Chapter IV: Anjou and Normandy (2)

[520] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 175 _et
seq._

[521] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 33 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p.
308).

[522] Eng. Chron. a. 1074.

[523] See note D at end of chapter.

[524] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 533. See
note E at end of chapter.

[525] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 533.

[526] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1081 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 26).
See note E at end of chapter.

But on his death in 1087 the advantage really given to Anjou by the treaties of Alençon and Blanchelande at last became apparent. From the moment when Robert came into actual possession of the fief with which he had been twice invested by an Angevin count, the Angevin overlordship could no longer be denied or evaded. The action of the Cenomannians forced their new ruler to throw himself upon Fulk’s support. Their unquenchable love of freedom caught at the first ray of hope offered them by Robert’s difficulties in his Norman duchy and quarrels with his brother the king of England, and their attitude grew so alarming that in 1089 Robert, lying sick at Rouen, sent for the count of Anjou and in a personal interview besought him to use his influence in preventing their threatened revolt. Fulk consented, on condition that, as the price of his good offices, Robert should obtain for him the hand of a beautiful Norman lady, Bertrada of Montfort.[527] Fulk’s domestic life was as shameless as his public career. He had already one wife dead and two living; Hermengard of Bourbon, whom he had married in 1070[528] and who was the mother of his heir,[529] had been abandoned in 1075 without even the formality of a divorce for Arengard of Châtel-Aillon;[530] and Arengard was now set aside in her turn to make way for Bertrada.[531] These scandals had already brought Fulk under a Papal sentence of excommunication;[532] he met with a further punishment at the hands of his new bride. Bertrada used him simply as a stepping-stone to higher advancement; on Whitsun-Eve 1093 she eloped with King Philip of France.[533]

[527] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 681.

[528] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1070.

[529] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 140.

[530] According to a charter in Marchegay, _Documents inédits
sur l’Anjou_, p. 96, Fulk married Arengard on Saturday the
feast of S. Agnes (January 21) 1075--_i.e._ what we call 1076,
as the year was usually reckoned in Gaul from Easter to Easter;
see editor’s note 4, as above. The _Art de vérifier les dates_,
however (vol. xiii. p. 62), refers to a document in Dom Huyne’s
collection where the marriage is dated 1087.

[531] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 681,
seems to date Bertrada’s marriage about 1089. The Chron. Turon.
Magn. puts it in 1091 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, vol. i. p.
128); but a charter in Marchegay, _Archives d’Anjou_, vol. i.
p. 365, shows that it had already taken place in April 1090.

[532] Gregor. VII. Epp., l. ix. ep. 22. Fulk’s violence to
the archbishop of Tours had also something to do with his
excommunication; see _ib._ ep. 23; Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1081
(Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, vol. i. p. 126), and _Narratio
Controversiæ_ in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 459. So
too had his imprisonment of his brother; _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._
as above, p. 664, note.

[533] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1093 (as above, p. 128).

By that time Maine was again in revolt. The leader of the rising was young Elias of La Flèche, a son of John and Paula; but his place was soon taken by the veteran Geoffrey of Mayenne, whose treasons seem to have been forgiven and forgotten, and who now once more installed Hugh of Este as count at Le Mans. Hugh proved however utterly unfit for his honourable but dangerous position, and gladly sold his claims to his cousin Elias.[534] For nearly six years the Cenomannians were free to rejoice in a ruler of their own blood and their own spirit. We must go to the historian of his enemies if we would hear his praises sung;[535] his own people had no need to praise him in words; for them he was simply the incarnation of Cenomannian freedom; his bright, warm-hearted, impulsive nature spoke for itself. The strength as well as the charm of his character lay in its perfect sincerity; its faults were as undisguised as its virtues. In the gloomy tale of public wrong and private vice which makes up the history of the time--the time of Fulk Rechin, Philip I. and William Rufus--the only figure which shines out bright against the darkness, except the figure of S. Anselm himself, is that of Count Elias of Maine.

[534] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 34 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._),
pp. 310–312. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp.
683, 684.

[535] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 768, 769.

