Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 6

  In Maine, the death of Herbert Wake-the-Dog in 1036 left the county to a minor, Hugh III, and a struggle broke out between Gervais the Bishop of Le Mans and Hugh III’s great-uncle Herbert Bacon for control of the child. Despite the fact that he was already in rebellion against Fulk Nerra, Geoffrey Martel tried to intervene on behalf of Herbert Bacon, but was defeated and Gervais took over the county. However, once he had become count of Anjou and finished with the conquest of Touraine, Geoffrey returned in force and succeeded in capturing and imprisoning Gervais4, and he controlled the county in the person of the young count despite being excommunicated. When Hugh III died in 1051, Geoffrey swept into Le Mans by one gate while Hugh’s widow Bertha fled with her two children through another. Bertha fled to the court of Normandy, confirming that it was here Geoffrey would find his greatest test, but for the moment he was master of Maine.5

  It was now that Geoffrey Martel, having so comprehensively defeated Anjou’s old rival the House of Blois, annexed Touraine and dominated Maine, met a new rival, William of Normandy, and began a struggle that defined the rest of Geoffrey’s life. Of course we know what happened in 1066 and this colours everything we think about the conflict, but Geoffrey Martel died in 1060. Although he had no way of knowing his rival’s illustrious future, Geoffrey could certainly see that William was the most powerful enemy he had yet faced. In this struggle, his ally was Henry I of France and the battleground was to be Maine.

  Henry I of France was beginning to understand how great the menace that lurked on his border truly was (though he had little idea of how grave the danger would become after 1066), and he chose to continue the alliance with Geoffrey that had proved so fruitful in Touraine. Although their attempts to harass the Normans ended in disaster, the Gesta boldly chooses to ignore this, acknowledging that the Angevins had come into conflict with the Normans over Maine, but saying such things as, ‘In those days, Duke William of Normandy was greatly harassing Herbert, count of Le Mans. Since Martel was Herbert’s ally and protector, Duke William, who later became king of the English, suffered much at Martel’s hands.’6 There is some truth here, because despite various reverses Geoffrey Martel still remained master of Maine in 1060.

  Geoffrey is a difficult figure to characterize, falling as he does between Fulk Nerra, one of the most colourful characters in medieval history, and Fulk Réchin, who was the first secular figure to write his own version of events. It isn’t that we don’t know about his deeds, since we can credit him with one of the greatest accomplishments in early Angevin history, the annexation of Tours, along with the annexation of Saintonge and the domination of Maine. Neither was he a mindless warrior, as it is under him that Anjou developed its own chancery. There isn’t even a shortage of anecdotes about him, but these are problematic, and we struggle to disentangle him from the web of legend. What can we say about him?

  Geoffrey seems to warrant the adjective ‘terrible’ as much or more than Fulk Nerra because of his penchant for imprisoning people, his rebellion against his father, his opportunistic marriage to the widowed Duchess of Aquitaine7 and his pugnacious approach to his neighbours. The horrors of medieval warfare were not specific to Geoffrey, but the Gesta gives a graphic description of his callousness when describing the Angevins’ complete victory over the Poitevins at Chef-Boutonne: ‘The massacre complete, Martel and his men spent the night peacefully in their tents on the plain. Against the bitter north wind which was blowing, they piled up the dead bodies.’8

  Geoffrey is also much discussed by the English historian William of Malmesbury, who relates several very interesting and highly unflattering stories about him, though his credibility is suspect. Malmesbury’s introduction to his discussion of Geoffrey makes it very clear what he thought, as he says of Geoffrey ‘who had boastingly taken the surname of “Martel” as he seemed by a certain kind of felicity to beat down all his opponents’.9 Malmesbury discusses Geoffrey’s capture of Theobald of Blois in the context of his abominable behaviour, and mentions that he took Tours, but seems unaware or unwilling to admit that Geoffrey had been granted Tours by the French king after Theobald’s rebellion.

