CHAPTER IV.

ANJOU AND NORMANDY.

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.

[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.

It was a triumphant day for Fulk; but more triumphant still was the day when he and Geoffrey brought the new countess home to Angers. A large part of the barons and prelates who filled S. Julian’s minster on the wedding-day were Normans who in their inmost souls viewed with mingled rage and shame what they held to be the degradation of the Norman ducal house; a large part of the crowd who with their lips cheered the bridal procession as it passed through the streets of Le Mans were all the while cursing in their hearts the Angevin foe of Normandy.[618] But in Fulk’s own capital the rejoicings were universal and unalloyed. Many a brilliant match had been made by the house of Anjou, from that wedding with the heiress of Amboise which had been the beginning of its founder’s fortunes, down to Fulk’s own marriage, only seventeen years ago, with Aremburg of Maine; but never before had Black Angers welcomed such a bride as King Henry’s daughter. A writer of the next generation has left us a picture of Angers as it was in his days--days when the son of Geoffrey and Matilda was king of England and count of Anjou. In its main features that picture is almost as true a likeness now as it can have been seven hundred years ago, and by its help we can easily recall the scene of the bride’s homecoming. We can see the eager citizens swarming along the narrow, crooked streets that furrow the steep hill-side;--the clergy in their richest vestments assembling from every church in what is still, as it was then, emphatically a city of churches, and mustering probably on the very summit of the hill, in the open space before the cathedral--not the cathedral whose white twin spires now soar above all things around, the centre and the crown of Angers, but its Romanesque predecessor, crowned doubtless by a companion rather than a rival to the neighbouring dark tower of S. Aubin’s abbey, which now contrasts so vividly with the light pinnacles of S. Maurice. Thence, at a given signal, the procession streamed down with lighted tapers and waving banners to the northern gate of the city, and with psalms and hymns of rejoicing, half drowned in the shouting of the people and the clang of the bells overhead, led the new countess to her dwelling in the hall of Fulk the Black. It was Fulk who had made the first rude plans for the edifice of statesmanship which had now all but reached its last and loftiest stage. The unconscious praise of the Black Count was in every shout which beneath his palace-windows hailed in the person of his worthiest namesake and descendant the triumph of the house of Anjou.

[618] I think this may be safely inferred from the English Chronicler’s words a. 1127 (above, p. 243, note 5{613}), and from a singularly suggestive passage in the account of the wedding festivities in _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 237: “Clamatum est voce præconis ne quis indigena vel advena, dives, mediocris vel pauper, nobilis vel plebeius, miles vel colonus ex hâc regali lætitiâ se subtraheret; qui autem gaudiis nuptialibus minime interesset, regiæ procul dubio majestatis reus esset.”

There was no mother to welcome Geoffrey and his bride; Aremburg had not lived to see the marriage of her son;[619] and now the shadow of another coming separation fell over the mutual congratulations of Fulk and of his people. Another royal father besides Henry was seeking an Angevin bridegroom for his daughter and an Angevin successor to his throne. It was now just thirty years since the acclamations of the crusading host had chosen Godfrey of Bouillon king of Jerusalem. The crown, which he in his humility declined to wear, passed after his death to his brother Baldwin of Edessa, and then to another Baldwin, of the noble family of Réthel in Champagne. After a busy reign of ten years, Baldwin II., having no son, grew anxious to find a suitable husband for his eldest daughter and destined heiress, Melisenda. In the spring of 1128, with the unanimous approval of his subjects, he offered her hand, together with his crown, to Count Fulk of Anjou.[620] He could not have chosen a fitter man. Fulk was in the prime of life,[621] young enough to bring to his task all the vigour and energy needful to withstand the ever-encroaching Infidels, yet old enough to have learned political caution and experience; and if the one qualification was needed for defence against external foes, the other was no less so for steering a safe course amid the endless jealousies of the Frank princes in Palestine. Moreover, Fulk was known in the East by something more than reputation. Free of all connexion with the internal disputes of the realm, he was yet no utter stranger who would come thither as a mere foreign interloper. He had dwelt there for a whole year as a guest and a friend, and the memory of his visit had been kept alive in the minds of the people of the land, as well as in his own, by a yearly contribution which, amid all his cares and necessities at home, he had never failed to send to the Knights of the Temple for the defence of the Holy City.[622] Baldwin had thus every inducement to make the offer; and Fulk had equally good reasons for accepting it. His was clearly no case of mere vulgar longing after a crown. There may have been a natural feeling that it would be well to put Geoffrey’s father on a titular level with Matilda’s; if the prophecy said to have been made to Fulk the Good was already in circulation, there may have been also a feeling that it was rapidly approaching its fulfilment. But every recorded act of Fulk V. shews that he was too practical in temper to be dazzled by the mere glitter of a crown, without heeding the solid advantages to be gained with it or to be given up for its sake. He must have known that the sacred border-land of Christendom and Islam was a much harder post to defend than the marchland of France and Aquitaine had ever been; he must have known that the consort of the queen of Jerusalem would find little rest upon her throne. But this second Count Fulk the Palmer cared for rest as little as the first. It was work that he longed for: and work at home was at an end for him. The mission of the counts of Anjou, simply as such, was accomplished; when the heir of the Marchland wedded the Lady-elect of Normandy and England, he entered upon an entirely new phase of political existence. Fulk had in fact, by marrying his son to the Empress, cut short his own career, and left himself no choice but to submit to complete effacement or seek a new sphere of action elsewhere. Had Baldwin’s proposal come a year earlier, it might have caused a struggle between inclination and duty; coming as it did just after Henry’s, it extricated all parties from their last difficulty.

