Chapter III: Anjou and Blois (1)

987–1044.

One of the wildest of the legends which have gathered round the Angevin house tells how a count of Anjou had wedded a lady of unknown origin and more than earthly beauty, who excited the suspicions of those around her by her marked dislike to entering a church, and her absolute refusal to be present at the consecration of the Host. At last her husband, urged by his friends, resolved to compel her to stay. By his order, when the Gospel was ended and she was about to leave the church as usual, she was stopped by four armed men. As they laid hold of her mantle she shook it from her shoulders; two of her little children stood beneath its folds at her right hand, two at her left. The two former she left behind, the latter she caught up in her arms, and, floating away through a window of the church, she was seen on earth no more. “What wonder,” was the comment of Richard Cœur-de-Lion upon this story; “what wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind--we who come from the devil, and must needs go back to the devil?”[293]

[293] Girald. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 27
(Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 154).

One is tempted to think that the excited brains of the closing tenth century, filled with dim presages of horror that were floating about in expectation of the speedy end of the world, must have wrought out this strange tale by way of explaining the career of Fulk the Black.[294] His contemporaries may well have reckoned him among the phenomena of the time; they may well have had recourse to a theory of supernatural agency or demoniac possession to account for the rapid developement of talents and passions which both alike seemed almost more than human. When the county of Anjou was left to him by the death of his father Geoffrey Greygown, Fulk was a child scarce eight years old.[295] Surrounded by powerful foes whom Geoffrey’s aggressions had provoked rather than checked--without an ally or protector unless it were the new king--Fulk began life with everything against him. Yet before he has reached the years of manhood the young count meets us at every turn, and always in triumph. Throughout the fifty-three years of his reign Fulk is one of the most conspicuous and brilliant figures in French history. His character seems at times strangely self-contradictory. Mad bursts of passion, which would have been the ruin of an ordinary man, but which seem scarcely to have made a break in his cool, calculating, far-seeing policy; a rapid and unerring perception of his own ends, a relentless obstinacy in pursuing them, an utter disregard of the wrong and suffering which their pursuit might involve; and then ever and anon fits of vehement repentance, ignorant, blind, fruitless as far as any lasting amendment was concerned, yet at once awe-striking and touching in its short-lived, wrong-headed earnestness--all these seeming contradictions yet make up, not a puzzling abstraction, but an intensely living character--the character, in a word, of the typical Angevin count.

[294] “Fulco Nerra” or “Niger,” “Palmerius” and
“Hierosolymitanus” are his historical surnames. I can find no
hint whether the first was derived from his complexion or from
the colour of the armour which he usually wore (as in the case
of the “Black Prince”); the origin of the two last will be seen
later.

[295] This is on the supposition that Adela of Chalon was his
mother; see note C to chap. ii. above.

For more than a hundred years after the accession of Hugh Capet, the history of the kingdom which he founded consists chiefly of the struggles of the great feudataries among themselves to get and to keep control over the action of the crown. The duke of the French had gained little save in name by his royal coronation and unction. He was no nearer than his Karolingian predecessors had been to actual supremacy over the Norman duchy, the Breton peninsula, and the whole of southern Gaul. Aquitaine indeed passed from cold contempt to open aggression. When one of her princes, the count of Poitou, had at length made unwilling submission to the northern king, a champion of southern independence issued from far Périgord to punish him, stormed Poitiers, marched up to the Loire, and sat down in triumph before Tours, whose count, Odo of Blois, was powerless to relieve it. The king himself could find no more practical remonstrance than the indignant question, “Who made thee count?” and the sole reply vouchsafed by Adalbert of Périgord was the fair retort, “Who made thee king?” Tours fell into his hands, and was made over, perhaps in mockery, to the youthful count of Anjou. The loyalty of its governor and citizens, however, soon restored it to its lawful owner, and Adalbert’s dreams of conquest ended in failure and retreat.[296] Still, Aquitaine remained independent as of old; Hugh’s real kingdom took in little more than the old duchy of France “between Seine and Loire”; and even within these limits it almost seemed that in grasping at the shadow of the crown he had loosened his hold on the substance of his ducal power. The regal authority was virtually a tool in the hands of whichever feudatary could secure its exercise for his own ends. As yet Aquitaine and Britanny stood aloof from the struggle; Normandy had not yet entered upon it; at present therefore it lay between the vassals of the duchy of France. Foremost among them in power, wealth, and extent of territory was the count of Blois, Chartres and Tours. His dominions pressed close against the eastern border of Anjou, and it was on her ability to cope with him that her fate chiefly depended. Was the house of Anjou or the house of Blois to win the pre-eminence in central Gaul? This was the problem which confronted Fulk the Black, and to whose solution he devoted his life. His whole course was governed by one fixed principle and directed to one paramount object--the consolidation of his marchland. To that object everything else was made subservient. Every advantage thrown in his way by circumstances, by the misfortunes, mistakes or weaknesses of foes or friends--for he used the one as unscrupulously as the other--was caught up and pursued with relentless vigour. One thread of settled policy ran through the seemingly tangled skein of his life, a thread never broken even by the wildest outbursts of his almost demoniac temper or his superstitious alarms. While he seemed to be throwing his whole energies into the occupation of the moment--whether it were the building or the besieging of a fortress, the browbeating of bishop or king, the cajoling of an ally or the crushing of a rival on the battle-field--that work was in reality only a part of a much greater work. Every town mirrored in the clear streams that water the “garden of France”--as the people of Touraine call their beautiful country--has its tale of the Black Count, the “great builder” beneath whose hands the whole lower course of the Loire gradually came to bristle with fortresses; but far above all his castles of stone and mortar there towered a castle in the air, the plan of a mighty political edifice. Every act of his life was a step towards its realization; every fresh success in his long career of triumph was another stone added to the gradual building up of Angevin dominion and greatness.

