ANJOU AND BLOIS.
987–1044.
One of the wildest of the legends which have gathered round the Angevin
house tells how a count of Anjou had wedded a lady of unknown origin
and more than earthly beauty, who excited the suspicions of those
around her by her marked dislike to entering a church, and her absolute
refusal to be present at the consecration of the Host. At last her
husband, urged by his friends, resolved to compel her to stay. By his
order, when the Gospel was ended and she was about to leave the church
as usual, she was stopped by four armed men. As they laid hold of her
mantle she shook it from her shoulders; two of her little children
stood beneath its folds at her right hand, two at her left. The two
former she left behind, the latter she caught up in her arms, and,
floating away through a window of the church, she was seen on earth no
more. “What wonder,” was the comment of Richard Cœur-de-Lion upon this
story; “what wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind--we
who come from the devil, and must needs go back to the devil?”[293]
[293] Girald. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 27
(Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 154).
One is tempted to think that the excited brains of the closing tenth
century, filled with dim presages of horror that were floating about
in expectation of the speedy end of the world, must have wrought
out this strange tale by way of explaining the career of Fulk the
Black.[294] His contemporaries may well have reckoned him among the
phenomena of the time; they may well have had recourse to a theory of
supernatural agency or demoniac possession to account for the rapid
developement of talents and passions which both alike seemed almost
more than human. When the county of Anjou was left to him by the death
of his father Geoffrey Greygown, Fulk was a child scarce eight years
old.[295] Surrounded by powerful foes whom Geoffrey’s aggressions had
provoked rather than checked--without an ally or protector unless
it were the new king--Fulk began life with everything against him.
Yet before he has reached the years of manhood the young count meets
us at every turn, and always in triumph. Throughout the fifty-three
years of his reign Fulk is one of the most conspicuous and brilliant
figures in French history. His character seems at times strangely
self-contradictory. Mad bursts of passion, which would have been the
ruin of an ordinary man, but which seem scarcely to have made a break
in his cool, calculating, far-seeing policy; a rapid and unerring
perception of his own ends, a relentless obstinacy in pursuing them, an
utter disregard of the wrong and suffering which their pursuit might
involve; and then ever and anon fits of vehement repentance, ignorant,
blind, fruitless as far as any lasting amendment was concerned, yet
at once awe-striking and touching in its short-lived, wrong-headed
earnestness--all these seeming contradictions yet make up, not a
puzzling abstraction, but an intensely living character--the character,
in a word, of the typical Angevin count.
[294] “Fulco Nerra” or “Niger,” “Palmerius” and
“Hierosolymitanus” are his historical surnames. I can find no
hint whether the first was derived from his complexion or from
the colour of the armour which he usually wore (as in the case
of the “Black Prince”); the origin of the two last will be seen
later.
[295] This is on the supposition that Adela of Chalon was his
mother; see note C to chap. ii. above.
For more than a hundred years after the accession of Hugh Capet,
the history of the kingdom which he founded consists chiefly of the
struggles of the great feudataries among themselves to get and to
keep control over the action of the crown. The duke of the French had
gained little save in name by his royal coronation and unction. He
was no nearer than his Karolingian predecessors had been to actual
supremacy over the Norman duchy, the Breton peninsula, and the whole
of southern Gaul. Aquitaine indeed passed from cold contempt to open
aggression. When one of her princes, the count of Poitou, had at
length made unwilling submission to the northern king, a champion of
southern independence issued from far Périgord to punish him, stormed
Poitiers, marched up to the Loire, and sat down in triumph before
Tours, whose count, Odo of Blois, was powerless to relieve it. The king
himself could find no more practical remonstrance than the indignant
question, “Who made thee count?” and the sole reply vouchsafed by
Adalbert of Périgord was the fair retort, “Who made thee king?” Tours
fell into his hands, and was made over, perhaps in mockery, to the
youthful count of Anjou. The loyalty of its governor and citizens,
however, soon restored it to its lawful owner, and Adalbert’s dreams of
conquest ended in failure and retreat.[296] Still, Aquitaine remained
independent as of old; Hugh’s real kingdom took in little more than
the old duchy of France “between Seine and Loire”; and even within
these limits it almost seemed that in grasping at the shadow of the
crown he had loosened his hold on the substance of his ducal power.
The regal authority was virtually a tool in the hands of whichever
feudatary could secure its exercise for his own ends. As yet Aquitaine
and Britanny stood aloof from the struggle; Normandy had not yet
entered upon it; at present therefore it lay between the vassals of
the duchy of France. Foremost among them in power, wealth, and extent
of territory was the count of Blois, Chartres and Tours. His dominions
pressed close against the eastern border of Anjou, and it was on her
ability to cope with him that her fate chiefly depended. Was the house
of Anjou or the house of Blois to win the pre-eminence in central
Gaul? This was the problem which confronted Fulk the Black, and to
whose solution he devoted his life. His whole course was governed
by one fixed principle and directed to one paramount object--the
consolidation of his marchland. To that object everything else was
made subservient. Every advantage thrown in his way by circumstances,
by the misfortunes, mistakes or weaknesses of foes or friends--for he
used the one as unscrupulously as the other--was caught up and pursued
with relentless vigour. One thread of settled policy ran through the
seemingly tangled skein of his life, a thread never broken even by the
wildest outbursts of his almost demoniac temper or his superstitious
alarms. While he seemed to be throwing his whole energies into the
occupation of the moment--whether it were the building or the besieging
of a fortress, the browbeating of bishop or king, the cajoling of an
ally or the crushing of a rival on the battle-field--that work was in
reality only a part of a much greater work. Every town mirrored in
the clear streams that water the “garden of France”--as the people of
Touraine call their beautiful country--has its tale of the Black Count,
the “great builder” beneath whose hands the whole lower course of the
Loire gradually came to bristle with fortresses; but far above all his
castles of stone and mortar there towered a castle in the air, the plan
of a mighty political edifice. Every act of his life was a step towards
its realization; every fresh success in his long career of triumph was
another stone added to the gradual building up of Angevin dominion and
greatness.
[296] Ademar of Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
146. The date seems to be about 990; but Ademar has confused
Odo I. of Blois with his son Odo of Champagne.
