Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 5

  Fulk, the hot-tempered one, killed his wife Elizabeth at Angers after she had survived an enormous fall. Then Fulk burned with fiery flames the same city which was defended only by a few men.43

  Bachrach focuses on the details that Elisabeth was killed ‘after a great fall’ and that Angers was ‘defended by only a few men’, and concocts a story that Elisabeth, detected in adultery, seized the citadel of Angers with her supporters, leading Fulk to besiege her, whereupon she fell from the battlements and he then publicly burnt her. He gives no evidence for this elaborate story beyond the brief text cited above.

  Halphen bizarrely consigns the episode to a footnote, saying only that Elisabeth died in 1000 ‘in a terrible fire’. In the footnote he says that quickly a legend sprang up to explain her death, as found in the Chronicle of St Florent of Saumur, which is that Fulk burnt her.44 Halphen’s low-key approach was at least partially in response to Fulk’s previous 19th-century biographer, M. de Salies, who not only cited the story but gleefully provided more detail: he says that Fulk publicly accused Elisabeth of adultery, had her solemnly declared guilty by a judge and then burnt her in Angers. Intriguingly he also repeats a variant story that Fulk stabbed her and drove her off a precipice, trying to account for the reference to ‘an enormous fall’.45 Halphen took a dim view of Salies’ work, and perhaps this is why he chose to suppress the story, but it does seem incredible that even the most partial biographer would omit a story like this whether or not he believed it to be a rumour.

  Kate Norgate believes Fulk killed Elisabeth for her ‘real or supposed sins as a wife’ by burning her at the stake, and ties this to the universally grim mood in the years leading up to the year 1000 when everyone feared the world would end, which ‘inflamed his fierce temper almost to madness’.46 Norgate too loves to hide stories in footnotes, and in another place she repeats as a separate story a tale from d’Espinay’s Revue Historique de l’Anjou of 1874 that was clearly also derived from this incident, though it is applied to Fulk’s second wife Hildegard. This was that Fulk, seeing a potter working, decided to try his skill and produced a pot that he proudly took home to show Hildegard. As a joke, he presented the pot to her and said it came from ‘the man she loved best’. Taking this as an accusation, Hildegard ‘vowed to disprove it at once by undergoing the ordeal of water, and flung herself out of the window and into the river’.47 The point of the story is that a convent was established at the place where her body came to land, but it shows that this stubborn second strand of the tale keeps returning, and there is the persistent idea that somehow one of Fulk’s wives fell from a high place.

  The chroniclers all agree that at around the same time Angers was destroyed in a terrible fire, and Salies acknowledges that although we might like to believe Elisabeth died accidentally, there is no evidence for this, though Halphen accepts it entirely. In the chronicles in which Fulk was said to have killed Elisabeth, the fire that destroyed Angers was believed to be divine retribution for Elisabeth’s execution. We are frustratingly unable to decide definitively what happened, yet it is clear that Elisabeth died in 1000 and there is a consensus that it was in a fire. It certainly may be the case that the monks of St Florent wanted to defame Fulk because they resented his high-handed treatment of their monastery, and it may be that Fulk’s reputation was already so ‘terrible’ that everyone was willing to believe he might have killed his wife. Whether true or not, this does seem to be the basis for the terrible reputation of the Angevins that later led them to be characterized as diabolical, the ‘Devil’s Brood’.

  By modern standards this may sound ludicrous, but for an 11th-century figure Fulk is rather well documented and leaves tangible reminders of his presence. It is on a charter of Fulk’s that we find the first surviving princely – rather than royal – seal48, and in Loches and Langeais we have buildings constructed for him. Admittedly in this period we don’t have contemporary portraits, but we do have one vivid image for Fulk Nerra, and this is intimately bound up with his reputation today. Fulk was a popular figure for 19th-century historians, and as mentioned above, to my mind the entire way we see him was determined by a passage in Michaud’s Histoire des Croisades from 1825. Fulk died long before the First Crusade, but when Michaud discusses the origins of the Crusade, he includes a study of pilgrimages. Fulk was unquestionably most famous for his pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and Michaud says:

