Part 6

Fulk was now at the height of his prosperity. He had been count of Anjou for forty years, and his reign had been one of unbroken success. Each in turn of the greater neighbours who had stood, a threatening ring, around Geoffrey Greygown’s boy-heir had been successfully dealt with in some way or other, till the little Marchland had grown to be a power in the realm second only to Normandy and perhaps to Aquitaine; and before Fulk’s reign closed, even Aquitaine, the only one of Anjou’s immediate neighbours which had not had to bow before him, fell prostrate at the feet of his son. Fulk’s last years were to be years of peace. Only once again did he take part in the general affairs of the French kingdom; and then, as ever, his action was in strict accord with the policy which he had begun and which his descendants followed consistently down to the time of Henry Fitz-Empress: a policy of steady loyalty to the lawful authority of the French Crown, against which the counts of Blois lived in perpetual opposition. After Robert’s death, in 1031, Fulk appeared in the unexpected character of peace-maker between Queen Constance and her son, the young King Henry, whom she was trying to oust from his throne;[359] and he afterwards accompanied Henry on an expedition to dislodge Odo of Champagne from Sens, which however succeeded no better than the attempt once made by Odo and Henry to dislodge Fulk himself from Amboise.[360] But peace or war, it mattered not to the Black Count; he was never at a loss for work. When there was no enemy to fight or to outwit, his versatile energies flung themselves just as readily into the encouragement of piety or the improvement and embellishment of his capital. Over the black bastions of the castle with which the French King Philip Augustus, when he had wrested Angers from a degenerate descendant of its ancient counts, found it needful to secure his hold on “this contemptuous city,” there still looks out upon the river a fragment of a ruined hall, chiefly of red flintstone; it is the sole remains of the dwelling-place of Fulk Nerra--in all likelihood, his own work.[361] A poetic legend shows him to us for once quietly at home, standing in that hall and gazing at the view from its windows. At his feet flowed the purple Mayenne between its flat but green meadows--for the great suburb beyond the river did not yet exist--winding down beneath a bridge of his own building to join the Loire beyond the rising hills to the south-west. His eyes, keen as those of the “Falcon” whose name he bore, reached across river and meadow to the slope of a hill directly opposite him, where he descried a dove flying to and fro, picking up fragments of earth and depositing them in a cavity which it seemed to be trying to fill. Struck by the bird’s action, he carefully marked the spot, and the work of the dove was made the foundation-stone of a great abbey in honour of S. Nicolas, which he had vowed to build as a thank-offering for deliverance from a storm at sea on his return from his second pilgrimage.[362] This abbey, with a nunnery founded near it eight years later--in 1128--by his countess Hildegard, on the site of an ancient church dedicated to our Lady of Charity,[363] became the nucleus round which gathered in after-years a suburb known as Ronceray, scarcely less important than the city itself. These tranquil home-occupations, however, could not long satisfy the restless temper of Fulk. The irresistible charm exercised by the Holy Land over so many of the more imaginative spirits of the age drew him to revisit it in 1035. One interesting event of the journey is recorded: his meeting at Constantinople with Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror.[364] The old and the young penitent completed their pilgrimage together; but only the former lived to see his home again; and when he reached it, he found the gates of Angers shut in his face by his own son. The rebellion was soon quelled. Saddled and bridled like a beast of burthen, Geoffrey came crawling to his father’s feet. “Conquered art thou--conquered, conquered!” shouted the old count, kicking his prostrate son. “Aye, conquered by thee, for thou art my father; but unconquered by all beside!” The spirited answer touched Fulk’s paternal pride, and Geoffrey arose forgiven.[365] The power which he had thus undutifully tried to usurp was soon to be his by right; not, however, till the Black Count had given one last proof that neither his hand nor his brain had yet forgotten its cunning. Odo of Champagne had long ago left Touraine to its fate, and for the last four years he had been absorbed in a visionary attempt to wrest from the Emperor Conrad II., first the kingdom of Burgundy, then that of Italy, and at last the imperial crown itself; while Fulk’s conquests of the valleys of the Indre and the Cher had been completed by the acquisition of Montbazon and St.-Aignan.[366] When at the close of 1037 tidings came that Odo had been defeated and slain in a battle with the imperial forces at Bar, the Angevin at once laid siege to Langeais, and took it.[367] One more stronghold still remained to be won in the valley of the Vienne. From the right bank of the little river, winding down silvery-blue between soft green meadows to join the Loire beyond the circle of the distant hills to the north-west, the mighty steep of Chinon rises abruptly, as an old writer says, “straight up to heaven”; range upon range of narrow streets climb like the steps of a terrace up its rocky sides; acacias wave their bright foliage from every nook; and on the crest of the ridge a long line of white ruins, the remains of a stately castle, stand out against the sky. A dense woodland of oaks and larches and firs, stretching north-eastward almost to the valley of the Indre, and crowded with game of every kind, formed probably no small part of the attractions which were to make Chinon the favourite retreat of Fulk Nerra’s greatest descendant. In those ruined halls, where a rich growth of moss and creepers has replaced the tapestried hangings, earlier and later memories--memories of the Black Count or of the Maid of Orleans--seem to an English visitor only to flit like shadows around the death-bed of Henry Fitz-Empress. But it was Fulk who won Chinon for the Angevins. The persuasion of his tongue, as keen as his sword, sufficed now to gain its surrender.[368] The Great Builder’s work was all but finished; only the keystone remained to be dropped into its place. Tours itself stood out alone against the conqueror of Touraine. One more blow, and the count of Anjou would be master of the whole valley of the Loire from Amboise to the sea.

[359] R. Glaber, l. iii. c. 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 40). Fulk’s mediation was done in characteristic fashion; he asked Constance “cur bestialem vesaniam erga filios exerceret.” It took effect, however.

[360] Chron. S. Petr. Senon. and Chronolog. S. Marian. Autissiod. a. 1032 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. pp. 196, 308).

[361] See note B to chapter ii. above.

[362] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_) p. 275. The church was consecrated December 1, 1020; Chronn. S. Serg. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 134.) The foundation-charter is in Le Pelletier’s _Breviculum S. Nicolai_, p. 4.

[363] The foundation-charter, dated July 14, 1128, is in Hiret, _Antiquitez d’Anjou_, pp. 100, 101. The whole history of the church is fully discussed by M. d’Espinay, in the _Revue Historique de l’Anjou_, vol. xii. (1874), pp. 49–64, 143–155. A grotesque legend, which yet has a somewhat characteristic ring, was told of the origin of this nunnery. Fulk one day, watching a potter at his work, was seized with a desire to try his hand. He succeeded in producing a well-shaped pan, which he carried home in triumph and gave to his wife, telling her that it was made by the man whom she loved best. Hildegard, mistaking the jest for a serious charge, vowed to disprove it at once by undergoing the ordeal of water, and flung herself out of the window and into the river, before her husband could stop her. The spot where she came to land was marked by the abbey of our Lady (_Revue hist. de l’Anjou_, as above, pp. 54, 55, and note 1; Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 279 note.) Its later name of “Ronceray” was derived from a bramble-bush (_ronce_) which forced its way through the pavement of the choir, despite all attempts to uproot it. This however was in the sixteenth century.

[364] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 101. See note C at end of chapter.

[365] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, pp. 401, 402).

[366] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 116.

[367] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 168.

[368] _Ibid._

Strangely, yet characteristically, that final blow Fulk left to be struck by his successor. As his life drew to its close the ghostly terrors of his youth came back to him with redoubled force; and the world which had marvelled at his exploits and his crimes marvelled no less at his last penance. For the fourth time he went out to Jerusalem, and there caused two servants, bound by an oath to do whatsoever he should bid them, to drag him round the Holy City in the sight of all the Turks, one holding him by a halter round his neck, the other scourging his naked back, while he cried aloud for Heaven’s mercy on his soul as a perjured and miserable sinner.[369] He made his way homeward as far as Metz.[370] There, on June 21st, 1040, the Black Count’s soul passed away;[371] and his body was embalmed, carried home to Beaulieu, and buried in the chapter-house of the abbey which had been the monument of his earliest pilgrimage, the first-fruits of his youthful devotion and daring.[372]

[369] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 402).