During these years Anjou interfered with him as little as Normandy; Fulk was overwhelmed with domestic and ecclesiastical troubles. His excommunication was at length removed in 1094;[536] two years later Pope Urban II., on his way to preach the Crusade in western Gaul, was received by the count at Angers and consecrated the abbey church of S. Nicolas, now at length brought to completion.[537] From Angers Urban passed to Tours and Le Mans; and among the many hearts stirred by his call to take the cross there can have been few more earnest than that of Elias of Maine. Robert of Normandy was already gone, leaving his dominions pledged to his brother the king of England. Elias prepared to follow him; but when his request to William Rufus for the protection due to a crusader’s lands during his absence was met by a declaration of the Red King’s resolve to regain all the territories which had been held by his father, the count of Maine saw that he must fight out his crusade not in Holy Land but at home. The struggle had scarcely begun when he was taken prisoner by Robert of Bellême, and sent in chains to the king at Rouen.[538] The people of Maine, whose political existence seemed bound up in their count, were utterly crushed by his loss. But there was another enemy to be faced. Aremburg, the only child of Elias, was betrothed to Fulk Rechin’s eldest son, Geoffrey,[539] whose youthful valour had won him the surname of “Martel the Second;” Geoffrey hurried to save the heritage of his bride, and Fulk was no less eager to seize the opportunity of asserting once more his rights to the overlordship of Maine.[540] The Cenomannians gladly welcomed the only help that was offered them; and while Geoffrey reinforced the garrison of Le Mans, Fulk tried to effect a diversion on the border.[541] But meanwhile Elias had guessed his design, and frustrated it by making terms with the Norman.[542] If Maine must needs bow to a foreign yoke, even William Rufus was at least a better master than Fulk Rechin. To William, therefore, Elias surrendered his county as the price of his own release;[543] and to William he offered his services with the trustful frankness of a heart to which malice was unknown. The offer was refused. Then, from its very ashes, the spirit of Cenomannian freedom rose up once more, and for the second time Elias hurled his defiance at the Red King. An Angevin count in William’s place would probably have flung the bold speaker straight back into the dungeon whence he had come; the haughty chivalry of the Norman only bade him begone and do his worst.[544] In the spring Elias fought his way back to Le Mans, where the people welcomed him with clamorous delight; William’s unexpected approach, however, soon compelled him to withdraw;[545] and Maine had to wait two more years for her deliverance. It came with the news of the Red King’s death in August 1100. Robert of Normandy was too indolent, Henry of England too wise, to answer the appeal for succour made to each in turn by the Norman garrison of Le Mans; Elias received their submission and sent them home in peace;[546] and thenceforth the foreign oppressor trod the soil of Maine no more. When the final struggle for Normandy broke out between Robert and Henry, Elias, with characteristic good sense, commended himself to the one overlord whom he saw to be worthy of his homage.[547] Henry was wise enough loyally to accept the service and the friendship which Rufus had scorned; and he proved its value on the field of Tinchebray, where Elias and his Cenomannians decided the battle in his favour, and thus made him master of Normandy. On the other hand, the dread of Angevin tyranny had changed into a glad anticipation of peaceful and equal union. The long battle of Cenomannian freedom, so often baffled and so often renewed, was won at last. When next a duke of Normandy disputed the possession of Maine with a count of Anjou, he disputed it not with a rival oppressor but with the husband of its countess, the lawful heir of Elias; and the triumph of Cenomannia received its fitting crown when Henry’s daughter wedded Aremburg’s son in the minster of S. Julian at Le Mans.

[536] Letter of the legate, Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, dated
S. Florence of Saumur, S. John Baptist’s day, 1094; _Gallia
Christiana_, vol. iv., instrum. cols. 10, 11.

[537] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., a. 1095
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 14, 27, 140); Chron. S. Maxent.
a. 1096 (_ib._ p. 411). This last is the right year; see the
itinerary of Pope Urban in Gaul, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
xii. pp. 3 note _m_, and 65 note _d_.

[538] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp.
769–771. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 35 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
p. 313). The exact date of the capture is April 20, 1098;
Chron. S. Albin. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 28).

[539] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 35 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p.
313). _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 142.

[540] “Quia capitalis dominus erat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne,
_Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 772.

[541] _Ibid._ _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above.

[542] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ (as above), p. 314.

[543] _Ibid._ Ord. Vit., as above.

[544] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 773.

[545] _Ib._ pp. 774, 775. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above.

[546] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 784,
785.

[547] _Ib._ p. 822.

The union of Anjou and Maine did not, however, come to pass exactly as it had been first planned; Aremburg became the wife of an Angevin count, but he was not Geoffrey Martel the Second. That marriage, long deferred by reason of the bride’s youth, was frustrated in the end by the death of the bridegroom. His life had been far from an easy one. Fulk, prematurely worn out by a life of vice, had for some years past made over the cares of government to Geoffrey.[548] Father and son agreed as ill as their namesakes in a past generation; but this time the fault was not on the young man’s side. Geoffrey, while spending all his energies in doing his father’s work, saw himself supplanted in that father’s affection by his little half-brother, Bertrada’s child. He found a friend in his unhappy uncle, Geoffrey the Bearded, whose reason had been almost destroyed by half a lifetime of captivity; and a touching story relates how the imprisoned count in a lucid interval expressed his admiration for his nephew’s character, and voluntarily renounced in his favour the rights which he still persisted in maintaining against Fulk.[549] On the strength of this renunciation Geoffrey Martel, backed by Pope Urban, at length extorted his father’s consent to the liberation of the captive. It was, however, too late to be of much avail; reason and health were both alike gone, and all that the victim gained by his nephew’s care was that, when he died shortly after, he at least died a free man.[550] His bequest availed as little to Geoffrey Martel; in 1103, Fulk openly announced his intention of disinheriting his valiant son in favour of Bertrada’s child. A brief struggle, in which Fulk was backed by the duke of Aquitaine and Geoffrey by Elias, ended in Fulk’s abdication. For three years Geoffrey ruled well and prosperously,[551] till in May 1106, as he was besieging a rebellious vassal in the castle of Candé on the Loire, he was struck by a poisoned arrow and died next morning.[552] The bitter regrets of his people, as they laid him to sleep beside his great-uncle in the church of S. Nicolas at Angers,[553] were intensified by a horrible suspicion that his death had been contrived by Bertrada, and that Fulk himself condoned her crime.[554] It is doubtful whether her child, who now had to take his brother’s place, had even grown up among his own people; she had perhaps carried her baby with her, or persuaded the weak count to let her have him and bring him up at court; there, at any rate, he was at the time of Geoffrey’s death. Philip granted him the investiture of Anjou in Geoffrey’s stead, and commissioned Duke William of Aquitaine, who happened to be at court, to escort him safe home to his father. The Poitevin, however, conveyed him away into his own territories, and there put him in prison. Philip’s threats, Bertrada’s persuasions, alike proved unavailing, till the boy’s own father purchased his release by giving up some border-towns to Poitou, and after a year’s captivity young Fulk at last came home.[555] Two years later, on April 14, 1109, he was left sole count of Anjou by the death of Fulk Rechin.[556]