[619] She died in 1126; Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 33, 190). A story of her last illness, in _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 36 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p. 320), is very characteristic of Fulk, and indicates, too, that whether or not his marriage with her began in policy alone, it ended in real affection.

[620] Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 36 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._) p. 321.

[621] He cannot have been more than thirty-eight; he may have been only thirty-six.

[622] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 871). Will. Tyr. as above.

Fulk could not, however, accept the proposal without the consent of his overlord King Louis and that of his own subjects.[623] Both were granted; his people had prospered under him, but they, too, doubtless saw that alike for him and for them it was time to part. On that same Whit-Sunday when young Geoffrey was knighted at Rouen by King Henry, his father, prostrate before the high altar in the cathedral church of Tours, took the cross at the hands of Archbishop Hildebert.[624] From the wedding festivities at Le Mans he came home to make his preparations for departure. It may be that once more in the old hall overlooking the Mayenne the barons of Anjou and Touraine gathered round the last Count Fulk, to be solemnly released from their allegiance to him, and to perform their homage to his successor. A more secluded spot was chosen for the last family meeting. A few miles south-east of Saumur, in the midst of dark woods and fruitful apple-orchards, a pious and noble crusader, Robert of Arbrissel, had founded in the early years of Fulk’s reign the abbey of Fontevraud, whose church has counted ever since among the architectural marvels of western Europe. An English visitor now-a-days feels as if some prophetic instinct must have guided its architect and given to his work that peculiar awe-striking character which so exactly fits it for the burial-place of the two Angevin kings of England whose sculptured effigies still remain in its south transept. The first of their race who wore a crown, however, came thither not for his last sleep, but only for a few hours of rest ere he started on his eastward journey. The monastery was a double one--half for men and half for women; in the latter Fulk’s eldest daughter, the widow of William the Ætheling, had lately taken the veil. The cloisters of Fontevraud offered a quiet refuge where father and children could all meet undisturbed to exchange their last farewells.[625] Before Whitsuntide came round again Fulk and Anjou had parted for ever.[626]

[623] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 205.

[624] _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 152.

[625] “Ego Fulco junior Andegavensium comes, Fulconis comitis filius, ire volens Hierusalem, conventum sanctimonialium Fontis-Evraudi expetii. Adfuerunt etiam ibi filii mei Gaufridus et Helias, et filiæ meæ Mathildis et Sibylla, quarum una, id est Mathildis, paulo ante pro Dei amore se velari fecerat, etc. Acta charta apud Fontem-Ebraudi anno ab Incarnat. Dom. 1129” (_Rer. Gall. Script._, vol. xii. p. 736 note, from “Clypeum nascentis Fontis-Ebraldi”).

[626] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 153. _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 205. Will. Tyr., l. xiii. c. 24, l. xiv. c. 1. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1129 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 33, 144).

It is not for us to follow him on his lifelong crusade.[627] The Angevin spirit of restless activity and sleepless vigilance, of hard-working thoroughness and indomitable perseverance, never, perhaps, shewed to better advantage than in this second half of the eventful life of Fulk of Jerusalem; but we have to trace its workings only as they influenced the history of our own land. Our place is not with the devoted personal followers who went with Fulk across land and sea, but with those who stayed to share the fortunes of his successor in Anjou. Our concern is with the father of the Angevin kings, not of Jerusalem, but of England.

[627] Its history is in Will. Tyr., l. xiv. cc. 1–27.

NOTE A.

THE HOUSES OF ANJOU AND GÂTINAIS.