[370] “Metensem urbem,” _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_) p. 117. From the last word one would imagine this could only mean Metz in Lorraine; but there is another Metz in the Gâtinais; and although it is, and clearly always has been, an insignificant little town, quite undeserving the title of “urbs,” it seems more likely than its greater namesake to be the place really meant. For Metz in Lorraine would be completely out of the way of a traveller from Palestine to Anjou, while Metz in the Gâtinais was not merely close to Fulk’s home, but was actually in the territory of his own son-in-law (of whom we shall hear again later). It would be as natural for him to stop there on his way as it would be unnatural for him to fetch a compass through the remote dominions of the duke of Lorraine; and, on the other hand, the place is so insignificant that a careless and ignorant writer, such as John of Marmoutier, even though dwelling at no great distance, might easily forget its existence.

[371] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1040 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 24, 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377. _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 117.

[372] Fulk Rechin and _Gesta Cons._, as above.

From Beaulieu, at least, he had deserved nothing but gratitude, and Beaulieu never forgot the debt. For seven centuries the anniversary of his death was solemnly observed in the abbey; so was that of his widow, who as a bride had helped to the dedication of the church, and who now, following her husband’s last steps, went out to die at Jerusalem.[373] For seven centuries, as the monks gathered in the church to keep their yearly festival in honour of his gift, the fragment of sacred stone, they read over in the office of the day the story of his pilgrimage, and chanted the praise of his pious theft.[374] Next to that trophy, his tomb was their pride; it vanished in the general wreck of 1793; but research within the last few years has happily succeeded in bringing the Black Count’s earthly resting-place to light once more.[375] But it was not Beaulieu alone that kept his memory green. His own little Angevin marchland, his fairer conquest Touraine, are sown thick with memorials of him. So strong was the impression made by his activity in one direction that after-generations have persisted in attributing to him almost every important architectural work in his dominions, and transferred the credit of several constructions even of Henry Fitz-Empress to the first “great builder” of Anjou, who was believed to have had command over more than mortal artificers. Popular imagination, with its unerring instinct, rightly seized upon the Black Count as the embodiment of Angevin glory and greatness. The credit of the astute politician, the valiant warrior, the consummate general, the strenuous ruler--all this is his due, and something more; the credit of having, by the initiative force of genius, launched Anjou upon her career with an impetus such as no opposing power could thenceforth avail to check. One is tempted to wonder how far into the future of his house those keen eyes of the Black Falcon really saw; whether he saw it or not, that future was in a great measure of his own making; for his fifty-three years of work and warfare had been spent in settling the question on which that future depended--the question whether Anjou or Blois was to be the chief power of central Gaul. When his place was taken by Geoffrey Martel, there could no longer be any doubt of the answer.

[373] See extract from Martyrology of Ronceray in Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 395, note 3.

[374] See the office in Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 499 _et seq._

[375] See Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 456 _et seq._

The new count of Anjou began his reign in circumstances very unlike those of his father half a century before. Not only had Fulk wholly changed the political position of Anjou, but Geoffrey’s own position as an individual was totally different. He was no untried boy, left to fight his own way with no weapons save the endowments which nature had given him; he was a full-grown man, trained in the school of Fulk Nerra, and already experienced in politics and war. In his own day Geoffrey Martel was looked up to with as much respect as his father, and with even more dread. His career is an illustration of the saying that nothing succeeds like success. Till he came into collision with the duke of Normandy, he carried all before him like chaff before the wind. He crushed Aquitaine; he won Tours; he won Le Mans. It was no wonder if he delighted to commemorate in the surname of Martel, “the Hammer,” the victorious blows which laid opponent after opponent at the feet of the blacksmith’s foster-son.[376] But Geoffrey was not the artificer of his own fortune. He owed his pre-eminence among the great vassals of the Crown to his extended possessions and his military reputation; he owed his extended possessions more to his father’s labours and to a series of favourable accidents than to his own qualities as a statesman; and he owed his military reputation--as one writer who understood the Angevins thoroughly has very plainly hinted--more to luck than to real generalship.[377] Geoffrey stands at a disadvantage thus far, that in contemplating him one cannot avoid two very trying comparisons. It was as unlucky for his after-fame as it was lucky for his material prosperity that he was the son of Fulk the Black; it was unlucky for him in every way that he was the rival of William the Conqueror. Neither as a statesman, a ruler, a strategist, or a man was Geoffrey equal to his father. As a statesman he showed no very lofty capacity; his designs on Aquitaine, sweeping but pointless, came to nothing in the end: and with regard to Touraine and Maine, politically, he had little to do but to reap the fruit of Fulk’s labours and use the advantages which the favour of the king in one case, the rashness of the bishop in the other, and the weakness of the rival count in both, threw absolutely into his hands. As a ruler he seems to have been looked up to with simple dread; there is little trace of the intense personal following which others of his race knew so well how to inspire;[378] the first time he was intrusted with the government of Anjou his harshness and oppression roused the indignation alike of his subjects and of his father; his neighbours looked on him to the last as a tyrant,[379] and his own people seem to have feared far more than they loved him. As a strategist there is really no proof that he possessed any such overwhelming superiority as he himself boasted, and as others were led to believe. His two great victories, at Montcontour and Montlouis, dazzled the world because the one was gained over a prince who by the tradition of ages counted as the first potentate in the realm after the duke of Normandy, and the other led to the acquisition of Tours; but the capture of William of Aquitaine was really nothing more than the fortune of war; while in the case of the victory over Theobald of Blois at Montlouis, a considerable part of the credit is due to Geoffrey’s lieutenant Lisoy of Amboise; and moreover, to have beaten the successor of Odo II. is after all no very wonderful achievement for the successor of Fulk the Black. Twice in his life Geoffrey met his master. The first time he owned it himself as he lay at his father’s feet. The second time he evaded the risk of open defeat by a tacit withdrawal far more shameful in a moral point of view. It is small blame to Geoffrey Martel that he was no match for William the Conqueror. Had he, in honest consciousness of his inferiority, done his best to avoid a collision, and when it became inevitable stood to face the consequences like a man, it would have been small shame to him to be defeated by the future victor of Senlac. The real shame is that after courting an encounter and loudly boasting of his desire to break a lance with William, when the opportunity was given him he silently declined to use it. It was but a mean pride and a poor courage that looked upon defeat in fair fight as an unbearable humiliation, and could not feel the deeper moral humiliation of shrinking from the mere chance of that defeat. And it is just this bluntness of feeling, this callousness to everything not visible and tangible to outward sense, which sets Geoffrey as a man far below his father. There is in Fulk a living warmth, a quickness of susceptibility, which breaks out in all sorts of shapes, good and bad, in all the stories of the Black Count, but which seems wholly lacking in Geoffrey. Fulk “sinned bravely,” ardently, impulsively; Geoffrey sinned meanly, coldly, heartlessly. His was altogether a coarser, lower nature. Fulk was truly the falcon that wheels its swift and lofty flight ever closer and closer above the doomed quarry till it strikes it down irresistibly with one unerring swoop. Geoffrey rightly thought himself better represented by the crashing blows of the insensible sledge-hammer.

[376] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_) p. 379; cf. _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 260, and Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395).

[377] “Gaufredus cognomento Martellus, quod ipse sibi usurpaverat, quia videbatur sibi _felicitate quâdam_ omnes obsistentes contundere.” Will. Malm. as above.

[378] Even the devotion of Lisoy of Amboise seems to have been given to Geoffrey chiefly because he was his father’s son. Fulk was its real object.

[379] See the Norman writers, Orderic and William of Poitiers.