[296] Ademar of Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
146. The date seems to be about 990; but Ademar has confused
Odo I. of Blois with his son Odo of Champagne.

Fulk’s first victory was won before he was fourteen, over a veteran commander who had been more than a match for his father ten years earlier. The death of Geoffrey Greygown was soon followed by that of Count Guerech of Nantes; he, too, left only a young son, Alan; and when Alan also died in 990, Conan of Rennes, already master of all the rest of Britanny, seized his opportunity to take forcible possession of Nantes,[297] little dreaming of a possible rival in his young brother-in-law beyond the Mayenne. While his back was turned and he was busy assembling troops at Bruerech, at the other end of Britanny, the Angevin worked upon the old hatred of the Nantes people to the house of Rennes; with the craft of his race he won over some of the guards, by fair words and solid bribes, till he gained admittance into the city and received oaths and hostages from its inhabitants. He then returned home to collect troops for an attack upon the citadel, which was held by Conan’s men. Conan, as soon as he heard the tidings, marched upon Nantes with all his forces; as before, he brought with him a body of Norman auxiliaries, likely to be of no small use in assaulting a place such as Nantes, whose best defence is its broad river--for the “Pirates” had not yet forgotten the days when the water was their natural element and the long keels were their most familiar home. While the Norman ships blocked the river, Conan’s troops beset the town by land, and thus, with the garrison shooting down at them from the citadel, the townsfolk of Nantes were between three fires when Fulk advanced to their rescue.[298] Conan at once sent the audacious boy a challenge to meet him, on such a day, in a pitched battle on the field of Conquereux, where ten years before a doubtful fight had been waged between Conan and Fulk’s father. This time the Bretons trusted to lure their enemies to complete destruction by a device which, in days long after, was successfully employed by Robert Bruce against the English army at Bannockburn; they dug a series of trenches right across the swampy moor, covered them with bushes, branches, leaves and thatch, supported by uprights stuck into the ditches, and strewed the surface with ferns till it was indistinguishable from the surrounding moorland. Behind this line of hidden pitfalls Conan drew up his host, making a feint of unwillingness to begin the attack. Fulk, panting for his first battle with all the ardour of youth, urged his men to the onset; the flower of the Angevin troops charged right into the Breton pitfalls; men and horses became hopelessly entangled; two thousand went down in the swampy abyss and were drowned, slaughtered or crushed to death.[299] The rest fled in disorder; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and fell to the ground, weighed down by his armour, perhaps too heavy for his boyish frame. In an instant he was up again, wild with rage, burning to avenge his overthrow, calling furiously upon his troops. The clear, young voice of their leader revived the courage of the Angevins; “as the storm-wind sweeps down upon the thick corn-rigs”[300]--so their historian tells--they rushed upon the foe; and their momentary panic was avenged by the death of Conan and the almost total destruction of his host.[301] The blow overthrew the power of Rennes; the new duke Geoffrey, the son of Conan and Hermengard, was far indeed from being a match for his young uncle. In the flush of victory Fulk marched into Nantes; the citizens received him with open arms; the dismayed garrison speedily surrendered, and swore fealty to the conqueror; the titular bishop, Judicaël, a young son of Count Hoel, was set up as count under the guardianship of Aimeric of Thouars, a kinsman of the Angevin house, who ruled solely in Fulk’s interest;[302] while the territory on the right bank of the Mayenne, lost a century and a half before by the treason of Count Lambert, seems to have been reunited to the Angevin dominions.

[297] Morice, _Hist. de Bret._, vol. i. p. 64 (from a seemingly
lost bit of the Chron. Namnet.).

[298] Richer, l. iv. c. 81.

[299] _Ib._ cc. 82–85. Rudolf Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 15).

[300] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
15).

[301] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. R. Glaber (as above) says that
Conan was not slain, but only taken prisoner with the loss
of his right hand--a confusion with the first battle of
Conquereux. Conan’s death appears in all the chief Breton
chronicles, especially Chron. S. Michael. a. 992 (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 175), etc. See also Fulk Rechin
(Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377. The _Gesta Cons._ copy R. Glaber.

[302] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. The first viscount of Thouars,
a brother of Ebles, count of Poitou, had married Roscilla,
daughter of Fulk the Red. Chron. Com. Pictaviæ in _Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 294, 295.

