viscounties, with a castle in each of them where a viscount had his seat,
who was invested at once with administrative, judicial, and military
functions. Military obligations were strictly regulated, each baronial
estate owing a certain number of days' service in the field. In a word,
Normandy constituted a real state which was, besides, fortunate enough
to have at its head throughout the eleventh century, with the exception
of Robert Curthose, a succession of brilliant rulers.
Brittany. As under the Carolingians, Brittany continued to form an isolated province, almost a nation apart. Having its own language, a religion more impregnated here than elsewhere with paganism, special customs of its own, and manners ruder and coarser than was usual elsewhere, Brittany in the eyes even of contemporaries seemed a foreign and barbarous land. A priest, called by his duties to these inhospitable regions, looked upon himself as a missionary going forth to evangelise savages, or as a banished man, while the idea of Ovid in his Pontic exile suggested itself readily to such minds as had given themselves to the cultivation of letters.
But in spite of its well-marked characteristics, Brittany did not form a very strong political entity. Already a severe struggle was in progress between the Gallo-Roman population along the March of Rennes, and the Celtic people of Armorica, each group representing its own distinct language. In other respects, the antagonism took the form of a rivalry between the great houses which contended for the dignity of Duke of Brittany. Which among the counts, he of Rennes, or of Nantes, or of Cornouailles had the right to suzerainty? In the eleventh century it seemed for a moment as if the chances of inheritance were about to allow the unification of Brittany to become a fact, and as if the duke might be able to add to the theoretical suzerainty which his title gave him, a direct control over all the Breton counties. Hoel, Count of Cornouailles, after inheriting in 1063 the county of Nantes on the death of his mother Judith of Cornouailles, found himself in 1066 inheritor of the counties of Rennes and Vannes in right of his wife Havoise, sole heiress of her brother the Breton Duke, Conan II. But in order to complete the unification of the duchy it was necessary that the duke should succeed in making himself obeyed on the northern slope of the rocky mass of Brittany. Now the Léon country escaped his control, and he was to exhaust himself in vain efforts to reduce Eon of Penthièvre and his descendants who ruled over the dioceses of Dol, Alet, Saint-Brieuc and Tréguier, and even disputed the ducal dignity with the Counts of Rennes. At a loss for money, and forced to alienate their domains to meet their expenses, neither Hoel (1066-1084), nor his son and successor, Alan Fergent (1084-1112), succeeded in turning Brittany into a unified province.
Aquitaine and Gascony. The destiny of the countries south of the Loire has all the appearance of a striking paradox. While everywhere
