The first among the great fiefs of France to acquire a distinct character of its own was Normandy, which since the treaty of Clair-on-Epte in 911 had been handed over by Charles the Simple to Rolf the Ganger and his Viking followers. The pirates gave up their wandering life of plunder, became Christians, and tillers of the soil. Rollo divided the lands of his duchy among his kinsfolk and followers. In one or two generations, the descendants of the pirate chieftains became the turbulent feudal aristocracy that held even their fierce dukes in check, and found the little duchy too small a field for their ambition and enterprise. For a time they retained their Norse character. In some districts, especially in the Bessin and the Côtentin, the great mass of the population had become Scandinavian in tongue and manners. Constant relations with Norwegian and Danish kings kept alive the memory of their old home. Harold Blue Tooth protected Duke Richard against Louis IV. Swegen sought the help of the lord of Rouen in avenging the massacre of St. Brice on the English. But the ready wit and quick adaptability of the Scandinavian races could not long withstand the French influences surrounding them. The constant friendly relations between the Norman dukes and both the Carolingian and Capetian kings precipitated the change. The dukes and barons of Normandy became French in tongue and manners. But they became French with a difference. The French of Caen and Rouen were more restless, more enterprising, more ambitious, and more daring than the French of Paris and Orleans. The contemporary chroniclers saw the importance of the distinction. ‘O France,’ says Dudo of Saint-Quentin, ‘thou wert crushed to the earth. Behold, there comes to thee a new race from Denmark. Peace is made between her and thee. That race will raise thy name and thy power to the heavens.’ Nor was this prophecy a false one. Despite its constant turbulence, Normandy became filled with a vigorous local life that soon flowed over its own borders. What the Normans could not teach themselves, they learnt from wandering Italians or Burgundians. The Normans stood in the forefront of all the great movements of the time. They upheld the Capetians against the Carolingians. They became the disciples of Cluny, and from the Norman abbey of Le Bec soon flowed a stream of culture and civilisation that bade fair to rival Cluny itself. They covered their land with great minsters, and wrote stirring _chansons de geste_ in their Norman dialect of the French tongue. Yet they kept themselves so free of their suzerain’s influence, that not even through the Church could the Capetian kings exercise any authority in Normandy. Throughout the whole province of Rouen, the Church depended either upon the local seigneur or upon the Norman duke. They were the champions of the Hildebrandine Papacy. They were foremost in the Crusades. Their duke, William the Bastard, conquered England, and in the next generation his Norman