The boy count had well won his spurs on the field of Conquereux. With the control over Nantes he had secured the control over the whole course of the Loire from his own capital down to the sea--a most important advantage in an age when the water-ways were the principal channels of communication, whether for peace or war. The upper part of the Loire valley, its richest and most fertile part, was in the hands of the count of Blois. But his sway was not unbroken. Midway between his two capitals, Blois and Tours, stood Amboise, the heritage of the Red Count’s mother; farther south, in the valley of the Indre, stood Loches, the heritage of his wife. It was not in human nature--certainly not in Angevin nature--that the owner of Amboise and Loches should not seek to extend his power a little further at the expense of his neighbour in Touraine; and no great provocation on the part of Odo of Blois was needed to make the fiery young Angevin dash into his territories, and ride plundering, wasting and burning to the outskirts of Blois itself.[303] Raid and counter-raid went on almost without ceasing, and once it seems that King Hugh himself came to help his Angevin ally.[304] In 995 Odo died, and his widow, Bertha, shortly afterwards married Robert of France, who next year became king on the death of his father Hugh Capet. Robert and Bertha were cousins; the Church pronounced their marriage illegal, and punished it with an interdict on the realm; amid the general confusion which followed, Fulk carried on a desultory warfare with Odo’s two elder sons, Thierry and Theobald, till the death of the latter in 1004 brought him face to face with his lifelong antagonist, Odo II. The contest made inevitable by circumstances was to be rendered all the more bitter by the character of the two men who were now to engage in it. Odo, indeed, was even yet scarcely more than a boy;[305] but, like Fulk, he had begun his public career at a very early age. His beginning was as characteristic as Fulk’s beginning at Conquereux. In 999 he openly insulted his royal step-father by wresting the castle of Melun from Robert’s most trusty counsellor, Count Burchard of Vendôme; and no might short of that of the Norman duke, who had now grown from a “leader of the Pirates” into the king’s most valued supporter, sufficed to avenge the outrage.[306] The boy’s hasty, unprovoked spoliation of Burchard, his insolent defiance of the king, his overweening self-confidence, ending suddenly in ignominious flight, were typical of his whole after-career. Odo’s life was as busy and active as Fulk’s, but his activity produced no lasting effects. His insatiable ambition lacked the restraint and regulation of the Angevin practical sagacity, and ran hopelessly to seed without bringing forth any lasting fruit. There was no fixed purpose in his life. New ideas, daring schemes, sprang up in his brain almost as quickly as in that of Fulk; but he never waited till they were matured; he never stopped to count their cost; and instead of working together to one common end, they only drove him into a multiplicity of irreconcileable and often visionary undertakings which never came to perfection. He was entirely a creature of impulse; always ready to throw himself into a new project, but generally lacking patience and perseverance enough to carry it through; harassed by numberless conflicting cares;[307] breaking every engagement as soon as made, not from any deep-laid policy, but simply from sheer inability to keep long to anything. “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,” might have been the burthen of Odo and of Odo’s whole race. The house of Blois failed through their utter lack of the quality which was the main strength of their rivals: thoroughness. The rivalry and the characters of the two houses have a bearing upon English history; for the quarrel that began between them for the possession of Touraine was to be fought out at last on English ground, and for no less a stake than the crown of England. The rivalry of Odo and Fulk was a foreshadowing of the rivalry between Stephen of Blois and Henry of Anjou. The end was the same in both cases. With every advantage on their side, in the eleventh century as in the twelfth, in Gaul as in England, the aimless activity of the house of Blois only spent itself against the indomitable steadiness, determination and persistency of the Angevins, as vainly as the storm-wind might beat upon the rocky foundations of Black Angers.

[303] Richer, l. iv. c. 79.

[304] Richer, l. iv. cc. 90–94. His account of the war, and
indeed his whole account of Fulk and of Odo, is extremely
strange and confused; it has been examined by M. Léon Aubineau
in a “Notice sur Thibaut-le-Tricheur et Eudes I.” in the _Mém.
de la Soc. Archéol. de Touraine_, vol. iii. (1845–1847), pp.
41–94, but the result is far from convincing.

[305] He is called “puerulus” at the time of his mother’s
second marriage, _i.e._ in 995–996. _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ in
_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 211. But considering the date
of the Melun affair, this can hardly be taken literally.

[306] _Vita Burchardi_, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp.
354, 355. Will. Jumièges, l. v. c. 14 (_ib._ p. 189; Duchesne,
_Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 255). Richer, l. iv. cc. 74–78. See
note A at the end of chapter.

[307] See the character given of him by R. Glaber, l. iii. cc.
2, 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 27, 40).

In the ten years of misery and confusion which followed the death of Odo I. and the re-marriage of his widow, Fulk had time nearly to complete a chain of fortresses which, starting from Angers and sweeping along the line of Geoffrey Greygown’s Poitevin conquests in a wide irregular half-circle up again to Amboise, served the double purpose of linking his own outlying possessions in Touraine with his head-quarters in Anjou, and of cutting in halves the dominions of his neighbour. The towers of Montreuil, Passavant and Maulévrier, of Loudun and the more remote Mirebeau, were a standing menace to Saumur and Chinon. Sᵗᵉ·-Maure was an eyesore to the garrison of Ile-Bouchard.[308] Farther east, on a pile of rock with the little blue Indre winding round its foot, rose, as it rises still in ruined majesty, the mighty keep of Loches; and on the banks of the Indrois that of Montrésor, whose lord, Roger, rejoiced in the surname of “the devil.”[309] To Roger Fulk also intrusted the command of another great fortress, Montrichard, whose dark donjon frowned down upon the Cher from a plot of ground stolen from the metropolitan see of Tours.[310] At Amboise itself, the site of the Roman governor’s palace--now crowned by the modern castle--was occupied by a strong _domicilium_ of the Angevin count,[311] and the place was a perpetual obstacle between the archiepiscopal city of S. Martin and the secular capital of its rulers. Langeais and Montbazon, which for a while threatened Tours more closely still, were soon wrested from their daring builder;[312] but the whole course of the Indre above Montbazon was none the less in Fulk’s hands, for either by force or guile, the lords of all the castles on its banks had been won over to his cause; he had gained a foothold on every one of the affluents of the Loire upon its southern side; while on the north, in the valley of the Loir, Hugh of Alluye, the lord of Château-la-Vallière and St.-Christophe, was so devoted to the Angevin interest that the count’s usual route to and from Amboise lay through his lands.[313]

[308] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377.