[548] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
p. 130).

[549] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 141.

[550] _Ibid._ Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, _Chron.
Touraine_, p. 128). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
Scriptt._), p. 723.

[551] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 818. Chron. S. Albin. a.
1103–1105 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 30).

[552] Ord. Vit. as above. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S.
Serg., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm., S. Maxent., a. 1106 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 15, 16, 30, 142, 171, 190, 423). The three
first-named chronicles give the day as May 19, the Chron. S.
Maxent. makes it May 26, and according to M. Marchegay’s note
(as above, p. 171) the obituary of S. Maurice makes it June
1. This, however, might be owing to an accidental omission of
the “xiv.” (or “vii.”) before _Kal. Junii_. The _Gesta Cons._
(Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 142, places the death a year later.

[553] Ord. Vit. and _Gesta Cons._ as above.

[554] _Gesta Cons._ as above. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1108
(Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, p. 130). See also a quotation from
Le Pelletier’s _Epitome S. Nicolai_, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
vol. xii. p. 486, note.

[555] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 818.
Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1, has a different version, which does
not look authentic.

[556] Chron. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm.
ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 16, 31, 172, 190). The
Chronn. S. Serg. and S. Maxent. (_ib._ pp. 143, 424), date it
1108.

“Ill he began; worse he lived; worst of all he ended.”[557] Such is the verdict of a later Angevin historian upon the man whom we should have been glad to respect as the father of Angevin history. Fulk Rechin’s utter worthlessness had well-nigh undone the work of Geoffrey Martel and Fulk the Black; amid the wreck of the Angevin power in his hands, the only result of their labours which seemed still to remain was the mere territorial advantage involved in the possession of Touraine. Politically, Anjou had sunk far below the position which she had held in the Black Count’s earliest days; she had not merely ceased to be a match for the greatest princes of the realm, she had ceased to be a power in the realm at all. The title of count of Anjou, for nearly a hundred years a very synonym of energy and progress, had become identified with weakness and disgrace. The black cloud of ruin seemed to be settling down over the marchland, only waiting its appointed time to burst and pour upon her its torrent of destruction. It proved to be only the dark hour before the dawn of the brightest day that Anjou had seen since her great Count Fulk was laid in his grave at Beaulieu--perhaps even since her good Count Fulk was laid in his grave at Tours.

[557] _Hist. Abbr. Com. Andeg._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 360.

Nearly nine months before the death of Fulk Rechin, Louis VI. had succeeded his father Philip as king of France.[558] His accession marks an era in the growth of the French monarchy. It is a turning-point in the struggle of the feudataries with the Crown, or rather with each other for control over the Crown, which lay at the root of the rivalry between Anjou and Blois, and which makes up almost the whole history of the first three generations of the kingly house founded by Hugh Capet. The royal authority was a mere name; but that name was still the centre round which the whole complicated system of French feudalism revolved; it was the one point of cohesion among the various and ill-assorted members which made up the realm of France, in the wider sense which that word was now beginning to bear. The duke or count of almost any one of the great fiefs--Normandy, Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine--was far more really powerful and independent than the king, who was nominally the lord paramount of them all, but practically the tool of each in turn. In this seemingly ignominious position of the Crown there was, however, an element of hidden strength which in the end enabled it to swallow up and outlive all its rivals. The end was as yet far distant; but the first step towards it was taken when Louis the Fat was crowned at Reims in August 1109. At the age of thirty-two he ascended the throne with a fixed determination to secure such an absolute authority within the immediate domains of the Crown as should enable him to become the master instead of the servant of his feudataries.

[558] _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.),
p. 7.

This policy led almost of necessity to a conflict with King Henry of England, who had now become master of Normandy by his victory at Tinchebray. Louis appears never to have received Henry’s homage for the duchy;[559] and it may have been to avoid the necessity of performing this act of subordination that Henry, as it seems, refrained from formally assuming the ducal title, at least so long as his captive brother lived.[560] Whatever may have been his motive, the fact aptly typifies his political position. Alike in French and English eyes, he was a king of England ruling Normandy as a dependency of the English Crown. Such a personage was far more obnoxious to Louis and his projects than a mere duke of the Normans, or even a duke of the Normans ruling England as a dependency of the Norman duchy. On the other hand, Henry, in the new position given him by his conquest, had every reason to look with jealousy and suspicion upon the growing power of France. The uncertain relations between the two kings therefore soon took an openly hostile turn. In 1110 a quarrel arose between them concerning the ownership of the great border-fortress of Gisors. They met near the spot, each at the head of an army; but they parted again after wasting a day in fruitless recriminations and empty challenges.[561] Their jealousy was quickened by a dispute, also connected with the possession of a castle, between Louis and Henry’s nephew Theobald count of Blois.[562] Uncle and nephew made common cause against their common enemy; but the strife had scarcely begun when a further complication destined to be of far weightier consequence, if not to France at least to England, arose out of the position and policy of the young count of Anjou.