Geoffrey had been an independent ruler in a small sphere for nearly ten years before his father’s death. In 1030 or 1031 he became master of the little county of Vendôme by purchase from his half-sister Adela, the only child of Fulk’s ill-starred first marriage, and the heiress of her maternal grandfather Count Burchard. After doing homage to King Henry for the fief, Geoffrey’s first act was to found in the capital of his new dominions an abbey dedicated to the Holy Trinity.[380] The appointment of an abbot proved the occasion for the first recorded outbreak of that latent discord between Fulk and his heir which, as we have seen, culminated at last in open war. A monk named Reginald had just been sent at Fulk’s request from the great abbey of Marmoutier near Tours, to take the place of Baldwin, abbot of S. Nicolas at Angers, who had fled to bury himself in a hermitage. Before the day came for Reginald’s ordination, however, he deserted to a younger patron, and accepted the abbotship of Geoffrey’s newly-founded abbey at Vendôme. Fulk, thus disappointed by two abbots in succession, “flew,” as he himself said, “into a mighty rage,” summarily ordered the whole colony of monks whom he had brought from Marmoutier to S. Nicolas back to their parent monastery, and replaced them with some of the brethren of S. Aubin’s at Angers, with Hilduin, prior of that convent, as their head.[381] Fulk’s wrath seems to have been directed against the monks rather than against his son; but the incident serves as an illustration of the tendency to opposition that was springing up in Geoffrey’s mind. The quiet, waiting policy of Fulk’s latter years was evidently irksome to the young man’s impatient spirit, and he chose to strike out a path for himself in a direction which, it is not surprising to learn, did not please the old count. The only one of his neighbours with whom Fulk seems to have been always on peaceable terms was the count of Poitou. William Fierabras, the count from whom Geoffrey Greygown had wrested Loudun, died about two years after the second battle of Conquereux.[382] His wife was a daughter of Theobald the Trickster,[383] and his son and successor was therefore first cousin to Odo II. of Blois; but William IV.--whom Aquitaine reckoned as her “William the Great”--seems to have had little in common with his erratic kinsman, and to have always, on the other hand, maintained a friendly understanding with Anjou. Like Odo, he once received an offer of the crown of Italy; Fulk appears in the negotiations as the friendly advocate of the duke’s interests with King Robert,[384] and though the project came to nothing, it may have been in return for Fulk’s good offices on this occasion that William bestowed on him the investiture of Saintes, a gift which was to form the pretext for more than one war between their descendants. On January 31st, 1029, William died,[385] leaving as his successor a son who bore the same name, and whose mother seems to have been a sister of Queen Constance.[386] It was this new duke of Aquitaine, known as William the Fat, whom Geoffrey Martel selected as the first victim of his heavy hand. An Angevin story attributes the origin of the war to a dispute about Saintes or Saintonge,[387] but it will not bear examination. Geoffrey Martel simply trod in the steps of Geoffrey Greygown, and with more marked success. In the autumn of 1033 he started on an expedition against the duke of Aquitaine; William encountered him on September 20th in a pitched battle near the abbey of S. Jouin-de-Marne, not far from Montcontour in Poitou; the Poitevins were defeated, partly, it seems, through treason in their own ranks, and their duke was taken prisoner.[388] For three years the duke of Aquitaine, the second great feudatary of the realm, was kept in a dungeon by the count of Vendôme;[389] not till the whole district of Saintonge[390] and several important towns were ceded to Geoffrey, and an annual tribute promised, would he release his captive. From the execution of the last humiliating condition William was delivered by death; the cruel treatment he had suffered in prison had done its work; Geoffrey had exacted the ransom for his prisoner just in time, and sent him home only to die three days after his liberation.[391]

[380] _Origo Com. Vindoc._, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 31. See also Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. pp. 378, 379.

[381] The whole story is told only by Fulk himself, in a charter to the abbey of S. Nicolas; _Breviculum S. Nicolai_ (Le Pelletier), quoted in Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 379.

[382] See editor’s note to Peter of Maillezais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 183, note _g_.

[383] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 972 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 380).

[384] Adem. Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 161. Letters of William of Poitou, _ib._ pp. 483, 484; of Fulk to Robert, _ib._ pp. 500, 501.

[385] Chron. S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 390).

[386] She was Adelmodia, widow of Boso, count of La Marche, and daughter of William count of Arles and “Candida,” otherwise Adelaide the White; see Pet. Maillezais, l. i. c. 6 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 182), and note B at end of chapter.

[387] See note C at end of chapter iv. below.

[388] Chronn. S. Maxent. a. 1032, S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. a. 1033 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 391, 392, 23, 188); S. Serg. a. 1028 (_ib._ p. 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 378. Cf. _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), pp. 128–130, and note C to chapter iv. below.

[389] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1036 (as above, p. 392).

[390] “Sanctonas cum toto pago.” Chron. Tur. Magn., Salmon, _Chron. de Touraine_, p. 122. (The date, “anno Henrici Imperatoris iv et Henrici regis xiii,” is of course absurd, like most of the dates in the Tours chronicle at this period, except those which relate to local matters). Cf. _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 126, and note C to chapter iv. below.

[391] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395). Cf. Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 182.

Then Geoffrey threw off the mask. William had no children; his next heir was his half-brother Odo, the son of his father’s second marriage with Brisca, heiress of Gascony.[392] But after Brisca’s death, William the Great had married a third wife, whom he had left a still young widow with three little children. Before William the Fat had been many months dead, his stepmother the widowed Countess Agnes gave her hand to Geoffrey of Vendôme.[393] Geoffrey’s motive is plain; he sought to prevent the union of Poitou and Gascony and to get the former practically into his own hands as stepfather and guardian to the young sons of Agnes. But in Anjou the wedding gave great scandal; Geoffrey and Agnes were denounced in the harshest terms as too near akin to marry.[394] They seem in fact to have been, by the reckoning of the canon law, cousins in the third degree, as being, one a grandson, the other a great-granddaughter of Adela of Chalon, the second wife of Geoffrey Greygown.[395] At any rate they were looked upon as sinners, and by no one more than the bridegroom’s father. The whole scheme of Geoffrey’s meddlings in Aquitaine was repugnant to Fulk Nerra’s policy; he looked to his son to complete his own labours in Touraine and Maine, and it was no good omen for the fulfilment of his hopes when Geoffrey thus turned his back upon his appointed work for the love of Countess Agnes or of her late husband’s possessions. The capture of William the Fat had been the signal for the first outbreak of a “more than civil war” between father and son;[396] Geoffrey’s misconduct during his regency in Anjou brought matters to the crisis which ended in his first and last public defeat. Nevertheless he obstinately pursued his projects. The Poitevins, by the death of their count, were left, as their own chronicler says, “as sheep having no shepherd”; there was a party among them ready to support the claims of Agnes’s sons against their elder half-brother Odo of Gascony; and one of the leaders of this party, William of Parthenay, built with Angevin help a fortress at Germont in which he held out successfully against the besieging forces of Odo. The count of Gascony then proceeded to Mausé, another stronghold of his enemies, and in assaulting this place he was slain.[397] He left no children; the elder of Geoffrey Martel’s stepsons was now therefore heir to Poitou. The boys were twins; the third child of Agnes was a girl, who bore her mother’s name, and for whom her mother and stepfather contrived in 1043 to arrange a marriage with no less important a personage than the Emperor Henry III.,[398] whose first wife had been a daughter of Cnut. It was not till the year after this imperial wedding that the troubled affairs of Aquitaine were definitely settled. In 1044 Countess Agnes came to Poitiers accompanied by her two sons, Peter and Geoffrey, and her husband, their stepfather, Geoffrey Martel; there they held with the chief nobles of Poitou a council at which Peter, or William as he was thenceforth called, was solemnly ordained as duke of Aquitaine, and his brother sent into Gascony to become its count.[399] Agnes at least must now have attained her object; whether Geoffrey Martel was equally satisfied with the result of his schemes may be a question, for we do not clearly know how wide the range of those schemes really was. If, as seems likely, they included the hope of acquiring a lasting hold over Aquitaine, then their issue was a failure. By the victory of Montcontour Geoffrey had gained for himself at one blow a great military reputation; but for Anjou the only solid gain was the acquisition of Saintonge, and this, like some of the outlying possessions of the house of Blois, soon proved more trouble than profit. If Martel expected that his stepsons would hold themselves indebted to him for their coronets and remain his grateful and dutiful miscalculation. The marriage of a duchess-dowager of Aquitaine with Geoffrey Martel naturally suggests thoughts of the marriage of a duchess-regnant with a later count of Anjou; but the resemblance between the two cases is of the most superficial kind; the earlier connexion between Anjou and Aquitaine did little or nothing to pave the way for their later union. Geoffrey himself, indeed, had already discovered that although the count of Vendôme might go seeking adventures in the south, the duties and the interests of the count of Anjou still lay to the north, or at the utmost no farther away than the banks of the great frontier-river.

