In 1071 the widow of his guardian, Count Baldwin of Flanders, was robbed by the latter’s brother, Robert the Frisian, and she had recourse to Philip. The king took up arms in her behalf and marched against Robert, but suffered a shameful defeat at Cassel.[5] He also fought a twelve years’ war with William the Conqueror, but it was a war marked by no memorable event. William seduced Philip’s counsellors and partisans by offering them great domains in England. Philip on his side promised protection to the discontented element among the Normans and took the part of William’s eldest son Robert, in revolt against his father. After a truce and during an illness of the duke, the king made fun of the former’s extreme fatness by inquiring when he expected to be brought to bed. William heard of this and, furious, swore to bring the king the candles for the churching. He assembled a formidable army and was setting out to ravage Philip’s estates when he fell ill at Rouen and died there in 1087. When he was scarcely cold the lords who were with him departed in haste for their castles; his servants pillaged his effects, taking everything but the bed he lay on, and left the body of the conqueror naked on the mattress. A poor knight found it in this state and moved to pity covered it, at his own expense, with mourning robes and prepared to bury it. He had spoken the funeral service and the body was in the grave when a Norman named Asselin came forward and said, “This ground belongs to me; the man whose eulogy you have just pronounced robbed me of it. On this spot stood my father’s house, this man seized it against all justice and without paying a price for it. In God’s name I forbid you to cover the robber’s body with earth that is mine.” This is a memorable example of the vanity of an existence full of greatness and iniquity--a striking sign of the forerunner of the judgment which threatened, on the threshold of the other life, him who had founded his power on rapine and the extermination and misery of a people. This William, conqueror of a great realm and ravisher of immense domains in a foreign land, only obtained a resting-place in his native soil through pity; those who assisted at his funeral had to lay the price of it upon his coffin. [Sidenote: [1087-1108 A.D.]]