Chapter IV: Anjou and Normandy (1)

1044–1128.

The history of Anjou during the sixty years comprised in our last chapter groups itself around the figure of Fulk the Black. The period on which we are now to enter has no such personal centre of unity; its interest and its significance lie in the drama itself rather than in its actors; yet the drama has a centre which is living to this day. The city of Le Mans still stands, as it stood in Geoffrey Martel’s day and had stood for a thousand years before him, on the long narrow brow of a red sandstone rock which rises abruptly from the left bank of the Sarthe and widens out into the higher ground to the north and east:--a situation not unlike that of Angers on its black rock above the Mayenne. The city itself and the county of Maine, of which it was the capital, both took their names from a tribe known to the Romans as Aulerci Cenomanni, a branch of the great race of the Aulerci who occupied central Gaul in its earliest recorded days. Alike in legend and in history the Cenomanni are closely linked to Rome. One branch of them formed, according to Roman tradition, a portion of a band of Gallic emigrants who in the mythical days of the Tarquins wandered down through the Alpine passes into the valleys and plains of northern Italy, made themselves a new home on the banks of Padus, where afterwards grew up the towns of Brixia and Verona,[440] and became devoted allies of Rome.[441] When the last struggle for freedom was over in Gaul, few spots took the impress of Rome more deeply or kept it more abidingly than the home of their Transalpine brethren, the “Aulerci Cenomanni whose city to the east is Vindinum.”[442] The remains of the walls and gates of a Roman _castrum_ which succeeded the primeval hill-fortress of Vindinum or Le Mans are only now at last giving way to the destruction, not of time, but of modern utilitarianism. Far into the middle ages, long after Le Mans had outgrown its narrow Roman limits and spread down to a second line of fortifications close to the water’s edge, one part of the city on the height still kept the name of “Ancient Rome.”[443] The wondrous cathedral which now rises in the north-eastern corner of the city, towering high above the river and the double line of walls, stands, if we may trust its foundation-legend, on the very site of the _prætorium_; when the Cross followed in the train of the eagles, Defensor, the governor of the city, gave up his palace for the site of a church whose original dedication to the Blessed Virgin and S. Peter has long been superseded by the name of its founder S. Julian, a missionary bishop ordained and sent to Gaul by S. Clement of Rome.[444] Defensor is probably only a personification of the official _defensor civitatis_, the local tribune of the people under the later Roman Empire; but the state of things of which the legend is an idealized picture left its traces on the real relations of Church and state at Le Mans. After the Frankish conquest bishop and people together formed a power which more than matched that of the local lieutenant of the Merovingian kings; a decree of Clovis, confirmed by his grandson Childebert III., enacted that no count of Le Mans should be appointed without their consent.[445] Under the early Karolingians Le Mans seems to have held for a short time the rank afterwards taken by Angers as the chief stronghold of the Breton border; local tradition claims as its first hereditary count that “Roland, prefect of the Breton march,” who is more generally known as the hero of Roncevaux.[446] However this may be, the “duchy of Cenomannia” figures prominently in various grants of territory on the western border made to members of the Imperial house.[447] In the civil wars which followed the death of Louis the Gentle it suffered much from the ravages of Lothar;[448] and it underwent a far worse ordeal a few years later, when the traitor count Lambert of Anjou led both Bretons and northmen into the heart of central Gaul. The sack of Le Mans by Lambert and Nomenoë in 850[449] was avenged some years later when the traitor fell by the sword of Count Gauzbert of Maine;[450] but in 851 Charles the Bald was compelled to cede the western part of the Cenomannian duchy to the Breton king Herispoë;[451] the northern foes who had first come in the train of the Bretons swept over Maine again and again; and it was in making their way back to the sea after one of these raids by the old Roman road from Le Mans to Nantes that they entrapped Robert the Brave to his death at the bridge of Sarthe. The treaty of Clair-sur-Epte left Maine face to face with the northman settled upon her northern border; and in 924 a grant of the overlordship of the county was extorted by Hrolf from King Rudolf of Burgundy. In the hands of Hrolf’s most famous descendant the claim thus given was to become a formidable reality; at the moment however its force was neutralized by another grant made in the same year by Charles the Simple, which placed Maine together with the rest of Neustria under the jurisdiction of Hugh the Great.[452] In vain the counts of Le Mans strove to ignore or defy the house of France and that of Anjou, to which, as we have seen, the ducal claims over Maine were soon delegated. All their efforts were paralyzed by the opposing influence of that other officer in their state whose authority was of older date as well as loftier character than theirs, who held his commission by unbroken descent alike from the Cæsars and from the Apostles, and who had once at least been distinctly acknowledged as the equal, if not the superior, of his temporal colleague. The bishops were the nominees of the king, and therefore the champions of French and Angevin interests at Le Mans. In the last years of the tenth century and the early part of the eleventh, two of them in succession, an uncle and nephew named Sainfred and Avesgaud, were members of the house of Bellême who owned the borderlands of Perche, Séez and Alençon, between France and Normandy, who were never loyal to either neighbour, and whose name, as we have already seen, was one day to become a by-word for turbulent wickedness both in Normandy and in England. Sainfred was said to have owed his bishopric to Fulk Nerra’s influence with the king;[453] Avesgaud’s life was passed between building, hunting, and quarrelling with Count Herbert Wake-dog. Herbert’s military capacities, proved on the field of Pontlevoy, enabled him to stand his ground;[454] but very soon after his death Fulk’s dealings with Maine and its bishop began to bear fruit. Fulk survived both Herbert and Avesgaud. The count of Maine died in the prime of life in 1036,[455] leaving as his heir a son named Hugh, who, on pretext of his extreme youth, was set aside by a great-uncle, Herbert surnamed Bacco. Bishop Avesgaud, too, had died a few months before, and his office passed a second time from uncle to nephew in the person of his sister’s son, Gervase of Château-du-Loir.[456] The selection of a third prelate from the hated house of Bellême was in itself enough to excite the count’s wrath; Herbert Bacco moreover had a special reason for jealousy--the young nephew whose rights he had usurped was a godson of Gervase. For two years Herbert contrived to keep the new bishop out of Le Mans altogether; at the end of that time he admitted him, but no sooner were the rival rulers established side by side than their strife became as bitter and ceaseless as that of Herbert Wake-dog and Avesgaud. Gervase looked for help to the king, who, whether as king or as duke of the French, was patron and advocate of the see; but there was no help to be got from the feeble, selfish Henry I. of France. Despair hurried the bishop into a rasher step than any that his uncle had ever taken. Thinking that a less exalted protector, and one nearer to the spot and more directly interested, would be of more practical use, he besought King Henry to grant the patronage and advocacy of the see of Le Mans to Count Geoffrey of Anjou for his life.[457]