Fulk’s first victory was won before he was fourteen, over a veteran
commander who had been more than a match for his father ten years
earlier. The death of Geoffrey Greygown was soon followed by that of
Count Guerech of Nantes; he, too, left only a young son, Alan; and
when Alan also died in 990, Conan of Rennes, already master of all the
rest of Britanny, seized his opportunity to take forcible possession
of Nantes,[297] little dreaming of a possible rival in his young
brother-in-law beyond the Mayenne. While his back was turned and he
was busy assembling troops at Bruerech, at the other end of Britanny,
the Angevin worked upon the old hatred of the Nantes people to the
house of Rennes; with the craft of his race he won over some of the
guards, by fair words and solid bribes, till he gained admittance into
the city and received oaths and hostages from its inhabitants. He
then returned home to collect troops for an attack upon the citadel,
which was held by Conan’s men. Conan, as soon as he heard the tidings,
marched upon Nantes with all his forces; as before, he brought with
him a body of Norman auxiliaries, likely to be of no small use in
assaulting a place such as Nantes, whose best defence is its broad
river--for the “Pirates” had not yet forgotten the days when the water
was their natural element and the long keels were their most familiar
home. While the Norman ships blocked the river, Conan’s troops beset
the town by land, and thus, with the garrison shooting down at them
from the citadel, the townsfolk of Nantes were between three fires when
Fulk advanced to their rescue.[298] Conan at once sent the audacious
boy a challenge to meet him, on such a day, in a pitched battle on the
field of Conquereux, where ten years before a doubtful fight had been
waged between Conan and Fulk’s father. This time the Bretons trusted
to lure their enemies to complete destruction by a device which, in
days long after, was successfully employed by Robert Bruce against
the English army at Bannockburn; they dug a series of trenches right
across the swampy moor, covered them with bushes, branches, leaves and
thatch, supported by uprights stuck into the ditches, and strewed the
surface with ferns till it was indistinguishable from the surrounding
moorland. Behind this line of hidden pitfalls Conan drew up his host,
making a feint of unwillingness to begin the attack. Fulk, panting for
his first battle with all the ardour of youth, urged his men to the
onset; the flower of the Angevin troops charged right into the Breton
pitfalls; men and horses became hopelessly entangled; two thousand
went down in the swampy abyss and were drowned, slaughtered or crushed
to death.[299] The rest fled in disorder; Fulk himself was thrown
from his horse and fell to the ground, weighed down by his armour,
perhaps too heavy for his boyish frame. In an instant he was up again,
wild with rage, burning to avenge his overthrow, calling furiously
upon his troops. The clear, young voice of their leader revived the
courage of the Angevins; “as the storm-wind sweeps down upon the thick
corn-rigs”[300]--so their historian tells--they rushed upon the foe;
and their momentary panic was avenged by the death of Conan and the
almost total destruction of his host.[301] The blow overthrew the power
of Rennes; the new duke Geoffrey, the son of Conan and Hermengard, was
far indeed from being a match for his young uncle. In the flush of
victory Fulk marched into Nantes; the citizens received him with open
arms; the dismayed garrison speedily surrendered, and swore fealty to
the conqueror; the titular bishop, Judicaël, a young son of Count Hoel,
was set up as count under the guardianship of Aimeric of Thouars, a
kinsman of the Angevin house, who ruled solely in Fulk’s interest;[302]
while the territory on the right bank of the Mayenne, lost a century
and a half before by the treason of Count Lambert, seems to have been
reunited to the Angevin dominions.
[297] Morice, _Hist. de Bret._, vol. i. p. 64 (from a seemingly
lost bit of the Chron. Namnet.).
[298] Richer, l. iv. c. 81.
[299] _Ib._ cc. 82–85. Rudolf Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 15).
[300] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
15).
[301] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. R. Glaber (as above) says that
Conan was not slain, but only taken prisoner with the loss
of his right hand--a confusion with the first battle of
Conquereux. Conan’s death appears in all the chief Breton
chronicles, especially Chron. S. Michael. a. 992 (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 175), etc. See also Fulk Rechin
(Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377. The _Gesta Cons._ copy R. Glaber.
[302] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. The first viscount of Thouars,
a brother of Ebles, count of Poitou, had married Roscilla,
daughter of Fulk the Red. Chron. Com. Pictaviæ in _Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 294, 295.
The boy count had well won his spurs on the field of Conquereux. With
the control over Nantes he had secured the control over the whole
course of the Loire from his own capital down to the sea--a most
important advantage in an age when the water-ways were the principal
channels of communication, whether for peace or war. The upper part of
the Loire valley, its richest and most fertile part, was in the hands
of the count of Blois. But his sway was not unbroken. Midway between
his two capitals, Blois and Tours, stood Amboise, the heritage of the
Red Count’s mother; farther south, in the valley of the Indre, stood
Loches, the heritage of his wife. It was not in human nature--certainly
not in Angevin nature--that the owner of Amboise and Loches should
not seek to extend his power a little further at the expense of his
neighbour in Touraine; and no great provocation on the part of Odo
of Blois was needed to make the fiery young Angevin dash into his
territories, and ride plundering, wasting and burning to the outskirts
of Blois itself.[303] Raid and counter-raid went on almost without
ceasing, and once it seems that King Hugh himself came to help his
Angevin ally.[304] In 995 Odo died, and his widow, Bertha, shortly
afterwards married Robert of France, who next year became king on the
death of his father Hugh Capet. Robert and Bertha were cousins; the
Church pronounced their marriage illegal, and punished it with an
interdict on the realm; amid the general confusion which followed, Fulk
carried on a desultory warfare with Odo’s two elder sons, Thierry and
Theobald, till the death of the latter in 1004 brought him face to face
with his lifelong antagonist, Odo II. The contest made inevitable by
circumstances was to be rendered all the more bitter by the character
of the two men who were now to engage in it. Odo, indeed, was even
yet scarcely more than a boy;[305] but, like Fulk, he had begun his
public career at a very early age. His beginning was as characteristic
as Fulk’s beginning at Conquereux. In 999 he openly insulted his
royal step-father by wresting the castle of Melun from Robert’s most
trusty counsellor, Count Burchard of Vendôme; and no might short of
that of the Norman duke, who had now grown from a “leader of the
Pirates” into the king’s most valued supporter, sufficed to avenge
the outrage.[306] The boy’s hasty, unprovoked spoliation of Burchard,
his insolent defiance of the king, his overweening self-confidence,
ending suddenly in ignominious flight, were typical of his whole
after-career. Odo’s life was as busy and active as Fulk’s, but his
activity produced no lasting effects. His insatiable ambition lacked
the restraint and regulation of the Angevin practical sagacity, and
ran hopelessly to seed without bringing forth any lasting fruit. There
was no fixed purpose in his life. New ideas, daring schemes, sprang
up in his brain almost as quickly as in that of Fulk; but he never
waited till they were matured; he never stopped to count their cost;
and instead of working together to one common end, they only drove him
into a multiplicity of irreconcileable and often visionary undertakings
which never came to perfection. He was entirely a creature of impulse;
always ready to throw himself into a new project, but generally lacking
patience and perseverance enough to carry it through; harassed by
numberless conflicting cares;[307] breaking every engagement as soon as
made, not from any deep-laid policy, but simply from sheer inability to
keep long to anything. “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,” might
have been the burthen of Odo and of Odo’s whole race. The house of
Blois failed through their utter lack of the quality which was the main
strength of their rivals: thoroughness. The rivalry and the characters
of the two houses have a bearing upon English history; for the quarrel
that began between them for the possession of Touraine was to be fought
out at last on English ground, and for no less a stake than the crown
of England. The rivalry of Odo and Fulk was a foreshadowing of the
rivalry between Stephen of Blois and Henry of Anjou. The end was the
same in both cases. With every advantage on their side, in the eleventh
century as in the twelfth, in Gaul as in England, the aimless activity
of the house of Blois only spent itself against the indomitable
steadiness, determination and persistency of the Angevins, as vainly
as the storm-wind might beat upon the rocky foundations of Black Angers.
[303] Richer, l. iv. c. 79.
[304] Richer, l. iv. cc. 90–94. His account of the war, and
indeed his whole account of Fulk and of Odo, is extremely
strange and confused; it has been examined by M. Léon Aubineau
in a “Notice sur Thibaut-le-Tricheur et Eudes I.” in the _Mém.
de la Soc. Archéol. de Touraine_, vol. iii. (1845–1847), pp.
41–94, but the result is far from convincing.
[305] He is called “puerulus” at the time of his mother’s
second marriage, _i.e._ in 995–996. _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ in
_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 211. But considering the date
of the Melun affair, this can hardly be taken literally.
[306] _Vita Burchardi_, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp.
354, 355. Will. Jumièges, l. v. c. 14 (_ib._ p. 189; Duchesne,
_Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 255). Richer, l. iv. cc. 74–78. See
note A at the end of chapter.
[307] See the character given of him by R. Glaber, l. iii. cc.