[309] _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 107; _Gesta Amb. Domin._
(_ibid._), p. 167.

[310] _Gesta Cons._, as above.

[311] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (as above), p. 175.

[312] That Montbazon was built by Fulk appears by a charter of
King Robert (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 577, 578), date
seemingly about A.D. 1000. It had, however, passed into Odo’s
hands. Langeais, whose building is recorded by Fulk Rechin (as
above), was probably taken by Odo I. in 995; there is a charter
of his dated “at the siege of Langeais” in that year. Mabillon,
_Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 96.

[313] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 91. _Gesta Amb.
Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 164.

The early part of the eleventh century was an age of castle-building; Fulk, however, had begun his line of fortifications before the century dawned, in those gloomy years of interdict when the royal power was at its lowest ebb, when the people, cut off from the helps and comforts of religion, lay in hopeless anarchy and misery, and half in terror, half in longing, men whispered to each other that the end of the world was near. The superstitious terrors which paralyzed gentler souls only goaded Fulk into more restless activity and inflamed his fierce temper almost to madness. He had married the heiress of Vendôme, the daughter of Count Burchard;[314] but this union came to a terrible end while its only child was still in her cradle. In the very dawn of the dreaded year 1000 Countess Elizabeth expiated her real or supposed sins as a wife by death at the stake; and a conflagration which destroyed a large part of the city of Angers immediately after her execution may well have caused the horror-stricken subjects of her husband to deem that judgement was indeed at their gates.[315]

[314] They were already married in 990; see a charter in
Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 59.

[315] This, or something like it, must be the meaning of the
not very intelligible accounts given in the Angevin chronicles
of the death of Elizabeth and the fire which followed it.
“Incensa est urbs Andegavensis post incensionem Comitissæ
Elizabeth.” Chron. S. Michael. in Peric. Maris, a. 1000 (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 175). “Prima incensio urbis
Andegavæ, quæ evenit paucis diebus post combustionem comitissæ
Helisabeth.” Chron. S. Albin., a. 1000 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
p. 22). “Urbs Andecava incensa est post combustionem comitissæ
Elisabeth.” Breve Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 999 (_ib._ p.
187). “Fulco ... cum Elysabeth conjugem suam Andegavis, post
immane præcipitium salvatam, occidisset, ipsamque urbem paucis
defendentibus flammarum incendiis concremâsset.” _Hist. S.
Flor. Salm._ (_ibid._), p. 273. Cf. _ib._ p. 260.

After the paroxysm came the reaction. When the dreaded year had passed over and the world found itself still alive; when the king had at last consented to purchase relief from the interdict by parting from his beloved Bertha, and the nation was rousing itself to welcome the new queen who stepped into Bertha’s place; then the blood which he had shed at Conquereux and elsewhere--one may surely add, the ashes of his wife--began to weigh heavily on the Black Count’s soul; “the fear of Gehenna” took possession of him, and leaving the marchland to the care of his brother Maurice he set out for the Holy Sepulchre.[316] This journey was the first link in a chain which, through the later pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra himself and those of his great-grandson Fulk V., brought the counts of Anjou into a specially intimate relation with the Holy Land and led to the establishment of an Angevin dynasty upon its throne. Legend has not been slack to furnish Fulk the Palmer with characteristic adventures, to tell how his craft outwitted that of the Turks who tried to exclude him from the Sepulchre, and how he not only procured a piece of the true Cross, but while kissing the sacred stone in the fervour of his devotion, detected a loose fragment which he managed to bite off and bring home as the most precious trophy of his journey.[317] His first care on his return was to build an abbey for the reception of this relic. From the rocky angle by the winding Indre where the great “Square Tower”--as the natives emphatically call the keep of Loches--was rising in picturesque contrast to a church reared by Geoffrey Greygown in honour of our Lady,[318] the land which the wife of the first count of Anjou had transmitted to her descendants stretched a mile eastward beyond the river in a broad expanse of green meadow to a waste plot of ground full of broom, belonging to a man named Ingelger. From its original Latin name, _Belli-locus_, now corrupted into Beaulieu, it seems possible that the place was set apart for trials by ordeal of battle.[319]

[316] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
15). On the regency of Maurice see note C at end of chapter,
and Mabille, Introd. _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. lxxvi.

[317] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 102, 103.
There is a versified account of the pious theft in the
Beaulieu office of the Holy Sepulchre, Salies, _Hist. de
Foulques-Nerra_, p. 529.

[318] In 963; Chron. Turon. Abbrev. ad ann. (Salmon, _Chron.
de Touraine_, p. 185). From the foundation-charter, cited
by M. l’abbé Bardet (_La Collégiale de Loches_, p. 8), it
seems that Geoffrey founded the church on his return from a
pilgrimage to Rome. A fragment of his work possibly remains in
the present church (now called S. Ours), which was built by the
historian-prior, Thomas Pactius, in the time of Henry II.