All historians are agreed that Geoffrey the Bearded and Fulk Rechin were sons of Geoffrey Martel’s sister and of a count (or viscount) of Gâtinais, or Châteaulandon, which is the same thing--the Gâtinais being a district on the north-eastern border of the Orléanais whereof Châteaulandon was the capital. But the names of both husband and wife differ in different accounts. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 375) calls his mother Hermengard; R. Diceto (_ib._ p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) calls her Adela; in the _Gesta Cons._ no names are given. If we could be sure that Fulk really wrote the fragment which bears his name, his testimony would of course be decisive; as it is, we are left in doubt. The point is one of trifling importance, for whatever the lady’s name may have been, there is no doubt that she was the daughter of Fulk the Black and Hildegard. But who was her husband?

First, as to his name. The _Gesta Cons._ do not mention it. The Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1060 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 402), Hugh of Fleury (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 797), and R. Diceto (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) call him Alberic. Fulk Rechin (as above) calls him Geoffrey. None of them tell us anything about him. It seems in fact to be the aim of the Angevin writers to keep us in the dark as to the descent of the later counts of Anjou from the house of Gâtinais through the husband of Hermengard-Adela; but they try to make out a connexion between the two families six generations further back. One of the earliest legends in the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 39–45) tells how Châteaulandon and the Gâtinais were given to Ingelger as a reward for his defence of his slandered godmother, the daughter and heiress of a Count Geoffrey of Gâtinais, and the alleged gift is coupled with a grant from the king of the viscounty of Orléans. What Ingelger may or may not have held it is impossible to say, as we really know nothing about him. But there is proof that the viscounty of Orléans at least did not pass to his descendants. The very first known charter of Fulk the Good, one dated May 942, is witnessed by Geoffrey viscount of Orléans; and Geoffrey Greygown’s charter for the reform of S. Aubin’s in 966 is witnessed by Alberic viscount of Gâtinais, whose signature has already appeared in 957, attached to a charter of Theobald the Trickster. This Alberic may very likely have been the son of his predecessor Geoffrey, but he cannot well have been the father of Fulk Nerra’s son-in-law; there is a generation dropped out, and of the man who should fill it the only trace is in Ménage (_Hist. de Sablé_), who says that Fulk Rechin’s father, Geoffrey count of Gâtinais, was the son of _another Geoffrey_ and Beatrice, daughter of Alberic II. of Mâcon (Mabille, introd. _Comtes_, pp. lxxxv–lxxxvi). It seems probable that Orléans and Châteaulandon went together in fact as well as in Angevin legend. Assuming therefore that Ménage was copying a document now lost, the pedigree would stand thus:

Geoffrey, viscount of Orléans 942 | Alberic, viscount in 957 and 966 | Geoffrey, viscount of Orléans and count of Gâtinais | Alberic or Geoffrey = Hermengard or Adela, | daughter of Fulk Nerra +--------------+--------------+ | | Geoffrey the Bearded. Fulk Rechin.

If we might assume also, with M. Mabille, that the “Alberic” whose signature appears beside that of Fulk the Red in 886 (Mabille, introd. _Comtes_, p. lix, note 1) was the father of the first Geoffrey of Orléans, then the two names would stand alternate till we come to Hermengard’s husband. Is it just possible that (on a principle somewhat like that which made all the dukes of Aquitaine assume the name of William) this alternation of names grew into a family tradition, so that the son of Geoffrey II. and Beatrice having by some accident been christened by his father’s instead of his grandfather’s name, assumed the latter officially on succeeding to the title, and thus became known to outsiders as “Alberic,” while his own son (Fulk Rechin) spoke of him by his original and real name?

However this may be, he was most probably descended from the family who became viscounts of Orléans at about the same time that the house of Anjou was being founded. They make no figure in history, and the Angevin writers do their best to efface them altogether. Ralf de Diceto just names the father of the two young counts, and that is all; in the _Gesta Cons._ his very name is dropped, and the reader is left in utter darkness as to who and what Martel’s nephews were. They were Martel’s nephews, and that was all that anybody was intended to know about them. Fulk Rechin himself, or his representative, merges the Châteaulandon connexion almost completely in the Angevin, and regards himself simply as the grandson of Fulk Nerra. After all, they are right; it was Fulk Nerra’s blood that made his grandsons what they were; their father might have been anybody, or, as he almost appears, nobody, for all the influence he had on their characters or their destinies.

NOTE B.

THE HEIR OF GEOFFREY MARTEL.

Of the disposal of his territories made by Geoffrey Martel there are three versions.

