Henry I.’s marriage, uniting the old royal race with the new, much pacified matters, or at anyrate gave the king still more aid from the English people as distinct from the Norman barons. Again Robert of Bellème on the Welsh border revolted, but was driven into exile by the sovereign: in the claim of Robert to the throne, Englishmen sided with Henry, and for the first time served abroad to defeat the pretender at Tenchebrai. But Henry left no male successor, and Matilda his daughter was distasteful to the barons, who chose Stephen, grandson of the Conqueror, as king. This created two factions--that of Stephen and that of Matilda, the first of the great Civil Wars (for now the “English” counted for much more than heretofore), and the king, unlike his predecessors, unwisely allowing the barons to build castles on their own lands, paid for his over-confidence. For Matilda’s party, led first by the Earl of Gloucester, formed in the west of England, assisted by David King of Scots in the north. Stephen advanced against the latter, defeating the former at Northallerton, and after many vicissitudes on both sides, the war ceased by the retirement of Matilda to Normandy. So in anarchy and suffering--suffering so great that it was said “that God and His saints were asleep,” so terrible were the wrongs done in the land--the Norman power as such ceased to be, and Plantagenet kings (no longer Norman but English) reigned over the realm for more than three hundred years. Out of that time grew up the system of feudal levies, that is, of men who served as the personal retainers of some baron or overlord, and who fought therefore no longer as freemen, fighting freely in their country’s wars. Military service long remained personal rather than national. CHAPTER II THE ARMY OF THE NOBLES--TO 1500 With the rise of feudalism arose a further expansion of the principle of subdivision of command, though in its earliest days it degraded fighting to the mere personal prowess of the individual, and tactics as an art of war consequently made little, if any progress. Armies were built up much as before, and were still in many respects a species of militia. The knightly tenure was one of personal service for variable periods,--generally of about forty days,--during which the knight received no pay, and beyond which the king or overlord was supposed to defray the cost, and too frequently didn’t.