Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Random Rants, Notes and Articles No.2 . . .

In 1096, at the solicitation of Pope Urban II, Robert intersected with a great number of Christian princes, and pledged his duchy to the middle king the sum of ten thousand marks of silver, in order to defray the expenses of the expedition. He distinguished himself at the battle of Dorylée, in July 1097, and at the one that followed, the following year, the capture of Antioch.

At the siege of Jerusalem, he performed prodigies of valor, mounted one of the first to attack, and when the crusaders, as a reward for his courage, wanted to create him king of the holy city, he refused this honour. They then choose Godef oy de Bouillon.

The only prizes which Robert Courle-Heuse reported for his victories were a few enemy flags which he himself placed in the Church of the Trinity in Rouen, founded by his mother. It is the rhyming chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy, which reports this fact. Back in his states, Robert, exhausted by the expenses of the crusade, saw himself obliged to trample on his subjects and to increase the taxes.

His brother Henri, who, on the death of Gillaume-le-Roux, had taken possession of England to the detriment of Robert, knew how to take advantage of the general discontent.

Defeated and taken prisoner on September 27, 1106, before Tinchebai, Robert was led to his brother, who sent him to Cardiff Castle, in Glamorgan, a fortress built by their father William, in 1081.

It was there that this prince, a prey to all the sorrows of captivity, torn by the memory of his son whom he was never to see again, composed several pieces of poetry written in the Welsh language. The one we are translating here, according to Edouard Williams, seemed touching to us. He paints the Prisoner's Cristesse well.

The poet's eyes stopped at an oak tree which he saw in the distance on the promontory of Penarth, which overlooks the Bristol Channel.

Robert Courte-Heuse died in 1134, after twenty-eight years of captivity.