Great part played by him. without reason that we find the lord of the border-land spoken of by the fitting title of Marquess[1]. From the death of the Conqueror onwards, through the reigns of Robert and William, till the day when Henry sent him to a life-long prison, Robert of Bellême fills in the history of Normandy and England a place alongside of their sovereigns.
His character.
His surname.
His skill in engineering.
His special and wanton cruelty.
With the inheritance of Mabel and William Talvas,
their son and grandson was believed to have succeeded
in full measure to the hereditary wickedness of their
house. That house is spoken of as one at whose deeds
dæmons themselves might shudder,[2] and Robert himself
bears in the traditions of his Cenomannian enemies the
frightful surname which has been so unfairly transferred to
the father of the Conqueror. His name lives in proverbs.
In the land of Maine his abiding works are pointed
to as the works of Robert the Devil. Elsewhere the
"wonders of Robert of Bellême" became a familiar
saying.[3] That Robert was a man of no small natural
gifts is plain; to the ordinary accomplishments of the
Norman warrior he added a mastery of the more intellectual
branches of the art of warfare. As the
Cenomannian legend shows, he stood at the head of
his age in the skill of the military engineer.[4] Firm
and daring, ready of wit and ready of speech, he had
in him most of the qualities which might have made
him great in that or in any other age. But, even in
that age, he held a place by himself as a kind of in-*
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 675 D.
- ↑ Hen. Hunt. De Cont. Mund. 11. "Gens ipsis dæmonibus horrenda."
- ↑ See N. C. vol. i. p. 468. The Archdeacon of Huntingdon himself, with a slight contempt of sex and species, calls him "Pluto, Megæra, Cerberus, vel si aliquid horrendi scribi potest." He speaks of the proverb, "Mirabilia Roberti de Belesme."
- ↑ See his two pictures in Orderic, 675 C, D, and 707 C, D. In his character of engineer we shall meet him at Gisors. See 766 B.