[559] See Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. v. p. 193.

[560] Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. v. p. 180 and note 2.

[561] Suger, _Vita Ludov._, c. 15 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
xii. pp. 27, 28).

[562] _Ib._ c. 18 (pp. 35, 36).

The accession of Fulk V., no less than that of Louis VI., began a new era for his country. The two princes were in some respects not unlike each other: each stands out in marked contrast to his predecessor, and in Fulk’s case the contrast is even more striking than in that of Louis, for if little good was to be expected of the son of Philip I., there might well be even less hope of the child of Fulk Rechin and Bertrada. As a ruler and as a man, however, young Fulk turned utterly aside from the evil ways of both his parents.[563] Yet he was an Angevin of the Angevins; physically, he had the ruddy complexion inherited from the first of his race and name;[564] while in his restless, adventurous temper, at once impetuous and wary, daring and discreet, he shows a strong likeness to his great-grandfather Fulk the Black. But the old fiery spirit breaks out in Fulk V. only as if to remind us that it is still there, to shew that the demon-blood of Anjou still flows in his veins, hot as ever indeed, but kept under subjection to higher influences; the sense of right that only woke now and then to torture the conscience of the Black Count seems to be the guiding principle of his great-grandson’s life. The evil influences which must have surrounded his boyhood, whether it had been passed in his father’s house, or, as seems more probable, in the court of Philip and Bertrada, seem, instead of developing the worse tendencies of his nature, only to have brought out the better ones into more active working by sheer force of opposition. Politically, however, there can be no doubt that the peculiar circumstances of his early life led to important results, by reviving and strengthening the old ties between Anjou and the Crown which had somewhat slackened in Fulk Rechin’s days. The most trusted counsellor of the new king, the devoted supporter and not unfrequently the instigator of his schemes of reform or of aggression, was Almeric of Montfort, the brother of Bertrada. She herself, after persecuting Louis by every means in her power so long as his father lived, changed her policy as soon as he mounted the throne and became as useful an ally as she had been a dangerous enemy. Almeric’s influence, won by his own talents, seems to have been almost all-powerful with the king; over the count of Anjou, far younger and utterly inexperienced, natural ties had given a yet more complete ascendency to him and his sister, Fulk’s own mother. Their policy was to pledge Anjou irrevocably to the side of the French crown by forcing it into a quarrel with Henry I.

[563] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 143.

[564] “Vir rufus, sed instar David.” Will. Tyr. l. xiv. c. 1.

The means lay ready to their hands. Aremburg of Maine, once the plighted bride of Geoffrey Martel, was still unwed; Fulk, by his mother’s counsel, sought and won her for his wife.[565] Her marriage crowned the work of Elias. The patriot-count’s mission was fulfilled, his task was done; and in that very summer he passed to his well-earned rest.[566] Fulk, as husband of the heiress, thus became count of Maine, and the immediate consequence was a breach with Henry on the long-vexed question of the overlordship of the county. Whether Elias had or had not recognized any right of overlordship in Fulk Rechin or Geoffrey Martel II. is not clear; he certainly seems to have done homage to Henry,[567] and their mutual relations as lord and vassal were highly honourable to both; but it was hardly to be expected that Fulk, whose predecessors had twice received the homage of Henry’s elder brother for that very county, should yield up without a struggle the rights of the count of Anjou. He refused all submission to Henry, and at once formed a league with the French Crown in active opposition to the lord of England and Normandy.

[565] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 785,
818. _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 143. Will. Tyr.,
l. xiv. c. 1.

[566] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1110 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 31, 143). Eng. Chron. a. 1110. Ord. Vit.
(Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 785, 839.

[567] “Eac thises geares forthferde Elias eorl, the tha Mannie
of tham cynge Heanri geheold, and on cweow.” Eng. Chron. a.
1110. Nobody seems to know what “on cweow” means; Mr. Thorpe
(Eng. Chron., vol. ii. p. 211) suggests that it may stand for
“Angeow.”