[440] Tit. Liv., l. v. c. 35; Polyb., l. ii. c. 17.

[441] Polyb., l. ii. cc. 23, 24, 32.

[442] Ptolem., l. ii. c. 7. On the Peutinger Table, however,
the name is Subdinnum.

[443] “Ex parte vici de veteri Româ” is quoted by M. Voisin
(_Les Cénomans anciens et modernes_, p. 86, note 3) from a
document in the city archives.

[444] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 1, in Mabillon, _Vetera
Analecta_, pp. 239–241.

[445] Charter of Childebert III. a. 698, in Mabillon, _Vet.
Anal._, p. 283.

[446] Eginhard, _Vita Car. Magni_, c. 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
vol. v. p. 93).

[447] Charles the Great granted “ducatum Cenomannicum” to
his son Charles in 790; Ann. Mettens. ad ann. (_Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. v. pp. 346, 347). “Ducatus Cenomannicus,
omnisque occiduæ Galliæ ora inter Ligerim et Sequanam
constituta,” formed the share of Charles the Bald in 838; Ann.
Bertin. ad ann. (_ib._ vol. vi. p. 199).

[448] Ann. Bertin. a. 841 (_ib._ vol. vii. p. 60).

[449] Chron. Fontanell. a. 850 (_ib._ p. 42).

[450] The Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 366),
two Aquitanian chronicles (in Labbe, _Nova Bibl._, vol. i. pp.
291, 324) and Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
vii. p. 226) date this 852; Regino and the Ann. Mettens. (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p. 190) place it in 860.

[451] Above, p. 102. Part at least of this ceded territory must
have been soon regained; for it extended “usque ad viam quæ a
Lotitiâ Parisiorum Cæsarodunum Turonum ducit.” Ann. Bertin. a.
856 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. vii. p. 71).

[452] Frodoard. Chron. a. 924 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
viii. p. 181). See above, p. 124.

[453] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 29 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
p. 303).

[454] See the story of his struggles with Avesgaud in _Acta
Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 30 (as above, pp. 303, 304).

[455] Necrol. S. Pet. de Culturâ (Le Mans), quoted in _Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 632. Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 161) seems to imply that he had
contracted a mortal disease in his Angevin dungeon.

[456] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 31 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
pp. 305, 306). From the dates there given, Avesgaud must have
died in October 1035, about five months before Herbert Wake-dog.

[457] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above (p. 305).

As soon as the grant was made, Gervase “took counsel with the people of the diocese and the brave men of the land,”[458] and headed a revolution by which Herbert Bacco was expelled and the boy Hugh set in his place. The bishop’s next step was to seek a wife for his godson. Twelve years before, a band of Bretons, called by Hugh’s father to aid him against Bishop Avesgaud and Fulk of Anjou, had made a raid upon Blois and carried off Count Odo’s daughter Bertha to become the wife of Duke Alan of Britanny.[459] It was this Bertha, now a widow and a fugitive from Rennes, whence she was driven by her brother-in-law after her husband’s death,[460] whom Gervase now wedded to Hugh. Such a choice was not likely to conciliate Geoffrey Martel; all the less if--as some words of a local historian seem to imply--the daughter of Odo of Blois was gifted with all the courage and energy that were lacking in her brothers.[461] By some of the usual Angevin arts Geoffrey entrapped Gervase into his power and cast him into prison,[462] where for the next seven years the luckless bishop was left to reflect upon the consequences of his short-sighted policy and to perceive that in striving to secure a protector against Herbert Bacco he had placed himself and his country at the mercy of an unscrupulous tyrant. During those years Maine, nominally ruled by the young Count Hugh, was really in the power of Geoffrey Martel, and it became the scene of a fierce warfare between Anjou and Normandy. In 1049 the Council of Reims threatened Geoffrey with excommunication unless he released the captive prelate,[463] and next year the excommunication was actually pronounced by the Pope;[464] but neither Council nor Pope could turn the Angevin from his prey. About 1051 Hugh died, and his death sealed the fate of Le Mans. Its count’s son was an infant, its bishop a captive in an Angevin dungeon; its citizens had no choice but to submit. The twice-widowed countess and her children were driven out at one gate as the Hammer of Anjou knocked at the other, and without striking a blow Geoffrey became acknowledged master of Maine from thenceforth till the day of his death.[465] Gervase, his spirit broken at last, purchased his release by the surrender of Château-du-Loir, and by a solemn oath never again to set foot in Le Mans so long as Geoffrey lived. He found a refuge at the court of Duke William of Normandy, till in 1057 he was raised to the metropolitan chair of Reims.[466] In his former episcopal city the oppressor triumphed undisturbed; but the day of retribution had already dawned.