2, 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 27, 40).
In the ten years of misery and confusion which followed the death
of Odo I. and the re-marriage of his widow, Fulk had time nearly to
complete a chain of fortresses which, starting from Angers and sweeping
along the line of Geoffrey Greygown’s Poitevin conquests in a wide
irregular half-circle up again to Amboise, served the double purpose of
linking his own outlying possessions in Touraine with his head-quarters
in Anjou, and of cutting in halves the dominions of his neighbour.
The towers of Montreuil, Passavant and Maulévrier, of Loudun and the
more remote Mirebeau, were a standing menace to Saumur and Chinon.
Sᵗᵉ·-Maure was an eyesore to the garrison of Ile-Bouchard.[308] Farther
east, on a pile of rock with the little blue Indre winding round its
foot, rose, as it rises still in ruined majesty, the mighty keep of
Loches; and on the banks of the Indrois that of Montrésor, whose lord,
Roger, rejoiced in the surname of “the devil.”[309] To Roger Fulk also
intrusted the command of another great fortress, Montrichard, whose
dark donjon frowned down upon the Cher from a plot of ground stolen
from the metropolitan see of Tours.[310] At Amboise itself, the site
of the Roman governor’s palace--now crowned by the modern castle--was
occupied by a strong _domicilium_ of the Angevin count,[311] and the
place was a perpetual obstacle between the archiepiscopal city of S.
Martin and the secular capital of its rulers. Langeais and Montbazon,
which for a while threatened Tours more closely still, were soon
wrested from their daring builder;[312] but the whole course of the
Indre above Montbazon was none the less in Fulk’s hands, for either by
force or guile, the lords of all the castles on its banks had been
won over to his cause; he had gained a foothold on every one of the
affluents of the Loire upon its southern side; while on the north, in
the valley of the Loir, Hugh of Alluye, the lord of Château-la-Vallière
and St.-Christophe, was so devoted to the Angevin interest that the
count’s usual route to and from Amboise lay through his lands.[313]
[308] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377.
[309] _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 107; _Gesta Amb. Domin._
(_ibid._), p. 167.
[310] _Gesta Cons._, as above.
[311] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (as above), p. 175.
[312] That Montbazon was built by Fulk appears by a charter of
King Robert (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 577, 578), date
seemingly about A.D. 1000. It had, however, passed into Odo’s
hands. Langeais, whose building is recorded by Fulk Rechin (as
above), was probably taken by Odo I. in 995; there is a charter
of his dated “at the siege of Langeais” in that year. Mabillon,
_Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 96.
[313] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 91. _Gesta Amb.
Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 164.
The early part of the eleventh century was an age of castle-building;
Fulk, however, had begun his line of fortifications before the century
dawned, in those gloomy years of interdict when the royal power was at
its lowest ebb, when the people, cut off from the helps and comforts
of religion, lay in hopeless anarchy and misery, and half in terror,
half in longing, men whispered to each other that the end of the world
was near. The superstitious terrors which paralyzed gentler souls only
goaded Fulk into more restless activity and inflamed his fierce temper
almost to madness. He had married the heiress of Vendôme, the daughter
of Count Burchard;[314] but this union came to a terrible end while its
only child was still in her cradle. In the very dawn of the dreaded
year 1000 Countess Elizabeth expiated her real or supposed sins as a
wife by death at the stake; and a conflagration which destroyed a large
part of the city of Angers immediately after her execution may well
have caused the horror-stricken subjects of her husband to deem that
judgement was indeed at their gates.[315]
[314] They were already married in 990; see a charter in
Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 59.
[315] This, or something like it, must be the meaning of the
not very intelligible accounts given in the Angevin chronicles
of the death of Elizabeth and the fire which followed it.
“Incensa est urbs Andegavensis post incensionem Comitissæ
Elizabeth.” Chron. S. Michael. in Peric. Maris, a. 1000 (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 175). “Prima incensio urbis
Andegavæ, quæ evenit paucis diebus post combustionem comitissæ
Helisabeth.” Chron. S. Albin., a. 1000 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
p. 22). “Urbs Andecava incensa est post combustionem comitissæ
Elisabeth.” Breve Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 999 (_ib._ p.
187). “Fulco ... cum Elysabeth conjugem suam Andegavis, post
immane præcipitium salvatam, occidisset, ipsamque urbem paucis
defendentibus flammarum incendiis concremâsset.” _Hist. S.
Flor. Salm._ (_ibid._), p. 273. Cf. _ib._ p. 260.
After the paroxysm came the reaction. When the dreaded year had passed
over and the world found itself still alive; when the king had at
last consented to purchase relief from the interdict by parting from
his beloved Bertha, and the nation was rousing itself to welcome the
new queen who stepped into Bertha’s place; then the blood which he had
shed at Conquereux and elsewhere--one may surely add, the ashes of
his wife--began to weigh heavily on the Black Count’s soul; “the fear
of Gehenna” took possession of him, and leaving the marchland to the
care of his brother Maurice he set out for the Holy Sepulchre.[316]
This journey was the first link in a chain which, through the later
pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra himself and those of his great-grandson Fulk
V., brought the counts of Anjou into a specially intimate relation with
the Holy Land and led to the establishment of an Angevin dynasty upon
its throne. Legend has not been slack to furnish Fulk the Palmer with
characteristic adventures, to tell how his craft outwitted that of the
Turks who tried to exclude him from the Sepulchre, and how he not only
procured a piece of the true Cross, but while kissing the sacred stone
in the fervour of his devotion, detected a loose fragment which he
managed to bite off and bring home as the most precious trophy of his
journey.[317] His first care on his return was to build an abbey for
the reception of this relic. From the rocky angle by the winding Indre
where the great “Square Tower”--as the natives emphatically call the
keep of Loches--was rising in picturesque contrast to a church reared
by Geoffrey Greygown in honour of our Lady,[318] the land which the
wife of the first count of Anjou had transmitted to her descendants
stretched a mile eastward beyond the river in a broad expanse of
green meadow to a waste plot of ground full of broom, belonging to a
man named Ingelger. From its original Latin name, _Belli-locus_, now
corrupted into Beaulieu, it seems possible that the place was set apart
for trials by ordeal of battle.[319]
[316] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
15). On the regency of Maurice see note C at end of chapter,
and Mabille, Introd. _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. lxxvi.
[317] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 102, 103.
There is a versified account of the pious theft in the
Beaulieu office of the Holy Sepulchre, Salies, _Hist. de
Foulques-Nerra_, p. 529.
[318] In 963; Chron. Turon. Abbrev. ad ann. (Salmon, _Chron.
de Touraine_, p. 185). From the foundation-charter, cited
by M. l’abbé Bardet (_La Collégiale de Loches_, p. 8), it
seems that Geoffrey founded the church on his return from a
pilgrimage to Rome. A fragment of his work possibly remains in
the present church (now called S. Ours), which was built by the
historian-prior, Thomas Pactius, in the time of Henry II.
[319] This is a remark quoted by M. de Salies
(_Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 115, 361) from Dufour, “Dict. hist. de
l’arrond. de Loches,” and grounded on the fact that while the
many other Beaulieus, in France and in England, all appear in
Latin as “_Bellus_-locus,” this one is “_Belli_-locus” in its
foundation charter. See a similar case of verbal corruption
below, p. 187.