The war began in 1111, and the danger was great enough to call Henry himself over sea in August and keep him on the continent for nearly two years. The leading part was taken by the count of Anjou, whose marriage enabled him to add the famous “Cenomannian swords” to the forces of Touraine and the Angevin March.[568] Moreover, treason was, as usual, rife among the Norman barons; and the worst of all the traitors was Robert of Bellême. One after another the lesser offenders were brought to justice; at last, in November 1112, Robert himself fell into the hands of his outraged sovereign, and, to the joy of all men on both sides of the sea, was flung into a lifelong captivity.[569] Then at last Henry felt secure in Normandy; the capture of Robert was followed by the surrender of his fortress of Alençon, and the tide of fortune turned so rapidly that Fulk and Louis were soon compelled to sue for peace. Early in Lent 1113 Fulk and Henry met at Pierre-Pécoulée near Alençon; the count submitted to perform the required homage for Maine, and his infant daughter was betrothed to Henry’s son, the little Ætheling William. In March the treaty was confirmed by the two kings at Gisors; and as the first-fruits of their new alliance there was seen the strange spectacle of a count of Anjou and a count of Blois fighting side by side to help the lord of Normandy in subduing the rebels who still held out in the castle of Bellême.[570]

[568] Eng. Chron. a. 1111, 1112.

[569] Eng. Chron. a. 1112. Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 841, 858.
Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 398 (Hardy, p. 626).

[570] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 841.

Henry’s next step was to exact, first from the barons of Normandy and then from the Great Council of England, a solemn oath of homage and fealty to his son William as his destined successor.[571] This ceremony, not unusual in France, but quite without precedent in England, was doubtless a precaution against the chances of the war which he foresaw must soon be renewed. This time indeed he was himself the aggressor; Louis had made no hostile movement, and Fulk was troubled by a revolt at home, whose exact nature is not clearly ascertained. The universal tendency of feudal vassals to rebel against their lord had probably something to do with it; but there seems also to have been another and a far more interesting element at work. “There arose a grave dissension between Count Fulk the Younger and the burghers of Angers.”[572] In this provokingly brief entry in one of the Angevin chronicles we may perhaps catch a glimpse of that new spirit of civic freedom which was just springing into life in northern Europe, and which made some progress both in France and in England during the reigns of Louis VI. and Henry I. One would gladly know what were the demands of the Angevin burghers, and how they were met by the son-in-law of Elias of Le Mans; but the faint echo of the dispute between count and citizens is drowned in the roar of the more imposing strife which soon broke out anew between the rival kings. Its ostensible cause was now Count Theobald of Blois, whose wrongs were made by his uncle a ground for marching into France, in company with Theobald himself and his brother Stephen, in the spring of 1116. Louis retaliated by a raid upon Normandy; the Norman barons recommenced their old intrigues;[573] and they were soon furnished with an excellent pretext. After the battle of Tinchebray, Duke Robert’s infant son William had been intrusted by his victorious uncle to the care of his half-sister’s husband, Elias of Saint-Saëns. Elias presently began to suspect Henry of evil designs against the child; at once, sacrificing his own possessions to Henry’s wrath, he fled with his charge and led him throughout all the neighbouring lands, seeking to stir up sympathy for the fugitive heir of Normandy, till he found him a shelter at the court of his kinsman Count Baldwin of Flanders.[574] At last the faithful guardian’s zeal was rewarded by seeing the cause of his young brother-in-law taken up by both Baldwin and Louis. In 1117 they leagued themselves together with the avowed object of avenging Duke Robert and reinstating his son in the duchy of Normandy; and their league was at once joined by the count of Anjou.[575]

[571] Eng. Chron. a. 1115. Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p.
69. Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), p. 237.

[572] “Facta est gravis dissensio inter Fulconem comitem
Juniorem et burgenses Andecavenses.” Chron. S. Serg. a. 1116
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 143). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1114
(_ib._ p. 32) has “Guerra burgensium contra comitem”; but M.
Marchegay says in a note that two MSS. read “baronum” for
“burgensium.”

[573] See details in Suger, _Vita Ludov._ c. 21 (_Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 43), and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
Norm. Scriptt._), p. 843.

[574] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 837, 838.

[575] Eng. Chron. a. 1117. Hen. Huntingdon, l. vii. c. 29
(Arnold, p. 239).

The quarrel had now assumed an aspect far more threatening to Henry; but it was not till the middle of the following summer that the war began in earnest. Its first honours were won by the count of Anjou, in the capture of La Motte-Gautier, a fortress on the Cenomannian border.[576] In September the count of Flanders was mortally wounded in a skirmish near Eu;[577] Louis and Fulk had however more useful allies in the Norman baronage, whose chiefs were nearly all either openly or secretly in league with them. Almeric of Montfort, who claimed the county of Evreux, was the life and soul of all their schemes. In October the city of Evreux was betrayed into his hands;[578] and this disaster was followed by another at Alençon. Henry had granted the lands of Robert of Bellême to Theobald of Blois; Theobald, with his uncle’s permission, made them over to his brother Stephen; and Stephen at once began to shew in his small dominions the same incapacity for keeping order which he shewed afterwards on a larger scale in England. His negligence brought matters at Alençon to such a pass that the outraged citizens called in the help of the count of Anjou, admitted him and his troops by night into the town, and joined with him in blockading the castle.[579] Stephen meanwhile had joined his uncle and brother at Séez. On receipt of the evil tidings, the two young counts hurried back to Alençon, made an unsuccessful attempt to revictual the garrison, and then tried to surround the Angevin camp, which had been pitched in a place called “the Park.” A long day’s fighting, in which the tide seems to have been turned at last chiefly by the valour of Fulk himself, ended in an Angevin victory and won him the surrender of Alençon.[580]

[576] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 844. His chronology is all wrong.

