Rouen (France) -- Description and travel; Rouen (France) -- History
Scarcely three years after Robert had attained the Duchy he quarrelled
openly with his brother, the Red King of England; and Rouen was
instantly in an uproar under Conan, a rich bourgeois, who probably
sided with William Rufus, because he saw more chance of a commune
under a distant king than in the presence of a duke at Rouen. In the
days of the Conqueror there had been no tyrants or demagogues in the
city, no armies in civic pay, no dealings of the citizens with other
princes. But now the chance for an independent commonwealth seemed
really to have come. However, the youngest brother, Henri Beauclerc,
came from Cotentin to assist Robert in his difficulty, but not before
the debauched and treacherous duke had been obliged to fly by the
eastern gate of Robec into the faubourg of Malpalu, where he was
cordially welcomed, and passed on to safety in St. Sever. Then Henri
Beauclerc, "The Lion of Justice," took up the fighting for himself,
swiftly beat back the soldiers of the Red King, threw Conan, the
leader of the revolt, into the Tower of the Dukes by the Seine, and
finally cast him down headlong from the battlements to die upon the
stones beneath. The place preserved the name of "Saut de Conan" for
many years, in the south-east corner of the Halles. So this first
Artevelde of Rouen came to an untimely end. Henri Beauclerc, helped by
Robert of Bellesme, one of the de Warrens (whose tomb is in the church
of Wantage), and by the Count of Evreux, proved far too strong for him
and for his companion in revolt, William, the son of Ansgar, who had
to pay a vast ransom as the price of disobedience, while many of the
rebellious citizens were massacred, and this immature attempt to form
a commune ended.
The three brothers continued to quarrel, and to make it up again for
some years. First, Robert and Rufus combine against Henry. Then Robert
sends over troops to help the barons who were rebelling against his
brother in England. Finally he went off with his Uncle Odo on the
first crusade in 1096, pledging the Duchy in his absence to his
brother the Red King, who, of course, seized it, and the real quarrel
between England and France began. For when Normandy had been
independent, Rouen blocked the road from Winchester to Paris. But as
soon as it belonged outright either to one or to the other, the
ancestral strife of French against English was certain to begin, and
to go on. The revolt of Elias, Count of Maine, against the English
King was repressed by his imprisonment--by Robert of Bellesme
again--in the same Tour de Rouen that had seen the death of Conan. But
Rufus never used his great gifts and power of ruling for anything but
evil, and his brother Henry followed him, the husband of that
descendant of Edmund and of Alfred who called herself Matilda at his
coronation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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