  This is all a preliminary to Malmesbury’s best-known, and most damning, story about Geoffrey. After his seizure of Tours and interventions in Maine, Geoffrey ‘insolent from the accession of so much power’ seized Alençon, which outraged William of Normandy, who besieged Domfront in turn. Geoffrey rushed to raise the siege, and William sent messengers to meet him. In Malmesbury’s description, Geoffrey:

  … immediately began to rage, to threaten mightily what he would do, and said that he would come thither the next day, and show to the world at large how much an Angevin could excel a Norman in battle; at the same time, with unparalleled insolence, describing the colour of his horse, and the devices on the arms he meant to use.10

  But when the morning came, Geoffrey did not appear, having slunk back to Anjou. Kate Norgate accepted this story entirely, and believed that it told us everything we need to know about Geoffrey’s character, which is what Malmesbury would have intended. As Norgate says,

  … he evaded the risk of open defeat by a tacit withdrawal far more shameful in a moral point of view. It is small blame to Geoffrey Martel that he was no match for William the Conqueror. Had he, in honest consciousness of his inferiority, done his best to avoid a collision, and when it became inevitable stood to face the consequences like a man, it would have been small shame to him to be defeated by the future victor of Senlac. The real shame is that after courting an encounter and loudly boasting of his desire to break a lance with William, when the opportunity was given him he silently declined to use it. It was but a mean pride and a poor courage that looked upon defeat in fair fight as an unbearable humiliation, and could not feel the deeper moral humiliation of shrinking from the mere chance of that defeat. And it is just this bluntness of feeling, this callousness to everything not visible and tangible to the outward sense, which sets Geoffrey as a man far below his father.11

  This is a striking story that does seem to delineate Geoffrey’s character clearly, but we cannot trust Malmesbury, and Norgate herself views this through the prism of future Norman triumphalism.

  Malmesbury was writing Norman propaganda, and even William the Conqueror’s biographer David Douglas takes a very different view. Before 1066 Angevin control of Maine was not seriously contested, and despite Geoffrey’s discomfiture in some skirmishes, he more or less maintained himself against the Normans. This is not consistent with overwhelming defeat or fear of confrontation, but stability. Of course, this is very revealing in its own way: before William the Conqueror, the Angevin story is one of constant steady expansion and the overmatching of competitors such as the Duke of Aquitaine or the Count of Blois. Against the Normans we can only speak of Geoffrey ‘holding his own’, and Geoffrey’s successors fared worse. Still, Geoffrey’s record against William is not as bleak as Malmesbury and Norgate make out.

  Malmesbury uses his discussion of Geoffrey to initiate a brief history of the counts of Anjou, and though he is highly complimentary of Fulk Nerra (indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter he presented an account that bears little resemblance to the character we find elsewhere), he uses this as another opportunity to condemn Geoffrey and gives us the story of Geoffrey’s rebellion against his father and Geoffrey having to wear a saddle.12 Norgate accepts this story as she does the others about Geoffrey and bases her analysis of Geoffrey’s character on it. Yet the Gesta, though acknowledging Geoffrey had his critics, reports that when Geoffrey was told that men spoke badly of him because of his aggression, he replied, ‘They do what they are wont to do, not what I deserve; they do not know how to speak well.’13

  The middle of the 11th century was a watershed in medieval warfare. Fulk Nerra may have pioneered the use of castles as offensive weapons, but by the time of Geoffrey Martel this tactic had been adopted by his rivals as well. The Normans adopted the new use of fortifications in their struggles with the Angevins, and it was also
a factor in the swiftness and completeness of the Norman conquest of England. The first castles in England seem to have been built by Edward the Confessor’s Norman relatives in the mid-11th century, but the custom did not take hold. Orderic Vitalis reports that one of the reasons the Normans conquered England so easily was because ‘there were practically no fortresses such as the French call castella in the land, wherefore the English, though warlike and courageous, proved too feeble to withstand their enemies.’14

  The other contemporary development was, as we have seen, the use of the cavalry charge with couched lances. The Bayeux Tapestry shows that the mounted Normans in 1066 were still using their spears in a variety of ways, but it clearly demonstrates that one method was to seat the lance under the arm and use the force of the charging warhorse to give impetus to the blow, which could be made even more effective by having a coordinated group of knights charge together. Within fifty years the Normans would be famous for the unstoppable force of their grouped cavalry charges.

