According to Wace Ralf had served among the Breton auxiliaries at the battle of Hastings.
It does not appear that any medieval historian regarded this as an act of treachery on Waltheof’s part.
This point is made by Pollock and Maitland. H. E. L., i., 291.
For the rest of the Conqueror’s reign, there was peace between Normandy and Brittany, except that in 1086 William, to whom the new count Alan Fergant, the son of Hoel, had refused homage, crossed the border once more and laid siege to Dol. In this siege also he was unsuccessful, and speedily came to terms with Alan, who received Constance, the Conqueror’s daughter, in marriage.
CHAPTER IX THE LAST YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR
With the peace of Blanchelande we enter upon the last phase in the life of William the Conqueror, and this although more than the half of his English reign still lay in the future. It must be owned that no unity of purpose or achievement can be traced underlying this final stage; the history of these last years is little more than a series of disconnected episodes, of which the details themselves are very imperfectly known to us. It has, in fact, been customary for historians to regard this period as marking somewhat of a decline in the character and fortunes of the Conqueror; a decline which the men of the next generation were inclined to attribute to supernatural vengeance pursuing the king for his execution of Earl Waltheof in 1076. “Such was his resolution,” says Orderic, “that he still maintained a brave fight against his enemies, but success did not crown his enterprises now as formerly, nor were his battles often crowned with victory.”[264] This idea of retributive fate, characteristic of the medieval mind, has received from historians various adaptations and exemplifications, but perhaps a more reasonable explanation of the tameness of the last years of the Conqueror would be that the achievements of the decade between 1060 and 1070 inevitably make the succeeding history something of an anticlimax. The Conqueror’s last wars are indeed inconsiderable enough when compared with the campaigns of Le Mans and Hastings, but the most unique undertaking of his life falls within two years of its close; and with the Domesday Survey before us we need no further proof that the far-sightedness of the king’s policy and the strength of his executive power were still unimpaired at the very close of his career.