[392] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1010 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 387, 388).

[393] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 182. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395). Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1037 (as above, pp. 392, 393); Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1032 (_ib._ pp. 23, 135). On the date see note D at end of chapter.

[394] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1032 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 23, 135).

[395] See note D at end of chapter.

[396] Chronn. S. Albin. a. 1032, 1033 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 23); S. Serg. a. 1028 (_ib._ p. 135); Rain. Andeg. a. 1036, 1037 (_ib._ p. 11). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1033, says: “Gaufridus ... Willelmum comitem Pictavorum sumpsit in bello; quare orta est discordia inter patrem et filium.” Labbe in his _Bibl. MSS. Librorum_ printed this “patrem et _matrem_,” and thereby originated a perfectly groundless story of a quarrel between Fulk and Hildegard.

[397] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1037 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 392, 393).

[398] Hermann. Contract., a. 1043 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 19). Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 24, 135, 136). The Chron. S. Maxent. (_ib._ p. 398) dates the marriage vaguely “per hæc tempora” under 1049.

[399] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1044 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 394, 395). It seems quite plain that the elder boy’s baptismal name was Peter, but he signs his charters “William” (see Besly, _Comtes de Poitou, preuves_, pp. 314, 317). The Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1058 (as above, p. 400) calls him “Willelmus qui et Petrus, cognomento Acer.” In recording the birth of the two boys (a. 1023, _ib._ p. 388) the same writer calls them “Petrum cognomine Acerrimum, et Gaufredum qui et Wido vocatus est”; and he afterwards speaks of the latter by both names indifferently. It seems however to have been an established rule that the reigning duke of Aquitaine must be officially called William; for Guy-Geoffrey also assumed the name when he succeeded his brother in 1058.

The visions of empire to which Odo of Champagne had sacrificed the latter years of his life had perished with him on the field of Bar. Not a foot of land outside the limits of the kingdom of France had he left to his heirs. He had two sons, Theobald and Stephen, whose very names seemed to mark out their destined shares in his dominions. Stephen, the younger, became count of Champagne; to Theobald, the elder, fell the original territories of his house--Blois, Chartres and Tours.[400] Theobald’s heritage however was shorn of its fairest portion. The county of Tours now comprised little more than the capital; all Touraine south of the Loire--by far the most fertile and valuable half--was in the power of the Angevin; Tours itself, once a secure central post, had become a closely threatened border-city. Theobald’s first duty was to protect it, but it seems to have been the last thing he thought of. Odo’s sons had inherited all his wrongheadedness without his quickness of thought and action. Shut in as they were on all sides by powerful foes, the two young men began their career by rebelling after the manner of their forefathers;[401] and the king’s youngest brother Odo was lured, by a promise of dethroning Henry in his favour, into joining in their rebellion. Odo, a youth of weak intellect, was in himself no very formidable person, but he might for the very same reason become a dangerous tool in the hands of his fellow-conspirators; and a rebellious coalition of Blois and Champagne threatened to be a serious difficulty for the king at a moment when there was scarcely one of the great feudataries on whom he could reckon for support. The death of Duke Robert of Normandy had plunged his duchy into confusion and deprived Henry of all chance of help in the quarter which had hitherto been his chief source of strength. The county of Burgundy was governed by the king’s brother Robert, who had with difficulty been induced to accept it as compensation for the failure of his hopes of the crown. Flanders and Britanny were always indifferent to the troubles and necessities of the king; the count of Vermandois was a kinsman and ally of Champagne; Aquitaine was as powerless as Normandy. The one vassal to whom Henry could look for aid was the count of Anjou. Had the rebels possessed sense and spirit they might have given Henry quite as much trouble as their father had given Robert; but they seem to have had no well-concerted plan; each acted independently, and each was crushed singly. Young Odo, their puppet pretender, was easily caught and imprisoned at Orléans; Stephen of Champagne was defeated in a pitched battle by the king himself;[402] Theobald of Blois was left to be dealt with by other hands. With a master-stroke of policy, Henry proclaimed the city of Tours forfeit by Theobald’s rebellion, and granted its investiture to the count of Anjou.[403]

[400] Hugh of Fleury, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 159. Chron. Fr. Andreæ, _ib._ p. 364.

[401] Hugh of Fleury and Chron. Fr. Andreæ, as above. _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ (_ibid._), p. 160.

[402] _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi.), p. 160. Hugh of Fleury (_ibid._), p. 159.

[403] Chron. Virdun. a. 1039 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 144). R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_ib._ vol. x. p. 60), copied in _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 122, 123. Fulk Rechin (_ibid._), p. 378.

To understand the full importance of this grant and of the war which followed it, we must know something of the history of Tours and of the peculiar feelings and interests attached to it. The origin of Tours as a city dates from the time of the Roman empire, when it appears under the name of Cæsarodunum.[404] The Roman _castrum_ was built in a broad, shallow sort of basin, watered on the north by the Loire, on the south by the Cher; it probably occupied the site of some village of those Turones or Turoni, who play a part in the Gallic wars of Cæsar,[405] and whose name in the end superseded that which the place received from its conqueror. The “city of the Turones” became the central point of a network of roads connecting it with Poitiers, Chartres, Bourges, Orléans, Le Mans and Angers;[406] and owing to the convenience of its situation for military and administrative purposes it was made the capital of the Third Lyonnese province.[407] But its hold on the minds of men was due to another gift of Rome, more precious than roads or fortifications or even political traditions. It was the holy city of Gaul, the cradle of Gaulish Christianity. Its first bishop, Gatian, was one of seven missionaries sent out from Rome to evangelize the Gallic provinces in the days of the Decian persecution.[408] S. Gatian’s episcopate of half a century fell in one of the most distracted periods of the Empire; after his death the Church which he had planted remained untended for nearly forty years, and it was not till after the death of Constantine that Tours received her second bishop in the person of Lidorius, one of her own sons, who laid the foundations of a cathedral church.[409] But the fame of the two first bishops of Tours was completely overshadowed by that of the third. The work of S. Gatian and S. Lidorius was confined to their own immediate flock; S. Martin was the apostle not only of Touraine but of all central Gaul. Born at Sabaria[410] in the Upper Pannonia, in the reign of the first Christian Emperor, but of heathen parents, Martin rose to high military distinction under the Cæsar Julian, accompanied him into Gaul, and enjoyed his utmost esteem and regard till he forfeited them by renouncing the standard of the eagles for that of the Cross. Neither the wrath of his commander nor the entreaties of his fellow-soldiers, by whom he was greatly beloved, availed to shake his resolution; he fled to Poitiers, and there found a friend and counsellor in the holy bishop Hilary, from whom he received the minor orders. After braving toil and peril by land and sea in a journey to his native country for the conversion of his family, he returned to a life of seclusion in Gaul, and acquired such a reputation for holiness that on the death of Lidorius in 371 the people of Tours, in spite of his strenuous resistance, actually forced him to become their bishop.[411] From that moment Tours became a mission-centre whence the light of the faith spread with marvellous rapidity over all the surrounding country. Anjou and all the neighbouring lands owed their conversion to S. Martin and the missionaries sent out by him; everywhere paganism gave way before his eloquent preaching, his dauntless courage, his almost apostolic endowments--above all, perhaps, his good example. He was looked upon as the Thaumaturgus of Gaul, and countless legends were told of his wonder-working powers; more famous than all of them is a story of the saint in his soldier-days, when, Christian already in feeling though not yet in profession, he stopped his horse one cold winter’s night, drew his sword and cut his military cloak in halves to share it with one whose necessity was greater than his own. That night he dreamed that the Lord whom, not knowing, he yet instinctively served, appeared to him wearing the half cloak which he had thus given away; and it was this vision which determined him to receive baptism.[412] Amid all his busy, active life he never lost the love of solitary contemplation so characteristic of the early Christian missionaries. His episcopal city lay on the south side of the Loire, but had on the north or right bank a large suburb afterwards known by the name of S. Symphorian; beyond this, farther to the eastward, the bishop found for himself a “green retreat,” which has scarcely yet lost its air of peaceful loneliness, and which, before the suburb had spread to its present extent, must have been an ideal spot for monastic retirement. A little wooden cell with its back against the white limestone rock which shelters the northern side of the basin of Tours--an expanse of green solitude in front, stretching down to the broad calm river--such was the nest which S. Martin built him in the wilderness; gathering round him a little band of men likeminded with himself, he snatched every spare moment from his episcopal cares to flee away thither and be at rest;[413] and the rock-hewn cells of the brotherhood became the nucleus of a famous abbey, the “Great Monastery,” as it was emphatically called--_Majus Monasterium_, Marmoutier. Another minster, of almost greater fame, grew up over the saint’s burial place outside the western wall of the city, on low-lying ground which, before it was reclaimed by the energetic dyke-makers of the ninth and tenth centuries, must have been not unfrequently under water. It is within the episcopal city of S. Martin, in the writings of Bishop Gregory of Tours, that West-Frankish history begins. An English student feels a nearer interest in the abbey without the walls, remembering that the abbot under whom it reached its highest glory and became the very fount and source of all contemporary learning, human and divine, was Alcuin of York.