This field Fulk determined to purchase for the site of his abbey. A
bargain was struck; the count paid down the stipulated sum, carried the
former owner on his shoulders from the middle of the field to the foot
of the bridge, and there set him down, saying, “A man without wit his
freehold must quit”--by which ceremony the contract was completed.[320]
Despite his fiery haste, Fulk did all things with due method,[321] and
his next anxiety was to decide upon the dedication of his intended
minster. He found his best counsellor in his newly-married wife, the
Lady Hildegard, and by her advice the church was placed under the
direct invocation, not of saint or angel, but of the most Holy Trinity
Itself.[322] By the time it stood ready for consecration the son of
Fulk and Hildegard was nearly three years old:[323] he had been nursed
by a blacksmith’s wife at Loches;[324] and many a time, as the count
and countess went to inspect the progress of architect and builder in
the meadow beyond the river, they must have lingered beside the forge
to mark the growth of their little Geoffrey, the future conqueror
of Tours. The consecration of the church proved a difficulty; the
archbishop of Tours refused to perform it unless Fulk would restore to
his see the stolen land of Montrichard.[325] Fulk swore--doubtless
his customary oath, “by God’s souls”[326]--that he would get the
better of the primate, and went straight off to Rome to lay his case
before the Pope. After several years’ wrangling it was decided in his
favour,[327] and one morning in May 1012 the abbey-church of the Holy
Trinity at Beaulieu was hallowed with all due pomp and solemnity by a
Roman cardinal-legate. But though Rome had spoken, the case was not
ended yet. That very afternoon a sudden storm of wind blew up from the
south, whirled round the church, and swept the whole roof completely
off. Clergy and laity alike seized on the prodigy as an evident token
of Heaven’s wrath against the insolence and presumption of Fulk;[328]
not so the Black Count himself, who simply replaced the roof and
pushed on the completion of the monastic buildings as if nothing had
happened.[329] He had successfully defied the Church; he next ventured
to defy the king and the count of Blois both at once. The divorced
queen Bertha, mother of young Odo of Blois, still lived and was still
loved by the king; Fulk, if he was not actually, as tradition relates,
a kinsman of the new Queen Constance,[330] was at any rate fully alive
to the policy of making common cause with her against their common
rivals of Blois. He crushed King Robert’s last hope of reunion with
Bertha by sending twelve armed men to assassinate at a hunting-party,
before his royal master’s eyes, the king’s seneschal or _comes palatii_
Hugh of Beauvais who was the confidant of his cherished scheme.[331]
It is a striking proof not only of the royal helplessness but also
of the independence and security which Fulk had already attained
that his crime went altogether unpunished and even uncensured save
by one bishop,[332] and almost immediately after its commission he
could again venture on leaving his dominions under the regency of his
brother Maurice, while he set off upon another long journey which the
legendary writers of Anjou, by some strange confusion between their own
hero and the Emperor Otto III., make into a mission of knight-errantry
to deliver the Pope from a tyrant named Crescentius, but which seems
really to have been a second pilgrimage to Holy Land.[333] He came
back to find the storm which had so long been gathering on his eastern
border on the point of breaking at last.
[320] 11th lesson of the Beaulieu Office, Salies,
_Foulques-Nerra_, p. 528. “Stultus a proprio expellitur alodo.”
[321] “Ut semper curiose agebat,” R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 4 (_Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 15).
[322] _Ibid._ (pp. 15, 16).
[323] He was born October 14, 1006, according to Chronn.
Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp.
164, 187). The Chron. S. Serg. (_ib._ p. 134) gives the same
day, but makes the year 1007; the Chron. S. Maxent. (_ib._ p.
387) places the event on April 12, 1005. The Chron. S. Albin.
(_ib._ p. 22) gives no day, but confirms the two first-named
authorities for the year, 1006.
[324] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 260.
[325] R. Glaber, as above (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
16). Cf. _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 107).
[326] “Fulco Nerra, cui consuetudo fuit Animas Dei jurare,”
begins his history in the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_),
p. 89.
[327] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 4 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
x. p. 17). See also a bull of Pope John XVIII. in Migne’s
_Patrologia_, vol. cxxxix., cols. 1491, 1492; and two of
Sergius IV., _ib._ cols. 1525–1527.
[328] R. Glaber, as above (p. 16).
[329] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 99. This writer
copies the whole story of Beaulieu from R. Glaber.
[330] See note B at end of chapter.
[331] R. Glaber, l. iii. c. 2 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.
p. 27).
[332] Fulbert of Chartres; see his letter to Fulk, _Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 476, 477.
[333] See note C at end of chapter.
The adherents of the count of Blois, headed by Landry of Châteaudun,
had profited by Fulk’s absence to concert a scheme for the expulsion
of the Angevins from Touraine. In spite of a vigorous resistance made
by Fulk’s lieutenant at Amboise, Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin’s at
Tours, they seemed in a fair way to succeed, when Fulk himself dropped
like a thunderbolt in their midst, dashed right through the county of
Blois into that of Chartres, punished Landry by sacking Châteaudun
and harrying the surrounding district, and marched home in triumph
to Amboise.[334] A raid such as this was a distinct declaration of
war, not upon Landry, but upon Landry’s lord. Fulk had intended it
as such, and he went home to set in action every possible means that
could gain him help and support in a fight to the uttermost with
Odo for the possession of Touraine. At that very moment the county
of Maine was thrown virtually into his hands by the death of its
aged count Hugh; with the alliance of Hugh’s youthful successor he
secured the northern frontier of Touraine and the support of a body
of valiant fighting-men whose co-operation soon proved to be of the
highest value and importance. The rapid insight which singled out at
a glance the most fitting instruments for his purpose, the gifts of
attraction and persuasion by which he knew how to attach men to his
service, and seemed almost to inspire them with some faint reflex of
his own spirit, while making them devoted creatures of his will,
were all brought into play as he cast about in all directions for
aid in the coming struggle, and were strikingly shown in his choice
of a lieutenant. The instinct of genius told him that he had found
the man he wanted in young Lisoy, lord of the castle of Bazogers, in
Maine. As prudent in counsel as he was daring in fight, Lisoy was a
man after Fulk’s own heart; they understood each other at once; Lisoy
was appointed to share with the now aged Sulpice the supreme command
of Loches and Amboise; and while Sulpice provided for the defence of
Amboise by building on his own land there a lofty tower of stone,[335]
the burned and plundered districts of St.-Aignan, Chaumont and Blois
soon had cause to know that the “pride of Cenomannian knighthood”
had thrown himself heart and soul into the service of the count of
Anjou.[336]
[334] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 88, 89–91.
[335] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 169.
[336] _Ib._ pp. 160–164.
The crisis came in the summer of 1016, when Odo of Blois gathered all
his forces for an attack upon Montrichard. His rival was fully prepared
to meet him. Before he set out from Blois, the allied hosts of Anjou
and Maine had assembled at Amboise, and thence separated again to post
themselves in such a manner as to render a battle unavoidable. Fulk
turned eastward, and took up a position close to Pontlevoy, seemingly
in a wood now known as the Bois-Royal, which in that day was skirted
by the high road from Blois to Montrichard. Herbert of Maine rode down
to the banks of the Cher, and pitched his camp just above Montrichard,
at Bourré.[337] If Odo followed the high road he would be met by the
Angevins; if he contrived to turn their position by taking a less
direct route to the eastward, he must encounter the Cenomannians, with
the garrison of Montrichard at their back; while whichever engaged him
first, the distance between the two bodies of troops was so slight
that either could easily come to the other’s assistance. It was well
for Anjou and for her count that his strategical arrangements were so
perfect, and so faithfully carried out by his young ally; for never in
all his long life, save in the panic at Conquereux, was Fulk the Black
so near to complete overthrow as on that Friday morning in July 1016,
when he met Odo of Blois face to face in the battle-field.