  The Angevins also seem to have adopted this method, and an incidental offshoot of this military innovation was the need for teams of knights to practise working together to deliver the shattering charge. This seems to be the origin of the tournament, which in one form or another would become the most popular sport of the aristocracy for the next six centuries. Though it was the Normans who became most famous for the cavalry charge, which played a key role in their conquests of England, southern Italy and in the Holy Land, a fascinating piece of evidence from the Chronicle of St Martin of Tours states that the inventor of tournaments was Geoffrey de Preuilly, a baron of Angers, who died in either 1062 or 1066.15 Sadly the chronicle wasn’t written until the early 13th century and has little credibility, but it would be fascinating to think that the tournament originated in Anjou as a means of training the Angevin cavalry in the new method of fighting invented by their Norman enemies.

  The Norman Century

  With Geoffrey Martel, we are at the high point of Angevin ambition and success, yet it is almost at this moment that Angevin fortunes took a dramatic turn for the worse. Anjou’s neighbours, the Normans, had become the most dominant force in Europe, and we will spend a significant part of this chapter discussing them. They also form a vital part of the Angevin story because everything they built would eventually belong to the Angevins.

  After being so prominent as the horrifying Viking invaders that coloured early Angevin history, the Normans seemed to have settled down in their new duchy, but in fact they were creating a political and military state whose expansion in the 11th century was unstoppable. Although William the Bastard’s disputed succession from 1035–1047 kept Norman aggression focused inward for a time, after 1047 the Normans began to impinge on Angevin designs. This was largely because Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel had completely dominated Maine and now had a border with the duchy. But before that the Normans had already embarked upon the adventures that would see them become a dominant force in the Mediterranean, and indeed in addition to the other factors mentioned above, it was this resurgence of Western Christian power in the Mediterranean through the Normans that gave the First Crusade its impetus.

  In the early 11th century, southern Italy was politically fragmented and consisted of independent city-states like Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta; Lombard principalities such as Salerno, Benevento and Capua; and a strong province of the Byzantine Empire centred on Bari that claimed suzerainty over the entire area. Despite the political strength of the Byzantine outpost, the religious influence of Rome dominated much of the region and posed a considerable obstacle to Byzantine hegemony. More importantly, Sicily had long ago been conquered by Muslims, and along with Sardinia, Corsica and certain towns in southern France served as a base for raids on the Italian peninsula.16

  The advent of the Normans in southern Italy came before 1018 when a small band of adventurers – returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, according to some stories – either helped a Lombard rebel against the Greeks at Bari, or fought off a Muslim siege of Salerno. Though this did not establish a lasting Norman presence in the area, it did show the Italians the benefits of Norman assistance, and showed the Normans what rewards could be won. Within ten years the Normans were called back to help reinstate the deposed leader of Naples, and in addition to money their leader was granted the hill fortress of Aversa with its surrounding land. This was the first Norman state in Italy, and the new Count of Aversa was quick to intervene in the affairs of his neighbours and provide a warm reception for any other Normans who wished to try their luck in Italy.17

  The most famous of these were the twelve sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a minor Norman landowner whose children would change the history of the Mediterranean world. By 1047 Tancred’s elder sons had dominated Apulia and assumed the title of count, and it was also in this year that one of his younger sons, Robert Guiscard (the ‘Wily’), arrived in Italy to transform Norman fortunes.18 Robert Guiscard began his career as a brigand, but he rapidly parlayed this into a more exalted position.