  The count of Anjou, Foulque de Nerra … was accused of having killed his first wife, and of being many times stained with innocent blood. Pursued by public hatred and by the voice of his own conscience, it seemed to him that the numerous victims sacrificed to his vengeance or his ambition issued from their tombs to disturb his sleep and reproach him for his barbarity.49

  Much more importantly, Michaud’s history was illustrated lavishly with engravings by Gustave Doré, and one of the most striking is the one showing Fulk Nerra haunted by the spirits of all his victims. Disappointingly (to me, anyway), I truly believe that despite all his accomplishments and his genuinely important place in medieval history, Fulk’s reputation was sealed by Doré’s engraving and it is in this way that everyone still seems determined to see him. A better example of the transformative power of art can scarcely be found, despite the fact that this 19th-century engraving has virtually nothing to do with the real Fulk.

  There is one medium in which we do get some sense of a person: the funeral effigy. These were still stylized and made no attempt to represent the person’s features accurately, but as a three-dimensional form they do convey a sense of presence, a sense reinforced through the connection with a tomb. The later Angevins are spectacularly blessed with funerary monuments, and their necropolis at Fontevraud Abbey contains impressive effigies of Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart and King John’s wife Isabella, and Geoffrey Plantagenet’s enamelled tomb in Le Mans is both beautiful and of seminal importance to art history with its preservation of a medieval colour scheme and perhaps pioneering use of heraldry. Needless to say we have nothing for Ingelgarius, Fulk the Red, Fulk the Good or Geoffrey Greymantle, but Fulk Nerra’s tomb provides tantalising possibilities.

  Fulk died on the way home from one of his pilgrimages and was interred in his abbey of Beaulieu. His tomb, like so many others, was destroyed in the unrest following the French Revolution, but there is a drawing of the tomb from 1699 that gives us some idea of what it was like, and preserves its epitaph commemorating his pilgrimages to Jerusalem. However, in 1870 a grave was discovered containing some bones and a perfectly preserved skull, which were believed to be Fulk Nerra’s. Perhaps the most fascinating part of M. de Salies’s quite peculiar biography of Fulk from 1874 is his discussion of the discovery of the tomb, where he gives a partial transcript of the inquest and discusses interviews with residents of Loches whose parents lived through the events of the Revolution. The tomb had a classical frieze showing Fulk’s victory at Conquereuil and an effigy showing Fulk looking like a beardless Roman, though M. de Salies believed that the tomb’s characteristics showed it to be a 14th-century reconstruction of Fulk’s original tomb. M. de Salies also waxed lyrical about the skull that was believed to be Fulk’s (this has subsequently been disproved) and subjected it to anthropological analysis, and he unsurprisingly concluded that the skull must have been that of a great and terrible character.50

  What, then, should be our final judgement of Fulk Nerra? At the highest level, we cannot disagree with M. de Salies, who states that three people represent the 11th century: their names are mixed in every event, nothing happens without them, nothing is done but by them and their story is, for this period, the history of France: Fulk Nerra, William the Conqueror and Theobald Count of Blois.51 There is no more accurate statement of Fulk’s political centrality to the 11th century, but this fails to identify what makes him such a compelling figure. Fulk Nerra is the first figure in the 11th century who appears to us as a real person with his hopes, fears, faults, victories and defeats. We can see Fulk, however patchily, as a
n individual who embodied all the trends of his time yet still managed to convey his own personality with all the rough edges later chroniclers would try to polish off.

  His foundation of later Angevin success cannot be denied. His grandson Fulk Réchin took an eminently sensible approach when he documented Fulk Nerra’s accomplishments and listed all his castles, a roll call of the places such as Loches, Saumur and Chinon that would still be central to the Angevins four centuries later. Fulk’s domination of Touraine and Maine made the Angevins one of the great powers of northern France, who within another hundred years would claim the greatest prize of all and become kings twice over. Naturally later myth-makers tried to glorify Fulk by suppressing his perceived faults and embellishing his deeds with fabrications, but what is so extraordinary about Fulk is that his true character still emerges, and shows the Angevin characteristics that would serve the family so well for generations. Even if chroniclers sometimes invented stories to emphasize this continuity, it is amply demonstrated that bottomless energy, a terrible temper and red hair were genetic traits shared by the Angevins over the two centuries from Fulk Nerra to Richard the Lionheart.