[319] This is a remark quoted by M. de Salies
(_Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 115, 361) from Dufour, “Dict. hist. de
l’arrond. de Loches,” and grounded on the fact that while the
many other Beaulieus, in France and in England, all appear in
Latin as “_Bellus_-locus,” this one is “_Belli_-locus” in its
foundation charter. See a similar case of verbal corruption
below, p. 187.

This field Fulk determined to purchase for the site of his abbey. A bargain was struck; the count paid down the stipulated sum, carried the former owner on his shoulders from the middle of the field to the foot of the bridge, and there set him down, saying, “A man without wit his freehold must quit”--by which ceremony the contract was completed.[320] Despite his fiery haste, Fulk did all things with due method,[321] and his next anxiety was to decide upon the dedication of his intended minster. He found his best counsellor in his newly-married wife, the Lady Hildegard, and by her advice the church was placed under the direct invocation, not of saint or angel, but of the most Holy Trinity Itself.[322] By the time it stood ready for consecration the son of Fulk and Hildegard was nearly three years old:[323] he had been nursed by a blacksmith’s wife at Loches;[324] and many a time, as the count and countess went to inspect the progress of architect and builder in the meadow beyond the river, they must have lingered beside the forge to mark the growth of their little Geoffrey, the future conqueror of Tours. The consecration of the church proved a difficulty; the archbishop of Tours refused to perform it unless Fulk would restore to his see the stolen land of Montrichard.[325] Fulk swore--doubtless his customary oath, “by God’s souls”[326]--that he would get the better of the primate, and went straight off to Rome to lay his case before the Pope. After several years’ wrangling it was decided in his favour,[327] and one morning in May 1012 the abbey-church of the Holy Trinity at Beaulieu was hallowed with all due pomp and solemnity by a Roman cardinal-legate. But though Rome had spoken, the case was not ended yet. That very afternoon a sudden storm of wind blew up from the south, whirled round the church, and swept the whole roof completely off. Clergy and laity alike seized on the prodigy as an evident token of Heaven’s wrath against the insolence and presumption of Fulk;[328] not so the Black Count himself, who simply replaced the roof and pushed on the completion of the monastic buildings as if nothing had happened.[329] He had successfully defied the Church; he next ventured to defy the king and the count of Blois both at once. The divorced queen Bertha, mother of young Odo of Blois, still lived and was still loved by the king; Fulk, if he was not actually, as tradition relates, a kinsman of the new Queen Constance,[330] was at any rate fully alive to the policy of making common cause with her against their common rivals of Blois. He crushed King Robert’s last hope of reunion with Bertha by sending twelve armed men to assassinate at a hunting-party, before his royal master’s eyes, the king’s seneschal or _comes palatii_ Hugh of Beauvais who was the confidant of his cherished scheme.[331] It is a striking proof not only of the royal helplessness but also of the independence and security which Fulk had already attained that his crime went altogether unpunished and even uncensured save by one bishop,[332] and almost immediately after its commission he could again venture on leaving his dominions under the regency of his brother Maurice, while he set off upon another long journey which the legendary writers of Anjou, by some strange confusion between their own hero and the Emperor Otto III., make into a mission of knight-errantry to deliver the Pope from a tyrant named Crescentius, but which seems really to have been a second pilgrimage to Holy Land.[333] He came back to find the storm which had so long been gathering on his eastern border on the point of breaking at last.

[320] 11th lesson of the Beaulieu Office, Salies,
_Foulques-Nerra_, p. 528. “Stultus a proprio expellitur alodo.”

[321] “Ut semper curiose agebat,” R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 4 (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 15).

[322] _Ibid._ (pp. 15, 16).

[323] He was born October 14, 1006, according to Chronn.
Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp.
164, 187). The Chron. S. Serg. (_ib._ p. 134) gives the same
day, but makes the year 1007; the Chron. S. Maxent. (_ib._ p.
387) places the event on April 12, 1005. The Chron. S. Albin.
(_ib._ p. 22) gives no day, but confirms the two first-named
authorities for the year, 1006.

[324] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 260.

[325] R. Glaber, as above (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
16). Cf. _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 107).

[326] “Fulco Nerra, cui consuetudo fuit Animas Dei jurare,”
begins his history in the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_),
p. 89.

[327] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 4 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
x. p. 17). See also a bull of Pope John XVIII. in Migne’s
_Patrologia_, vol. cxxxix., cols. 1491, 1492; and two of
Sergius IV., _ib._ cols. 1525–1527.

[328] R. Glaber, as above (p. 16).

[329] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 99. This writer
copies the whole story of Beaulieu from R. Glaber.

[330] See note B at end of chapter.

[331] R. Glaber, l. iii. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.
p. 27).

[332] Fulbert of Chartres; see his letter to Fulk, _Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 476, 477.

[333] See note C at end of chapter.

