur, became chief of the Normans, A. D. 943, Normandy was a power in Europe, and virtually a free state, for its rulers were "independent as the kings of France, whose superiority they acknowledged, but whose behests they never held themselves bound to obey."

The Normans soon made themselves felt in Europe. They became the foremost of Christian communities, and were distinguished in arts and arms and letters. They were the politest people of their time, and in their manners and modes of life they presented strong contrasts to the general coarseness of the period in which they flourished. Their valor seemed to increase with their culture; and if they were admired by the few because of their intellectual superiority, they were dreaded by the many because of their dauntless bravery and the energy and success which characterized their military exploits. Though often fighting at great odds, they were rarely defeated. They furnished the most distin

guished adventurers of an adventurous age. There is nothing more romantic than the history of the Norman family of Hauteville, which sent forth a number of men whose exertions in Southern Europe had great effect in the eleventh century. Foremost of his countrymen in courage and capacity was the adventurer Robert de Hauteville, better known as Robert Guiscard, substantially the founder of that Neapolitan kingdom which we have seen absorbed into the new kingdom of Italy. His daughter married a son of one of the Byzantine Emperors, who was dethroned; and Robert was thus enabled to enter on a series of Eastern conquests, which would have ended in the taking of Constantinople had not imperative circumstances compelled him to return to Italy. A few years later he resumed his Oriental schemes, but died before he could complete them, and when everything promised him success. Had a Norman dynasty been established at Constantinople, at the close of the eleventh century, by so able a man as Robert Guiscard, it is probable the Lower Empire would have renewed its life, and that the Normans would have become as influential in the East as their contemporary conquest of England had made them in the West. The feudal system, of which they were the great masters, might as easily have been introduced into Greece as it was into England, and with the effect of producing an order of men who would have proved themselves more than a match for any force that the Mussulman could have brought against the new nation. There would have been a regular flow of Normans and other hardy adventurers to Byzantium, and the Turks never would have been allowed to cross the Hellespont to establish themselves in Europe, and would have been fortunate had they been able to keep the Normans from crossing the Hellespont to establish themselves in Asia. Thousands of those fanatics who were so soon to cover the Syrian sands with their

bones, as Crusaders, would have been attracted to Greece, and would have done Christendom better service there than ever they were allowed to render it under the Godfreys and Baldwins and Raymonds, the Louises and Richards and Fredericks, who piously fought for the redemption of the Redeemer's sepulchre. Indeed the Holy Sepulchre could best have been freed from infidel pollution by operations from Greece, had Greece renewed her life under a dynasty worthy of the Greeks of old; and Asia, the Land of Light, might have been relieved from the thick darkness under which it has so long labored, had Norman genius and Norman valor been authoritatively employed to direct the Christian populations of the East, reinforced by the surplus adventurers of the West, against the Mussulmans. The West might have liquidated its debt to the East, by restoring Christianity to it.

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All this was on the cards, had Robert Guiscard lived a few years longer, and he was one of many sons of a poor and petty Norman baron, and superior to thousands of his countrymen only in the circumstance that he was more favored by Fortune. We are not to judge of what might have been effected by a Norman dynasty in Greece by the miserable failure of that Latin empire of which Greece was the scene in the thirteenth century, and which grew out of the capture of Constantinople by the French and the Venetians.

That empire had not the elements of success in it; and it was established too late, and on foundations too feeble, to meet the demands of the time. Its founders lacked that legislative capacity with which the Normans were so liberally endowed. Though we cannot subscribe in full to Mr. Acton Warburton's enthusiastic estimate of the Norman race, we believe him to be substantially correct in what he says of their legislative genius. He dwells with unction on the strong tendency to institutions that ever characterized them. This tendency, he observes, strongly indicates "the profound

sentiment of perpetuity, inherent in the Norman mind, to which everything was valueless that shared not in some degree its own enduring character. Abhorrent alike of despotism and license, they imparted this love of institutions wherever they came. In their days the world was passing through a fierce ordeal. A stern necessity lay on the whole system of things, a necessity which may be expressed in this brief formula, the sword. In their several missions, if I may so speak, the Normans were forced to use the appointed instrument of the hour; but the readiness with which the sword was sheathed, the facility with which the soldier changed into the citizen, shows how deeply they felt that a state of hostilities, bloodshed, and disorder could not be the normal condition of man. And so we see them pass at once from the battle-field to the council-chamber. The fierce warrior of yesterday is the thoughtful legislator of to-day. The first interval of repose was ever employed in devising means for giving stability to their acquisitions, and a constitutional form to the society in which they were to be vested. Among the Teutons, such a task was never referred to the wisdom of any one leader, however successful, — any oligarchy of chiefs, however eminent. From time immemorial, the provisions from which their laws were derived, and on which their societies were based, were the emanations of free public opinion. Their armies were triumphant, because the soldier yielded up his will implicitly to his general; their societies were vigorous and stable, because, when the soldier became a citizen, he resumed that will again. No sooner had conquest and peace transmuted the army into a society, than the dominant sentiment appeared, the sentiment of rational independence, resulting, as the community formed, in liberal institutions."* Had this legislative spirit been applied to Greece at the close of the eleventh

* Rollo and his Race; or, Footsteps of the Normans, Vol. II. pp. 107-109.

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