[337] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 107. The
topography of the battle of Pontlevoy is cleared up by Salies,
_Foulques-Nerra_, p. 175 _et seq._
Odo, who always trusted to be saved by the multitude of an host,[338]
was greatly astonished, on arriving with all his forces opposite
Pontlevoy, to find the Angevins drawn up against him in battle array.
With a few hurried words he urged his men to the onset. Fortune seemed
for a while to favour the stronger side; Fulk and his troops were sore
bested; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and severely stunned,
and the fate of Anjou hung trembling in the balance, when the scale was
turned by the sword of Herbert of Maine. A messenger hurried off to
tell the Cenomannian count that his friend was defeated, nay, captured.
Herbert and his knights flew to the rescue; they charged the left
wing of the enemies with a vigour which changed the whole position of
affairs, and snatched from the count of Blois the victory he had all
but won; the chivalry of Blois fled in confusion, leaving the foot
to be cut to pieces at will, and their camp to be plundered by the
victorious allies, who returned in triumph to Amboise, laden with rich
spoils and valuable prisoners.[339]
[338] “More suo, nimiâ multitudine confisus.” _Gesta Cons._
(Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 107.
[339] _Ib._ pp. 107, 108. The date--July 6--is given in Chronn.
S. Serg., Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm., a. 1016 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 134, 164, 187). There is an account of the
battle in _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (_ib._), p. 274, but it has a
very impossible look.
The victory of Pontlevoy was the turning-point of Fulk’s career.
Nine years passed away before Odo recovered from the check enough
to make any attempt to avenge it. It seems at first glance strange
that Fulk did not employ the interval in pushing forward his conquest
of Touraine. But in the eyes of both Fulk and Odo the possession of
Touraine was in reality a means rather than an end; and a sort of
armed truce, so long as Odo did not provoke him to break it, suited
Fulk’s purpose better than a continued war. His western frontier had
been secured by his first victory at Conquereux; his eastern frontier
was now secured, at any rate for a time, by his victory at Pontlevoy;
from the south there was nothing to fear, for the duke of Aquitaine,
to whom he owed homage for Loudun, was his staunch friend, and
presently gave proof of his friendship by bestowing on him the city of
Saintes.[340] Fulk at once made use of the gift as a means of extorting
something yet more valuable from a neighbour to whom he owed a far
deeper obligation--Herbert of Maine. It may be that they had quarrelled
since the days of Pontlevoy; it may be that Herbert had begun that
career of nocturnal raids against the fortified towns of Anjou which
scared men and beasts from their rest, and gained him his unclassical
but expressive surname of “Wake-the-dog.”[341] If so, the wily Angevin
took effectual measures to stop them. He enticed the count of Maine
to pay him a visit at Saintes, proposing to grant him the investiture
of that city. Suddenly, in the midst of conversation, Herbert was
seized by Fulk’s servants and flung into prison, whence he was only
released at the end of two years, and on submission to such conditions
as Fulk chose to dictate.[342] What those conditions were history
does not tell; but there can be little doubt that they included some
acknowledgment of the suzerain rights of Anjou over Maine, with which
Geoffrey Greygown had been invested by Hugh Capet, but which he had not
had time to make good, and which Fulk had only enforced for a moment,
at the sword’s point, when the aged count Hugh was dying.[343] Fulk’s
dealings with Maine are only an episode in his life; but they led even
more directly than his struggle with the house of Blois to consequences
of the utmost importance. They paved the way for an Angevin conquest of
Maine which extended the Angevin power to the Norman border, brought it
into contact and collision with the Norman ducal house, and originated
the long wars which were ended at last by the marriage of Geoffrey
Plantagenet and the Empress Matilda. The imprisonment of Herbert is
really the first step in the path which leads from Anjou to England.
[340] Ademar of Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p.
149.
[341] “Vulgo, sed parum Latine, cognominari Evigilans-canem
pro ingenti probitate promeruit. Nam ... in eundem [sc.
Fulconem] arma levans nocturnas expeditiones crebro agebat, et
Andegavenses homines et canes in ipsâ urbe, vel in munitioribus
oppidis terrebat, et horrendis assultibus pavidos vigilare
cogebat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._) p.
532. It is however only fair to add that in another place
(_ib._ p. 487) Orderic says Herbert “vulgo Evigilans-canem
cognominabatur, propter gravissimas infestationes quas
a perfidis affinibus suis Andegavensibus incessanter
patiebatur”--as if he kept the Cenomannian dogs awake to give
notice of the enemy’s approach, we must suppose.
[342] Ademar of Chabanais (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.),
p. 161; Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p.
189; Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 401).
Ademar says Herbert’s imprisonment lasted two years; and the
Chronn. S. Albin. and Vindoc. a. 1027 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
pp. 22, 167), give us the date of his release, by giving that
of the Breton invasion which followed it.
[343] “Hugonis ... quem Fulco senior sibi violentur
subjugârat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
p. 532. The terms of Herbert’s submission to Fulk are matter
of inference from what followed his release. He at once
began to quarrel with Avesgaud, the bishop of Le Mans, and
being by him defied and excommunicated, called in the help
of Duke Alan of Britanny (_Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 30, in
Mabillon, _Vet. Analecta_, p. 304). Alan, when he had helped
to defeat the bishop, marched down to besiege Le Lude, one
of the chief Angevin fortresses on the Cenomannian border,
and only desisted when he had extorted from Fulk the hostages
given him by Herbert on his release; Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 166). It is not hard to see why the
rival overlord of Nantes should be ready to make war, on any
pretext, upon the count of Anjou; but, making due allowance
for Fulk’s possible difficulties--Odo’s last attack occurred
in this year--still it is very hard to see why Fulk, “the
ingenious Fulk,” as the writer of the _Gesta Amb. Domin._
calls him (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 165), could find no better
way of raising the siege of a petty border-fortress than by
making restitution to Herbert at the bidding of Alan, unless
he felt so sure of his hold over Herbert as not to think the
hostages worth keeping. The striking resemblance between Fulk’s
treatment of Herbert and his father’s treatment of Guerech also
suggests that there was probably a like resemblance in the
terms of release.
