It does not seem that Philip made any attempt to defend his threatened frontier, and he is reported to have treated William’s threats with contempt. Thereupon, the Conqueror, stung by some insult which passed at the time, suddenly threw himself with a Norman force across the Epte, and harried the country until he came to Mantes itself. The garrison had left their posts on the previous day, in order to inspect the devastation which the Normans had wrought in the neighbourhood, and were surprised by King William’s arrival. Garrison and invaders rushed in together headlong through the gates of the city, but the Normans had the victory, and Mantes was ruthlessly burned. And then King William, while riding among the smouldering ruins of his last conquest, in some way not quite clearly known, was thrown violently upon the pommel of his saddle, and his injury lay beyond the resources of the rough surgery of the eleventh century.
Stricken thus with a mortal blow, King William left the wasted Vexin for his capital of Rouen, and for six weeks of a burning summer his great strength struggled with the pain of his incurable hurt. At first he lay within the city of Rouen itself, but as the days passed he became less able to bear the noise of the busy port, and he bade his attendants carry him to the priory of Saint-Gervase, which stands on a hill to the west of the town. The progress of his sickness left his senses unimpaired to the last, and in the quiet priory the Conqueror told the story of his life to his sons William and Henry, his friend and physician Gilbert Maminot, bishop of Lisieux, Guntard, abbot of Jumièges, and a few others who had come to witness the end of their lord. Two independent narratives of King William’s _apologia_ have survived to our day, and, although monastic tradition may have framed the tale somewhat to purposes of edification, yet we can see that it was in no ignoble spirit that the Conqueror, under the shadow of imminent death, reviewed the course of his history. He called to mind with satisfaction his constant devotion and service to Holy Church, his patronage of learned men, and the religious houses founded under his rule. If he had been a man of war from his youth up he cast the blame in part upon the disloyal kinsmen, the jealous overlord, the aggressive rivals who had beset him from his childhood, but for the conquest of England, in this his supreme moment, he attempted no justification. In his pain and weariness, the fame he had shed upon the Norman race paled before the remembrance of the slaughter at Hastings, and the harried villages of Yorkshire. No prevision, indeed, of the mighty outcome of his work could have answered the Conqueror’s anxiety for the welfare of his soul, and under the spur of ambition he had taken a path which led to results beyond his own intention and understanding. We need not believe that the bishop of Lisieux or the abbot of Jumièges have tampered with William’s words, when we read his repentance for the events which have given him his place in history.