The adherents of the count of Blois, headed by Landry of Châteaudun, had profited by Fulk’s absence to concert a scheme for the expulsion of the Angevins from Touraine. In spite of a vigorous resistance made by Fulk’s lieutenant at Amboise, Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin’s at Tours, they seemed in a fair way to succeed, when Fulk himself dropped like a thunderbolt in their midst, dashed right through the county of Blois into that of Chartres, punished Landry by sacking Châteaudun and harrying the surrounding district, and marched home in triumph to Amboise.[334] A raid such as this was a distinct declaration of war, not upon Landry, but upon Landry’s lord. Fulk had intended it as such, and he went home to set in action every possible means that could gain him help and support in a fight to the uttermost with Odo for the possession of Touraine. At that very moment the county of Maine was thrown virtually into his hands by the death of its aged count Hugh; with the alliance of Hugh’s youthful successor he secured the northern frontier of Touraine and the support of a body of valiant fighting-men whose co-operation soon proved to be of the highest value and importance. The rapid insight which singled out at a glance the most fitting instruments for his purpose, the gifts of attraction and persuasion by which he knew how to attach men to his service, and seemed almost to inspire them with some faint reflex of his own spirit, while making them devoted creatures of his will, were all brought into play as he cast about in all directions for aid in the coming struggle, and were strikingly shown in his choice of a lieutenant. The instinct of genius told him that he had found the man he wanted in young Lisoy, lord of the castle of Bazogers, in Maine. As prudent in counsel as he was daring in fight, Lisoy was a man after Fulk’s own heart; they understood each other at once; Lisoy was appointed to share with the now aged Sulpice the supreme command of Loches and Amboise; and while Sulpice provided for the defence of Amboise by building on his own land there a lofty tower of stone,[335] the burned and plundered districts of St.-Aignan, Chaumont and Blois soon had cause to know that the “pride of Cenomannian knighthood” had thrown himself heart and soul into the service of the count of Anjou.[336]

[334] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 88, 89–91.

[335] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 169.

[336] _Ib._ pp. 160–164.

The crisis came in the summer of 1016, when Odo of Blois gathered all his forces for an attack upon Montrichard. His rival was fully prepared to meet him. Before he set out from Blois, the allied hosts of Anjou and Maine had assembled at Amboise, and thence separated again to post themselves in such a manner as to render a battle unavoidable. Fulk turned eastward, and took up a position close to Pontlevoy, seemingly in a wood now known as the Bois-Royal, which in that day was skirted by the high road from Blois to Montrichard. Herbert of Maine rode down to the banks of the Cher, and pitched his camp just above Montrichard, at Bourré.[337] If Odo followed the high road he would be met by the Angevins; if he contrived to turn their position by taking a less direct route to the eastward, he must encounter the Cenomannians, with the garrison of Montrichard at their back; while whichever engaged him first, the distance between the two bodies of troops was so slight that either could easily come to the other’s assistance. It was well for Anjou and for her count that his strategical arrangements were so perfect, and so faithfully carried out by his young ally; for never in all his long life, save in the panic at Conquereux, was Fulk the Black so near to complete overthrow as on that Friday morning in July 1016, when he met Odo of Blois face to face in the battle-field.

[337] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 107. The
topography of the battle of Pontlevoy is cleared up by Salies,
_Foulques-Nerra_, p. 175 _et seq._

Odo, who always trusted to be saved by the multitude of an host,[338] was greatly astonished, on arriving with all his forces opposite Pontlevoy, to find the Angevins drawn up against him in battle array. With a few hurried words he urged his men to the onset. Fortune seemed for a while to favour the stronger side; Fulk and his troops were sore bested; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and severely stunned, and the fate of Anjou hung trembling in the balance, when the scale was turned by the sword of Herbert of Maine. A messenger hurried off to tell the Cenomannian count that his friend was defeated, nay, captured. Herbert and his knights flew to the rescue; they charged the left wing of the enemies with a vigour which changed the whole position of affairs, and snatched from the count of Blois the victory he had all but won; the chivalry of Blois fled in confusion, leaving the foot to be cut to pieces at will, and their camp to be plundered by the victorious allies, who returned in triumph to Amboise, laden with rich spoils and valuable prisoners.[339]

[338] “More suo, nimiâ multitudine confisus.” _Gesta Cons._
(Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 107.

[339] _Ib._ pp. 107, 108. The date--July 6--is given in Chronn.
S. Serg., Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm., a. 1016 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 134, 164, 187). There is an account of the
battle in _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (_ib._), p. 274, but it has a
very impossible look.

The victory of Pontlevoy was the turning-point of Fulk’s career. Nine years passed away before Odo recovered from the check enough to make any attempt to avenge it. It seems at first glance strange that Fulk did not employ the interval in pushing forward his conquest of Touraine. But in the eyes of both Fulk and Odo the possession of Touraine was in reality a means rather than an end; and a sort of armed truce, so long as Odo did not provoke him to break it, suited Fulk’s purpose better than a continued war. His western frontier had been secured by his first victory at Conquereux; his eastern frontier was now secured, at any rate for a time, by his victory at Pontlevoy; from the south there was nothing to fear, for the duke of Aquitaine, to whom he owed homage for Loudun, was his staunch friend, and presently gave proof of his friendship by bestowing on him the city of Saintes.[340] Fulk at once made use of the gift as a means of extorting something yet more valuable from a neighbour to whom he owed a far deeper obligation--Herbert of Maine. It may be that they had quarrelled since the days of Pontlevoy; it may be that Herbert had begun that career of nocturnal raids against the fortified towns of Anjou which scared men and beasts from their rest, and gained him his unclassical but expressive surname of “Wake-the-dog.”[341] If so, the wily Angevin took effectual measures to stop them. He enticed the count of Maine to pay him a visit at Saintes, proposing to grant him the investiture of that city. Suddenly, in the midst of conversation, Herbert was seized by Fulk’s servants and flung into prison, whence he was only released at the end of two years, and on submission to such conditions as Fulk chose to dictate.[342] What those conditions were history does not tell; but there can be little doubt that they included some acknowledgment of the suzerain rights of Anjou over Maine, with which Geoffrey Greygown had been invested by Hugh Capet, but which he had not had time to make good, and which Fulk had only enforced for a moment, at the sword’s point, when the aged count Hugh was dying.[343] Fulk’s dealings with Maine are only an episode in his life; but they led even more directly than his struggle with the house of Blois to consequences of the utmost importance. They paved the way for an Angevin conquest of Maine which extended the Angevin power to the Norman border, brought it into contact and collision with the Norman ducal house, and originated the long wars which were ended at last by the marriage of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Empress Matilda. The imprisonment of Herbert is really the first step in the path which leads from Anjou to England.

