On the site of the present church once stood a Romanesque edifice built by funds donated by William the Conqueror on his deathbed, to atone for his having set fire to the ancient church (1087). Angered by a coarse joke of the French king's, he had sworn his usual oath, "by the splendor and resurrection of God," that he would light a hundred thousand candles when he went to his churching Mass; so he marched against his tormentor and set fire to Mantes that lay in his path. For, as Mr. Henry Adams has picturesquely expressed it, "Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest in arms, as in architecture." As the corpulent Conqueror rode around the place, his horse stumbled, and from the injury then received he died in Rouen in a few weeks. That burning of Mantes by the Duke of Normandy and King of England has been called the prelude to the Hundred Years' War between France and England, whose actual span was from 1337 to 1453. And in a way Waterloo was its epilogue. The shoulder-to-shoulder fight of the ancient rivals, from 1914 to 1918, let us hope, has put the seal on their pact of peace. THE CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX[100] Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ! White Horsemen who ride on white horses, the Knights of God! They, for their Lord and their Lover have sacrificed All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod! These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night, Swept, and they wake in white places at morningtide.... Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go; White Horsemen who ride on white horses, oh, fair to see! They ride, where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow, White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain: forever He! --LIONEL JOHNSON, _Te Martyrum Candidatus_.[101] To decipher Meaux Cathedral has been a student's _tour-de-force_, so early and unceasing have been its rebuildings. With Troyes and Séez, it was the only Gothic cathedral that had a flaw in its structure. Begun with the choir, in the last decades of the XII century, it still retained the Romanesque idea of deep galleries over the side aisles. Whether poor foundations were laid or whether the tribune vaults were made too cumbersome, the edifice gave signals of insecurity from the start. As the XIII century opened, the transept and that part of the nave near it were building with the tribunes still, although by that time such galleries had fallen into disuse. Repeated restorations delayed the works. Cracks continued to show until, about 1270, when the collapse of the whole church was threatened, a complete reconstruction was undertaken by Bishop Jean de Poincy.