But the step could never have been followed up as it was by Fulk’s
successor had not Fulk himself at once turned back to his special work
of clearing away the obstacle to Angevin progress formed by the rivalry
of Blois, which once again threatened to become a serious danger in the
very year of Herbert’s capture. Odo had lately[344] succeeded to the
inheritance of his cousin Stephen, count of Champagne, an acquisition
which doubled his wealth and power, and gave him a position of such
importance in the French kingdom as enabled him to overawe the crown
and cause a complete change in its policy. In 1025 King Robert, “or
rather his queen Constance,” as the chroniclers significantly add,
made peace with Count Odo who had hitherto been their enemy, and
left their old friend Fulk of Anjou to carry on alone the struggle
which he had begun with their good will, and, ostensibly at least,
partly in their interest.[345] Odo thought his hour was come; “with
all his might he set upon” Fulk;[346] and his might now included all
the forces of Touraine, Blois, Chartres and Champagne, aided, it
seems, by a contingent from the Royal Domain itself.[347] With this
formidable host Odo laid siege to a great fortified camp known as
the Montboyau, which Fulk had reared some ten years before on the
northern bank of the Loire almost opposite Tours, as a standing menace
to the city and a standing defiance to its ruler.[348] Fulk, to whom
the besieged garrison appealed for succour, had advanced[349] as far
as Brain-sur-Alonnes when he was met by tidings which induced him to
change his course.[350] Nearly over against the spot where he stood,
a ridge of white chalk-cliff rising sheer above the southern bank of
the Loire was crowned by the fortress of Saumur, the south-western
key of Touraine, close to the Angevin border. It had belonged to the
counts of Tours since the days of Theobald the Trickster at least;
but in an earlier time it had probably formed a part of the Angevin
March, as it still formed a part of the diocese of Angers. Its lord,
Gelduin, was the sole human being whom the Black Count feared; “Let
us flee that devil of Saumur!” was his cry, “I seem always to see him
before me.”[351] But now he learned that Gelduin had joined his count
at the siege of the Montboyau. A hurried night-ride across Loire and
Vienne brought Fulk at break of day to the gates of Saumur,[352] and
before sunset he was master of the place, although its inhabitants,
with a spirit worthy of their absent leader, fired the town before they
surrendered, and only admitted the victors into a heap of ashes. Not
the least valiant of its defenders had been the monks of S. Florence, a
little community who dwelt within the castle-enclosure, keeping guard
over the relics of a famous local saint. As they came forth with their
patron’s body from the blazing ruins, the Black Count’s voice rose
above the din: “Let the fire burn, holy Florence! I will build thee a
better dwelling at Angers.” The relics were placed in a boat and rowed
down the stream till they reached the limit of the lands of Saumur,
at Trèves. Once the boundary had been further west, at Gennes; till
Fulk, despite his terror of the “devil,” had taken courage to march
against him, doubtless at a moment when Gelduin was unprepared for
defence, for he at once asked a truce. It was granted, but not exactly
as he desired; on the spot where Gelduin’s envoy met him Fulk planted
a castle and called it mockingly “Treva,” _truce_. Opposite this
alien fortress the boat which carried the relics of S. Florence now
stuck fast in one of the sandbanks of treacherous Loire, and all the
efforts of the rowers failed to move it. The saint--said the monks--was
evidently determined not to be carried beyond his own territory. Fulk,
who was superintending the voyage in person, began to rail at him as
“an impious rustic who would not allow himself to be well treated”: but
there was a grain of humour in the Black Count’s composition, and he
was probably as much amused as angered at the saint’s obstinacy; at any
rate he suffered the monks to push off in the opposite direction--which
they did without difficulty--and deposit their charge in the church
of S. Hilary, an old dependency of their house, till he should find
them a suitable place for a new monastery.[353] Thus far Odo’s grand
expedition had brought him nothing but the loss of the best stronghold
he possessed on the Angevin border. There was apparently nothing to
prevent Fulk from marching in triumph up the valley of the Vienne,
where Chinon and Ile-Bouchard now held out alone for the count of
Blois amid a ring of Angevin fortresses. His present object, however,
was to relieve the Montboyau; and turning northward he laid siege
to a castle of his own building which had somehow passed into the
enemy’s hands, Montbazon[354] on the Indre, only three leagues distant
from Tours. Odo, whose siege operations had proved a most disastrous
failure,[355] at once broke up his camp and marched to the relief of
Montbazon. To dislodge him from the siege of Montboyau was all that
Fulk wanted; simulating flight, he retreated up the valley to Loches
and thence retired gradually upon Amboise.[356] A month later Odo
made an ineffectual attempt to regain Saumur. Some time afterwards he
tried again, pitching his tents among the vineyards on the banks of
the Thouet, hard by the rising walls of the new abbey of S. Florence;
the monks acted as mediators between their former lord and their new
patron, and peace was made, Odo definitely relinquishing Saumur, and
Fulk agreeing to raze the Montboyau[357]--that is, to raze the keep on
its summit; for the white chalky slopes of the mighty earthwork itself
rise gleaming above the river to this day. The struggle between Fulk
and Odo was virtually over. Once again, in the following year, the
count of Blois attempted to surprise Amboise, in company with the young
King Henry, Robert’s son and recently crowned colleague. The attack
failed;[358] it was Odo’s last effort to stem the tide of Angevin
progress. Fulk had done more than beat his rival in the battle-field;
he had out-generalled him in every way, and won a triumph which made
the final issue of their rivalry a foregone conclusion. That issue he
never sought to hasten, for with all his fiery vehemence Fulk knew how
to wait; unlike Odo, he could look beyond the immediate future, beyond
the horizon of his own life, and having sown and watered his seed he
could be content to leave others to gather its fruit, rather than risk
the frustration of his labours by plucking at it before the time.
[344] Stephen seems to have died in 1019; _Art de vérifier les
dates_, vol. xi. p. 347.
[345] Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p.
10); Chron. Vindoc. a. 1025 (_ib._ p. 165). This last is
probably the right date, as the Angevin capture of Saumur,
which follows, is dated in 1026 by the Chronn. S. Albin. and S.
Serg. (_ib._ pp. 22, 134), and in 1025 by the Chronn. S. Flor.
Salm. and S. Maxent. (_ib._ pp. 187, 388).
[346] “Totis nisibus adorsus est.” Chronn. Rain. Andeg. and
Vindoc. as above.
[347] “Cum _Francis_,” says the _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 276). This writer afterwards speaks
of Odo’s whole host as “Franci.” He has already done the same
at Pontlevoy (_ib._ p. 274); but surely there cannot have been
any royal vassals fighting under Odo there. What can be the
writer’s real meaning?
[348] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 108. _Gesta Amb.
Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 165. See, for dates, Chron. Rain. Andeg.
a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 10).
[349] The _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (as above), p. 165, say that Fulk
was accompanied by Herbert of Maine. But, on calculating dates,
it seems that Herbert must have been by this time in prison.
It is however highly probable that Cenomannian troops would be
supplied to Fulk by Bishop Avesgaud.
[350] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 276.
[351] _Ib._ p. 275.
[352] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p.
276.--“Ligerique _ac Vigennâ_ transvadatis.” The writer, living
close to the spot, can hardly have mistaken its topography; but
unless he has done so, the confluence of the Vienne and the
Loire must at that time have been considerably farther west
than at present; it is now at Candes, some distance to the east
of Saumur and Brain.
[353] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), pp.
276–278.
[354] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 109. _Gesta Amb.
Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 165.
[355] Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 10).
[356] _Gesta Cons._ and _Gesta Amb. Domin._ as above.
[357] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 280.
[358] Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027 (_ib._ p. 165). Cf. Chron. S.
Albin. a. 1027 (_ib._ p. 22).
[Illustration: Plan VI.
MEDIEVAL ANGERS.
Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co.
]
Fulk was now at the height of his prosperity. He had been count of
Anjou for forty years, and his reign had been one of unbroken success.
Each in turn of the greater neighbours who had stood, a threatening
ring, around Geoffrey Greygown’s boy-heir had been successfully dealt
with in some way or other, till the little Marchland had grown to be a
power in the realm second only to Normandy and perhaps to Aquitaine;
and before Fulk’s reign closed, even Aquitaine, the only one of
Anjou’s immediate neighbours which had not had to bow before him, fell
prostrate at the feet of his son. Fulk’s last years were to be years
of peace. Only once again did he take part in the general affairs of
the French kingdom; and then, as ever, his action was in strict accord
with the policy which he had begun and which his descendants followed
consistently down to the time of Henry Fitz-Empress: a policy of steady
loyalty to the lawful authority of the French Crown, against which the
counts of Blois lived in perpetual opposition. After Robert’s death,
in 1031, Fulk appeared in the unexpected character of peace-maker
between Queen Constance and her son, the young King Henry, whom she
was trying to oust from his throne;[359] and he afterwards accompanied
Henry on an expedition to dislodge Odo of Champagne from Sens, which
however succeeded no better than the attempt once made by Odo and
Henry to dislodge Fulk himself from Amboise.[360] But peace or war,
it mattered not to the Black Count; he was never at a loss for work.
