Scarce had the Norwegians departed, when William, Duke of Normandy, landed in the southern part of the kingdom with an army of sixty thousand chosen men, and struck a general terror through all the nation, which was well acquainted with the character of the commander and the courage and discipline of his troops.
The Normans were the posterity of those Danes who had so long and so cruelly harassed the British islands and the shore of the adjoining continent. In, the days of King Alfred, a body of these adventurers, under their leader, Rollo, made an attempt upon England; but so well did they find every spot defended by the vigilance and bravery of that great monarch that they were compelled to retire. Beaten from these shores, the stream of their impetuosity bore towards the northern parts of France, which had been reduced to the most deplorable condition by their former ravages. Charles the Simple then sat on the throne of that kingdom; unable to resist this torrent of barbarians, he was obliged to yield to it; he agreed to give up to Rollo the large and fertile province of Neustria, to hold of him as his feudatory. This province, from the new inhabitants, was called Normandy. Five princes succeeded Rollo, who maintained with great bravery and cultivated with equal wisdom his conquests. The ancient ferocity of this people was a little softened by their settlement; but the bravery which, had made the Danes so formidable was not extinguished in the Normans, nor the spirit of enterprise. Not long before this period, a private gentleman of Normandy, by his personal bravery, had acquired the kingdom of Naples. Several others followed his fortunes, who added Sicily to it. From one end of Europe to the other the Norman name was known, respected, and feared. Robert, the sixth Duke of Normandy, to expiate some crime which lay heavy upon his conscience, resolved, according to the ideas of that time, upon a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was in vain that his nobility, whom he had assembled to notify this resolution to them, represented to him the miserable state to which his country would be reduced, abandoned by its prince, and uncertain of a legal successor. The Duke was not to be moved from his resolution, which appeared but the more meritorious from the difficulties which attended it. He presented to the states William, then an infant, born of an obscure woman, whom, notwithstanding, he doubted not to be his son; him he appointed to succeed; him he recommended to their virtue and loyalty; and then, solemnly resigning the government in his favor, he departed on the pilgrimage, from whence he never returned. The states, hesitating some time between, the mischiefs that attend the allowing an illegitimate succession, and those which might arise from admitting foreign pretensions, thought the former the least prejudicial, and accordingly swore allegiance to William. But this oath was not sufficient to establish a right so doubtful. The Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, as well as several Norman noblemen, had specious titles. The endeavors of all these disquieted the reign of the young prince with perpetual troubles. In these troubles he was formed early in life to vigilance, activity, secrecy, and a conquest over all those passions, whether bad or good, which obstruct the way to greatness. He had to contend with all the neighboring princes, with the seditions of a turbulent and unfaithful nobility, and the treacherous protection of his feudal lord, the King of France. All of these in their turns, sometimes all of these together, distressed him. But with the most unparalleled good fortune and conduct he overcame all opposition, and triumphed over every enemy, raising his power and reputation above that of all his ancestors, as much as he was exalted by his bravery above the princes of his own time.