Robert takes Brionne. the deliverance of his son.[1] He then prays, not without golden arguments, for the restitution of Brionne.[2] The officer in command, Robert son of Baldwin, asserts his own hereditary claim, and, at the head of six knights only, stands a siege, though not a long one, against the combined forces of the Duke and of the Count of Meulan and his father.[3] This siege is remarkable. The summer days were hot; all things were dry; the besiegers shot red-hot arrows against the roof of the fortified hall, and set fire to it.[4] So Duke Robert boasted that he had taken in a day the river-fortress which had held out for three years against his father.[5]
Advance of Rufus. These events concern us only because we know the actors, and because they helped to keep up that state of confusion in the Norman duchy which supplied the Red King at once with an excuse for his invasion, and with the means for carrying out his schemes. It must be remembered that the two stories are actually contemporary; while Robert was besieging Brionne, the fortresses of eastern Normandy were already falling one by one into the hands of Rufus. It is even quite possible that
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 686 C. The Duke speaks of the old Roger's "magna legalitas," "loyalty," according to its etymology. Is it characteristic of the "callidus senex" that he addresses the Duke as "vestra sublimitas," "vestra serenitas," and thanks him for imprisoning his son, "temerarium juvenem"? Yet it was twenty-four years since the exploits of Robert of Meulan at Senlac.
- ↑ Ib. D. "Ob hoc ingens pecuniæ pondus promisit."
- ↑ Ib. 687 A.
- ↑ Ib. A, B. "Tunc calor ingens incipientis æstatis, et maxima siccitas erant, quæ forinsecus expugnantes admodum juvabant. Callidi enim obsessores in fabrili fornace quæ in promptu structa fuerat, ferrum missilium calefaciebant, subitoque super tectum principalis aulæ in munimento jaciebant, et sic ferrum candens sagittarum atque pilorum in arida veterum lanugine imbricum totis nisibus figebant."
- ↑ Ib. "Sic Robertus dux ab hora nona Brioniam ante solis occasum obtinuit, quam Guillelmus pater ejus cum auxilio Henrici Francorum regis sibi vix in tribus annis subigere potuit." See N. C. vol. ii. p. 268.