[577] _Ib._ p. 843. Suger, _Vita Ludov._, c. 21 (_Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 45). Eng. Chron. a. 1118. Will. Malm.
_Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 403 (Hardy, pp. 630, 631) substitutes
Arques for Eu.

[578] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 843,
846.

[579] _Ib._ p. 847.

[580] The details of this story--in a very apocryphal-looking
shape--are in _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 145–150.
The Angevin victory, however, comes out clearly in Ord. Vit.
(as above).

The following year was for Henry an almost unbroken series of reverses and misfortunes, and in 1119 he was compelled to seek peace with Fulk. Their treaty was ratified in June by the marriage of William the Ætheling and Matilda of Anjou; Fulk made an attempt to end the Cenomannian difficulty by settling Maine upon his daughter as a marriage-portion,[581] and gave up Alençon on condition that Henry should restore it to the dispossessed heir, William Talvas.[582] Henry had now to face only the French king and the traitor barons. With the latter he began at once by firing the town of Evreux.[583] Louis, on receiving these tidings from Almeric of Montfort, assembled his troops at Etampes and marched upon Normandy. In the plain of Brenneville, between Noyon and Andely, he was met by Henry with the flower of his English and Norman forces. Louis, in the insane bravado of chivalry, disdained to get his men into order before beginning the attack, and he thereby lost the day. The first charge, made by eighty French knights under a Norman traitor, William Crispin, broke against the serried ranks of the English fighting on foot around their king; all the eighty were surrounded and made prisoners; and the rest of the French army was put to such headlong flight that, if the Norman tale can be true, out of nine hundred knights only three were found dead on the field. Louis himself, unhorsed in the confusion, escaped alone into a wood where he lost his way, and was finally led back to Andely by a peasant ignorant of his rank.[584] In bitter shame he went home to Paris to seek comfort and counsel of Almeric, who, luckily for both, had had no share in this disastrous expedition. By Almeric’s advice a summons was issued to all bishops, counts, and other persons in authority throughout the realm, bidding them stir up their people, on pain of anathema, to come and help the king. The plan seems to have had much the same result as a calling-out of the “fyrd” in England, and the host which it brought together inflicted terrible ravages upon Normandy. In October Louis sought help in another quarter. Pope Calixtus had come to hold a council at Reims; the ecclesiastical business ended, he had to listen to a string of appeals in all sorts of causes, and the first appellant was the king of France, who came before the Pope in person and set forth a detailed list of complaints against Henry. The archbishop of Rouen rose to defend his sovereign, but the council refused to hear him. Calixtus, however, was on too dangerous terms with Henry of Germany to venture upon anathematizing his father-in-law, Henry of England; and in a personal interview at Gisors, in November, the English king vindicated himself to the Pope’s complete satisfaction. The tide had turned once more. Almeric had been won over by a grant of the coveted honour of Evreux; and his defection from Louis was followed by that of all the other rebel Normans in rapid succession. William the Clito--as Duke Robert’s son is called, to distinguish him from his cousin William the Ætheling--was again driven into exile, with his faithful brother-in-law still at his side; a treaty was arranged between Henry and Louis; all castles were to be restored, all captives freed, and all wrongs forgiven and forgotten.[585]

[581] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 851. Eng. Chron. a. 1119. Suger,
_Vita Ludov._ c. 21 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 45).
Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652).

[582] Ord. Vit. as above.

[583] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 852.

[584] _Ib._ pp. 853–855. See also Eng. Chron. a. 1119, Hen.
Hunt., l. vii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 241), and Suger, _Vita
Ludov._, c. 21 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 45).

[585] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 858,
859, 863–866. Cf. Eng. Chron. a. 1120.

We seem to be reading the story of Fulk Nerra over again as we are told how his great-grandson, as soon as peace seemed assured and he was reconciled to all his neighbours, desired also by penance for his sins to become reconciled to God, and leaving his dominions in charge of his wife and their two little sons, set out on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[586] The “lord of three cities,”[587] however, could not leave his territories to take care of themselves as the Black Count seems to have done; the regency of his boys was merely nominal, for the eldest of them was but seven years old; and though their mother, the daughter of Elias, may well have been a wise and courageous woman, it was no light matter thus to leave her alone with the rival kings on each side of her. To guard against all dangers, therefore, Fulk again formally commended the county of Maine to King Henry as overlord during his own life, and bequeathed it to his son-in-law the Ætheling in case he should not return.[588] Two months before his departure, the cathedral of Le Mans, which had just been rebuilt, was consecrated in his presence and that of his wife. At the close of the ceremony he took up his little son Geoffrey in his arms and placed him on the altar, saying with tears: “O holy Julian, to thee I commend my child and my land, that thou mayest be the defender and protector of both!”[589] The yearning which drew him literally to tread in his great-grandfather’s steps was too strong to be repressed; but he went,[590] it is clear, with anxious and gloomy forebodings; and before he reached his home again those forebodings were fulfilled. The treaty that had promised so well was scattered to the winds on November 25, 1120, by the death of William the Ætheling in the wreck of the White Ship.[591]

[586] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 871.

