[461] The author of the _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 31 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p. 305), calls her “nobilissimam fœminam” and “uxorem fortissimam.” [462] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, as above. [463] Concil. Rem. in Labbe, _Concilia_ (ed. Cossart), vol. xix. col. 742. [464] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1050 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 398). [465] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ (as above, pp. 305, 306). [466] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 31 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p. 306). The tide of fortune which had borne Geoffrey Martel on from victory to victory spent its last wave in carrying him to the brow of the Cenomannian hill. The acquisition of Le Mans was the last outward mark of his success; the height of his real security had been passed three years before. The turning-point of Geoffrey’s life was the year 1044. The settlement of Poitou, the winning of Tours, the capture of Bishop Gervase, all followed close upon each other; and for the next four years the count of Anjou was beyond all question the second power in the kingdom. No one save the duke of Normandy could claim to stand on a level with the lord of the Angevin march, of Touraine and Saintonge, the step-father and guardian of the boy-duke of Aquitaine, the virtual master of Maine. It was with the duke of Normandy that Geoffrey’s last conquest now brought him into collision. His head had been turned by his easy and rapid successes; in 1048, on his return from an expedition to Apulia in company with his wife’s son-in-law the Emperor,[467] he set himself up against King Henry with a boastful insolence which threatened to disturb the peace of the whole realm.[468] Five years earlier, Henry had profited by the feud between Anjou and Blois to win Geoffrey’s help in putting down the rebellion of Theobald; now he profited by the jealousy which the state of Cenomannian affairs was just beginning to create between Anjou and Normandy to win the help of the Norman Duke William in putting down the rebellion of Geoffrey. The king’s own operations against Anjou seem to have extended no further than a successful siege of the castle of Moulinières;[469] after this his conduct towards William seems to have been copied from that of his parents towards Fulk the Black three and twenty years before. William, like Fulk, was left to fight the royal battles single-handed; and to William, as to Fulk, the task was welcome, for the battle was in truth less the king’s than his own. Geoffrey Martel, in the pride of his heart, had openly proclaimed his ambition to crown all his previous triumphs by an encounter with the only warrior whom he deigned to regard as a foeman worthy of his steel,[470] and had diligently used all the opportunities for provoking a quarrel with the Norman which the dependent position of Maine furnished but too readily. Either by force or guile, or that judicious mixture of both in which the Angevin