that William himself in his younger days was touched by it. But we
see also that coat-armour was as yet unknown. Geoffrey and his
host, so the Normans say, shrink from the challenge and decamp in
the night, leaving the way open for a sudden march upon Alencon.
The disloyal burghers received the duke with mockery of his birth.
They hung out skins, and shouted, "Hides for the Tanner." Personal
insult is always hard for princes to bear, and the wrath of William
was stirred up to a pitch which made him for once depart from his
usual moderation towards conquered enemies. He swore that the men
who had jeered at him should be dealt with like a tree whose
branches are cut off with the pollarding-knife. The town was taken
by assault, and William kept his oath. The castle held out; the
hands and feet of thirty-two pollarded burghers of Alencon were
thrown over its walls, and the threat implied drove the garrison to
surrender on promise of safety for life and limb. The defenders of
Domfront, struck with fear, surrendered also, and kept their arms
as well as their lives and limbs. William had thus won back his
own rebellious town, and had enlarged his borders by his first
conquest. He went farther south, and fortified another castle at
Ambrieres; but Ambrieres was only a temporary conquest. Domfront
has ever since been counted as part of Normandy. But, as
ecclesiastical divisions commonly preserve the secular divisions of
an earlier time, Domfront remained down to the great French
Revolution in the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of Le Mans.


William had now shown himself in Maine as conqueror, and he was
before long to show himself in England, though not yet as
conqueror. If our chronology is to be trusted, he had still in
this interval to complete his conquest of his own duchy by securing