shrink from thy side? Publish thy ban, not in Normandy alone, but in
every region and realm where the Church is honoured. This is the
first war of the Cross."

Then indeed was it seen--that might of the Church! Soon as were made
known the sanction and gifts of the Pope, all the continent stirred as
to the blast of the trump in the Crusade, of which that war was the
herald. From Maine and from Anjou, from Poitou and Bretagne, from
France and from Flanders, from Aquitaine and Burgundy, flashed the
spear, galloped the steed. The robber-chiefs from the castles now
grey on the Rhine; the hunters and bandits from the roots of the Alps;
baron and knight, varlet and vagrant,--all came to the flag of the
Church,--to the pillage of England. For side by side with the Pope's
holy bull was the martial ban:--"Good pay and broad lands to every one
who will serve Count William with spear, and with sword, and with
cross-bow." And the Duke said to Fitzosborne, as he parcelled out the
fair fields of England into Norman fiefs:

"Harold hath not the strength of mind to promise the least of those
things that belong to me. But I have the right to promise that which
is mine, and also that which belongs to him. He must be the victor
who can give away both his own and what belongs to his foe." [238]

All on the continent of Europe regarded England's king as accursed--
William's enterprise as holy; and mothers who had turned pale when
their sons went forth to the boar-chase, sent their darlings to enter
their names, for the weal of their souls, in the swollen muster-roll
of William the Norman. Every port now in Neustria was busy with
terrible life; in every wood was heard the axe felling logs for the
ships; from every anvil flew the sparks from the hammer, as iron took