up. He met with but little resistance except at the stronghold of
Brionne. Guy himself vanishes from Norman history. William had
now conquered his own duchy, and conquered it by foreign help. For
the rest of his Norman reign he had often to strive with enemies at
home, but he had never to put down such a rebellion again as that
of the lords of western Normandy. That western Normandy, the
truest Normandy, had to yield to the more thoroughly Romanized
lands to the east. The difference between them never again takes a
political shape. William was now lord of all Normandy, and able to
put down all later disturbers of the peace. His real reign now
begins; from the age of nineteen or twenty, his acts are his own.
According to his abiding practice, he showed himself a merciful
conqueror. Through his whole reign he shows a distinct
unwillingness to take human life except in fair fighting on the
battle-field. No blood was shed after the victory of Val-es-dunes;
one rebel died in bonds; the others underwent no harder punishment
than payment of fines, giving of hostages, and destruction of their
castles. These castles were not as yet the vast and elaborate
structures which arose in after days. A single strong square
tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound surrounded by a
ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous. The possession of
these strongholds made every baron able at once to defy his prince
and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours. Every season of
anarchy is marked by the building of castles; every return of order
brings with it their overthrow as a necessary condition of peace.


Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had been
schooled for the rule of men. He had now, in the rule of a smaller
dominion, in warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to be