[404] Ptolem., l. ii. c. 8.

[405] Cæsar, _De Bello Gallico_, l. ii. c. 35; l. vii. c. 75; l. viii. c. 46.

[406] Article by M. E. Mabille on “Topographie de la Touraine,” in _Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, series v. vol. iv. pp. 413, 414.

[407] _Notitia Provinciarum Galliæ_, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. i. p. 122.

[408] Greg. of Tours, _Hist. Franc._, l. i. c. 28.

[409] Chron. Archiep. Turon., Salmon, _Chron. de Touraine_, p. 201.

[410] Now Stein-am-Angern.

[411] Sulpitius Severus, _Vita B. Martini_, cc. 2–9. Greg. Tours., _Hist. Franc._, l. i. cc. 34, 36, 43.

[412] Sulp. Severus, _Vita B. Martini_, c. 3.

[413] Sulp. Severus, _Vita B. Martini_, c. 10.

When the great English scholar and the great Emperor who had brought him into Gaul were gone, Tours underwent her full share of suffering in the invasions of the northmen. City and abbey became to the valley of the Loire something like what Paris and S. Denis were to that of the Seine, the chief bulwark against the fresh tide of heathen force which threatened to sweep away the footsteps of saints and scholars. Once, indeed, Tours had been in danger from heathens of another sort, and a body of Saracens had been turned back from her gates and destroyed by Charles Martel.[414] There was no Martel to save her from the northmen; her only defence consisted in the valour of her citizens, and the fortifications left to her by her Roman governors and carefully strengthened by her Karolingian sovereigns.[415] Over and over again the pirates were driven back from the walls of Cæsarodunum; over and over again S. Martin’s Abbey was burnt to the ground. For years the canons, who in Alcuin’s days had taken the place of the original monks,[416] lived in constant fear of desecration befalling their patron’s body, and carried it from place to place, like the body of our own S. Cuthbert, sometimes depositing it within the city walls, sometimes removing it farther inland--once even to the far-off Burgundian duchy--bringing it home whenever they dared, or whenever they had a church fit to contain it. Two of these “reversions”--one on December 13, 885, the other on May 12, 919--were annually celebrated at Tours, in addition to two other feasts of S. Martin, his ordination on July 4 and his “deposition” on November 11.[417] In the first reversion Ingelger, the founder of the Angevin house, was said to have borne a prominent part. The story of the second was afterwards superseded by a famous legend known as that of the “subvention of S. Martin.” Once, it was said, when the citizens of Tours were sore pressed by the besieging hosts of the northmen, they resolved to intrust their cause to a heavenly champion, and brought out upon the walls the corpse of the saint, which had been deposited for safety within the city. The living heathen fled at once before the dead saint; they were pursued by the triumphant citizens, still carrying their patron in their midst, and utterly routed at a spot which thence received the name of “S. Martin of the Battle.”[418] This story seems to belong to the siege of 903, when Marmoutier was destroyed, and the abbey of S. Martin burnt to the ground for the third time. When the canons again rebuilt it, they took the precaution of encircling it with a wall, and procured from Charles the Simple a charter which resulted in the creation of a new fortified borough, exempt from the jurisdiction of both bishop and count, and subject only to its own abbot--in other words, to the duke of the French, who from the middle of the eighth century always held _in commendam_ the abbey of S. Martin at Tours, as he did that of S. Denis at Paris.[419] Thus, side by side with the old city of the Turones, Cæsarodunum with its Roman walls, its count, its cathedral and its archbishop, there arose the “Castrum Novum,” Châteauneuf, “Castellum S. Martini,” Martinopolis as it is sometimes called, with its own walled enclosure, its collegiate church and its abbot-duke. The counts of Anjou, who followed so steadily in the train of the ducal house, were not blind to the means of gaining a footing in such tempting neighbourhood to the walls of Tours; from an early period they took care to connect themselves with the abbey of which their patron was the head. The first count of Anjou and his father play an important part in the legendary history of the two great “reversions”; Fulk the Good is almost more familiar to us as canon than as count, and the stall next to that of the dean of S. Martin’s, which he so loved to occupy, whence he wrote his famous letter, and where he saw his vision of the saint, seems to have become hereditary among his descendants like the abbotship among those of Hugh the Great. Good Canon Fulk prized it as a spiritual privilege; his successors probably looked upon it rather in the light of a political wedge whereby they might some day force an entrance into the greedily-coveted city itself. Tours was the point towards which Fulk the Black had worked steadily all his life long; and when he left his son to complete his labours, that point was almost reached. But, with her broad river and her Roman walls, Tours was still hard to win. To block the river was impossible; to break down the walls would need nothing less than a regular siege, and one which could not fail to be long, tedious and costly. Geoffrey seems to have delayed the task until by the king’s grant of the investiture it became a point of honour as well as a matter of the most pressing interest to make good the claim thus placed in his hands.

[414] Fredegar. Contin., l. ii. c. 108 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. ii. p. 454); Chron. Fontanell. a. 732 (_ib._ p. 660), etc.

[415] See Ann. Bertin., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p. 107.

[416] Chron. Petr. Fil. Bechin., in Salmon, _Chron. de Touraine_, p. 40. Chron. Tur. Magn. a. 991 (_ib._ p. 93). See _Gall. Christ._, vol. xiv. col. 154.

[417] For the whole history of the wanderings and the festivals of S. Martin, and of the sieges of Tours by the northmen, see an article by M. Mabille, “Les Invasions normandes dans la Loire et les pérégrinations du corps de S. Martin,” in _Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, series vi. vol. v. pp. 149–194.

[418] _Tract. de Revers. B. Martini_, in Salmon, _Supplément aux Chron. de Touraine_, pp. 14–34; copied in _Gesta Cons._ (see note A to chapter ii. above). On the date, see Mabille, “Inv. Norm.” (_Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, series vi. vol. v. p. 190). This device of the citizens of Tours was several times imitated elsewhere; _e.g._ by the monks of Saumur with the body of S. Docelinus, when Fulk Nerra besieged the place in 1025 (_Hist. S. Flor. Salm._, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 277); and by the monks of S. Peter at Sens, against the same opponent, in 1032 (Chron. S. Petr. Senon. ad ann., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 196). The former failed, the latter succeeded.

[419] Charter of Charles the Simple, a. 918, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. ix. p. 540. For the history of the “Castellum S. Martini,” and the topography of Tours and Châteauneuf, see “Topographie de la Touraine,” by M. E. Mabille, in _Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, series v. vol. v. pp. 321–366; and for the topography and history of the whole district from the earliest times see previous articles under the same title, series v. vol. iii. pp. 309–332, vol. iv. pp. 388–428, and vol. v. pp. 233–258.