[458] “Concilium iniit cum parochianis et heroibus terræ.”
_Ibid._ See Mr. Freeman’s note, _Norm. Conq._, vol. iii. p.
194, note 3.

[459] Chron. Kemperleg. a. 1008 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.
p. 294). For the real date see above, p. 159, note 4{343}.

[460] See below, p. 211.

[461] The author of the _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 31
(Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p. 305), calls her “nobilissimam
fœminam” and “uxorem fortissimam.”

[462] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above.

[463] Concil. Rem. in Labbe, _Concilia_ (ed. Cossart), vol.
xix. col. 742.

[464] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1050 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 398).

[465] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ (as above, pp. 305, 306).

[466] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 31 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
p. 306).

The tide of fortune which had borne Geoffrey Martel on from victory to victory spent its last wave in carrying him to the brow of the Cenomannian hill. The acquisition of Le Mans was the last outward mark of his success; the height of his real security had been passed three years before. The turning-point of Geoffrey’s life was the year 1044. The settlement of Poitou, the winning of Tours, the capture of Bishop Gervase, all followed close upon each other; and for the next four years the count of Anjou was beyond all question the second power in the kingdom. No one save the duke of Normandy could claim to stand on a level with the lord of the Angevin march, of Touraine and Saintonge, the step-father and guardian of the boy-duke of Aquitaine, the virtual master of Maine. It was with the duke of Normandy that Geoffrey’s last conquest now brought him into collision. His head had been turned by his easy and rapid successes; in 1048, on his return from an expedition to Apulia in company with his wife’s son-in-law the Emperor,[467] he set himself up against King Henry with a boastful insolence which threatened to disturb the peace of the whole realm.[468] Five years earlier, Henry had profited by the feud between Anjou and Blois to win Geoffrey’s help in putting down the rebellion of Theobald; now he profited by the jealousy which the state of Cenomannian affairs was just beginning to create between Anjou and Normandy to win the help of the Norman Duke William in putting down the rebellion of Geoffrey. The king’s own operations against Anjou seem to have extended no further than a successful siege of the castle of Moulinières;[469] after this his conduct towards William seems to have been copied from that of his parents towards Fulk the Black three and twenty years before. William, like Fulk, was left to fight the royal battles single-handed; and to William, as to Fulk, the task was welcome, for the battle was in truth less the king’s than his own. Geoffrey Martel, in the pride of his heart, had openly proclaimed his ambition to crown all his previous triumphs by an encounter with the only warrior whom he deigned to regard as a foeman worthy of his steel,[470] and had diligently used all the opportunities for provoking a quarrel with the Norman which the dependent position of Maine furnished but too readily. Either by force or guile, or that judicious mixture of both in which the Angevin house excelled, he had managed to get into his own hands the two keys of Normandy’s southern frontier, the castles of Alençon and Domfront, which guarded the valleys of the Sarthe and the Mayenne;[471] and thence, across the debateable lands of Bellême, he was now carrying his raids into undisputed Norman territory.[472]

[467] See _Art de vérifier les dates_, vol. xiii. p. 54.

[468] Henry was “contumeliosis Gaufredi Martelli verbis
irritatus.” Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
p. 180. “Vexavit idem [sc. Gaufredus] Franciam universam regi
rebellans.” _Ib._ p. 182.

[469] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
180. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 230 (Hardy, p. 394).

[470] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 181.

[471] _Ib._ p. 182. Wace, _Roman de Rou_, vv. 9380–9383
(Pluquet, vol. ii. p. 47).

[472] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
Scriptt._, p. 276). Cf. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c.
231 (Hardy, p. 396). These two writers ignore the king’s share
in the quarrel, and make it arise solely from Geoffrey’s raids
upon Normandy (“Brachium levabat in nos quo non leviter sese
vulnerabat,” remarks W. Poitiers, as above). The _Gesta Cons._
(Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 131) reverse the whole situation and
assert that William attacked the count of Maine, whereupon
Geoffrey, as the latter’s “auxiliator et tutor,” took up the
quarrel, and did William a great deal of damage! Fulk Rechin
(Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 378) wisely limits himself to the
statement that his uncle “had a war with William, duke of the
Normans.”

In the autumn of 1048 William set out to dislodge the intruder from Domfront. It was no light undertaking. The ruined keep which still stands, a splendid fragment, on the top of a steep wall-like pile of grey rock, the last spur of a ridge of hills sweeping round from the east, with the town and the dark woods at its back and the little stream of Varenne winding close round its foot, may tell something of what the castle was when its walls stood foursquare, fresh from the builder’s hand, and manned by the fierce moss-troopers of Bellême, reinforced by a band of picked soldiers from Anjou.[473] The rock itself was an impregnable fortress of nature’s own making. To horsemen it was totally inaccessible; foot-soldiers could only scale it by two narrow and difficult paths. Assault was hopeless; William’s only chance lay in a blockade, and even this was an enterprise of danger as well as difficulty, for Domfront stood in the heart of a dense woodland amid which the Normans were continually exposed to the ambushes and surprises of the foe. To William however the forest was simply a hunting-ground through which he rode day after day, with hawk on wrist, in scornful defiance of its hidden perils, while the siege was pressed closer and closer all through the winter’s snows, till at last the garrison were driven to call upon Geoffrey Martel for relief.[474] What followed reads like an anticipation of the story of Prestonpans as told in Jacobite song. If we may trust the Norman tale, Geoffrey not only answered the call, but sent his trumpeter with a formal challenge to the young duke of the Normans to meet him on the morrow at break of day beneath the walls of Domfront. But when the sun rose on that morrow, Geoffrey and all his host were gone.[475] Duke William’s chaplain, who tells the tale, could see but one obvious explanation of their departure; and it is impossible to contradict him, for the whole campaign of 1048 is a blank in the pages of the Angevin chroniclers. The Hammer of Anjou stands charged with having challenged Duke William at eventide and run away from him before sunrise, and no Angevin voice seems ever to have been lifted to deny or palliate the charge. He had scarcely turned his back when Alençon fell; and its fall was quickly followed by that of Domfront. William carried away his engines of war to set them up again on undisputed Cenomannian ground, at Ambrières on the Mayenne: still Geoffrey made no movement; William laid the foundations of a castle on the river-bank at Ambrières, and leaving it securely guarded marched home unmolested to Rouen.[476]

