To understand the full importance of this grant and of the war which followed it, we must know something of the history of Tours and of the peculiar feelings and interests attached to it. The origin of Tours as a city dates from the time of the Roman empire, when it appears under the name of Cæsarodunum.[404] The Roman castrum was built in a broad, shallow sort of basin, watered on the north by the Loire, on the south by the Cher; it probably occupied the site of some village of those Turones or Turoni, who play a part in the Gallic wars of Cæsar,[405] and whose name in the end superseded that which the place received from its conqueror. The “city of the Turones” became the central point of a network of roads connecting it with Poitiers, Chartres, Bourges, Orléans, Le Mans and Angers;[406] and owing to the convenience of its situation for military and administrative purposes it was made the capital of the Third Lyonnese province.[407] But its hold on the minds of men was due to another gift of Rome, more precious than roads or fortifications or even political traditions. It was the holy city of Gaul, the cradle of Gaulish Christianity. Its first bishop, Gatian, was one of seven missionaries sent out from Rome to evangelize the Gallic provinces in the days of the Decian persecution.[408] S. Gatian’s episcopate of half a century fell in one of the most distracted periods of the Empire; after his death the Church which he had planted remained untended for nearly forty years, and it was not till after the death of Constantine that Tours received her second bishop in the person of Lidorius, one of her own sons, who laid the foundations of a cathedral church.[409] But the fame of the two first bishops of Tours was completely overshadowed by that of the third. The work of S. Gatian and S. Lidorius was confined to their own immediate flock; S. Martin was the apostle not only of Touraine but of all central Gaul. Born at Sabaria[410] in the Upper Pannonia, in the reign of the first Christian Emperor, but of heathen parents, Martin rose to high military distinction under the Cæsar Julian, accompanied him into Gaul, and enjoyed his utmost esteem and regard till he forfeited them by renouncing the standard of the eagles for that of the Cross. Neither the wrath of his commander nor the entreaties of his fellow-soldiers, by whom he was greatly beloved, availed to shake his resolution; he fled to Poitiers, and there found a friend and counsellor in the holy bishop Hilary, from whom he received the minor orders. After braving toil and peril by land and sea in a journey to his native country for the conversion of his family, he returned to a life of seclusion in Gaul, and acquired such a reputation for holiness that on the death of Lidorius in 371 the people of Tours, in spite of his strenuous resistance, actually forced him to become their bishop.[411] From that moment Tours became a mission-centre whence the light of the faith spread with marvellous rapidity over all the surrounding country. Anjou and all the neighbouring lands owed their conversion to S. Martin and the missionaries sent out by him; everywhere paganism gave way before his eloquent preaching, his dauntless courage, his almost apostolic endowments—above all, perhaps, his good example. He was looked upon as the Thaumaturgus of Gaul, and countless legends were told of his wonder-working powers; more famous than all of them is a story of the saint in his soldier-days, when, Christian already in feeling though not yet in profession, he stopped his horse one cold winter’s night, drew his sword and cut his military cloak in halves to share it with one whose necessity was greater than his own. That night he dreamed that the Lord whom, not knowing, he yet instinctively served, appeared to him wearing the half cloak which he had thus given away; and it was this vision which determined him to receive baptism.[412] Amid all his busy, active life he never lost the love of solitary contemplation so characteristic of the early Christian missionaries. His episcopal city lay on the south side of the Loire, but had on the north or right bank a large suburb afterwards known by the name of S. Symphorian; beyond this, farther to the eastward, the bishop found for himself a “green retreat,” which has scarcely yet lost its air of peaceful loneliness, and which, before the suburb had spread to its present extent, must have been an ideal spot for monastic retirement. A little wooden cell with its back against the white limestone rock which shelters the northern side of the basin of Tours—an expanse of green solitude in front, stretching down to the broad calm river—such was the nest which S. Martin built him in the wilderness; gathering round him a little band of men likeminded with himself, he snatched every spare moment from his episcopal cares to flee away thither and be at rest;[413] and the rock-hewn cells of the brotherhood became the nucleus of a famous abbey, the “Great Monastery,” as it was emphatically called—Majus Monasterium, Marmoutier. Another minster, of almost greater fame, grew up over the saint’s burial place outside the western wall of the city, on low-lying ground which, before it was reclaimed by the energetic dyke-makers of the ninth and tenth centuries, must have been not unfrequently under water. It is within the episcopal city of S. Martin, in the writings of Bishop Gregory of Tours, that West-Frankish history begins. An English student feels a nearer interest in the abbey without the walls, remembering that the abbot under whom it reached its highest glory and became the very fount and source of all contemporary learning, human and divine, was Alcuin of York.

