lter
and aid wherever the English flag flies in authority, but were furnished
with ships by England and with men to work and to fight them, so that
our last sea-fight was won over our old foe on that summer day when the
Kearsarge sent the Alabama to look after the old Raven craft of the
Northmen that may be lying under the old Norman waters, and did it, too,
off the Cotentin shore, just where the conflict between Saxons and
Normans began.

King Ethelred, like President Lincoln in the case of the English, was so
unreasonable as to complain of the conduct of the Normans; and, again
like our lamented chief, he could not find any excuse for piratical
action in the fact that "the Normans were a thriving and money-getting
people," and supposed they had the right to get money by encouraging
robbery. But, unlike the American President, the Saxon king determined
to have prompt and ample vengeance--if he could get it. He indulged in
as much loud language as was uttered in Vienna last June, when Sadowa
was yet an unknown, name. He was bent upon vengeance, stern and
terrible. Now, vengeance is a commodity that is dear when it is
procurable _gratis_, but sometimes it is not obtainable at any price.
And so Ethelred found it, to his cost. Having formed his resolution to
invade Normandy, and lay it waste with fire and sword, and bring back
Richard le Bon with him in chains to England, it remained only to
execute his design. The English fleet sailed for the Cotentin, and
landed a force which should have done great things. But if the Normans
of the Cotentin were stout thieves, not the less were they stout
soldiers. No greater error than that men must have clean consciences to
be good warriors. The Normans rose to a man--and even to a
woman--against the invaders. Knights and seamen and peasants and the
peasants' wives, all armed; and the English were beaten so badly that
they could not have been beaten worse, had their cause been utterly
devilish. But few of them escaped,--probably those who had the sense to
run first; and they got off in six ships, all the rest of the fleet
falling into the hands of the Normans. The Norman Duke and the British
Basileus proceeded to make peace, and the peace-making business led to a
marriage, one of many royal marriages which have produced extraordinary
consequences, and led to much fighting, as if there were a natural
connection between wedlock and war. In private life, marriage not
unfrequently leads t