In the autumn of 1048 William set out to dislodge the intruder from Domfront. It was no light undertaking. The ruined keep which still stands, a splendid fragment, on the top of a steep wall-like pile of grey rock, the last spur of a ridge of hills sweeping round from the east, with the town and the dark woods at its back and the little stream of Varenne winding close round its foot, may tell something of what the castle was when its walls stood foursquare, fresh from the builder’s hand, and manned by the fierce moss-troopers of Bellême, reinforced by a band of picked soldiers from Anjou.[473] The rock itself was an impregnable fortress of nature’s own making. To horsemen it was totally inaccessible; foot-soldiers could only scale it by two narrow and difficult paths. Assault was hopeless; William’s only chance lay in a blockade, and even this was an enterprise of danger as well as difficulty, for Domfront stood in the heart of a dense woodland amid which the Normans were continually exposed to the ambushes and surprises of the foe. To William however the forest was simply a hunting-ground through which he rode day after day, with hawk on wrist, in scornful defiance of its hidden perils, while the siege was pressed closer and closer all through the winter’s snows, till at last the garrison were driven to call upon Geoffrey Martel for relief.[474] What followed reads like an anticipation of the story of Prestonpans as told in Jacobite song. If we may trust the Norman tale, Geoffrey not only answered the call, but sent his trumpeter with a formal challenge to the young duke of the Normans to meet him on the morrow at break of day beneath the walls of Domfront. But when the sun rose on that morrow, Geoffrey and all his host were gone.[475] Duke William’s chaplain, who tells the tale, could see but one obvious explanation of their departure; and it is impossible to contradict him, for the whole campaign of 1048 is a blank in the pages of the Angevin chroniclers. The Hammer of Anjou stands charged with having challenged Duke William at eventide and run away from him before sunrise, and no Angevin voice seems ever to have been lifted to deny or palliate the charge. He had scarcely turned his back when Alençon fell; and its fall was quickly followed by that of Domfront. William carried away his engines of war to set them up again on undisputed Cenomannian ground, at Ambrières on the Mayenne: still Geoffrey made no movement; William laid the foundations of a castle on the river-bank at Ambrières, and leaving it securely guarded marched home unmolested to Rouen.[476] [473] Will. Poitiers (as above), p. 182. [474] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 182. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396). [475] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 183. Cf. Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, pp. 396, 397).