1. The _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 131), R. Diceto (_ib._ p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) and Chron. Tur. Magn. (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, pp. 122, 123) say that Anjou and Saintonge were left to Fulk, Touraine and Gâtinais to Geoffrey.

2. A MS. representing the earliest form of the _Gesta Cons._ (ending in 1106) says just the opposite: Anjou and Saintonge to Geoffrey, Touraine and Gâtinais to Fulk (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 131, note 1. See Mabille, introd. _Comtes_, _ib._ pp. iv–viii).

3. Orderic (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 532) and Will. Poitiers (_ib._ pp. 188, 189) ignore Fulk and make Geoffrey sole heir.

The first version is easily disposed of. In three charters of S. Florence of Saumur, one of 1061 (Marchegay, _Archives d’Anjou_, vol. i. p. 259) and two whose dates must be between 1062 and 1066 (_ib._ p. 278), and in one of S. Maur, 1066 (_ib._ pp. 358–360), Geoffrey the Bearded is formally described as count of Anjou. The strongest proof of all is a charter of Fulk Rechin himself, March 11, 1068, setting forth how Geoffrey, nephew and _heir_ of Geoffrey Martel, had made certain promises to S. Florence, which he, Fulk, having now got possession of Anjou, fulfilled (_ib._ p. 260).

The second version, though apparently not contradicted by any documentary proof, has nothing to support it, and contains an internal difficulty. For how could Martel leave the Gâtinais to Fulk? Surely it was not his to leave at all, but would pass as a matter of course to Geoffrey as Alberic’s (Geoffrey’s?) eldest son. The old confusion of the relations of the Gâtinais to Anjou peeps out again here.

The third account is that of foreign writers; but those writers are Orderic and William of Poitiers. And they are not unsupported. Geoffrey Martel’s last act, a charter granted to Marmoutier on his deathbed, is signed by his _nephew and successor-designate Geoffrey_, and by Fulk, who is described simply as the latter’s brother (Mabille, introd. _Comtes_, p. lxxxiv).

The conclusion to which all this leads is that Martel bequeathed the whole of his dominions to his elder nephew Geoffrey, and that all the conflicting stories of a division of territory were inventions to save the character of Fulk Rechin. It is possible that Martel did, as Fulk says, invest him with Saintonge, but even here it is evident that the elder brother’s rights were reserved, for it is Geoffrey, not Fulk, who fights for Saintonge with the duke of Aquitaine.

One portion of Martel’s dominions is named in none of these accounts, except Fulk’s; and that is Maine. Fulk coolly puts it into the list of his own possessions, and M. Mabille regards this as a blunder proving that the author of the _Fragment_ was not what he professes to be. May it not rather tell the other way? A forger would have remembered that Maine was lost and not risked such a glaring falsehood; the count ignores its _de facto_ loss because he holds himself its overlord _de jure_. We shall find Geoffrey the Bearded making his appearance as titular overlord of Maine in 1063. Did Martel feel about Maine as William the Conqueror seems to have felt about England?

NOTE C.

THE WAR OF SAINTONGE.

The account of this war between Geoffrey the Bearded and Guy-Geoffrey, _alias_ William VII., of Aquitaine, has to be made out from one direct source and one indirect one. The first is the Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1061 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 402, 403): “Goffredus et Fulco habentes certamen cum Gaufredo duce propter Sanctonas, venientes cum magno exercitu, pugnaverunt cum eo in bello etiam in Aquitaniâ, ubi e contrario Pictavorum exercitus adunatus est; et ab utrisque partibus magnis animositatibus pugnatum est, sed traditores belli et ceteri signiferi, vexillis projectis, exercitum Pictavensium in fugam verterunt. Quapropter vulnerati multi sunt et plurimi occisi atque nonnulli capti; unde quidam versibus eam confusionem ita describit, dicens: Cum de Pictavis bellum sit et Andegavinis, Inque die Martis fuit et Sancti Benedicti, Circa forte Caput Wultonnæ contigit esse, Annus millenus tunc sexagesimus unus.”