  The Normans had become such a force in Italy and also such a threat, that by 1053 Pope Leo IX joined the Byzantines in an effort to expel them from Italy. Leo himself led a combined force to Civitate, but the lords of Aversa and Apulia joined forces, and with the support of Robert Guiscard utterly routed the papal army and captured the pope. Norman supremacy in southern Italy was confirmed, and neither the papacy nor the Byzantines (now thoroughly occupied closer to home repelling constant raids by the Seljuk Turks) had any means of opposing them. Showing the pragmatism that had served the institution for 1000 years, in 1059 Pope Nicholas II decided to ally with the Normans and granted to the lord of Aversa the title ‘Prince of Capua’, and Robert Guiscard (whose elder brother had died) the title Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and ‘in the future, Duke of Sicily’. This gift of territory – which was outside even the nominal control of the papacy – gave the Normans free rein and they were quick to capitalize on their position. Robert Guiscard conquered the remaining portions of Apulia and Calabria, and by 1071 had captured Bari to end 500 years of Byzantine control of the region. It is not coincidental that the pope would approve this, given that in 1054 the Latin and Greek churches finally suffered a breach that could not be repaired.19

  The papacy’s alliance with the Normans marked a turning point for that institution. Leo IX’s march against the Normans in 1053 was the action of a local ruler vying for power with local rivals who were his equals. Nicholas II’s alliance with the Normans connected him to this rising European power and gave the papacy greater ambition as well. Soon after, we see the pope extending his Norman connection by blessing William the Conqueror’s expedition to England, and even intervening in Angevin affairs to sanction the deposition of a count (though he quickly backtracked). The popes had some nominal claim to control secular power through their coronation of the Emperor, but this claim had lain dormant for nearly 300 years. With their new allies the popes were prepared to take a more active role, and this early Norman military support evolved through the participation of the Normans in the First Crusade into a religious and political/military tool that would have profound consequences for European history.

  Meanwhile, Robert Guiscard’s younger brother Roger had taken an interest in Sicily. Southern Italy and Sicily were the point where the Eastern and Western remnants of the Roman Empire met, with the inevitable tension this caused, and now the rising claims of the papacy and the Norman invasion provided added turmoil. With intermittent help from Robert, Roger had managed to take Messina and establish himself on the island. After Roger assisted in the capture of Bari, Robert Guiscard joined him again and the two managed to take Palermo in 1072, consolidating the Norman hold on the island and creating yet another new state. Roger eventually absorbed southern Italy into a Kingdom of Sicily that was one of the most prosperous states in Western Europe. Sicily also demonstrated the benefits that the peaceful coexistence of Christians and Muslims could bring, as the Sicilians prospered from the
ir participation in the trade of the entire Mediterranean. Thus by the end of the 11th century, the Norman kingdoms of Sicily and England were two of the best organized and most powerful states in Europe, and caused considerable disquiet to their neighbours.20

  Fulk Réchin, in his own words

  Modern historians have arrived at a consensus about the character of the early Angevins, to the extent that these truisms are repeated by most historians now. Fulk Nerra was a force of nature – wild, violent, successful and given to fits of piety – and he is admired as an iconic specimen of 11th-century nobility and taken as an epitome of his age. Geoffrey Martel inspires no love, and is always presented as cold, unpleasant and second best to William the Bastard. As we have seen, this comes from William of Malmesbury, who couldn’t have had any first-hand knowledge of Geoffrey and was explicitly a Norman apologist, but it is the view that is always repeated. When we come to Fulk Réchin, or in the words of one modern historian of the Normans on his very first mention of him, ‘the repulsive Fulk Réchin’21 – and why ‘repulsive’? – he is usually characterized as odious, but no reason is given. Why does he have this terrible reputation with modern historians? The reasons may lie with his succession to the county.