  Fulk’s role as the founder of Angevin greatness was not lost on 12th-century historians, and they were drawn irresistibly to compare him to Henry II, especially as Fulk’s greatest test was against the rulers Odo and Theobald of Blois, while Henry II took the throne only after a lengthy war against the usurper Stephen of Blois. As always, Norgate expresses it best:

  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.52

  Fulk Nerra provides a brilliant jumping-off point for a discussion of the Angevins who would rule England because he shares so many of their traits, but for me he is perfect for another reason. As Richard Southern illustrates in The Making of the Middle Ages, Fulk – and Anjou itself – encapsulates all the key trends of the age, and the purpose of this book is to argue that the other Angevins through the ages did the same. Fulk embodied the consolidation of power by local lords into compact independent states; the restless disorder and unrestrained violence in the age just before national monarchies asserted themselves; the overpowering religiosity that drove pilgrims to the Holy Land and penitents to walk barefoot to saints’ shrines; and the impulse that covered first France and then the rest of Europe with the most characteristic medieval building, the castle.53

  For all that, Fulk Nerra marks only the beginning of the Angevin adventure, and indeed the beginning of a new period in the Middle Ages when Europe was entirely transformed. My focus on the Angevins won’t distract us from the achievements of their arch-rivals – not the Blésois, who despite their late resurgence under Stephen of Blois were aimless as ever, but the Normans. Fulk’s success had unintended consequences because his expansion into Maine brought his son into collision with Normandy, and if Fulk was the most important figure of the first half of the 11th century then William Duke of Normandy, soon to be called the ‘Conqueror’, was the most important figure of the second half, as the Angevins discovered to their cost.

  CHAPTER 2 – ANGEVINS AND NORMANS

  THOUGH WE HAVE SPENT a chapter looking at the activities of Fulk Nerra, with hindsight the 11th century was actually dominated by two great events, in neither of which the Angevins acted initially, yet which would shape their future decisively. First was the investiture controversy between the popes and Holy Roman Emperors, over the right of lay rulers to invest bishops with their sees, in which the papacy emerged victorious. Despite the vagaries to which Charlemagne’s successors to the title were subjected, Charlemagne’s legacy ensured that the Emperor still maintained some nominal claim to authority in Europe. The investiture struggle ended with the Emperor’s claim for universal power in Europe destroyed and the foundations laid for a papal ‘monarchy’ that would gather strength over the coming centuries. The investiture struggle was most destructive in Germany and Italy (and it is not a coincidence that it was these regions that remained divided until the 19th century whereas England and France developed into nation-states), but the newly powerful pope would begin to play a much more significant role everywhere in Europe in the coming centuries. The culminating event, which came at the very end of the century and demonstrated that the pope, rather than the Emperor, was the leader of Christendom, was the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095. This of course was the second seismic event of the 11th century, and due to the astonishing success of the First Crusade and the foundation of Christian states in the Holy Land, the Crusades became a dominant thread in European society for the next 400 years.

  Subsumed within these two events were the great conquests of the Normans in England, Southern Italy, Sicily and the Holy Land, which laid the foundations for kingdoms that would last for centuries or indeed (in the case of England) until the present day. Considering that the Normans were near neighbours of the Angevins, the accession of a warrior as bold as William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, to the throne of England should have been a catastrophe for the Angevins – and it very nearly was – yet within 100 years the Angevins would conquer Normandy and take the English throne for themselves, plus much more. Angevins also succeeded to the throne of Jerusalem and conquered Sicily/Naples, completing the transfer of power from Norman to Angevin. Though the Normans had played a leading role in the First Crusade, capping what can definitively be called ‘the Norman Century’, the 12th century would in turn be ‘the Angevin Century’ and the Third Crusade cemented their dominance.

