had been going on throughout his rule.
That he had paid little attention to the weak King Charles is evident
from the tale that tells of the first execution recorded in what is
now the Place du Marche Vieux. For Charles, with a simplicity worthy
of his title, had apparently sent two gallants of his court to console
his daughter Gisela for the roughness with which he heard her husband
treated her, and these two were promptly hanged. But there was more
material profit to be had out of the quarrels of the country, and
though he lost Eu for a time, Rollo had been able to gain from the war
by which he was surrounded in Maine, in Bessin, and in Brittany; which
meant that his son came into possession of Caen, Cerisy, Falaise, and
that Bayeux, which had been colonised from the North in the last days
of the Roman Empire, and remained Teutonic long after Rouen had been
"Parisianised," where you may still see all save the tongue of
England, in men and animals, even in fields and hedges. And William
Longsword, though he wavered towards France and Christianity, remained
at heart even more Pagan than his father, sending his son to these
stubborn Northmen of Bayeux where the Danish tongue was kept in all
its purity, and calling in fresh Danish colonists to occupy his own
province of Cotentin from St. Michael's Mount to Cherbourg. It was in
the battle that secured his hold on this new territory that 300
knights of Rouen, under Bernard the Dane, drove out 4000 from Cotentin
under their leader Count Riolf, who had disputed William's suzerainty,
upon the Pre de la Bataille that is now a cider market near the town.
(Roman de Rou, v. 2239.) It was at this time, too, that Prince Alan of
Brittany fled for refuge to England, and the crushing of the Breton
revolt resulted in the addition of the Channel Islands to the Duchy of
Normandy, which remained British after John Lackland had lost the last
of his continental possessions, retaining their local independence and
ancient institutions under the protection of England; a far better
thing for them than any enjoyment of the privileges, either of a
French Department, or of a British county represented in Parliament
like the ancient Norwegian Earldom of Orkney.

Few of the occurrences of this confused period are so clearly
prominent or have such far-reaching results as this; and after young
Louis d'Outremer had been called over from England to the throne of
France, this vacillating and weak Duke Wi