That entry comprises all the direct information on the subject. The Angevin monastic chronicles and Fulk Rechin do not mention it at all. Neither do the _Gesta Cons._ in the right place; but they mix it up with the war between Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat in 1033. By the light of the Chron. S. Maxent., it seems possible to disentangle the two stories. It even seems possible to make sense of a passage in the _Gesta_ which never can be sense as it stands, by understanding it as referring to Geoffrey the Bearded instead of his uncle: “Willelmus Pictavensium comes consulatum Sanctonicum suum esse volebat et vi preoccupatum tenebat, quia patrui sui fuerat. Martellus eumdem consulatum reclamabat quia avi sui fuerat, cujus heredes absque liberis mortui erant; et ideo ad heredes sororis avi sui debere reverti affirmabat” (_Gesta Cons._, Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 126). This is the story by which the _Gesta_-writer professes to explain the cause of the war of Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat, of which he then gives an elaborate account, ending with William’s capture and the consequent surrender of Saintes to Geoffrey. But the story is utterly senseless; the claims of William and Martel as therein stated are alike devoid of all show of reason. In the account of the war itself, too, there are strong traces of confusion; Saintes is assumed to have passed back into the duke’s hands, of which there is no sign elsewhere; and to crown all, the scene of the battle in which William is taken is laid, not as by the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 1032, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 392) and Fulk Rechin (_Comtes_, p. 378), at S. Jouin-de-Marne or Montcontour, but at Chef-Boutonne. The question then arises: Can this wild tale in the _Gesta_, which is quite impossible as an explanation of Martel’s war with William V., be interpreted so as to explain his successor’s war with William VII.?

“Willelmus [VII., _alias_ Guy-Geoffrey] Pictavensium comes consulatum Sanctonicum suum esse volebat et vi præoccupatum tenebat [having presumably seized it on Martel’s death], quia patrui sui [for _patrui_ read _fratris_--William the Fat--or _patris_, William the Great] fuerat. Martellus [Barbatus] eumdem consulatum reclamabat, quia avi sui [Fulconis Nerræ] fuerat, cujus hæredes [_i.e._ G. Martellus] absque liberis mortui essent; et ideo ad hæredes sororis avi sui [read _avunculi sui_--Martel’s sister, the Bearded one’s mother] debere reverti affirmabat.”

Read in this way, the story is quite reasonable and intelligible, and the rest of the _Gesta’s_ account might stand almost intact, except the capture of the duke, which of course is dragged in from the earlier war. The confusion between the Williams of Aquitaine is easily accounted for, and so is that between the Geoffreys of Anjou, especially as all the Geoffreys after Martel occasionally took to themselves his cognomen.

NOTE D.

THE DESCENDANTS OF HERBERT WAKE-DOG.

Not the least puzzling matter connected with the Cenomannian wars is the genealogy of the sovereign house of Maine. The succession of the counts themselves--Hugh I. (or David), Herbert I. (Wake-dog), Hugh II., Herbert II.--is plain enough, as also that each was the son of his predecessor. But the filiation of the women of the family--Margaret, Gersendis, Paula and Biota--is far from being equally clear.

1. As to Margaret, there is no real doubt. Orderic does once (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 683) call her a daughter of Herbert [II.]; but his own statements in two other places (_ib._ pp. 487 and 532), as well as Will. Poitiers (_ib._ p. 190), shew that this is a mere slip. Margaret was clearly a daughter of Hugh II. and sister of Herbert II.

2. As to Biota. Orderic (as above, p. 487) calls her “Hugonis Cenomannensium comitis filiam”; in Will. Poitiers (_ib._ p. 189) she is “_soror_ Hugonis”; and Mr. Freeman (_Norm. Conq._, 3d ed., vol. iii. p. 200, and note T, p. 676) adopts the latter version. Biota, then, was a daughter of Herbert Wake-dog and sister of Hugh II. But were Gersendis and Paula her sisters or her nieces?

3. The fullest and most distinct statement of the Cenomannian pedigree is that of Orderic in Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 532: “Hugo filius Herberti ... Bertam ... in conjugium accepit; quæ filium nomine Herbertum et tres filias ei peperit. Una earum data est Azsoni Marchiso Liguriæ. Alia nomine Margarita Rodberto filio Guillelmi Ducis Neustriæ desponsata est ... Tertia vero Joanni domino castri quod Flecchia dicitur nupsit.”

With regard to this last marriage, it is to be observed that in the speech which Orderic puts into the mouth of Elias of La Flèche, addressing Hugh of Este (_ib._ p. 684), he says nothing about his mother at all, but makes him trace his descent from Herbert Wake-dog through his grandmother, whom he calls Herbert’s daughter: “Filia Herberti comitis Lancelino de Balgenceio nupsit, eique ... Joannem meum genitorem peperit.” The name of John’s wife, Paula, comes from another passage of Orderic (_ib._ p. 768); but he there says nothing about her parentage, merely calling her son Elias “Hugonis Cenomannorum consulis consobrinus.” The houses of Le Mans and La Flèche cannot have intermarried twice in two succeeding generations; one of Orderic’s statements must be wrong; but which, I cannot decide.

