[Sidenote:  A.D. 1093.]

To support him in these courses he chose for his minister Ralph Flambard, a fit instrument in his designs, and possessed of such art and eloquence as to color them in a specious manner.  This man inflamed all the king’s passions, and encouraged him in his unjust enterprises.  It is hard to say which was most unpopular, the king or his minister.  But Flambard, having escaped a conspiracy against his life, and having punished the conspirators severely, struck such a general terror into the nation, that none dared to oppose him.  Robert’s title alone stood in the king’s way, and he knew that this must be a perpetual source of disturbance to him.  He resolved, therefore, to put him in peril for his own dominions.  He collected a large army, and entering into Normandy, he began a war, at first with great success, on account of a difference between the Duke and his brother Henry.  But their common dread of William reconciled them; and this reconciliation put them in a condition of procuring an equal peace, the chief conditions of which were, that Robert should be put in possession of certain seigniories in England, and that each, in case of survival, should succeed to the other’s dominions.  William concluded this peace the more readily, because Malcolm, King of Scotland, who hung over him, was ready upon every advantage to invade his territories, and had now actually entered England with a powerful army.  Robert, who courted action, without regarding what interest might have dictated, immediately on concluding the treaty entered into his brother’s service in this war against the Scots; which, on the king’s return, being in appearance laid asleep by an accommodation, broke out with redoubled fury the following year.  The King of Scotland, provoked to this rupture by the haughtiness of William, was circumvented by the artifice and fraud of one of his ministers:  under an appearance of negotiation, he was attacked and killed, together with his only son.  This was a grievous wound to Scotland, in the loss of one of the wisest and bravest of her kings, and in the domestic distractions which afterwards tore that kingdom to pieces.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1094.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1096.]

No sooner was this war ended, than William, freed from an enemy which had given himself and his father so many alarms, renewed his ill treatment of his brother, and refused to abide by the terms of the late treaty.  Robert, incensed at these repeated perfidies, returned to Normandy with thoughts full of revenge and war.  But he found that the artifices and bribes of the King of England had corrupted the greatest part of his barons, and filled the country with faction and disloyalty.  His own facility of temper had relaxed all the bands of government, and contributed greatly to these disorders.  In this distress he was obliged to have recourse to the King of France for succor.  Philip, who was then on the throne, entered into his