England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

CHAPTER II. (Part 2 of 3)

Fulk the Good’s reign is the traditional golden age of Anjou, proverbially happy with no recorded history: he waged no wars, took no part in national politics. A canon of S. Martin’s at Châteauneuf by Tours, he escaped rule to attend the saint’s festival, lodging with canons and quietly covering expenses. He composed anthems, and when King Louis From-over-sea mocked him as a “clerk-count” at evensong, Fulk replied with a letter that became proverb: “Know, my lord, that an unlettered king is but a crowned ass.” Still he rebuilt churches and towns, cultivated fallow land, and attracted settlers—a 20-year golden age ending only with his death.

In his last years Fulk tangled with Breton politics: Brittany was now a duchy riven by civil war. Alan Barbetorte of Nantes, exiled to Æthelstan’s court, returned, died in 952, and left infant son Drogo to his brother-in-law Theobald of Blois, “the Trickster.” Theobald offered Fulk his sister (Alan’s widow) and half Nantes, the other half to Juhel Berenger of Rennes. Drogo died soon after—later slander claiming Fulk murdered him, almost certainly false. A Viking raid let citizens throw off Angevin authority: Fulk delayed aid, citizens defeated the Vikings themselves, and chose Hoel, another of Alan’s sons, as ruler. Fulk died shortly after, kneeling to receive communion at S. Martin’s, passing in his fellow canons’ arms. Legends grew: he carried a leper on his shoulders to S. Martin’s, only for the leper to vanish as S. Martin told him in vision he had carried the Lord himself, like S. Christopher. A later addition claimed an angel foretold his descendants would rule to the ends of the earth—a prophecy invented at the height of Angevin power, framing empire as reward for Fulk’s charity.

Fulk’s successor Geoffrey Greygown was a rough, dashing soldier in the coarse grey tunic of the Angevin peasantry, conspicuous at the courts of King Lothar and Duke Hugh. The last capable Carolingian, Louis From-over-sea, died in 954, bringing Hugh Capet closer to the throne. When Emperor Otto the Great died in 973, the Eastern-Western Frankish alliance fractured: in 978 Lothar’s jealousy of Otto’s Aachen court drove him to invade Lorraine. Hugh Capet joined the raid, Geoffrey’s grey tunic conspicuous; the West-Franks plundered Aachen, even turning Charles the Great’s bronze palace eagle to face east. Otto counter-invaded, driving Lothar to seek Hugh’s help. Geoffrey’s first marriage to Adela of Vermandois produced daughter Hermengard, betrothed in 970 to Conan the Crooked of Rennes, paving the way for Angevin intervention in Brittany. He later married second wife Adela, countess of Chalon-sur-Saône and widow of Lambert of Autun. When Conan seized all Brittany and the count of Nantes was assassinated, leaving an infant heir, Fulk the Good had forced the new count-bishop Guerech to swear homage for Nantes and disputed borderland. Conan, furious, raided Anjou and was turned back from Angers’ gates by Geoffrey, then attacked Guerech. The two allies met Conan at Conquereux, where a previous fight had ended inconclusively. This time the Angevins won, spawning the proverb: “Like the battle of Conquereux, where the crooked overcame the straight.” Conan was severely wounded.

Lothar died in March 986, bringing Hugh Capet to the brink. Louis V (the Do-nothing) died suddenly on 22 May 987; nobles offered the crown to Hugh, who was besieging a rebellious vassal at Marson with Geoffrey at his side. Hugh left Geoffrey to finish the siege, went to Noyon, and was crowned on 1 June 987. Seven weeks later Geoffrey fell sick and died outside Marson, his body carried to Tours to be buried beside his father in S. Martin’s. The Carolingian era was over. The Angevins had already begun looking beyond their river boundaries: Geoffrey had seized Loudun in Poitou, and Hugh had granted him a claim to Maine—a remote promise that would shape English history for centuries.

CHAPTER II. (Part 3 of 3)

The only detailed sources for early Angevin history down to Geoffrey Greygown are two 12th-century works: John of Marmoutier’s Gesta Consulum Andegavensium and the Historia Comitum Andegavensium attributed to Thomas Pactius of Loches, the latter an abridgement of the former. John’s text is a patchwork drawing on a lost work by Abbot Odo, recast by Thomas. A far more reliable but shorter source is a fragment attributed to Fulk Rechin (Fulk IV), written in the late 11th century, in which he admits ignorance of the first five generations, contradicting John’s legendary pedigrees tracing the house to Tortulf and his invented son “Tertullus.” The Ingelger story is almost entirely copied from a forged 10th-century treatise on the return of S. Martin’s relics, full of exposed anachronisms; reliable early details come from charters, which show Fulk the Red witnessing documents from 886, holding the count title by 909, and dying in 941 or 942. The legend of a “bipartite county” divided by the Mayenne, with Ingelger as first hereditary count, has no documentary basis: the Angevin march likely extended only east of the Mayenne, land west lost to Brittany after Lambert’s 840s treason. 19th-century archaeologists confirmed the counts’ palace stood on Angers’ southwest corner from 851 onwards; the only surviving fragment is the ruined 10th-century hall in the castle enclosure, the only part to survive the 1132 fire. Geoffrey’s marital history is equally tangled: his first wife was likely Adela of Vermandois, mother of Hermengard; his second Adela of Chalon, mother of Maurice and almost certainly Fulk the Black, though exact parentage is debated.