[587] “Trium urbium dominus.” I think it is Orderic who
somewhere thus expressively designates the lord of Angers and
Le Mans and Tours.

[588] This seems to be the meaning of Will. Malm. _Gesta
Reg._, l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652); “Quin et Ierosolymam
Fulco ire contendens, comitatum commendavit regi suum, si
viveret; futurum profecto generi, si non rediret.” The “county”
in question can only be Maine, of the gift of which to the
Ætheling at his marriage William has just been speaking.

[589] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 35 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p.
318).

[590] In company with Rainald, bishop of Angers, in 1120.
Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 32, 190).

[591] Eng. Chron. a. 1120; Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c.
419 (Hardy, pp. 653, 654); Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 32 (Arnold,
p. 242); Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 288, 289; Ord. Vit.
(Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 868, 869, etc.

In that wreck perished not merely Fulk’s hopes for the settlement of Maine, but Henry’s hopes for the settlement of England and Normandy. Setting aside the father’s personal grief for the loss of his favourite child, the Ætheling’s death was the most terrible political blow that could have fallen upon Henry. All his hopes for the continuance of his work were bound up in the life of his son. The toils and struggles of twenty years would be little more than lost labour unless he could guard against two dangers which had been the bane of both England and Normandy ever since the Conqueror’s death:--a disputed succession to the English throne, and a separation between the insular and the continental dominions of the ducal house. In the person of William the Ætheling both dangers seemed provided against; if Henry lived but a few years more, there was every reason to expect that William, and William alone among the Conqueror’s surviving descendants, would be able to mount the English throne without opposition. On any accepted principle, his only possible competitor would have been his cousin and namesake the Clito. Neither people nor barons would have been likely to think for a moment of setting aside the son of their crowned king and queen--a king born in the land and a queen who represented the ancient blood-royal of England--for a landless, homeless stranger whose sole claim rested on the fact that by strict rule of primogeniture he was the heir male of the Conqueror; and, once master of England, William might fairly be expected to keep his hold upon Normandy as his father had done. The shipwreck of November 1120, however, left Henry suddenly face to face with the almost certain prospect of being succeeded in all his dominions by his brother’s son, his enemy, the rival of his lost boy, the one person of all others whose succession would be most repugnant alike to his feelings and to his policy. As soon as Henry himself was gone, the Clito would have positively no competitor; for of all Henry’s surviving children, the only one who had any legal rights was a daughter. The future of Henry’s policy had hung upon the thread of a single life, and now the silver cord was loosed.

The Ætheling’s child-widow was in England: on that sad night she had crossed with her father-in-law instead of her husband, and thus escaped sharing the latter’s fate. Fulk at once sent to demand his daughter back;[592] but Henry was unwilling to part from her, and kept her constantly with him as if she were his own child, till the little girl herself begged to see her own parents again, and was allowed to return to Angers.[593] Henry seems really to have clung to her as a sort of legacy from his dead son; but, to Fulk’s great indignation, he kept her dowry as well as herself.[594] An embassy sent to England at Christmas 1122--apparently after her return to Anjou--came back without success after a delay of several months and a stormy parting from the king.[595] The most important part of the dowry however was still in Fulk’s own hands. His settlement of Maine upon William and Matilda and their possible posterity was annulled by William’s death; Fulk was once more free to dispose of the county as he would. Regarding all ties with Henry as broken, and urged at once by Almeric of Montfort and Louis of France, he offered it, with the hand of his second daughter Sibyl, to William the Clito.[596]

[592] Eng. Chron. a. 1121.

[593] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 875.

[594] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 655).

[595] Eng. Chron. a. 1123.

[596] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 838, 876. Eng. Chron. a. 1124.
Will. Malm. as above (p. 654).

To the threatening attitude of France and Anjou was added, as a natural consequence, a conspiracy among the Norman barons, headed by the arch-plotter Almeric and the young Count Waleran of Meulan, a son of Henry’s own familiar friend. Their scheme, planned at a meeting held in September at the Croix-Saint-Leuffroy, was discovered by the king; he marched at once upon Waleran’s castle of Pontaudemer, and took it after a six weeks’ siege, during which he worked in the trenches as hard as any young soldier. This success was counterbalanced by the loss of Gisors, which was taken and sacked by Almeric; Henry retaliated by seizing Evreux. Advent and a stormy winter checked the strife; one battle in the spring put an end to it. On March 25, 1124, the rebels were met at Bourgthéroulde by Ralf of Bayeux, who commanded at Evreux for King Henry; despite their superior numbers, they were completely defeated, and Waleran was taken prisoner.[597] His capture was followed by the surrender of his castles; Almeric, who had as usual escaped, again made his peace with Henry; and the Clito’s cause, forsaken by his Norman partizans, was left almost wholly dependent on the support of Anjou.[598] Meanwhile Henry had found an ally in his son-in-law and namesake the Emperor, and in August France was threatened with a German invasion. Louis seized the consecrated banner--the famous Oriflamme--which hung above the high altar in the abbey of S. Denis, and hurried off with it, as Geoffrey Martel had once ridden forth with the standard of S. Martin of Tours, to meet the foe. But the invasion came to an unexpected end. For some reason which is not explained, the Emperor turned suddenly homeward without striking a blow.[599]

[597] Eng. Chron. a. 1124. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
Scriptt._), pp. 876–880. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c.
21 (_ib._ p. 302). The date comes from the Chronicle; the
continuator of Will. Jumièges makes it a day later.