When there was no enemy to fight or to outwit, his versatile energies
flung themselves just as readily into the encouragement of piety or the
improvement and embellishment of his capital. Over the black bastions
of the castle with which the French King Philip Augustus, when he had
wrested Angers from a degenerate descendant of its ancient counts,
found it needful to secure his hold on “this contemptuous city,” there
still looks out upon the river a fragment of a ruined hall, chiefly
of red flintstone; it is the sole remains of the dwelling-place of
Fulk Nerra--in all likelihood, his own work.[361] A poetic legend
shows him to us for once quietly at home, standing in that hall and
gazing at the view from its windows. At his feet flowed the purple
Mayenne between its flat but green meadows--for the great suburb
beyond the river did not yet exist--winding down beneath a bridge of
his own building to join the Loire beyond the rising hills to the
south-west. His eyes, keen as those of the “Falcon” whose name he
bore, reached across river and meadow to the slope of a hill directly
opposite him, where he descried a dove flying to and fro, picking up
fragments of earth and depositing them in a cavity which it seemed to
be trying to fill. Struck by the bird’s action, he carefully marked
the spot, and the work of the dove was made the foundation-stone of a
great abbey in honour of S. Nicolas, which he had vowed to build as a
thank-offering for deliverance from a storm at sea on his return from
his second pilgrimage.[362] This abbey, with a nunnery founded near
it eight years later--in 1128--by his countess Hildegard, on the site
of an ancient church dedicated to our Lady of Charity,[363] became
the nucleus round which gathered in after-years a suburb known as
Ronceray, scarcely less important than the city itself. These tranquil
home-occupations, however, could not long satisfy the restless temper
of Fulk. The irresistible charm exercised by the Holy Land over so many
of the more imaginative spirits of the age drew him to revisit it in
1035. One interesting event of the journey is recorded: his meeting
at Constantinople with Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William
the Conqueror.[364] The old and the young penitent completed their
pilgrimage together; but only the former lived to see his home again;
and when he reached it, he found the gates of Angers shut in his face
by his own son. The rebellion was soon quelled. Saddled and bridled
like a beast of burthen, Geoffrey came crawling to his father’s feet.
“Conquered art thou--conquered, conquered!” shouted the old count,
kicking his prostrate son. “Aye, conquered by thee, for thou art my
father; but unconquered by all beside!” The spirited answer touched
Fulk’s paternal pride, and Geoffrey arose forgiven.[365] The power
which he had thus undutifully tried to usurp was soon to be his by
right; not, however, till the Black Count had given one last proof
that neither his hand nor his brain had yet forgotten its cunning. Odo
of Champagne had long ago left Touraine to its fate, and for the last
four years he had been absorbed in a visionary attempt to wrest from
the Emperor Conrad II., first the kingdom of Burgundy, then that of
Italy, and at last the imperial crown itself; while Fulk’s conquests
of the valleys of the Indre and the Cher had been completed by the
acquisition of Montbazon and St.-Aignan.[366] When at the close of
1037 tidings came that Odo had been defeated and slain in a battle with
the imperial forces at Bar, the Angevin at once laid siege to Langeais,
and took it.[367] One more stronghold still remained to be won in the
valley of the Vienne. From the right bank of the little river, winding
down silvery-blue between soft green meadows to join the Loire beyond
the circle of the distant hills to the north-west, the mighty steep of
Chinon rises abruptly, as an old writer says, “straight up to heaven”;
range upon range of narrow streets climb like the steps of a terrace up
its rocky sides; acacias wave their bright foliage from every nook; and
on the crest of the ridge a long line of white ruins, the remains of a
stately castle, stand out against the sky. A dense woodland of oaks and
larches and firs, stretching north-eastward almost to the valley of the
Indre, and crowded with game of every kind, formed probably no small
part of the attractions which were to make Chinon the favourite retreat
of Fulk Nerra’s greatest descendant. In those ruined halls, where a
rich growth of moss and creepers has replaced the tapestried hangings,
earlier and later memories--memories of the Black Count or of the Maid
of Orleans--seem to an English visitor only to flit like shadows around
the death-bed of Henry Fitz-Empress. But it was Fulk who won Chinon
for the Angevins. The persuasion of his tongue, as keen as his sword,
sufficed now to gain its surrender.[368] The Great Builder’s work was
all but finished; only the keystone remained to be dropped into its
place. Tours itself stood out alone against the conqueror of Touraine.
One more blow, and the count of Anjou would be master of the whole
valley of the Loire from Amboise to the sea.
[359] R. Glaber, l. iii. c. 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x.
p. 40). Fulk’s mediation was done in characteristic fashion; he
asked Constance “cur bestialem vesaniam erga filios exerceret.”
It took effect, however.
[360] Chron. S. Petr. Senon. and Chronolog. S. Marian.
Autissiod. a. 1032 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. pp. 196,
308).
[361] See note B to chapter ii. above.
[362] _Hist. S. Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_) p. 275. The
church was consecrated December 1, 1020; Chronn. S. Serg. ad
ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 134.) The foundation-charter is
in Le Pelletier’s _Breviculum S. Nicolai_, p. 4.
[363] The foundation-charter, dated July 14, 1128, is in Hiret,
_Antiquitez d’Anjou_, pp. 100, 101. The whole history of the
church is fully discussed by M. d’Espinay, in the _Revue
Historique de l’Anjou_, vol. xii. (1874), pp. 49–64, 143–155.
A grotesque legend, which yet has a somewhat characteristic
ring, was told of the origin of this nunnery. Fulk one day,
watching a potter at his work, was seized with a desire to try
his hand. He succeeded in producing a well-shaped pan, which
he carried home in triumph and gave to his wife, telling her
that it was made by the man whom she loved best. Hildegard,
mistaking the jest for a serious charge, vowed to disprove it
at once by undergoing the ordeal of water, and flung herself
out of the window and into the river, before her husband could
stop her. The spot where she came to land was marked by the
abbey of our Lady (_Revue hist. de l’Anjou_, as above, pp. 54,
55, and note 1; Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 279 note.) Its later
name of “Ronceray” was derived from a bramble-bush (_ronce_)
which forced its way through the pavement of the choir, despite
all attempts to uproot it. This however was in the sixteenth
century.
[364] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 101. See note C
at end of chapter.
[365] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, pp. 401,
402).
[366] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 116.
[367] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 168.
[368] _Ibid._
Strangely, yet characteristically, that final blow Fulk left to be
struck by his successor. As his life drew to its close the ghostly
terrors of his youth came back to him with redoubled force; and the
world which had marvelled at his exploits and his crimes marvelled no
less at his last penance. For the fourth time he went out to Jerusalem,
and there caused two servants, bound by an oath to do whatsoever
he should bid them, to drag him round the Holy City in the sight of
all the Turks, one holding him by a halter round his neck, the other
scourging his naked back, while he cried aloud for Heaven’s mercy on
his soul as a perjured and miserable sinner.[369] He made his way
homeward as far as Metz.[370] There, on June 21st, 1040, the Black
Count’s soul passed away;[371] and his body was embalmed, carried home
to Beaulieu, and buried in the chapter-house of the abbey which had
been the monument of his earliest pilgrimage, the first-fruits of his
youthful devotion and daring.[372]
[369] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 402).
