and she was cut off from the sea and from the lower course of her
own river. On the other hand, the French and the Norman dukes had
found their interest in a close alliance; Norman support had done
much to transfer the crown from Laon to Paris, and to make the Dux
Francorum and the Rex Francorum the same person. It was the
adoption of the French speech and manners by the Normans, and their
steady alliance with the French dukes, which finally determined
that the ruling element in Gaul should be Romance and not Teutonic,
and that, of its Romance elements, it should be French and not
Aquitanian. If the creation of Normandy had done much to weaken
France as a duchy, it had done not a little towards the making of
France as a kingdom. Laon and its crown, the undefined influence
that went with the crown, the prospect of future advance to the
south, had been bought by the loss of Rouen and of the mouth of the
Seine.

There was much therefore at the time of William's accession to keep
the French kings and the Norman dukes on friendly terms. The old
alliance had been strengthened by recent good offices. The
reigning king, Henry the First, owed his crown to the help of
William's father Robert. On the other hand, the original ground of
the alliance, mutual support against the Karolingian king, had
passed away. A King of the French reigning at Paris was more
likely to remember what the Normans had cost him as duke than what
they had done for him as king. And the alliance was only an
alliance of princes. The mutual dislike between the people of the
two countries was strong. The Normans had learned French ways, but
French and Normans had not become countrymen. And, as the fame of
Normandy grew, jealousy was doubtless mingled with dislike.
William, in short, inherited a very doubtful and dangerous state of