[473] Will. Poitiers (as above), p. 182.

[474] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
182. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396).

[475] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
183. Cf. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, pp.
396, 397).

[476] Will. Poitiers, as above. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18
(Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 276). Wace, _Roman de
Rou_, vv. 9430–9635 (Pluquet, vol. ii. pp. 49–58).

So began the most momentous feud ever waged by the counts of Anjou. After the first burst of the storm came a lull of nearly seven years, one of which was marked, as we have seen, by Geoffrey’s final acquisition of Le Mans; but his power had sustained a shock from which it never wholly recovered. In the struggles with Normandy which fill the latter years of Henry I. of France, the king and the count of Anjou play an almost equally ignoble part. Henry, who had once courted the friendship of William to ward off the blows of the Angevin Hammer, no sooner perceived which was really the mightier of the two princes than he completely reversed his policy, gave an almost open support to the treasons in William’s duchy, and at length, in 1054, when these indirect attacks had failed, summoned all the princes of his realm to join him in a great expedition for the ruin of the duke of Normandy. They flocked to the muster at Mantes from all quarters save one; strangely enough, the count of Anjou was missing.[477] Only a few months ago the terror which clung around Martel’s name and the number of troops at his command had sufficed to make his stepson William of Aquitaine disband an army with which he was preparing to encounter him, and sue for peace at his mere approach;[478] yet it seems that not even with all the forces of king and kingdom at his side would Geoffrey risk an encounter with the man whom he had challenged and fled from at Domfront.

[477] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 24 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
Scriptt._, p. 281) says he was there; but see Mr. Freeman’s
remarks, _Norm. Conq._, vol. iii., p. 144.

[478] Charter of William of Passavant, dated Montilliers,
1053, in _Archives d’Anjou_ (Marchegay), vol. i. p. 271. Besly
(_Comtes de Poitou, preuves_, p. 327) printed it with the date
1043, and it is apparently on this that the _Art de vérifier
les dates_ founds a war between Geoffrey and Peter-William in
that year--an almost impossible thing.

By thus deserting the king at a moment when Henry had every reason to count upon his support, Geoffrey escaped all part in the rout of Mortemer; but the consequence was that when peace was made next year between the king and the duke, one of its clauses authorized William to make any conquests he could at the expense of the count of Anjou.[479] William at once sent warning to Geoffrey to expect him and all his forces at Ambrières within forty days. South of Ambrières, lower down in the valley of the Mayenne, stands the town which bears the same name as the river; its lord, Geoffrey, was the chief man of the district. He went in haste to his namesake and overlord and bitterly complained to him that if these Normans were left unhindered to work their will at Ambrières, the whole land would be at their mercy. “Cast me off as a vile and unworthy lord,” was Martel’s reply, “if thou seest me tamely suffer that which thou fearest!” But the boast was as vain as the challenge before Domfront. William completed without hindrance his fortifications at Ambrières; as soon as his back was turned Geoffrey laid siege to the place, in company with the duke of Aquitaine and Odo, uncle and guardian of the young duke of Britanny; but the mere rumour of William’s approach sufficed to make all three withdraw their troops “with wonderful speed, not to say in trembling flight.” Geoffrey of Mayenne, made prisoner and left to bear alone the whole weight of William’s wrath, took the count of Anjou at his word, and casting off the “vile and unworthy lord” whose desertion had brought him to this strait, owned himself the “man” of the Norman duke.[480]

[479] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
187. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 233 (Hardy, p. 399).

[480] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp.
187, 188.