[370] “Metensem urbem,” _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_)
p. 117. From the last word one would imagine this could only
mean Metz in Lorraine; but there is another Metz in the
Gâtinais; and although it is, and clearly always has been,
an insignificant little town, quite undeserving the title
of “urbs,” it seems more likely than its greater namesake
to be the place really meant. For Metz in Lorraine would be
completely out of the way of a traveller from Palestine to
Anjou, while Metz in the Gâtinais was not merely close to
Fulk’s home, but was actually in the territory of his own
son-in-law (of whom we shall hear again later). It would
be as natural for him to stop there on his way as it would
be unnatural for him to fetch a compass through the remote
dominions of the duke of Lorraine; and, on the other hand, the
place is so insignificant that a careless and ignorant writer,
such as John of Marmoutier, even though dwelling at no great
distance, might easily forget its existence.
[371] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1040 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 24, 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p.
377. _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 117.
[372] Fulk Rechin and _Gesta Cons._, as above.
From Beaulieu, at least, he had deserved nothing but gratitude, and
Beaulieu never forgot the debt. For seven centuries the anniversary of
his death was solemnly observed in the abbey; so was that of his widow,
who as a bride had helped to the dedication of the church, and who now,
following her husband’s last steps, went out to die at Jerusalem.[373]
For seven centuries, as the monks gathered in the church to keep their
yearly festival in honour of his gift, the fragment of sacred stone,
they read over in the office of the day the story of his pilgrimage,
and chanted the praise of his pious theft.[374] Next to that trophy,
his tomb was their pride; it vanished in the general wreck of 1793; but
research within the last few years has happily succeeded in bringing
the Black Count’s earthly resting-place to light once more.[375] But
it was not Beaulieu alone that kept his memory green. His own little
Angevin marchland, his fairer conquest Touraine, are sown thick with
memorials of him. So strong was the impression made by his activity
in one direction that after-generations have persisted in attributing
to him almost every important architectural work in his dominions,
and transferred the credit of several constructions even of Henry
Fitz-Empress to the first “great builder” of Anjou, who was believed to
have had command over more than mortal artificers. Popular imagination,
with its unerring instinct, rightly seized upon the Black Count as the
embodiment of Angevin glory and greatness. The credit of the astute
politician, the valiant warrior, the consummate general, the strenuous
ruler--all this is his due, and something more; the credit of having,
by the initiative force of genius, launched Anjou upon her career
with an impetus such as no opposing power could thenceforth avail to
check. One is tempted to wonder how far into the future of his house
those keen eyes of the Black Falcon really saw; whether he saw it or
not, that future was in a great measure of his own making; for his
fifty-three years of work and warfare had been spent in settling the
question on which that future depended--the question whether Anjou or
Blois was to be the chief power of central Gaul. When his place was
taken by Geoffrey Martel, there could no longer be any doubt of the
answer.
[373] See extract from Martyrology of Ronceray in Marchegay,
_Eglises_, p. 395, note 3.
[374] See the office in Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 499 _et
seq._
[375] See Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, pp. 456 _et seq._
The new count of Anjou began his reign in circumstances very unlike
those of his father half a century before. Not only had Fulk wholly
changed the political position of Anjou, but Geoffrey’s own position
as an individual was totally different. He was no untried boy, left
to fight his own way with no weapons save the endowments which nature
had given him; he was a full-grown man, trained in the school of Fulk
Nerra, and already experienced in politics and war. In his own day
Geoffrey Martel was looked up to with as much respect as his father,
and with even more dread. His career is an illustration of the saying
that nothing succeeds like success. Till he came into collision with
the duke of Normandy, he carried all before him like chaff before the
wind. He crushed Aquitaine; he won Tours; he won Le Mans. It was no
wonder if he delighted to commemorate in the surname of Martel, “the
Hammer,” the victorious blows which laid opponent after opponent at
the feet of the blacksmith’s foster-son.[376] But Geoffrey was not
the artificer of his own fortune. He owed his pre-eminence among
the great vassals of the Crown to his extended possessions and his
military reputation; he owed his extended possessions more to his
father’s labours and to a series of favourable accidents than to his
own qualities as a statesman; and he owed his military reputation--as
one writer who understood the Angevins thoroughly has very plainly
hinted--more to luck than to real generalship.[377] Geoffrey stands at
a disadvantage thus far, that in contemplating him one cannot avoid
two very trying comparisons. It was as unlucky for his after-fame
as it was lucky for his material prosperity that he was the son of
Fulk the Black; it was unlucky for him in every way that he was the
rival of William the Conqueror. Neither as a statesman, a ruler, a
strategist, or a man was Geoffrey equal to his father. As a statesman
he showed no very lofty capacity; his designs on Aquitaine, sweeping
but pointless, came to nothing in the end: and with regard to Touraine
and Maine, politically, he had little to do but to reap the fruit of
Fulk’s labours and use the advantages which the favour of the king in
one case, the rashness of the bishop in the other, and the weakness of
the rival count in both, threw absolutely into his hands. As a ruler
he seems to have been looked up to with simple dread; there is little
trace of the intense personal following which others of his race knew
so well how to inspire;[378] the first time he was intrusted with the
government of Anjou his harshness and oppression roused the indignation
alike of his subjects and of his father; his neighbours looked on him
to the last as a tyrant,[379] and his own people seem to have feared
far more than they loved him. As a strategist there is really no proof
that he possessed any such overwhelming superiority as he himself
boasted, and as others were led to believe. His two great victories,
at Montcontour and Montlouis, dazzled the world because the one was
gained over a prince who by the tradition of ages counted as the first
potentate in the realm after the duke of Normandy, and the other led to
the acquisition of Tours; but the capture of William of Aquitaine was
really nothing more than the fortune of war; while in the case of the
victory over Theobald of Blois at Montlouis, a considerable part of the
credit is due to Geoffrey’s lieutenant Lisoy of Amboise; and moreover,
to have beaten the successor of Odo II. is after all no very wonderful
achievement for the successor of Fulk the Black. Twice in his life
Geoffrey met his master. The first time he owned it himself as he lay
at his father’s feet. The second time he evaded the risk of open defeat
by a tacit withdrawal far more shameful in a moral point of view. It
is small blame to Geoffrey Martel that he was no match for William the
Conqueror. Had he, in honest consciousness of his inferiority, done
his best to avoid a collision, and when it became inevitable stood to
face the consequences like a man, it would have been small shame to him
to be defeated by the future victor of Senlac. The real shame is that
after courting an encounter and loudly boasting of his desire to break
a lance with William, when the opportunity was given him he silently
declined to use it. It was but a mean pride and a poor courage that
looked upon defeat in fair fight as an unbearable humiliation, and
could not feel the deeper moral humiliation of shrinking from the mere
chance of that defeat. And it is just this bluntness of feeling, this
callousness to everything not visible and tangible to outward sense,
which sets Geoffrey as a man far below his father. There is in Fulk a
living warmth, a quickness of susceptibility, which breaks out in all
sorts of shapes, good and bad, in all the stories of the Black Count,
but which seems wholly lacking in Geoffrey. Fulk “sinned bravely,”
ardently, impulsively; Geoffrey sinned meanly, coldly, heartlessly.
His was altogether a coarser, lower nature. Fulk was truly the falcon
that wheels its swift and lofty flight ever closer and closer above the
doomed quarry till it strikes it down irresistibly with one unerring
swoop. Geoffrey rightly thought himself better represented by the
crashing blows of the insensible sledge-hammer.
[376] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_) p. 379; cf. _Hist. S.
Flor. Salm._ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 260, and Will. Malm.
_Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395).
[377] “Gaufredus cognomento Martellus, quod ipse sibi
usurpaverat, quia videbatur sibi _felicitate quâdam_ omnes
obsistentes contundere.” Will. Malm. as above.