Normans were everywhere in 1066, and everywhere in the lead of their age. We were a serious race. If you want other proof of it, besides our record in war and in politics, you have only to look at our architecture. Down nearly to the end of the twelfth century the Norman was fairly master of the world in architecture as in arms.
Duke William of Normandy raised an army of forty thousand men in these parts on the great campaign for the conquest of England,—the greatest military effort that has been made in western Europe since Charlemagne.
France can offer few buildings of this importance equally old, with dates so exact. The overmastering strength of the eleventh century is stamped on a great scale here. No one is likely to forget what Norman architecture was.
We cannot do many things which are done in the centre of civilization, at Byzantium, but we can fight, and we can build a church.
Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, are all one at Mont-Saint-Michel.
