Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy.The town was a lordship of the house of Belleme, a house renowned for power and wickedness, and which, as holding great possessions alike of Normandy and of France, ranked rather with princes than with ordinary nobles.The story went that William Talvas, lord of Belleme, one of the fiercest of his race, had cursed William in his cradle, as one by whom he and his should be brought to shame.Such a tale set forth the noblest side of William's character, as the man who did something to put down such enemies of mankind as he who cursed him.The possessions of William Talvas passed through his daughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery, a man who plays a great part in William's history; but it is the disloyalty of the burghers, not of their lord, of which we hear just now.They willingly admitted an Angevin garrison.William in return laid siege to Domfront on the Varenne, a strong castle which was then an outpost of Maine against Normandy.A long skirmishing warfare, in which William won for himself a name by deeds of personal prowess, went on during the autumn and winter (1048-49).One tale specially illustrates more than one point in the feelings of the time.The two princes, William and Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each gives the other notice of the garb and shield that he will wear that he may not be mistaken.The spirit of knight-errantry was coming in, and we see that William himself in his younger days was touched by it.But we see also that coat-armour was as yet unknown.Geoffrey and his host, so the Normans say, shrink from the challenge and decamp in the night, leaving the way open for a sudden march upon Alencon.
The disloyal burghers received the duke with mockery of his birth.
They hung out skins, and shouted, "Hides for the Tanner." Personal insult is always hard for princes to bear, and the wrath of William was stirred up to a pitch which made him for once depart from his usual moderation towards conquered enemies.He swore that the men who had jeered at him should be dealt with like a tree whose branches are cut off with the pollarding-knife.The town was taken by assault, and William kept his oath.The castle held out; the hands and feet of thirty-two pollarded burghers of Alencon were thrown over its walls, and the threat implied drove the garrison to surrender on promise of safety for life and limb.The defenders of Domfront, struck with fear, surrendered also, and kept their arms as well as their lives and limbs.William had thus won back his own rebellious town, and had enlarged his borders by his first conquest.
He went farther south, and fortified another castle at Ambrieres;but Ambrieres was only a temporary conquest.Domfront has ever since been counted as part of Normandy.But, as ecclesiastical divisions commonly preserve the secular divisions of an earlier time, Domfront remained down to the great French Revolution in the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of Le Mans.
William had now shown himself in Maine as conqueror, and he was before long to show himself in England, though not yet as conqueror.