[340] Ademar of Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
149.

[341] “Vulgo, sed parum Latine, cognominari Evigilans-canem
pro ingenti probitate promeruit. Nam ... in eundem [sc.
Fulconem] arma levans nocturnas expeditiones crebro agebat, et
Andegavenses homines et canes in ipsâ urbe, vel in munitioribus
oppidis terrebat, et horrendis assultibus pavidos vigilare
cogebat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._) p.
532. It is however only fair to add that in another place
(_ib._ p. 487) Orderic says Herbert “vulgo Evigilans-canem
cognominabatur, propter gravissimas infestationes quas
a perfidis affinibus suis Andegavensibus incessanter
patiebatur”--as if he kept the Cenomannian dogs awake to give
notice of the enemy’s approach, we must suppose.

[342] Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.),
p. 161; Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
189; Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 401).
Ademar says Herbert’s imprisonment lasted two years; and the
Chronn. S. Albin. and Vindoc. a. 1027 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
pp. 22, 167), give us the date of his release, by giving that
of the Breton invasion which followed it.

[343] “Hugonis ... quem Fulco senior sibi violentur
subjugârat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
p. 532. The terms of Herbert’s submission to Fulk are matter
of inference from what followed his release. He at once
began to quarrel with Avesgaud, the bishop of Le Mans, and
being by him defied and excommunicated, called in the help
of Duke Alan of Britanny (_Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 30, in
Mabillon, _Vet. Analecta_, p. 304). Alan, when he had helped
to defeat the bishop, marched down to besiege Le Lude, one
of the chief Angevin fortresses on the Cenomannian border,
and only desisted when he had extorted from Fulk the hostages
given him by Herbert on his release; Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 166). It is not hard to see why the
rival overlord of Nantes should be ready to make war, on any
pretext, upon the count of Anjou; but, making due allowance
for Fulk’s possible difficulties--Odo’s last attack occurred
in this year--still it is very hard to see why Fulk, “the
ingenious Fulk,” as the writer of the _Gesta Amb. Domin._
calls him (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 165), could find no better
way of raising the siege of a petty border-fortress than by
making restitution to Herbert at the bidding of Alan, unless
he felt so sure of his hold over Herbert as not to think the
hostages worth keeping. The striking resemblance between Fulk’s
treatment of Herbert and his father’s treatment of Guerech also
suggests that there was probably a like resemblance in the
terms of release.