Two castles in the heart of Maine thus acknowledged William for their lord. Three years passed away without further advance from either side; Geoffrey’s energies were frittered away in minor disputes which brought him neither gain nor honour. The old quarrel about Nantes woke up once more and was once more settled in 1057 under circumstances very discreditable to the count of Anjou. Duke Alan of Britanny died in 1040, leaving as his heir a boy three months old. The child was at once snatched from the care of his mother--Bertha of Blois--by his uncle Odo, who set himself up as duke of Britanny in his stead.[481] The duchy split up into factions, and for sixteen years all was confusion, aggravated, there can be little doubt, by the meddlesomeness of Geoffrey of Anjou, who seems to have taken the opportunity thus offered him for picking a quarrel with count Hoel of Nantes.[482] In 1056 or 1057, however, a party among the Breton nobles succeeded in freeing the young Conan, by whom Odo was shortly afterwards made prisoner in his turn.[483] On this Geoffrey, it seems, following the traditional policy of the Angevin house in Britanny, made alliance with his late enemy the count of Nantes; and Hoel, on some occasion which is not explained, actually ventured to intrust his capital to Geoffrey’s keeping, whereupon Geoffrey at once laid a plot for taking possession of it altogether. His treachery however met the reward which it deserved; he held Nantes for barely forty days, and then lost it for ever.[484] Troubles were springing up too in another quarter. Geoffrey’s marriage with the widowed countess of Poitou had failed to bring him the advantages for which he doubtless hoped when he carried it through in defiance of public opinion and his father’s will. He had been unable to keep any hold over his stepsons. Guy-Geoffrey fought and bargained with the rival claimant of Gascony till he had made himself sole master of the county: Peter-William, though he bears the surname of “the Bold,” seems to have kept his land in peace, for his reign is a blank in which the only break is caused by his quarrels with Anjou. The first of these, in 1053, came as we have seen to no practical consequence, and two years later William is found by Geoffrey’s side at Ambrières. But the tie between them was broken; Geoffrey and Agnes were no longer husband and wife,[485] and Geoffrey was married to Grecia of Montreuil. There are sufficient indications of Geoffrey’s private character to warrant the assumption that the blame of this divorce rested chiefly upon his shoulders,[486] and it may be that Peter-William acted as the avenger of his mother’s wrongs. The quarrel, whatever may have been its grounds, broke out afresh in the spring or early summer of 1058, when the duke of Aquitaine blockaded Geoffrey himself within the walls of Saumur. But before the end of August a sudden sickness drove William of Aquitaine home to Poitiers to die,[487] and set the Angevin count free for one last struggle with William of Normandy.

[481] Chron. Brioc. ad ann. (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_,
vol. i. col. 35).

[482] Fulk Rechin mentions among his uncle’s wars one “cum
Hoello comite Nannetensi.” Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 378.

[483] Chron. S. Michael. a. 1056 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
xi. p. 29). Chron. Kemperleg. a. 1057 (_ib._ p. 371).

[484] Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. a. 1057 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 167, 399). The Chron. Britann. in Morice (_Hist.
Bret., preuves_, vol. i. col. 101) records this affair under
the year 1040; but on that chronicle’s own showing Hoel was not
count of Nantes till 1051, while the Chron. Brioc. (_ib._ col.
36) places his succession in 1054.

[485] The last charter signed by Agnes as countess of Anjou is
dated 1050 (Mabille, Introd. _Comtes_, p. lxxxiii). From 1053
onwards she reappears at the court of her elder son--generally
by the title of “mater comitum”--witnessing his charters,
founding churches in Poitou, and in short holding her old place
as duchess of Aquitaine, while her place as countess of Anjou
is taken by Grecia, widow of Berlay of Montreuil, and mother
of Eustachia, the wife of Agnes’s stepson William the Fat. See
_Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 293, and
Besly, _Comtes de Poitou_, p. 89.

[486] See a charter of our Lady of Charity (Ronceray) quoted in
note to _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ as above.

[487] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1058 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 400).

King Henry was now gathering up his strength for another invasion of the Norman duchy. This time Geoffrey did not fail him. Both had discovered, too late, who was really their most dangerous rival, and all old grudges between them were forgotten in the common instinct of vengeance upon the common foe. Early in 1058 Henry came to visit the count at Angers;[488] and the plan of the coming campaign was no doubt arranged during the time which they then spent together. It was to be simply a vast plundering-raid; neither king nor count had now any ambition to meet the duke in open fight. In August they set forth--Geoffrey, full of zeal, at the head of all the troops which his four counties could muster. The French and Angevin host went burning and plundering through the Hiesmois and the Bessin, the central districts of Normandy, as far as Caen. Half of the confederates’ scheme was accomplished; but as they crossed the Dive at the ford of Varaville they were overtaken at once by the inflowing tide and by the duke himself; the two leaders, who had been the first to cross, could only look helplessly on at the total destruction of their host, and make their escape from Norman ground as fast as their horses would carry them.[489] The wars of Henry and Geoffrey were over. The king died in the summer of 1060; in November he was followed by the count of Anjou. A late-awakened conscience moved Geoffrey to meet his end in the abbey of S. Nicolas which had been founded by his father and completed under his own care. One night he was borne across the river and received the monastic habit; next morning at the hour of prime he died.[490]

[488] Henry was at Angers on March 1, 1058; charter in _Epitome
S. Nicolai_, p. 9, referred to by Mabille, Introd. _Comtes_,
pp. lxxxiii, lxxxiv. The Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. place
this visit in 1057 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 167, 399).

[489] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
188. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 28 (_ib._ p. 283). Wace, _Roman
de Rou_, vv. 10271–10430 (Pluquet, vol. ii. pp. 87–94).

[490] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 379, gives the year
and the day, November 14, 1060. The Chronn. Vindoc. and S.
Maxent. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 167, 402) agree with him;
the Chron. S. Albin. (_ib._ p. 25) gives the same day, but a
year later; the Chron. S. Serg. (_ib._ p. 137) dates the event
in the right year, 1060, but places it on November 13 instead
of 14; the Chron. S. Flor. Salm. (_ib._ p. 189) says nothing
of Geoffrey’s death, but places both his assumption of the
monastic habit and King Henry’s death a year too early, in 1059.