He woke at once from his Aquitanian dreams, gathered his forces, and led them out, probably not by the old Roman road from Juliomagus to Cæsarodunum past the white steeps of his father’s Montboyau, but by a safer though longer route, passing along the southern bank of the Loire and across the valleys of the Vienne and the Indre, to lay siege to Tours. With the royal sanction to his enterprise he had the great advantage of being able to use Châteauneuf as a basis of operations. The monastery of S. Julian, at the north-east corner of the town, close against the city wall, was especially convenient for attacking the latter; Geoffrey took possession of it and used it accordingly.[420] The city, however, held out against him for a whole year, during which its inhabitants seem to have been left by their count to defend themselves as best they could. At last, in August 1044, Theobald collected an army for its relief, in union with the forces of Champagne under his brother Stephen.[421] Geoffrey, in expectation of this, had detached from his main force a body of two hundred knights and fifteen hundred foot, whom he posted at Amboise under Lisoy, to guard the road against Theobald.[422] The services of Lisoy were a special legacy from Fulk the Black to his son. Of all Fulk’s adherents, none had served him so intelligently and so devotedly as this Cenomannian knight whom he had chosen to be the colleague of the aged Sulpice in the defence of Amboise and Loches. Fulk, when he felt his end approaching, had striven hard to impress on his son the value of such a true and tried friend, and at the same time to bind Lisoy yet more closely to him by arranging his marriage with Hersendis, the niece and heiress of Sulpice, whereby Lisoy came into possession of all Sulpice’s estates at Loches and Amboise, including the famous tower of stone.[423] Lisoy proved as true to the new count as to the old one. Theobald, not daring to come within reach of Amboise, avoided the direct route from Blois to Tours along the Loire,[424] and took the road by Pontlevoy to Montrichard. The chief force of Montrichard, with its commander Roger, was no doubt with Geoffrey before Tours, so the count of Blois pursued his way unmolested, plundering as he went, down the valley of the Cher, till he pitched his tents in the meadows of St.-Quentin opposite Bléré, and there stayed a day and a night to rest.[425] All his movements were known to the watchful lord of Amboise; and as soon as Lisoy had fully ascertained the numbers and plans of the enemy, he hurried off to seek his count in the army before Tours, and offer him some sound military advice. He represented that it would be far better to raise the siege, join the whole Angevin force with that which was already at Amboise, and stake everything on a pitched battle. The enemy might beat either Geoffrey or his lieutenant singly, but united they would be irresistible; and whereas the siege must be long and tedious, and its result uncertain, one victory in the field would lay all Touraine at the victor’s feet. Only let the count be quick and not suffer his foe to catch him at unawares.[426]

[420] See _Gall. Christ._, vol. xiv. col. 243.

[421] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 60).

[422] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 118.

[423] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 168, 169.

[424] _Ib._ p. 170.

[425] _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 119.

[426] _Ib._ pp. 118, 119.

Geoffrey, as he listened to this bold counsel, must have been reminded of his father’s warning, that a true friend like Lisoy was a surer source of strength than either hosts or treasures.[427] He took the advice, and while Lisoy returned to Amboise to bring up his little force to the trysting-place agreed upon between them, his count, after diligent prayers and vows to S. Martin, took the consecrated banner of the abbey from its place above the shrine, affixed it to his own spear, and rode forth with it at the head of all his troops to do battle with Theobald.[428] On the same day when Theobald encamped opposite Bléré Geoffrey reached Montlouis, a hill on the south bank of the Loire, about half way between Tours and Amboise. Next morning the men of Blois resumed their march; turning in a north-westerly direction they were met at a place called Noit by the Angevins coming down from Montlouis. The Hammer of Anjou, ever foremost in fight, headed the attack on the enemy’s centre; his faithful Lisoy came up, as he had promised, at the head of his contingent, and threw himself on their right wing.[429] What followed scarcely deserved the name of a battle. The army of the brother-counts seemed spell-bound, and made no resistance at all; Stephen took to flight at once and escaped with a few knights;[430] the rest of the troops of Blois and Champagne were utterly defeated and taken prisoners almost in a body. The men of Amboise were hottest in pursuit of the fugitives, and they won the great prize of the day. They drove Theobald with some five or six hundred knights into a wood called Braye, whence it was impossible for horsemen to extricate themselves; and thus Lisoy had the honour of bringing the count of Blois a captive to the feet of Geoffrey Martel.[431] No one at the time doubted that the Angevins owed their easy victory to the saint whose standard they were following. The few soldiers of Theobald who escaped declared that they had seen Geoffrey’s troops all clad in shining white raiment, and fled in horror, believing themselves to be fighting against the hosts of Heaven.[432] The village near which the fight took place was called “burgum S. Martini Belli”[433]--S. Martin of the Battle, a name derived from the “subvention of S. Martin,” supposed to have occurred at the same place two hundred years before. Most curiously, neither the well-known legend of the saint’s triumph over the northmen nor the fame of Geoffrey’s triumph over the count of Blois availed to fix in popular memory the true meaning of the name. While the English “Place of Battle” at Senlac has long forgotten its dedication to S. Martin, its namesake in Touraine has forgotten both its battles and become “St.-Martin-le-Beau.”

[427] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 168.

[428] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 60); copied in _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 122.

[429] _Gesta Cons._ (as above), p. 120.

[430] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 61); copied in _Gesta Cons._ (as above), p. 122.

[431] _Gesta Cons._ (as above), p. 121; _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 170.

[432] R. Glaber, as above; _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 123.

[433] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 120.

With very little bloodshed, the Angevins had gained over a thousand prisoners.[434] The most valuable of them all was put in ward at Loches;[435] but he took care not to stay there long. Theobald took warning by the fate of William of Aquitaine;[436] he had no mind to run the risk of dying in prison, and held his person far dearer than his property.[437] Three days after his capture, finding that no amount of silver or gold would avail to purchase his release, he yielded the only ransom which Geoffrey would accept: the city of Tours and the whole county of Touraine.[438] A nominal overlordship over the ceded territory was reserved to Theobald, and Geoffrey had to go through the formality of doing homage for it to him.[439] When the substance was securely his own, the count of Anjou could well afford to leave to his vanquished rival the shadowy consolation of an empty ceremony. Moreover, the circumstances of the whole transaction and the account of King Henry’s grant to Geoffrey clearly imply that Theobald’s rights over the most important point of all, the capital itself, were considered as entirely forfeited by his rebellion, so that with regard to the city of Tours Geoffrey stepped into the exact place of its former counts, holding it directly of the king alone.

[434] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 378; R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 61). For the date of the battle--August 21, 1044--see Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm., and S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 11, 24, 136, 166, 188, 395). The _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 121, and _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 170, make it 1042, but they cannot possibly be right.

[435] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ as above.

[436] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 182.

[437] _Gesta Cons._, as above. See the comment of Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396).

[438] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 276); _Gesta Cons._ (as above), pp. 121, 122; the details of the treaty are in pp. 123, 124.

[439] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ as above.

The acquisition of Tours closes the second stage in the career of the house of Anjou. Looked at from a strictly Angevin point of view, the period just passed through, although in one sense only preliminary, is the most important of all, for it is that on which depended all the later growth, nay, almost the very existence of Anjou. Had the counts of Blois proved too strong for her in these her early years, she would have been swallowed up altogether; had they merely proved themselves her equals, the two states so closely bound together would have neutralized each other so that neither of them could have risen to any commanding eminence; till one or the other should sweep its rival out of its path, both must be impeded in their developement. At the opening of the struggle, in Fulk Nerra’s youth, Blois was distinctly in the ascendant, and the chances of independent existence for the little Marchland hung solely on the courage and statesmanship of its count. His dauntless genius, helped by Odo’s folly, saved Anjou and turned the tide completely in its favour. The treaty sworn, four years after Fulk’s death, in his great castle by the Indre, was the crowning of his life’s work, and left his son absolutely without a rival till he chose to seek one beyond the debateable ground of Maine. The long struggle of Fulk and Odo, completed by Geoffrey and Theobald, had made a clear field for the future struggles of Geoffrey and William, of Fulk V. and Henry I., and at last--by a strange turn of fate--for a renewal of the old feud with the house of Blois itself, in a new form and for a far higher stake, in the struggle of Stephen and Henry Fitz-Empress for the English crown.

NOTE A.

