Fulk II of Anjou

“ 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. ”

“ The first count of Anjou and his father play an important part in the legendary history of the two great “reversions”; Fulk the Good is almost more familiar to us as canon than as count, and the stall next to that of the dean of S. Martin’s, which he so loved to occupy, whence he wrote his famous letter, and where he saw his vision of the saint, seems to have become hereditary among his descendants like the abbotship among those of Hugh the Great. ”

“ Beginning with a Breton woodsman, five counts of Anjou ruled before Fulk III the Black (989-1040) . He held Vendôme, Amboise, and Loches, where he founded Beaulieu Abbey, and he won Chinon, and Saumur, where he established St. Florent-les-Saumur. His grandfather, Fulk II the Good, a canon in St. Martin’s at Tours, and a poet, had said, “Rex illiteratus est asinus coronatus,” which Henry I of England was fond of repeating. The son of Fulk Nerra was Geoffrey Martel (d. 1060) , who won Tours and Le Mans, but later lost the overlordship of the latter to William the Conqueror. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 interestingi.219 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. ”

“ At the opening of the struggle, in Fulk Nerra’s youth, Blois was distinctly in the ascendant, and the chances of independent existence for the little Marchland hung solely on the courage and statesmanship of its count. His dauntless genius, helped by Odo’s folly, saved Anjou and turned the tide completely in its favour. The treaty sworn, four years after Fulk’s death, in his great castle by the Indre, was the crowning of his life’s work, and left his son absolutely without a rival till he chose to seek one beyond the debateable ground of Maine. ”

“ The reign of the second Count Fulk is the traditional golden age of Anjou. Under him, she is the proverbially happy land which has no history. While the name of the bishop of Soissons is conspicuous in court and camp, that of his brother the count is never once heard; he waged no wars, [252] he took no share in politics; the annalists of the time find nothing to record of him. But if there is no history, there is plenty of tradition and legend to set before us a charming picture of the Good Count’s manner of life. The arts he cultivated were those of peace ”

“ Henry’s daring scheme now seemed all but hopeless. His only chance was to make peace with some one at least of his adversaries; and the one whom he chose was not the king of France, but the count of Anjou. He saw—and Fulk saw it too—that until the question about Maine was settled there could be no lasting security, and that it could only be settled effectually by the union of all conflicting claims in a single hand. For such an union the way was now clear. The heir of Anjou was growing up to manhood; the chosen successor of Henry was a childless widow. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ His father was then no longer count of Anjou. A year after Hugh’s consecration, in the winter of 941 or the early spring of 942, Fulk the Red died “in a good old age,” leaving the marchland which his sword had won and guarded so well to his youngest son, Fulk the Good. [251]
[246] Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises) , p. 239. The true date is shewn by a charter of Fulk, in Mabille’s Introd. to Comtes d’Anjou, pièces justif. no. vi., p. ci. [247] Chron. Frodoard, a. 937 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 192) . [248] Richer, l. ii. c. 82. [249] Richer, l. ii. c. 48; Gesta Cons. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Following King Charles the Bald in his struggle with the Danes, the woodman won broad lands along Loire, and his son Ingelger, who had swept the northmen from Touraine and the land to the west, which they had burned and wasted into a vast solitude, became the first Count of Anjou. But the tale of Tortulf and Ingelger is a mere creation of some twelfth century jongleur. The earliest Count whom history recognizes is Fulk the Red. Fulk attached himself to the Dukes of France who were now drawing nearer to the throne, and between 909 and 929 he received from them in guerdon the county of Anjou. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ She herself, after persecuting Louis by every means in her power so long as his father lived, changed her policy as soon as he mounted the throne and became as useful an ally as she had been a dangerous enemy. Almeric’s influence, won by his own talents, seems to have been almost all-powerful with the king; over the count of Anjou, far younger and utterly inexperienced, natural ties had given a yet more complete ascendency to him and his sister, Fulk’s own mother. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every one is familiar with the name of Fulk the Good, Count of Anjou, against whose learning Hallam has directed so uncourteous a sneer. The story, threadbare as it is, affords too good an illustration of the subject to be omitted. He was accustomed to sing in choir with the canons of St. Martin’s of Tours, and when ridiculed by king Louis IV. of France, for the habit, sent to that monarch a pithy epistle to the following effect: “Know, sir, that an illiterate king is a crowned ass.” ”

“ A few years before Fulk’s investiture as count of Anjou, the relations between the West-Frankish kingdom and its northern foes had entered upon a new phase. In 912 King Charles the Simple and Duke Hugh of Paris, finding themselves unable to wrest back from a pirate leader called Hrolf the Ganger the lands which he had won around the mouth of the Seine, made a virtue of necessity, and by a treaty concluded at St.-Clair-sur-Epte granted to Hrolf a formal investiture of his conquest, on condition of homage to the king and conversion to the Christian faith. ”

“ Fulk was thus furnished with a pretext for renewing his former connection with William of Normandy, on whose future prospects [165] the death of his cousin might exercise considerable influence. The son of Duke Robert was placed by Fulk in possession of the earldom of Le Mans, and was again betrothed to Sibylla, the younger daughter of the Count Henry, who was apprised of these proceedings, passed over into Normandy, and after a year of desultory warfare, made prisoners of several of the Norman barons, and detached Fulk of Anjou once more from the cause of William. ”

“ It seems to me that this strange Angevin hallucination about Count Maurice, so utterly inexplicable in any other way, becomes intelligible if we believe that he was regent of Anjou in 1014–1015 during a second journey of his brother to Holy Land; a theory which, if it has no positive evidence to support it, seems at least to have none to contradict it, and is not rendered improbable by the general condition of Angevin affairs at the time.
2. As to the third journey. The Gesta Cons. state that Fulk, on one of his pilgrimages, went in company with Robert the Devil. ”

“ While he was fighting in Normandy he kept England at peace. In 1111 Fulk V of Anjou joined Louis against him, for Fulk had married the daughter and heiress of Elias of Maine, and on the death of his father-in-law revived the old claim of his house on Maine; the war increased in importance, and Henry remained in Normandy for about two years. He seems to have acted warily, to have trusted much to good management and bribes, and to have avoided actual fighting as much as possible. He caught his old enemy, Robert of Bellême, sent him over to an English prison, and captured his town of Alençon. ”