With him expired the male line of Fulk the Red. But there was no lack of heirs by the spindle-side. Geoffrey’s eldest nephew was his half-sister Adela’s son, Fulk “the Gosling,” to whom after long wrangling he had been compelled to restore the county of Vendôme.[491] He was bound by closer ties to the two sons of his own sister Hermengard, daughter of Fulk Nerra and Hildegard, and wife of Geoffrey count of the Gâtinais, a little district around Châteaulandon near Orléans.[492] Her younger son, Fulk, was but seventeen years old when at Whitsuntide 1060 he was knighted by Geoffrey Martel, invested with the government of Saintonge, and sent to put down a revolt among its people.[493] The elder, who bore his uncle’s name, was chosen by him for his heir.[494]

[491] _Origo Com. Vindoc._, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
xi., p. 31. Vendôme seems however to have counted thenceforth
as a dependency of Anjou--and, for the most part, a loyal and
useful one.

[492] See note A at end of chapter.

[493] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 379. The revolt was
headed by one “Petrus Didonensis.”

[494] See note B at end of chapter.

The dominion which Geoffrey the Hammer thus bequeathed to Geoffrey the Bearded was no compact, firmly-knit whole; it was a bundle of four separate states, held on different tenures, and two of them burthened with a legacy of unsettled feuds. The real character of their union shewed itself as soon as Martel was gone. What had held them together was simply the terror of his name, and the dissolution, already threatening before his death, set in so rapidly that in less than three years afterwards two out of his four counties were lost to his successor. It was in fact only the dominions of Fulk the Black--Anjou and Touraine--that were thoroughly loyal to his son. Geoffrey’s last conquest, Maine, was only waiting till death should loose the iron grasp that choked her to recall her ancient line. His earliest conquest, Saintonge, lying further from the control of the central power, was already drifting back to its natural Aquitanian master. Young Count Fulk was still at his uncle’s death-bed when Saintes was surprised and captured by the duke of Aquitaine,--Guy-Geoffrey of Gascony, who had succeeded his twin-brother by the title of William VII. William seems to have justified his aggression on the plea that by the terms of the cession of 1036 Martel had no right to leave Saintonge to collateral heirs, and that on his death without children it ought to revert to the duke.[495] The city of Saintes itself however had been Angevin ever since Fulk Nerra’s days, and a strong party of citizens devoted to Anjou besought Geoffrey’s successor to come and deliver them. While the two brothers prepared to march into Poitou, William gathered an immense force to the siege of Chef-Boutonne, a castle on a rocky height above the river Boutonne, on the borders of Poitou and Saintonge. Thence, at the Angevins’ approach, he descended to meet them in the plain, on S. Benedict’s day, March 21, 1061. The duke’s army, including as it did the whole forces of Gascony and Aquitaine, must have far outnumbered that of the brother-counts; but there was treason in the southern ranks; the standard-bearers were the first to flee, and their flight caused the rout of the whole ducal host.[496] Saintes threw open its gates to the Angevin victor;[497] but its loss was only delayed. Next year the duke of Aquitaine blockaded the city till sword and famine compelled the garrison to surrender;[498] and from that moment Saintonge was lost to the count of Anjou.

[495] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 126. See note C
at end of chapter.

[496] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1061 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 402).
_Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 126–130. See note C at
end of chapter.

[497] _Gesta Cons._ (as above), p. 130.

[498] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1062 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 403).

Meanwhile a change fraught with far graver consequences had undone Geoffrey Martel’s work in the north. The conqueror of Le Mans was scarcely in his grave when Maine flung off the yoke and called upon the son of her late count Hugh to come home and enjoy his own again. It was however but a shadowy coronet that she could offer now; her independence had received a fatal shock; and, to increase the difficulty of his position, Herbert II. was still a mere boy, without a friend to guide and protect him except his mother, Bertha of Blois. Bertha saw at once that his only chance of saving his father’s heritage from the shame of subjection to Anjou was to throw himself on the honour of the duke of Normandy; to William therefore, as overlord, Herbert commended himself and his county, on the terms of the old grant made to Hrolf by King Rudolf.[499] The commendation was accompanied by an agreement that Herbert should in due time marry one of William’s daughters; but there seems to have been a foreboding that the boy-count’s life was not to be a long one, for it was further provided that if he died without children Maine should revert in full property to William;[500] and a marriage was also arranged between William’s eldest son Robert and Herbert’s sister Margaret, whereby in the next generation the rights of the “man” and his lord, of the house of Hrolf and the house of Herbert Wake-Dog, might be united.[501]

[499] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 487).
Will. Poitiers (_ibid._), p. 189.

[500] Will. Poitiers, as above.

[501] Ord. Vit. as above.

In 1064 Herbert died, leaving neither child nor wife. By the treaty which had seemed so admirably planned to meet all possible contingencies, his county was now to revert to William; but there was more than one difficulty to be met before he could take possession of it. The first was a sudden revival of the Angevin claim. The indifference with which Geoffrey the Bearded seems to have viewed the transactions between Herbert and William may perhaps have been due to the pressure of the war in Saintonge. Far more puzzling than his tardiness in asserting his rights to the overlordship of Maine is the readiness with which, when he did assert them, they seem to have been admitted by William. Geoffrey did not indeed aspire to the actual possession of the county which his uncle had enjoyed; all that he claimed was its overlordship; and William, it seems, acknowledged his claim by permitting the little Robert to do him homage at Alençon and to receive from him a formal grant of Margaret’s hand together with the whole honour of Maine.[502] Geoffrey’s action is easily accounted for. His only reasonable course was to make a compromise with Normandy: the wonder is that he was allowed to make it on such favourable terms. If the story is correct, the truth probably is that compromise was at this moment almost as needful to William as to Geoffrey, for any Angevin intermeddling in Maine would have rendered his difficulties there all but insurmountable. One clause of the treaty of 1061--the marriage of Robert and Margaret--was still in the remote future, for the bridegroom cannot have been more than nine years old, and the bride was far away in what a Norman writer vaguely describes as “Teutonic parts.”[503] There being thus no security that the county would ever revert to the descendants of its ancient rulers, Cenomannian loyalty turned its hopes from Hugh’s young daughter to her aunts, the three daughters of Herbert Wake-the-dog, of whom the nearest to the spot was Biota, the wife of Walter of Mantes, sister’s son to Eadward the Confessor.[504] In his wife’s name Walter laid claim to the whole county of Maine, and a considerable part of it at once passed into his hands. The capital was held for him by Hubert of Sᵗᵉ-Suzanne and Geoffrey of Mayenne--that same Geoffrey who, deceived in his Angevin overlord, had yielded a compulsory homage to William, and now, casting off all foreign masters alike, proved the most determined champion of his country’s independence. It was between William and Geoffrey of Mayenne that the contest really lay; and again the duke proved victorious. The conqueror made his “joyous entry” into Le Mans, and sent for the little Margaret to be kept under his own protection until her marriage could take place. But before the wedding-day arrived she lay in her grave at Fécamp; Walter and Biota had already come to a mysterious end; and the one gallant Cenomannian who held out when Walter and all else had yielded--Geoffrey of Mayenne--was at length compelled to surrender.[505] Thenceforth William ruled Maine as its Conqueror, and as long as he lived, save for one brief moment, the homage due to Anjou was heard of no more.