When the great English scholar and the great Emperor who had brought him into Gaul were gone, Tours underwent her full share of suffering in the invasions of the northmen. City and abbey became to the valley of the Loire something like what Paris and S. Denis were to that of the Seine, the chief bulwark against the fresh tide of heathen force which threatened to sweep away the footsteps of saints and scholars. Once, indeed, Tours had been in danger from heathens of another sort, and a body of Saracens had been turned back from her gates and destroyed by Charles Martel.[414] There was no Martel to save her from the northmen; her only defence consisted in the valour of her citizens, and the fortifications left to her by her Roman governors and carefully strengthened by her Karolingian sovereigns.[415] Over and over again the pirates were driven back from the walls of Cæsarodunum; over and over again S. Martin’s Abbey was burnt to the ground. For years the canons, who in Alcuin’s days had taken the place of the original monks,[416] lived in constant fear of desecration befalling their patron’s body, and carried it from place to place, like the body of our own S. Cuthbert, sometimes depositing it within the city walls, sometimes removing it farther inland—once even to the far-off Burgundian duchy—bringing it home whenever they dared, or whenever they had a church fit to contain it. Two of these “reversions”—one on December 13, 885, the other on May 12, 919—were annually celebrated at Tours, in addition to two other feasts of S. Martin, his ordination on July 4 and his “deposition” on November 11.[417] In the first reversion Ingelger, the founder of the Angevin house, was said to have borne a prominent part. The story of the second was afterwards superseded by a famous legend known as that of the “subvention of S. Martin.” Once, it was said, when the citizens of Tours were sore pressed by the besieging hosts of the northmen, they resolved to intrust their cause to a heavenly champion, and brought out upon the walls the corpse of the saint, which had been deposited for safety within the city. The living heathen fled at once before the dead saint; they were pursued by the triumphant citizens, still carrying their patron in their midst, and utterly routed at a spot which thence received the name of “S. Martin of the Battle.”[418] This story seems to belong to the siege of 903, when Marmoutier was destroyed, and the abbey of S. Martin burnt to the ground for the third time. When the canons again rebuilt it, they took the precaution of encircling it with a wall, and procured from Charles the Simple a charter which resulted in the creation of a new fortified borough, exempt from the jurisdiction of both bishop and count, and subject only to its own abbot—in other words, to the duke of the French, who from the middle of the eighth century always held in commendam the abbey of S. Martin at Tours, as he did that of S. Denis at Paris.[419] Thus, side by side with the old city of the Turones, Cæsarodunum with its Roman walls, its count, its cathedral and its archbishop, there arose the “Castrum Novum,” Châteauneuf, “Castellum S. Martini,” Martinopolis as it is sometimes called, with its own walled enclosure, its collegiate church and its abbot-duke. The counts of Anjou, who followed so steadily in the train of the ducal house, were not blind to the means of gaining a footing in such tempting neighbourhood to the walls of Tours; from an early period they took care to connect themselves with the abbey of which their patron was the head. 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. Good Canon Fulk prized it as a spiritual privilege; his successors probably looked upon it rather in the light of a political wedge whereby they might some day force an entrance into the greedily-coveted city itself. Tours was the point towards which Fulk the Black had worked steadily all his life long; and when he left his son to complete his labours, that point was almost reached. But, with her broad river and her Roman walls, Tours was still hard to win. To block the river was impossible; to break down the walls would need nothing less than a regular siege, and one which could not fail to be long, tedious and costly. Geoffrey seems to have delayed the task until by the king’s grant of the investiture it became a point of honour as well as a matter of the most pressing interest to make good the claim thus placed in his hands.

