At his accession in 987 Anjou was the least important of the greater provinces of France.  At his death in 1040 it stood, if not in extent, at least in real power, first among them all.  Cool-headed, clear-sighted, quick to resolve, quicker to strike, Fulk’s career was one long series of victories over all his rivals.  He was a consummate general, and he had the gift of personal bravery, which was denied to some of his greatest descendants.  There was a moment in the first of his battles when the day seemed lost for Anjou; a feigned retreat of the Bretons drew the Angevin horsemen into a line of hidden pitfalls, and the Count himself was flung heavily to the ground.  Dragged from the medley of men and horses, he swept down almost singly on the foe “as a storm-wind” (so rang the paean of the Angevins) “sweeps down on the thick corn-rows,” and the field was won.  But to these qualities of the warrior he added a power of political organization, a capacity for far-reaching combinations, a faculty of statesmanship, which became the heritage of his race, and lifted them as high above the intellectual level of the rulers of their time as their shameless wickedness degraded them below the level of man.  His overthrow of Britanny on the field of Conquereux was followed by the gradual absorption of Southern Touraine; a victory at Pontlevoi crushed the rival house of Blois; the seizure of Saumur completed his conquests in the south, while Northern Touraine was won bit by bit till only Tours resisted the Angevin.  The treacherous seizure of its Count, Herbert Wakedog, left Maine at his mercy.

[Sidenote:  Death of Henry]

His work of conquest was completed by his son.  Geoffry Martel wrested Tours from the Count of Blois, and by the seizure of Le Mans brought his border to the Norman frontier.  Here however his advance was checked by the genius of William the Conqueror, and with his death the greatness of Anjou came for a while to an end.  Stripped of Maine by the Normans and broken by dissensions within, the weak and profligate rule of Fulk Rechin left Anjou powerless.  But in 1109 it woke to fresh energy with the accession of his son, Fulk of Jerusalem.  Now urging the turbulent Norman nobles to revolt, now supporting Robert’s son, William, in his strife with his uncle, offering himself throughout as the loyal supporter of the French kingdom which was now hemmed in on almost every side by the forces of the English king and of his allies the Counts of Blois and Champagne, Fulk was the one enemy whom Henry the First really feared.  It was to disarm his restless hostility that the king gave the hand of Matilda to Geoffry the Handsome.  But the hatred between Norman and Angevin had been too bitter to make such a marriage popular, and the secrecy with which it was brought about was held by the barons to free them from the oath they had previously sworn.  As no baron if he was sonless could give a husband to his daughter save with his lord’s