[502] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 532.
The story is somewhat suspicious, because Orderic tells it not
in its proper place, but in a sort of summary of Cenomannian
history, introductory to the war of 1073; so that it looks very
much like a confused anticipation of the treaty of Blanchelande
(see below, p. 223). Still there is nothing intrinsically
impossible in it, and I do not feel justified in rejecting it
without further evidence.

[503] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 190.

[504] On the pedigree of the house of Maine see note D at end
of chapter.

[505] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp.
190, 191. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 27 (_ib._ p. 283). Ord.
Vit. (_ibid._) pp. 487, 488.

The rapid decline of the Angevin power after Geoffrey Martel’s death was due partly to the reaction which often follows upon a sudden rise, partly to the exceptional greatness of the rival with whom the Angevin count had to deal in the person of William the Conqueror. But behind and beyond these two causes lay a third more fatal than either. The house of Anjou was divided against itself. From the hour of Martel’s death, a bitter dispute over his testamentary dispositions had been going on between his nephews. To young Fulk it seemed an unpardonable wrong that he was left without provision--for even Saintonge, as we have seen, had now slipped from his grasp--while his elder brother was in full possession not only of the paternal county of Gâtinais but also of their uncle’s heritage. In later days Fulk went so far as to declare that his uncle had intended to make him sole heir, to the complete exclusion of Geoffrey the Bearded.[506] Fulk is in one aspect a very interesting person. Almost the sole authority which we possess for the history of the early Angevin counts is a fragment written in his name. If it be indeed his work--and criticism has as yet failed to establish any other conclusion--Fulk Rechin is not merely the earliest historian of Anjou; he is well-nigh the first lay historian of the Middle Ages.[507] But in every other point of view he deserves nothing but aversion and contempt. His very surname tells its own tale; in one of the most quarrelsome families known to history, he was pre-eminently distinguished as “the Quarreller.”[508] With the turbulence, the greed, the wilfulness of his race he had also their craft and subtlety, their plausible, insinuating, serpent-like cleverness; but he lacked the boldness of conception, the breadth of view and loftiness of aim, the unflinching perseverance, the ungrudging as well as unscrupulous devotion to a great and distant end, which lifted their subtlety into statesmanship and their cleverness into genius. The same qualities in him degenerated into mere artfulness and low cunning, and were used simply to meet his own personal needs and desires of the moment, not to work out any far-reaching train of policy. He is the only one of the whole line of Angevin counts, till we reach the last and worst of all, whose ruling passion seems to have been not ambition but self-indulgence. Every former count of Anjou, from Fulk the Red to Geoffrey Martel, had toiled and striven, and sinned upon occasion, quite as much for his heirs as for himself: Fulk Rechin toiled and sinned for himself alone. All the thoroughness which they threw into the pursuit of their house’s greatness he threw simply into the pursuit of his own selfish desires. Had Geoffrey the Bearded possessed the highest capacities, he could have done little for his own or his country’s advancement while his brother’s restless intrigues were sowing strife and discontent among the Angevin baronage and turning the whole land into a hotbed of treason.[509] Geoffrey’s cause was however damaged by his own imprudence. An act of violent injustice to the abbey of Marmoutier brought him under the ban of the Church;[510] and from that moment his ruin became certain. From within and without, troubles crowded upon the Marchland and its unhappy count. The comet which scared all Europe in 1066 was the herald of evil days to Anjou as well as to the land with which she was one day to be linked so closely. In that very year a Breton invasion was only checked by the sudden death of Duke Conan just after he had received the surrender of Châteaugonthier.[511] Next spring, on the first Sunday in Lent, Saumur was betrayed by its garrison to Fulk Rechin;[512] on the Wednesday before Easter he was treacherously admitted into Angers, and Geoffrey fell with his capital into the clutches of his brother.[513] The citizens next day rose in a body and slew the chief traitors;[514] the disloyalty of Saumur was punished by the duke of Aquitaine, who profited by the distracted state of Anjou to cross the border and fire the town;[515] while the remonstrances of Pope Alexander II. soon compelled Fulk to release his brother.[516] Next year, however, Geoffrey was again taken prisoner while besieging Fulk’s castle of Brissac.[517] This time the king of France, alarmed no doubt by the revelation of such a temper among his vassals, took up arms for Geoffrey’s restoration, and he was joined by Count Stephen of Blois, the son of Theobald from whom Geoffrey Martel had won Tours. Fulk bought off both his assailants. Stephen, who was now governing the territories of Blois as regent for his aged father, was pacified by receiving Fulk’s homage for Touraine; the king was bribed more unblushingly still, by the cession of what was more undeniably Geoffrey’s lawful property than any part of the Angevin dominions--his paternal heritage of the Gâtinais.[518] It thus became Philip’s interest as well as Fulk’s to keep Geoffrey in prison. For the next twenty-eight years he lay in a dungeon at Chinon,[519] and Fulk ruled Anjou in his stead.