  Geoffrey Martel: ‘Showing how much an Angevin can excel a Norman’

  Both the investiture struggle and the First Crusade came at a particularly difficult time for Anjou, whose uninterrupted rise was about to meet severe difficulties. Fulk Nerra died in 1040 leaving his son Geoffrey Martel to inherit Anjou, and Geoffrey’s reign from 1040–1060 did see the completion of most of the business begun by Fulk Nerra. It also marked the beginning of the Angevin entanglement with the Normans that would have such spectacular consequences, and leaves us at a convenient place to consider the whirlwind of events that would occupy the rest of Europe, while the Angevins sank into relative obscurity for forty years, only to re-emerge at the forefront of European history.

  Geoffrey Martel was a belligerent and aggressive figure superficially cut from the same cloth as his father, and contemporaries expected him to add to his father’s achievements, as he indeed did. First though, we should consider his name. We are on much safer ground with Geoffrey than Fulk Nerra, since he used the name ‘Martel’ in his own lifetime and we know that it means ‘the Hammer’, serving as a warning to his enemies, as well as alluding to Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s grandfather and the victor over the Arabs in 747, thus ‘saving Europe’ from Muslim dominion according to Carolingian family mythology. The Gesta relates the story that as soon as Geoffrey was born he was fostered, as noble children always were, but specifically with the wife of a blacksmith near Beaulieu, and Fulk Nerra often visited the forge to see him. This was meant to account for his nickname of ‘Martel’, though this title was fairly common for those who wished to emphasize their credentials as warriors so the story doesn’t really seem necessary. William of Malmesbury, writing eighty years later, also says that Geoffrey took the name Martel in his own lifetime, though he gives his usual unflattering interpretation to this, as below.1

  Geoffrey was already a successful commander before Fulk Nerra died. One of his first exploits was typical: he met William the Fat, Duke of Aquitaine, in battle in 1033 and captured him, then kept him imprisoned for three years until he managed to extort the region of the Saintonge from him. William died three days after hi
s release, which says something about the nature of Geoffrey’s hospitality, but it was undeniably effective in a crude way. Geoffrey was much concerned with Aquitaine, and it is said that this infuriated Fulk Nerra, who wished his son to continue his work in Touraine and Maine. Yet perhaps it is not surprising that as forceful a character as Geoffrey wished to make his own way in a new region while his father lived.

  Geoffrey achieved a coup in his Aquitainian policy, though he angered his father further, by marrying Agnes, the young widow of William the Fat’s father. William the Fat’s half-brother had become the new Duke of Aquitaine, but Agnes had two young sons and a daughter who might one day succeed to the duchy, and Geoffrey must have been hoping to control its affairs by controlling the children. Geoffrey also incurred the displeasure of the church because he and Agnes were third cousins and considered too nearly related to marry2, but his calculations were correct because Agnes’s two sons did become Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Gascony, though they had no love for their step-father. Geoffrey seems to have gained little from this marriage, though the Angevin domination of Poitou (the county just south of Anjou, centred on Poitiers) in this period marked the moment Poitou switched from the langue d’oc to the langue d’oil, that is from Occitan to French.3

  Geoffrey had a high reputation with his contemporaries as a warrior and he was even more aggressive, if not as astute and effective, as his father. In the aftermath of Fulk’s death, Geoffrey’s deeds certainly warranted this reputation, since he completed the annexation of Tours after defeating Theobald III of Champagne and Stephen II of Blois completely at Nouy in August 1044, also capturing Theobald, who gave his full submission. The circumstances of the annexation were part of larger French politics: as the new counts of Champagne and Blois, Theobald and Stephen had rebelled against Henry I of France, who found himself isolated. Duke Robert of Normandy had died in 1035, leaving Normandy in chaos and a beleaguered bastard son to pick up the pieces; Aquitaine was in similar turmoil after several new dukes in succession; and Flanders, Brittany and Burgundy had no interest in the king’s difficulties. This left only Anjou, and in an act of inspired diplomacy Henry dispossessed Theobald of Champagne and granted Tours to Geoffrey Martel.