The last point is the parentage of Gersendis, the wife of Azzo of Este; and as the whole tone of Elias’s speech (as above) implies that he and her son were related to the counts of Le Mans in the same degree, the solution of this question might almost be held to decide the previous one also. This seems to be Mr. Freeman’s opinion, and he regards Orderic’s statement quoted above as conclusive that Gersendis and Paula were both daughters of Hugh II., and sisters therefore of Margaret and Herbert II., in spite of the biographer of the bishops of Le Mans (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p. 308), who expressly says that Gersendis was a daughter of Herbert Wake-dog, and the continuator of Will. Jumièges, who says:--“Cenomannenses ... consilium ineunt cum Heliâ filio Joannis de Flecâ ... ut _filiam cujusdam comitis Langobardiæ, neptem videlicet Hereberti quondam Cenomannensis comitis ex primogenitâ filiâ_, in matrimonium ducat.” Will. Jumièges, l. viii. c. 5 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 294). This re-appears in R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 183, 184; Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 334) in the following form:--“Helias, filius Johannis de Flecâ, Sibillam, filiam cujusdam comitis Longobardiæ, neptem scilicet Hereberti quondam Cenomannorum comitis, duxit uxorem, et cum eâ comitatum Cenomanniæ suscepit.” But this is certainly wrong; for the first wife of Elias was Matilda of Château-du-Loir, and the second was Agnes of Perche.

What Elias could have had to gain by the marriage thus proposed for him it is impossible to guess, as he himself certainly was quite as nearly related to the counts of Maine as this oddly-described bride could have been. Mr. Freeman (_Norm. Conq._, 3d ed., vol. iii., note T, p. 676), takes the description as favouring Orderic’s theory, and remarks: “The words could only have been written by one who looked on Gersendis as a sister of Herbert.” “Neptem Hereberti,” then, he interprets, “niece of Herbert [II].” But is it not a much simpler interpretation of the whole phrase--“_neptem Hereberti ex primogenitâ filiâ_”--to read it “granddaughter of Herbert [I.] through his eldest daughter”? In that case, we should have another witness on the side of the bishops’ biographer.

There is another curious bit of evidence which at first glance seems also to tell in his favour. I do not think that it really proves anything about the matter; but it is worth examining for other reasons. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (_Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 392, note 5), declares it proved on documentary evidence that Stephen-Henry of Blois, the father of our King Stephen, was the son of Theobald III. by his first marriage with Gersendis of Maine. About the marriage itself there is no doubt, nor about the divorce which followed it; and the latter had taken place in 1049 at latest, for Theobald was excommunicated for that very cause by the Council of Reims. Most historians seem however to have supposed that Gersendis was then a mere child, and that the mother of Stephen, as well as of Theobald’s other children, was his second wife, Adela of Valois. M. de Jubainville, in support of his opinion, refers especially to two charters. One is in _Gallia Christiana_, vol. viii., instr. col. 548. It has no date, and says nothing about Stephen’s mother or his stepmother; I therefore cannot see its bearing on the question. The other is in Bernier, _Histoire de Blois, preuves_, pp. xiii–xiv. In it Stephen-Henry, in the year 1089, grants certain lands to Pontlevoy “pro animæ meæ et uxoris et Theobaldi patris mei et _matris meæ Gandree_ ... remedio”; and has the grant confirmed “nomine ... Alæ uxoris meæ, _Alæ uxoris Thebaudi comitis_,” etc. This certainly seems to shew that Adela was not his mother, though it does not necessarily follow that “Gandree” represents Gersendis. If it does, Stephen-Henry must have been born in 1049 at latest, and therefore Gersendis cannot possibly have been a daughter of Hugh II., who was not married till 1040 at the very earliest.

The greatest puzzle in the whole matter, however, is this: If Stephen-Henry was really the eldest son of Gersendis of Maine, how does it happen that neither in 1073, nor in 1089, nor in any of the Cenomannian revolutions and wars, do we hear a single word about his claims upon the county? M. d’Arbois de Jubainville’s suggestion in fact opens a question much more important and much more obscure than that of the age and parentage of Gersendis. He certainly seems to have proved that Adela of Valois was not Stephen’s mother; but has he proved that Gersendis was? The only bit of evidence, direct or indirect, which it seems possible to bring to bear upon this matter is a passage in the _Historia Pontificalis_ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. p. 531) where it is said that the cause of our King Stephen was upheld by some of the Roman cardinals who claimed kindred with him “eo quod avia ejus Lumbarda fuerit.” Now, as the second husband of Gersendis was a Lombard, this may come from some confused idea about her. But it also suggests another possible solution of the whole question about Stephen-Henry’s mother. Theobald and Gersendis were divorced in 1049 at latest; the first record in which Adela appears as Theobald’s wife is dated 1061 (Jubainville, _Comtes de Champagne_, vol. i. p. 393, note 3). May not the mysterious “Gandrea” of the charter of 1089 have been an Italian lady who was married to Theobald, became the mother of his heir, and died, between those two dates?