[506] See note B at end of chapter.

[507] “It needs some self-sacrifice to give up the only lay
historian whom we have come across since the days of our own
Æthelweard.” Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, 3d ed. vol. ii. p. 638.

[508] This seems to be the meaning of “Rechin.”

[509] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 138, 139.

[510] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 134–137. See
also _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 664, note.

[511] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 33 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
Scriptt._, p. 286). Chron. Brioc. and Chron. Britann. a. 1066
(Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i. cols. 36, 102).
Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1067 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 12, 137, 168)--which, however, means 1066, as
all these chronicles place both the comet and the conquest in
the same year.

[512] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 403,
404). This was February 25 (_ibid._).

[513] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc.
a. 1067 (_ib._ pp. 12, 25, 137, 138, 168). _Gesta Cons._
(Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 138, 139), antedated by a year.

[514] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin. (as above); S. Serg.
(_ib._ p. 138); Vindoc. (_ib._ pp. 168, 169).

[515] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (_ib._ p. 404).

[516] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 379.

[517] _Ib._ pp. 379, 380. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S.
Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1068 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 12, 26,
138, 169).

[518] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 139. Chron.
Turon. Magn. a. 1067 (Salmon, _Chron. de Touraine_, p. 125)--a
date which must be at least a year too early.

[519] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 723,
818. He makes it thirty years, but the dates are undoubtedly
1068–1096.

That time was a time of shame and misery such as the Marchland had never yet seen. Eight years of civil war had fostered among the barons of Anjou and Touraine a spirit of turbulence and lawlessness which Fulk, whose own intrigues had sown the first seeds of the mischief, was powerless to control. Throughout the whole of his reign, all southern Touraine was kept in confusion by a feud among the landowners at Amboise;[520] and it can hardly have been the only one of its kind under a ruler who, instead of putting it down with a strong hand, only aggravated it by his undignified and violent intermeddling. Nor were his foreign relations better regulated than his home policy. For a moment, in 1073, an opportunity seemed to present itself of regaining the lost Angevin overlordship over Maine. Ten years of Angevin rule had failed to crush out the love of independence among the Cenomannian people; ten years of Norman rule had just as little effect. While their conqueror was busied with the settlement of his later and greater conquest beyond sea, the patriots of Maine seized a favourable moment to throw off the Norman yoke. Hugh of Este or of Liguria, a son of Herbert Wake-the-dog’s eldest daughter Gersendis, was received as count under the guardianship of his mother and Geoffrey of Mayenne. But Geoffrey, who in the hour of adversity ten years before had seemed little short of a hero, yielded to the temptations of power; and his tyranny drove the Cenomannians to fall back upon the traditions of their old municipal freedom and “make a commune”--in other words, to set up a civic commonwealth such as those which were one day to be the glory of the more distant Cenomannian land on the other side of the Alps. At Le Mans, however, the experiment was premature. It failed through the treachery of Geoffrey of Mayenne; and the citizens, in the extremity of despair, called upon Fulk of Anjou to save them at once from Geoffrey and from William. Fulk readily helped them to dislodge Geoffrey from the citadel of Le Mans;[521] but as soon as William appeared in Maine with a great army from over sea Fulk, like his uncle, vanished. Only when the conqueror had “won back the land of Maine”[522] and returned in triumph to Normandy did Fulk venture to attack La Flèche, a castle on the right bank of the Loir, close to the Angevin border, and held by John, husband of Herbert Wake-dog’s youngest daughter Paula.[523] At John’s request William sent a picked band of Norman troops to reinforce the garrison of La Flèche; Fulk at once collected all his forces and persuaded Hoel duke of Britanny to bring a large Breton host to help him in besieging the place. A war begun on such a scale as this might be nominally an attack on John, but it was practically an attack on William. He took it as such, and again calling together his forces, Normans and English, led them down to the relief of La Flèche. Instead, however, of marching straight to the spot, he crossed the Loir higher up and swept round to the southward through the territories of Anjou, thus putting the river between himself and his enemies. The movement naturally drew Fulk back across the river to defend his own land against the Norman invader.[524] The two armies drew up facing each other on a wide moor or heath stretching along the left bank of the Loir between La Flèche and Le Lude, and overgrown with white reindeer-moss, whence it took the name of Blanchelande. No battle however took place; some clergy who were happily at hand stepped in as mediators, and after a long negotiation peace was arranged. The count of Anjou again granted the investiture of Maine to Robert of Normandy, and, like his predecessor, received the young man’s homage to himself as overlord.[525] Like the treaty of Alençon, the treaty of Blanchelande was a mere formal compromise; William kept it a dead letter by steadily refusing to make over Maine to his son, and holding it as before by the right of his own good sword. A few years later Fulk succeeded in accomplishing his vengeance upon John of La Flèche by taking and burning his castle;[526] but the expedition seems to have been a mere border-raid, and so long as William lived neither native patriotism nor Angevin meddlesomeness ventured again to question his supremacy over Maine.