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.