NOTE E.

THE SIEGE OF LA FLÈCHE AND TREATY OF BLANCHELANDE.

There are two questionable points connected with these matters: 1. the date; 2. the geography.

1. The only original writer who gives a detailed account of both siege and treaty is Orderic, who carries his story straight on from the quelling of the revolt of Maine in 1073 to the siege of La Flèche, as if it had all happened in the same year, before William returned to England with his troops. On the other hand, none of the Angevin writers mention La Flèche under date 1073; but the Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 26, 189) have “Exercitus de Fissâ,” the former in 1077, the latter in 1078; and in the _Art de vérifier les Dates_ these entries are interpreted as referring to the siege which was followed by the treaty of Blanchelande. M. Voisin (_Les Cénomans_, p. 414) dates the whole affair 1085; he gives no reason and seems to be quite unsupported. The choice lies therefore between Orderic’s date and that of the Angevin chronicles. Mr. Freeman (_Norm. Conq._, vol. iv. pp. 560–563) follows Orderic, and I have done the same.

2. As to the geography. Orderic (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 533) says that to meet William the Angevin and Breton host, leaving La Flèche, “Ligerim fluvium audacter pertransierunt.” Now this must be wrong, as the Loire is a long way south of La Flèche. It is clear that for _Ligerim_, “Loire,” we must read _Liderim_, “Loir,” as Mr. Freeman says (_Norm. Conq._, vol. iv. p. 562, note 2). Even crossing the Loir seems rather a strange proceeding; for La Flèche being on the right or north bank of that river, they must have crossed it to the southward--_i.e._ away from Normandy. How came it that William, marching against them out of Normandy, had gone so far down to the south of them?

There is however a further question as to the actual place of the treaty, which Mr. Freeman (as above, p. 562) places at Bruère in the Passais. If such was the case, Orderic’s story of the crossing of the river becomes quite hopeless, as Bruère is a long way north-west of La Flèche. But there is another version. J. Pesche in his _Dictionnaire historique de la Sarthe_, vol. i. p. 168, under “_Blanchelande_ ou _Blanche-bruyère_,” says: “Vaste espace de terrain infertile, où croît abondamment le lichen des rennes, dont la blancheur lui aura fait donner son nom; situé _entre La Flèche et Le Lude_, côtoyé par la route qui conduit de l’une à l’autre de ces deux villes.” It is this which Pesche and, following him, M. Voisin (_Les Cénomans_, p. 414, note 1) mark as the scene of the treaty. So does M. Prévost in a note to Orderic, vol. ii. p. 258, and he adds that a farm there still in 1840 bore the name of Blanchelande. If this theory is correct, Orderic’s geography is quite right and clear; the besiegers of La Flèche, on the north side of the Loir, crossing over to its southern bank, would march straight upon the “white moor.” William must then have crossed higher up and made a circuit to the south-east of them. The only question remaining would be, what was his reason for this movement? To which there was doubtless a good military answer.

With regard to the second siege of La Flèche by Fulk Rechin, in 1081, there is a very strange story in the Chron. Rain. Andeg. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 13). We are there told that Fulk not only took and burned the castle (as the Chron. S. Albin., _ib._ p. 26, also states under the same year) in revenge, for John’s rebellion against him, but also punished King William for his previous relief of the castle, by so worsting him in battle that he retreated after giving hostages for peace, among whom were his brother the count of Mortain and his own son! Mr. Freeman says nothing of this very apocryphal-looking story. Is it anything more than an Angevin travesty of Robert’s homage to Fulk at Blanchelande?

NOTE F.

THE MARRIAGE OF GEOFFREY AND MATILDA.

The date of this marriage is commonly given as 1127. A comparison of evidence seems however to lead to the conclusion that its true date is 1128.

1. The Angevin chronicles never mention the marriage at all. The _Gesta Cons._, Will. Jumièges and several other writers mention it without any kind of date. The English Chronicle, Sim. Durh., Will. Malm. and Hen. Hunt. give no distinct date, but imply that the proposal was immediately followed by the wedding. They speak as if Robert and Brian had taken Matilda over sea and married her to Geoffrey without more ado.