He woke at once from his Aquitanian dreams, gathered his forces, and led them out, probably not by the old Roman road from Juliomagus to Cæsarodunum past the white steeps of his father’s Montboyau, but by a safer though longer route, passing along the southern bank of the Loire and across the valleys of the Vienne and the Indre, to lay siege to Tours. With the royal sanction to his enterprise he had the great advantage of being able to use Châteauneuf as a basis of operations. The monastery of S. Julian, at the north-east corner of the town, close against the city wall, was especially convenient for attacking the latter; Geoffrey took possession of it and used it accordingly.[420] The city, however, held out against him for a whole year, during which its inhabitants seem to have been left by their count to defend themselves as best they could. At last, in August 1044, Theobald collected an army for its relief, in union with the forces of Champagne under his brother Stephen.[421] Geoffrey, in expectation of this, had detached from his main force a body of two hundred knights and fifteen hundred foot, whom he posted at Amboise under Lisoy, to guard the road against Theobald.[422] The services of Lisoy were a special legacy from Fulk the Black to his son. Of all Fulk’s adherents, none had served him so intelligently and so devotedly as this Cenomannian knight whom he had chosen to be the colleague of the aged Sulpice in the defence of Amboise and Loches. Fulk, when he felt his end approaching, had striven hard to impress on his son the value of such a true and tried friend, and at the same time to bind Lisoy yet more closely to him by arranging his marriage with Hersendis, the niece and heiress of Sulpice, whereby Lisoy came into possession of all Sulpice’s estates at Loches and Amboise, including the famous tower of stone.[423] Lisoy proved as true to the new count as to the old one. Theobald, not daring to come within reach of Amboise, avoided the direct route from Blois to Tours along the Loire,[424] and took the road by Pontlevoy to Montrichard. The chief force of Montrichard, with its commander Roger, was no doubt with Geoffrey before Tours, so the count of Blois pursued his way unmolested, plundering as he went, down the valley of the Cher, till he pitched his tents in the meadows of St.-Quentin opposite Bléré, and there stayed a day and a night to rest.[425] All his movements were known to the watchful lord of Amboise; and as soon as Lisoy had fully ascertained the numbers and plans of the enemy, he hurried off to seek his count in the army before Tours, and offer him some sound military advice. He represented that it would be far better to raise the siege, join the whole Angevin force with that which was already at Amboise, and stake everything on a pitched battle. The enemy might beat either Geoffrey or his lieutenant singly, but united they would be irresistible; and whereas the siege must be long and tedious, and its result uncertain, one victory in the field would lay all Touraine at the victor’s feet. Only let the count be quick and not suffer his foe to catch him at unawares.[426]

Geoffrey, as he listened to this bold counsel, must have been reminded of his father’s warning, that a true friend like Lisoy was a surer source of strength than either hosts or treasures.[427] He took the advice, and while Lisoy returned to Amboise to bring up his little force to the trysting-place agreed upon between them, his count, after diligent prayers and vows to S. Martin, took the consecrated banner of the abbey from its place above the shrine, affixed it to his own spear, and rode forth with it at the head of all his troops to do battle with Theobald.[428] On the same day when Theobald encamped opposite Bléré Geoffrey reached Montlouis, a hill on the south bank of the Loire, about half way between Tours and Amboise. Next morning the men of Blois resumed their march; turning in a north-westerly direction they were met at a place called Noit by the Angevins coming down from Montlouis. The Hammer of Anjou, ever foremost in fight, headed the attack on the enemy’s centre; his faithful Lisoy came up, as he had promised, at the head of his contingent, and threw himself on their right wing.[429] What followed scarcely deserved the name of a battle. The army of the brother-counts seemed spell-bound, and made no resistance at all; Stephen took to flight at once and escaped with a few knights;[430] the rest of the troops of Blois and Champagne were utterly defeated and taken prisoners almost in a body. The men of Amboise were hottest in pursuit of the fugitives, and they won the great prize of the day. They drove Theobald with some five or six hundred knights into a wood called Braye, whence it was impossible for horsemen to extricate themselves; and thus Lisoy had the honour of bringing the count of Blois a captive to the feet of Geoffrey Martel.[431] No one at the time doubted that the Angevins owed their easy victory to the saint whose standard they were following. The few soldiers of Theobald who escaped declared that they had seen Geoffrey’s troops all clad in shining white raiment, and fled in horror, believing themselves to be fighting against the hosts of Heaven.[432] The village near which the fight took place was called “burgum S. Martini Belli”[433]—S. Martin of the Battle, a name derived from the “subvention of S. Martin,” supposed to have occurred at the same place two hundred years before. Most curiously, neither the well-known legend of the saint’s triumph over the northmen nor the fame of Geoffrey’s triumph over the count of Blois availed to fix in popular memory the true meaning of the name. While the English “Place of Battle” at Senlac has long forgotten its dedication to S. Martin, its namesake in Touraine has forgotten both its battles and become “St.-Martin-le-Beau.”

With very little bloodshed, the Angevins had gained over a thousand prisoners.[434] The most valuable of them all was put in ward at Loches;[435] but he took care not to stay there long. Theobald took warning by the fate of William of Aquitaine;[436] he had no mind to run the risk of dying in prison, and held his person far dearer than his property.[437] Three days after his capture, finding that no amount of silver or gold would avail to purchase his release, he yielded the only ransom which Geoffrey would accept: the city of Tours and the whole county of Touraine.[438] A nominal overlordship over the ceded territory was reserved to Theobald, and Geoffrey had to go through the formality of doing homage for it to him.[439] When the substance was securely his own, the count of Anjou could well afford to leave to his vanquished rival the shadowy consolation of an empty ceremony. Moreover, the circumstances of the whole transaction and the account of King Henry’s grant to Geoffrey clearly imply that Theobald’s rights over the most important point of all, the capital itself, were considered as entirely forfeited by his rebellion, so that with regard to the city of Tours Geoffrey stepped into the exact place of its former counts, holding it directly of the king alone.