But the step could never have been followed up as it was by Fulk’s successor had not Fulk himself at once turned back to his special work of clearing away the obstacle to Angevin progress formed by the rivalry of Blois, which once again threatened to become a serious danger in the very year of Herbert’s capture. Odo had lately[344] succeeded to the inheritance of his cousin Stephen, count of Champagne, an acquisition which doubled his wealth and power, and gave him a position of such importance in the French kingdom as enabled him to overawe the crown and cause a complete change in its policy. In 1025 King Robert, “or rather his queen Constance,” as the chroniclers significantly add, made peace with Count Odo who had hitherto been their enemy, and left their old friend Fulk of Anjou to carry on alone the struggle which he had begun with their good will, and, ostensibly at least, partly in their interest.[345] Odo thought his hour was come; “with all his might he set upon” Fulk;[346] and his might now included all the forces of Touraine, Blois, Chartres and Champagne, aided, it seems, by a contingent from the Royal Domain itself.[347] With this formidable host Odo laid siege to a great fortified camp known as the Montboyau, which Fulk had reared some ten years before on the northern bank of the Loire almost opposite Tours, as a standing menace to the city and a standing defiance to its ruler.[348] Fulk, to whom the besieged garrison appealed for succour, had advanced[349] as far as Brain-sur-Alonnes when he was met by tidings which induced him to change his course.[350] Nearly over against the spot where he stood, a ridge of white chalk-cliff rising sheer above the southern bank of the Loire was crowned by the fortress of Saumur, the south-western key of Touraine, close to the Angevin border. It had belonged to the counts of Tours since the days of Theobald the Trickster at least; but in an earlier time it had probably formed a part of the Angevin March, as it still formed a part of the diocese of Angers. Its lord, Gelduin, was the sole human being whom the Black Count feared; “Let us flee that devil of Saumur!” was his cry, “I seem always to see him before me.”[351] But now he learned that Gelduin had joined his count at the siege of the Montboyau. A hurried night-ride across Loire and Vienne brought Fulk at break of day to the gates of Saumur,[352] and before sunset he was master of the place, although its inhabitants, with a spirit worthy of their absent leader, fired the town before they surrendered, and only admitted the victors into a heap of ashes. Not the least valiant of its defenders had been the monks of S. Florence, a little community who dwelt within the castle-enclosure, keeping guard over the relics of a famous local saint. As they came forth with their patron’s body from the blazing ruins, the Black Count’s voice rose above the din: “Let the fire burn, holy Florence! I will build thee a better dwelling at Angers.” The relics were placed in a boat and rowed down the stream till they reached the limit of the lands of Saumur, at Trèves. Once the boundary had been further west, at Gennes; till Fulk, despite his terror of the “devil,” had taken courage to march against him, doubtless at a moment when Gelduin was unprepared for defence, for he at once asked a truce. It was granted, but not exactly as he desired; on the spot where Gelduin’s envoy met him Fulk planted a castle and called it mockingly “Treva,” _truce_. Opposite this alien fortress the boat which carried the relics of S. Florence now stuck fast in one of the sandbanks of treacherous Loire, and all the efforts of the rowers failed to move it. The saint--said the monks--was evidently determined not to be carried beyond his own territory. Fulk, who was superintending the voyage in person, began to rail at him as “an impious rustic who would not allow himself to be well treated”: but there was a grain of humour in the Black Count’s composition, and he was probably as much amused as angered at the saint’s obstinacy; at any rate he suffered the monks to push off in the opposite direction--which they did without difficulty--and deposit their charge in the church of S. Hilary, an old dependency of their house, till he should find them a suitable place for a new monastery.[353] Thus far Odo’s grand expedition had brought him nothing but the loss of the best stronghold he possessed on the Angevin border. There was apparently nothing to prevent Fulk from marching in triumph up the valley of the Vienne, where Chinon and Ile-Bouchard now held out alone for the count of Blois amid a ring of Angevin fortresses. His present object, however, was to relieve the Montboyau; and turning northward he laid siege to a castle of his own building which had somehow passed into the enemy’s hands, Montbazon[354] on the Indre, only three leagues distant from Tours. Odo, whose siege operations had proved a most disastrous failure,[355] at once broke up his camp and marched to the relief of Montbazon. To dislodge him from the siege of Montboyau was all that Fulk wanted; simulating flight, he retreated up the valley to Loches and thence retired gradually upon Amboise.[356] A month later Odo made an ineffectual attempt to regain Saumur. Some time afterwards he tried again, pitching his tents among the vineyards on the banks of the Thouet, hard by the rising walls of the new abbey of S. Florence; the monks acted as mediators between their former lord and their new patron, and peace was made, Odo definitely relinquishing Saumur, and Fulk agreeing to raze the Montboyau[357]--that is, to raze the keep on its summit; for the white chalky slopes of the mighty earthwork itself rise gleaming above the river to this day. The struggle between Fulk and Odo was virtually over. Once again, in the following year, the count of Blois attempted to surprise Amboise, in company with the young King Henry, Robert’s son and recently crowned colleague. The attack failed;[358] it was Odo’s last effort to stem the tide of Angevin progress. Fulk had done more than beat his rival in the battle-field; he had out-generalled him in every way, and won a triumph which made the final issue of their rivalry a foregone conclusion. That issue he never sought to hasten, for with all his fiery vehemence Fulk knew how to wait; unlike Odo, he could look beyond the immediate future, beyond the horizon of his own life, and having sown and watered his seed he could be content to leave others to gather its fruit, rather than risk the frustration of his labours by plucking at it before the time.

[344] Stephen seems to have died in 1019; _Art de vérifier les
dates_, vol. xi. p. 347.

[345] Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p.
10); Chron. Vindoc. a. 1025 (_ib._ p. 165). This last is
probably the right date, as the Angevin capture of Saumur,
which follows, is dated in 1026 by the Chronn. S. Albin. and S.
Serg. (_ib._ pp. 22, 134), and in 1025 by the Chronn. S. Flor.
Salm. and S. Maxent. (_ib._ pp. 187, 388).

[346] “Totis nisibus adorsus est.” Chronn. Rain. Andeg. and
Vindoc. as above.

[347] “Cum _Francis_,” says the _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 276). This writer afterwards speaks
of Odo’s whole host as “Franci.” He has already done the same
at Pontlevoy (_ib._ p. 274); but surely there cannot have been
any royal vassals fighting under Odo there. What can be the
writer’s real meaning?

[348] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 108. _Gesta Amb.
Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 165. See, for dates, Chron. Rain. Andeg.
a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 10).

[349] The _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (as above), p. 165, say that Fulk
was accompanied by Herbert of Maine. But, on calculating dates,
it seems that Herbert must have been by this time in prison.
It is however highly probable that Cenomannian troops would be
supplied to Fulk by Bishop Avesgaud.

[350] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 276.

[351] _Ib._ p. 275.

[352] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p.
276.--“Ligerique _ac Vigennâ_ transvadatis.” The writer, living
close to the spot, can hardly have mistaken its topography; but
unless he has done so, the confluence of the Vienne and the
Loire must at that time have been considerably farther west
than at present; it is now at Candes, some distance to the east
of Saumur and Brain.

[353] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), pp.
276–278.

[354] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 109. _Gesta Amb.
Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 165.

[355] Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 10).

[356] _Gesta Cons._ and _Gesta Amb. Domin._ as above.

[357] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 280.

[358] Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027 (_ib._ p. 165). Cf. Chron. S.
Albin. a. 1027 (_ib._ p. 22).

MEDIEVAL ANGERS.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co.
]