Rallying his faithful subjects around him at Falaise, and obtaining aid from the king, William met the rebels at Val des Demes. One of them came over to his side before the battle, and, having previously sworn that the Duke should be the first man whom he would strike, he began by giving his armor a slight blow with the point of his lance, considering it necessary thus to fulfil his rash oath to the letter. The rebels were totally defeated, and either submitted to William’s mercy, or went to join their countrymen, who were engaged in the conquest of Sicily. This was the last attempt made by the Normans to resist their Duke, whose authority was now fully established; but it was not long before a war broke out with his powerful neighbor Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, which, however, would scarcely deserve mention, but for the curious terms in which a challenge was sent by the Duke to the Count, who had come to raise the siege of Domfront. “Tell the Count of Anjou,” said he to William Fitz Osborn and Roger Montgomery, his messengers, “that if he attempts to carry victuals into Domfront, he will find me before the gates, mounted on a bay horse, and with a red shield. And that he may know me the better, I shall have at the point of my lance a streamer of taffety, to wipe his face withal.” In the battle which followed, a few days after, William fulfilled his threat, by overthrowing the Count, who escaped with difficulty, with the loss of part of an ear, and was soon after obliged to conclude a peace. William married Matilda, daughter of the Count of Flanders, and of a sister of Duke Robert the Magnificent; and having omitted to ask the dispensation from the Pope, which was required on the marriage of such near relations, his uncle, the Archbishop of Rouen, laid them both under sentence of excommunication. William sought for an advocate to send to Rome to plead for their absolution, and his choice fell upon Lanfranc, a native of Lombardy, who had been bred as a lawyer, and was possessed of great learning and talent, but had chosen to embrace the monastic life, and had selected the Norman abbey of Bee as the place of his profession, because the monks there were very poor, and very strict in the observance of their rule. Lanfranc, at the Duke’s desire, travelled to Rome, and there succeeded in obtaining the confirmation of the marriage, and the absolution of the bride and bridegroom, on condition of their each founding an abbey, and jointly building a hospital for the blind.