The ducal territories, which had descended to the Norman line from their first champion, Rollo, were separated by the small stream of Coësnor from the neighboring tract of Brittany, to which all the succeeding princes had possessed a claim since Charles the Simple, in the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, had ceded it to that great duke, the founder of the Norman dynasty. The consequence of this pretence--for such in fact it was--were endless bickerings, small border wars, aggressions and reprisals, burnings, and massacres, and vengeance! Some trivial skirmish had occurred upon this frontier, just as the duke had perceived that he must either suffer Harold to depart before his projects were accomplished, or force him to remain by open violence. In such a crisis he resolved at once upon his line of action; and, instantly proclaiming war, he raised the banner of his dukedom, summoned his vassals, great and small, to render service for their military tenures; and in announcing to his guest his march against the forces of his hereditary foe, claimed his assistance in the field as a true host from his well-proved guest, and a godfather-in-arms from the son whom he had admitted to the distinguished honor of the knightly accolade. Intoxicated with ambition and with love, madly desirous of acquiring fame among the martial Normans, and fancying, with a vanity not wholly inexcusable, that he was doing service to his country in acquiring the respect of foreign powers, he met half-way the proffer. And, in the parlance of the day, right nobly did he prove his gilded spurs of knighthood. In passing the Coësnor, which, like the See, the Seluna, and the other streams that cross the great Grêve of St. Michel, is perilous from its spring-tide and awful quicksands, Harold displayed, in recovering several soldiers, who, having quitted the true line of march, were on the point of perishing, a noble union of intrepidity and strength.