independent.  City and land chose for them a prince who came by female descent from the stock of their ancient counts.  This was Hugh the son of Azo Marquess of Liguria and of Gersendis the sister of the last Count Herbert.  The Normans were driven out of Le Mans; Azo came to take possession in the name of his son, but he and the citizens did not long agree.  He went back, leaving his wife and son under the guardianship of Geoffrey of Mayenne.  Presently the men of Le Mans threw off princely rule altogether and proclaimed the earliest commune in Northern Gaul.  Here then, as at Exeter, William had to strive against an armed commonwealth, and, as at Exeter, we specially wish to know what were to be the relations between the capital and the county at large.  The mass of the people throughout Maine threw themselves zealously into the cause of the commonwealth.  But their zeal might not have lasted long, if, according to the usual run of things in such cases, they had simply exchanged the lordship of their hereditary masters for the corporate lordship of the citizens of Le Mans.  To the nobles the change was naturally distasteful.  They had to swear to the commune, but many of them, Geoffrey for one, had no thought of keeping their oaths.  Dissensions arose; Hugh went back to Italy; Geoffrey occupied the castle of Le Mans, and the citizens dislodged him only by the dangerous help of the other prince who claimed the overlordship of Maine, Count Fulk of Anjou.

If Maine was to have a master from outside, the lord of Anjou hardly promised better than the lord of Normandy.  But men in despair grasp at anything.  The strange thing is that Fulk disappears now from the story; William steps in instead.  And it was at least as much in his English as in his Norman character that the Duke and King won back the revolted land.  A place in his army was held by English warriors, seemingly under the command of Hereward himself.  Men who had fought for freedom in their own land now fought at the bidding of their Conqueror to put down freedom in another land.  They went willingly; the English Chronicler describes the campaign with glee, and breaks into verse—­or incorporates a contemporary ballad—­at the tale of English victory.  Few men of that day would see that the cause of Maine was in truth the cause of England.  If York and Exeter could not act in concert with one another, still less could either act in concert with Le Mans.  Englishmen serving in Maine would fancy that they were avenging their own wrongs by laying waste the lands of any man who spoke the French tongue.  On William’s part, the employment of Englishmen, the employment of Hereward, was another stroke of policy.  It was more fully following out the system which led Englishmen against Exeter, which led Eadric and his comrades into Scotland.  For in every English soldier whom William carried into Maine he won a loyal English subject.  To men who had fought under his banners beyond the sea