2. Orderic mentions the marriage in two places. In the first (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 763) he gives no clue to the date; in the second (_ib._ p. 889) he dates it 1129.

3. The Chron. Fiscannense (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 778) dates it 1127.

4. A charter of agreement between the bishop of Séez and the convent of Marmoutier (printed in Gilles Bry’s _Hist. de Perche_, p. 106) has “signum Henrici Regis quando dedit filiam suam Gaufredo comiti Andegavensi juniori.” It is dated “anno ab Inc. Dom. 1127, Indictione VI.”

5. The last witness is John of Marmoutier, the author of the _Historia Gaufredi Ducis_. From him we might have expected a distinct and authentic statement; but he does not mention the year at all. He says that Geoffrey was knighted on Whit-Sunday and married on its octave, and that he was then fifteen years of age (_Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_, Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 236, 233). Afterwards, in speaking of the birth of Henry Fitz-Empress, he says that it took place in the fourth year of his parents’ marriage (_ib._ pp. 277, 278). Henry was born on Mid-Lent Sunday, March 5, 1133; if therefore the writer reckoned backwards from the Whitsuntide of that year, his words ought to mean that the marriage was in 1129. But as he goes on to state that Matilda’s third son was born in the sixth year of her marriage, and that Henry I. died “anno eodem, ab Incarnatione videlicet Domini 1137,” it is impossible to say what he did mean. Whether he is collecting the traditions of the ancient counts or writing the life of his own contemporary sovereign, John’s chronology is pursued by the same fate; whenever he mentions a date by the year, he is almost certain to make it wrong. But that he should have done the like in his reckoning of days, or even of his hero’s age, by no means follows. To consider the latter point first: Geoffrey the Handsome was born on August 24, 1113 (Chron. S. Albin. _ad ann._, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 32). Therefore, if John meant that he was past fifteen at his marriage, it must have been in 1129. But if he only meant “in his fifteenth year,” it would be 1128. In that year the octave of Pentecost fell on June 17; Geoffrey then lacked but two months to the completion of his fifteenth year; and considering Matilda’s age, it is no wonder that the panegyrist tried to make her husband out as old as possible. It is in fact plain that such was his intention, for though he places Geoffrey’s death in the right year, 1151, he gives his age as forty-one instead of thirty-eight (_Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_, Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 292).

The most important matter, however, is John’s statement that the wedding took place on the octave of Pentecost. The date in this case is not one casually slipped in by the writer in passing; it comes in a detailed account of the festivities at Rouen on the occasion of Geoffrey’s knighting, which is expressly said to have occurred at Pentecost, and to have been followed by his marriage on the octave. Now this leaves us on the horns of a dilemma fatal alike to the date in the Chron. Fiscann., 1127, and to that of Orderic, 1129. For, on the one hand, Will. Malm. (_Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3, Hardy, p. 692) says that Matilda did not go to Normandy till _after_ Whitsuntide [1127]; and Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 247), adds that the king followed her in August (Sim. Durh., ed. Arnold, vol. ii. pp. 281, 282, really witnesses to the same effect; for his chronology of the whole story is a year in advance). Consequently, as Mrs. Everett Green remarks, “the union could not have taken place before the spring of the following year, 1128” (_Princesses of England_, vol. i. pp. 107, 108). On the other hand, it is plain that Fulk was present at his son’s wedding; but before Whitsuntide 1129 Fulk was himself married to the princess of Jerusalem (Will. Tyr., l. xiii. c. 24).

From all this it results: 1. If Geoffrey and Matilda were married in 1127, it cannot have been earlier than September, _i.e._ at least three months after Whitsuntide. 2. If they were married in 1129, it must have been quite at the beginning of the year, and Orderic must, on this occasion at least, have made his year begin in English fashion, at Christmas. 3. If they were married at Whitsuntide, it can only have been in 1128.

We have in short to choose one out of three authorities: the Chronicle of Fécamp, Orderic and John of Marmoutier--for the Séez charter, as Mrs. Everett Green remarks (_Princesses_, vol. i. p. 108), proves nothing more than that the betrothal had taken place in 1127. Of these three, the first is certainly of least account. Orderic, on the other hand, is on most other subjects a far better authority than John. But his chronology is very little better than John’s, at any rate towards the close of his work; his whole account of Henry’s later years is sketchy and confused; while John is Geoffrey Plantagenet’s own special biographer, writing within sixty years of the event, from materials furnished by personal followers of his hero. I cannot but regard him as our primary authority on this subject, and believe on his testimony that the real wedding-day of Geoffrey and Matilda was the octave of Pentecost, June 17, 1128.