THE SIEGE OF MELUN.

The fullest account of this Melun affair is in Richer, l. iv. cc. 74–78. Briefly, it comes to this: Odo (described simply by his name, without title of any kind) “rerum suarum augmentum querebat,” and especially the castle of Melun, partly for the convenience of getting troops across the Seine, and partly because it had formerly belonged to his grandfather and was now in the hands, not of the king, but of “another” (not named). He managed to corrupt the officer in command and to obtain possession of the place. As soon as the kings (_reges_) heard of it, they gathered their forces to besiege him there: “et quia castrum circumfluente Sequanâ ambiebatur, ipsi in litore primo castra disponunt; in ulteriore, accitas piratarum acies ordinant.” These “pirates” furnished a fleet which blockaded the place, and finally discovered a secret entrance whereby they got into the town, surprised the castle, and compelled it to surrender to the king (_regi_).

2. William of Jumièges (l. v. c. 14, Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 255) tells the story more briefly, but to exactly the same effect. He mentions however only _one_ king: he supplies the name of the “other man” who held Melun--viz. Burchard: he clearly implies that “Odo” is Odo II. of Blois (of whose doings with Normandy he has just given an account in c. 12, _ib._ p. 254); and, of course, he gives the “pirates” their proper name of Normans, and puts them under their proper leader, Duke Richard [the Good].

3. Hugh of Fleury tells the same tale very concisely, but with all the names, and gives a date, a. 999 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 220, 221). (He is copied by the Chron. S. Petr. Senon., _ib._ p. 222.)

4. The _Abbreviato Gestorum Franciæ Regum_ tells the same, but gives no date beyond “eo tempore,” coming just after Hugh Capet’s death (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 227).

5. The _Vita Burchardi Comitis_ gives no dates, does not identify Odo, and does not mention the Normans, but makes Burchard himself the chief actor in the regaining of the place (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 354, 355. In p. 350, note _a_, the editor makes Burchard a son of Fulk the Good; but he gives no authority, and I can find none).

6. The Angevins have a version of their own. In the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 76, 77) the captor of Melun is “Herbert count of Troyes”; in Hugh of Clères (_ib._ p. 388) he has the same title but no name, and neither has the king, who in the _Gesta_ is called Robert. The victim is not named at all; but the hero who plays a part equivalent to that of the Normans in the other versions is Geoffrey Greygown.

The main question is the date. One authority--Hugh of Fleury--gives it distinctly as 999. Will. Jumièges clearly identifies the Odo in question as Odo II. Now Odo II. was not count till 1004; but his father died in 995, so William may have given him the title by anticipation at any time after that date. The _Abbr. Gest. Franc. Reg._ would seem to place it thereabouts, as its note of time is “eo tempore” in reference to Hugh Capet’s death (which occurred in October 996). On the other hand, Richer speaks of “the _kings_” in the plural; from which Kalckstein, Waitz and Luchaire (_Hist. des Institutions monarchiques de la France_, vol. ii. p. 7, note 1) conclude that it is Odo I. who is concerned, and they date the affair 991. Why they fix upon this year, in defiance of both William of Jumièges and Hugh of Fleury, I cannot see. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 196) adopts Hugh’s date, 999. Is it not possible, however, from a comparison of the other authorities, that the right year is 996, just before Hugh’s death, or even that he died while the siege was in progress? for it is to be noticed that Richer mentions only _one_ king at the surrender. Richer has made such a confusion about these Odos and their doings that it is hardly fair to set him up as an infallible authority on the subject against such writers as Hugh of Fleury and William of Jumièges. Anyhow, the Angevin story cannot stand against any of them.

NOTE B.

THE PARENTS OF QUEEN CONSTANCE.

The parentage of Constance requires some notice here, as she is usually called either a niece or a cousin of Fulk Nerra. The one point on which all authorities are agreed is that her father’s name was William. It was long disputed whether he was William III. (Taillefer) count of Toulouse or William I. count of Arles and Provence. M. Mabille, in a note to the latest edition of Vic and Vaissète’s _Hist. du Languedoc_ (Toulouse, 1872), vol. iv. pp. 157–161, has made it clear that he was William of Arles; this conclusion is adopted by M. Luchaire (_Hist. des Instit. Monarch._, vol. ii. p. 211, note 1).

M. Mabille however does not attempt to decide who was Constance’s mother, through whom her kindred with the Angevins is said to have come; and this is the question which we now have to investigate. The evidence at present known is as follows:--

1. An unprinted MS. of R. Glaber’s history, l. iii. c. 2 (quoted by Mabille, note to Vic and Vaissète, as above, p. 158; Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, Introd., p. lxxiii. note 2), describes Constance as “neptem prædicti Fulconis ... natam de Blancâ sorore ejus.” This is the version adopted in _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 110).

2. A letter of Bishop Ivo of Chartres (Ep. ccxi., Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. 162, cols. 215, 216), written about A.D. 1110, makes Constance’s mother sister, not of Fulk, but of his father Geoffrey Greygown. So does an anonymous chronicle ending in 1109, printed in Duchesne’s _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 96.

3. The Chron. S. Albin. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 21) has under date 987: “Hlotharius rex obiit.... In isto reges Francorum defecerunt. Hic accepit uxorem Blanchiam filiam Fulconis Boni comitis Andegavensium, patris Gaufredi Grisegonellæ, et habuit ex eâ filiam, Constantiam nomine, quæ fuit data cum regno Roberti regis filio, scilicet Hugonis Magni.” Wildly confused as this passage is, I believe that it really contains a clue to the identity of Constance’s mother. Whoever she was, she certainly must, at the time of Constance’s birth, have been wife not of Louis the Lazy (who is evidently meant, instead of Lothar), but of Count William I. of Arles. Now it is plain (see Vic and Vaissète as above, pp. 62, 63) that William was twice married; first to Arsindis, who was living 968–979; and secondly, to Adelaide, who appears in 986, was mother of his successor William II., and apparently still living in 1026. Of Arsindis nothing further is known; but with Adelaide the case is otherwise. King Louis the Lazy, at some time between 978 and 981, married a lady “ab Aquitanis partibus” (R. Glaber, l. i. c. 3, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 5), whose name was Adelaide according to Richer (l. iii. c. 92), but whom the Chron. S. Albin. (as we have already seen) and the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 986, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 382) call _Blanche_. After two years of marriage with the young king she divorced him, or was divorced by him, and married _William of Arles_ (Richer, l. iii. cc. 94, 95). This is clearly the lady of whom we are in search. The dates fit exactly; William’s first wife, Arsindis, is dead; he marries the divorced queen, probably about 982–983, and they have a daughter who in 1000 will be, as Constance evidently was at her marriage, in the prime of girlish beauty. The probability is strengthened by the fact that Adelaide’s first husband actually was what R. Glaber (l. iii. c. 2, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 27) mistakenly calls Constance’s father, count of the “First Aquitaine,” or Toulouse; for Richer (l. iii. c. 92) says she was widow of Raymond “duke of the Goths,” _i.e._ of Septimania or Toulouse:--by the name of “Candida,” the Latin equivalent for “Blanche,” given to the wife of William of Arles by Peter of Maillezais (l. i. c. 6, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 182; see above, p. 173, note 5{386});--and even by the blundering Angevin chronicle which makes Constance a daughter of “Blanche” and “Lothar,” meaning of course Blanche the wife of Lothar’s son, and her third husband. This same Chron. S. Albin., however, adds that the said “Blanche” was a daughter of Fulk the Good. Nobody else seems to have known her origin, and this very “perplexed and perplexing” chronicler is a doubtful authority to build upon; but as there is no intrinsic impossibility in this part of his statement, and as there evidently was in the early twelfth century a tradition that Constance was akin to the house of Anjou, he may be right. From the dates, one would think she was more likely to have been Greygown’s daughter than his sister. If she was his sister, it must surely have been by the half-blood. She might be a daughter of Fulk the Good by his second marriage with the widow of Alan Barbetorte.

NOTE C.

THE PILGRIMAGES OF FULK NERRA.

