1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [87]
Eustace's troops at the rear were quickly scattered in confusion. The Norman horsemen pursued them, and amid cries of alarm and much slashing of swords, they killed many and took others captive. More lives are said to have been lost as, in their hurry and ignorance of the local paths, the Boulonnais soldiers fell over precipices and were dashed to death on the rocks below. Of those that made it down to the English shore, many crowded on to frail ships, which sank, and they were drowned under the weight of their chain mail. Eustace himself was better prepared. A fleet horse had been always at the ready for him; and knowing the way back to his ship, he made fast for it. Now with the remnant of his forces the humiliated count sailed back to Boulogne. A large part of the English contingent was also able to escape across land by using local knowledge. But Eustace's young nepos (a word traditionally translated as 'nephew'), apparently taking part in his first battle, was captured by Odo's knights. The chronicles do not name this youngster, evidently a close kinsman of Eustace, but they stress that he was of the highest nobility ('nobilissimus').The Anglo-Boulonnais attack on Dover Castle thus ended in utter disaster for Count Eustace. That Christmas, at the king's traditional gathering of his court, William condemned Eustace to exile from England and confiscated the English lands that he had been given as his share of the spoils of victory only a year earlier. His poor nepos, in all likelihood, remained Odo's prisoner.
Eustace's purpose in attacking Dover remains deeply mysterious. It has been suggested that he was hoping to take Dover and the surrounding countryside so that he could control both sides of the straits of Dover, something that would have given him enormous political benefits as well as substantial economic gains. Alternatively, he may have been disappointed at his share of the spoils of conquest and, in particular, at not regaining the lands of his former English wife Godgifu.2 Having taken Dover Castle, he may have hoped to renegotiate his share of the victory with William from a position of strength. Another possibility, though rather speculative, is that the son he had given to William as a hostage had not been released despite, perhaps, an agreement to the contrary. It is possible that Odo was given charge of the hostage prior to the invasion when Eustace and he met in the summer of 1066, and just possible that the hostage was at that very moment being held in Dover Castle.
Undoubtedly the most intriguing possibility, however, is that Count Eustace was attempting to pursue his own claim to the English throne. This idea has been proposed by many historians. Eustace stood in the same relation to the former English king, Edward the Confessor, as Harold had done in January 1066: both were brothers-in-law of King Edward. Eustace had the prized blood of Charlemagne running in his veins and beyond that contemporaries traced his maternal ancestry to the earlier Merovingian kings of France and through them on more dubious grounds to Priam of Tory. This was a bloodline that gave Count Eustace greater prestige than perhaps any of his contemporaries and yet here was a man who was not a king;