[598] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 880–882.

[599] Suger, _Vita Ludov._, c. 21 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
xii. pp. 49, 50).

The English king found a more useful friend in the Pope than in the Emperor. By dint of threats, promises and bribes, he persuaded the court of Rome to annul the marriage of Sibyl and the Clito on the ground of consanguinity.[600] Of their kinship there is no doubt;[601] but it was in exactly the same degree as the kinship between Henry’s own son and Sibyl’s sister, to whose marriage no objection had ever been raised. The Clito refused to give up his bride, and was thereupon excommunicated by the Pope;[602] Fulk publicly burnt the letter in which the legate insisted upon the dissolution of the marriage, singed the beards of the envoys who carried it, and put them in prison for a fortnight. The consequence was an interdict[603] which compelled him to submit; the new-married couple parted, and William the Clito became a wanderer once more.[604]

[600] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 838.

[601] They were descended, one in the fifth, the other in the
sixth degree, from Richard the Fearless; Ord. Vit. as above,
giving details of the pedigree.

[602] Brief of Calixtus II., August 26 [1124], in D’Achéry,
_Spicilegium_, vol. iii. p. 479.

[603] Brief of Honorius II., April 12 [1125], _ibid._

[604] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 882.

Next Christmas Henry struck his final blow at his nephew’s hopes of the succession. An old tradition which declared that whatsoever disturber of the realm of France was brought face to face with the might of S. Denis would die within a twelvemonth was fulfilled in the person of the Emperor Henry V.[605] His widow, the only surviving child of Henry of England and the “Good Queen Maude,” was summoned back to her father’s court.[606] She came not without regret, for she had dwelt from childhood among her husband’s people, and was held by them in great esteem. The dying Emperor had no child to take his place. He had committed his sceptre to his consort;[607] and some of the princes of Lombardy and Lorraine took this symbolical bequest in such earnest that they actually followed Matilda over sea to demand her back as their sovereign.[608] But King Henry had other plans for his daughter. At the midwinter assembly of 1126–1127 he made the barons and prelates of England swear that in case of his death without lawful son they would acknowledge her as Lady of England and Normandy.[609]

[605] Suger, _Vita Ludov._, c. 21 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
xii. p. 52). Henry V. died in Whit-week, 1125; Ord. Vit. (as
above).

[606] Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 25 (Duchesne, _Hist.
Norm. Scriptt._, p. 304). Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c.
1 (Hardy, p. 689). She went to England with her father in
September 1126. Eng. Chron. ad ann.

[607] Ord. Vit. as above.

[608] Will. Jumièges Contin. and Will. Malm. as above.

[609] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii.
c. 25 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 304). Will. Malm.
_Hist. Nov._, l. i. cc. 2, 3 (Hardy, pp. 690–692).

The first result of this unprecedented step was that the king of France set himself to thwart it by again taking up the cause of William the Clito, offering him, as compensation for the loss of Sibyl and Maine, a grant of the French Vexin and a bride whom not even Rome could make out to be his cousin--Jane of Montferrat, half-sister to Louis’s own queen.[610] Two months later the count of Flanders was murdered at Bruges. He was childless; the king of France adjudged his fief to William the Clito as great-grandson of Count Baldwin V., and speedily put him in possession of the greater part of the county.[611] Henry’s daring scheme now seemed all but hopeless. His only chance was to make peace with some one at least of his adversaries; and the one whom he chose was not the king of France, but the count of Anjou. He saw--and Fulk saw it too--that until the question about Maine was settled there could be no lasting security, and that it could only be settled effectually by the union of all conflicting claims in a single hand. For such an union the way was now clear. The heir of Anjou was growing up to manhood; the chosen successor of Henry was a childless widow. Regardless of his promise not to give his daughter in marriage to any one out of the realm[612]--regardless of the scorn of both Normans and English,[613] of the Empress’s own reluctance,[614] and also of the kindred between the houses of Normandy and Anjou--Henry sent Matilda over sea shortly after Pentecost 1127 under the care of her half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester and Count Brian of Britanny, who were charged with instructions to the archbishop of Rouen to make arrangements for her marriage with Geoffrey Plantagenet, eldest son of the count of Anjou. In the last week of August the king himself followed them;[615] at the following Whitsuntide he knighted Geoffrey at Rouen with his own hand;[616] and eight days later Geoffrey and Matilda were wedded by the bishop of Avranches in the cathedral church of S. Julian at Le Mans.[617]

[610] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm.
Scriptt._), p. 884. _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 151.

[611] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 884, 885.
See the Flemish Chronicles in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xiii.

[612] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 693).

[613] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. “Hit ofthute nathema ealle Frencisc
and Englisc.”

[614] Will. Jumièges Contin. as above.

[615] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3
(Hardy, p. 692). Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 247).

[616] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 234–236.

[617] _Ib._ p. 236. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._), p. 889. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 36 (Mabillon,
_Vet. Anal._, p. 321). On the date see note F at end of chapter.