Of all the writers, ancient and modern, who have treated of Fulk Nerra, scarcely any two are wholly agreed as to the number and dates of his journeys to Holy Land. Some make out four journeys; some three; one, his own grandson, makes only two (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 377). It is, however, abundantly evident that there were at least three--one before the foundation of Beaulieu (_Gesta Cons._, _ib._ p. 117; _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 273); one after the foundation of Beaulieu, and before that of S. Nicolas (_Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ as above, p. 275); and one in returning from which he died (see above, p. 168). It is admitted on all hands that his death took place at Metz on June 21st, 1040; the date of the last pilgrimage is therefore undisputed. That of the first is now fixed by a charter quoted by M. Mabille (Marchegay, _Comtes_, Introd. p. lxxix) to 1003. The points still remaining to be decided therefore are (1) the date of the second journey; (2) the reality of the third.

The only real clue which our original authorities give us to the date of the second journey is the statement of _Hist. S. Flor._ that it was after the foundation of Beaulieu and before that of S. Nicolas (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 275). Now S. Nicolas was founded in 1020 (_ibid._). Beaulieu was consecrated in 1012, but all we know of its foundation is that it cannot have been before Fulk’s return from his first journey in 1004. Modern writers have proposed three different dates for this second pilgrimage. The _Art de vérifier les dates_ (vol. xiii. p. 50) places it in 1028; M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Hist. des Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 245) in 1019–20; M. Mabille (Introd. _Comtes_, pp. lxxviii, lxxx) and M. de Salies (_Foulques-Nerra_, pref. pp. xxxii, xxxiii, 143) in 1010–11. The first date, founded on a too literal reading of Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 164), is disposed of at once by the History of S. Florence. The theory of M. de Jubainville has a good deal of plausibility, but there is no documentary evidence for it. M. Mabille quotes in support of his date, 1010, a charter of S. Maur-sur-Loire, setting forth how Fulk, Hildegard and Geoffrey visited that abbey on the eve of Fulk’s departure for Holy Land. This charter is in Marchegay’s _Archives d’Anjou_, vol. i. p. 356; it has no date of any sort; and it does not specify whether Fulk’s intended journey was his second or third. The presence of Geoffrey proves it was not the first, but nothing more. M. Mabille pronounces for the second, and dates it “vers 1010”; but the editor of the _Archives_, M. Marchegay, says in a note “vers l’an 1030.” This charter therefore does not help at all. M. de Salies (_Foulques-Nerra_, p. 143, and pref. _ib._ p. xxxii) appeals in support of the same date, 1010, to the Chronicle of Tours, whose chronology throughout the century is so wild as to have no weight at all, except in strictly local matters; to the Chron. S. Petr. Senon., where I can find nothing about the question at issue;--and above all, to a charter in Baluze’s collections which says: “In natali S. Barnabæ Apostoli, qui est in Idibus Junii, Rainaldus ... Andecavensium Episcopus rebus terrenis exemptus est ... Ad sepulchrum Domini Hierosolymam comitante Fulcone vicecomite tendebat, progressusque usque Ebredunum” ... died and was there buried “anno ab Incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi 1010.”

In the first place, this charter is suspicious as to date, for the Chronn. S. Albin. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 22), Vindoc. (_ib._ p. 164), S. Flor. Salm. (_ib._ p. 187), all date Bishop Rainald’s death 1005, and so, according to _Gallia Christiana_, vol. xiv. col. 558, does the Obituary of S. Maurice; and the Chron. S. Serg. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 134) dates the consecration of his successor Hubert 1007. In the next place, what ground has M. de Salies for assuming that “Fulco _vice_comes” is Fulk Nerra count of Anjou? The authors of _Gallia Christiana_ quote this same charter, and their comment on it is this: “Fulco sedenim comes” [it is _vice_comes in the charter] “quocum Rainaldus Hierosolymitanum iter aggressus supra memoratur, Andegavensis rei curam annum circa 1010, teste non uno, suscepit.” And as they have been describing various dealings of the bishop with Fulk the Black long before 1010, it is quite clear they take this Fulk to be some one else; though one would like to see their witnesses and know who he really was.

There is however another clue which may suggest a different date for this second pilgrimage. There are only two ways of making sense of the account given in the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 88–91) of “the wicked Landry’s” attack on Anjou and the war of Châteaudun. In that account the first misdoings of Landry and his aggressions against Sulpice and Archambald of Amboise are put in the reign of Count Maurice; then Maurice dies and his son Fulk succeeds him, and the raid upon Châteaudun follows as the first exploit of “juvenis haud modici pectoris.” Now we have seen that Maurice was not Fulk’s father but his younger brother, and never was count of Anjou at all. We must therefore either regard the introduction of Maurice as a complete myth and delusion, or interpret the tale as a distorted account of a regency undertaken by Maurice during his brother’s absence. It is hard to see why the chroniclers should have gratuitously dragged in Maurice without any reason. Moreover the charter which establishes the date of Fulk’s first pilgrimage informs us that he left his brother as regent of Anjou on that occasion (Mabille, Introd. _Comtes_, p. lxxvi); it is therefore quite possible that he may have done the same thing a second time. On this theory, to ascertain the date of the war with Landry would be equivalent to ascertaining the date of Fulk’s second pilgrimage.

If we take the _Gesta’s_ account of Landry just as it stands, Landry’s attack on Anjou must have been made at the close of 1014 or in 1015; for he was resisted (say they) by Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin’s, and his brother Archambald. Now Sulpice could not be treasurer of S. Martin’s before 1014, as his predecessor Hervey died in that year (Chron. Tur. Magn. ad ann., Salmon, _Chron. de Touraine_, p. 119; Chronol. S. Mar. Autiss. ad ann., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 275); and on the other hand, Archambald must have died in 1015 or very early in 1016, for the Chron. Tur. Magn. (as above)--which is likely to be right in its dating of local matters, though hopelessly confused in its general chronology--places in 1016 the building of Sulpice’s stone tower at Amboise, which the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 88, 89) tell us took place after his brother’s death; and the whole affair was certainly over some time before July 1016, the date of the battle of Pontlevoy. According to the _Gesta_ (as above, pp. 89, 90), Landry makes another attack on Sulpice, after his brother’s death, just when Maurice has also died and Fulk succeeded him [_i.e._ Fulk has come home and resumed the reins of government]; and the raid on Châteaudun follows immediately. Here comes in a new difficulty; Odo of Blois is now brought in with a minute list of his possessions in Champagne, which he only acquired in 1019 at earliest, so that if this part of the story is also to be taken literally, Landry’s war with Sulpice and Fulk’s raid on Châteaudun must be separated by nearly four years. Maurice cannot possibly have been regent all that time, so we must either give him up entirely, or conclude that some of the details are wrong. And the one most likely to be wrong is certainly the description of Odo, whom almost all the old writers call “Campanensis” long before he had any right to the epithet. This is the view of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, who dates the whole affair of Landry and Châteaudun in 1012–1014 (_Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. pp. 227, 228), but ignores Maurice and puts Fulk’s second journey in 1019, without giving any reason. It seems to me that this strange Angevin hallucination about Count Maurice, so utterly inexplicable in any other way, becomes intelligible if we believe that he was regent of Anjou in 1014–1015 during a second journey of his brother to Holy Land; a theory which, if it has no positive evidence to support it, seems at least to have none to contradict it, and is not rendered improbable by the general condition of Angevin affairs at the time.

2. As to the third journey. The _Gesta Cons._ state that Fulk, on one of his pilgrimages, went in company with Robert the Devil. Now as Robert died at Nikaia in July 1035 Fulk cannot have met him on either of his first two journeys, nor on his last; therefore, if this incident be true, we must insert another pilgrimage in 1034–1035. The story appears only in the _Gesta Cons._ and is therefore open to suspicion, as the whole account of Fulk’s travels there given is a ludicrous tissue of anachronisms (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 100–103). Fulk first goes to Rome and promises to deliver Pope Sergius IV. (who reigned 1009–1012) from Crescentius (who was killed in 997); then he goes to Constantinople, and thence in company with Robert to Jerusalem; Robert dies on the way home (1035) and Fulk on his return founds Beaulieu Abbey (consecrated 1012.) The monk has confounded at least two journeys, together with other things which had nothing to do with either.