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Classic
& Historic Cartoon Comic Strips To Read Online- Illustrated Text
Stories from Comicbooks |
The Invader- First Presented in the Eagle
Book of Amazing Stories Annual 1974. In battle after battle he was
triumphant. He was the greatest of the Normans and his ambition was
to win a crown-the crown of England! |
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One moment the castle at Vandreuil in
Normandy was quiet and still as its inhabitants slept soundly in the
night. The next moment its thick walls echoed and re-echoed to the
sounds of the dead and dying, as the midnight marauders who had climbed
stealthily over the castle walls went from room to room murdering the
sleepers as they slept in their beds. |
During the commotion a servant ran into
the room of a little boy. The boy's playmate, who had been sleeping
beside him, had been stabbed to death in his bed. The servant snatched
up the survivor and, running like the wind, carried him out of the
castle to the shelter of a peasant's cottage. The marauders at Vandreuil
castle that night were the warring Montgomeries, a baronial family
who were sworn enemies of Duke Robert of Normandy and were determined
to kill his young son and heir, 12-year-old William. And in that bloody
deed they failed, for young William was the boy carried out by the
quick-witted servant. In time, when his father died, he became Duke
William of Normandy. In more time still, he became William the Conqueror,
England's first and greatest Norman King. |
In the middle of the eleventh century, the time of William's youth,
the opposing elements of Christian knighthood and the fighting spirit
of the Vikings, from whom the Normans came, were each to find a champion
in this dynamic young Duke. His early years were a hard training, and
from his loveless babyhood to his unwept death, he knew all the bitter
sorrows that belong to a cruel man and a much-feared leader .
All through William's earliest years the feudal lords spent most
of their strength in quarrelling with each other. What they feared
most was that one of them would rise above the others and crush them
all into submission-one strong man who would demand allegiance from
all of them and an end to their petty wars. Years were a hard training, and from his loveless babyhood to his
unwept death, he knew all the bitter sorrows that belong to a cruel
man and a much-feared leader .
All through William's earliest years the feudal lords spent most of
their strength in quarrelling with each other. What they feared most
was that one of them would rise above the others and crush them all
into submission-one strong man who would demand allegiance from all
of them and an end to their petty wars.
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William, it was soon plain for them all to see, threatened
to be that man. In his teens, rumours of his wisdom and his uncommon
strength and quickness in battle, were flying about from town to town
and warned his enemies that they had no time to lose if they meant to
crush him. He was a noble-looking lad and had shown a natural preference
for a soldier's life: at 15 he had demanded to be made a Norman knight.
'None save Duke William', we are told, 'could bend Duke William's bow.'
It was as well, for William lived in peril, surrounded by baronial enemies.
The fiercest of them, Roger de Toesny, scorned all that was said of the
young Duke and invited a battle by laying waste Norman lands. |
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