The account of this war between Geoffrey the Bearded and Guy-Geoffrey, _alias_ William VII., of Aquitaine, has to be made out from one direct source and one indirect one. The first is the Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1061 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 402, 403): “Goffredus et Fulco habentes certamen cum Gaufredo duce propter Sanctonas, venientes cum magno exercitu, pugnaverunt cum eo in bello etiam in Aquitaniâ, ubi e contrario Pictavorum exercitus adunatus est; et ab utrisque partibus magnis animositatibus pugnatum est, sed traditores belli et ceteri signiferi, vexillis projectis, exercitum Pictavensium in fugam verterunt. Quapropter vulnerati multi sunt et plurimi occisi atque nonnulli capti; unde quidam versibus eam confusionem ita describit, dicens: Cum de Pictavis bellum sit et Andegavinis, Inque die Martis fuit et Sancti Benedicti, Circa forte Caput Wultonnæ contigit esse, Annus millenus tunc sexagesimus unus.” That entry comprises all the direct information on the subject. The Angevin monastic chronicles and Fulk Rechin do not mention it at all. Neither do the _Gesta Cons._ in the right place; but they mix it up with the war between Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat in 1033. By the light of the Chron. S. Maxent., it seems possible to disentangle the two stories. It even seems possible to make sense of a passage in the _Gesta_ which never can be sense as it stands, by understanding it as referring to Geoffrey the Bearded instead of his uncle: “Willelmus Pictavensium comes consulatum Sanctonicum suum esse volebat et vi preoccupatum tenebat, quia patrui sui fuerat. Martellus eumdem consulatum reclamabat quia avi sui fuerat, cujus heredes absque liberis mortui erant; et ideo ad heredes sororis avi sui debere reverti affirmabat” (_Gesta Cons._, Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 126). This is the story by which the _Gesta_-writer professes to explain the cause of the war of Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat, of which he then gives an elaborate account, ending with William’s capture and the consequent surrender of Saintes to Geoffrey. But the story is utterly senseless; the claims of William and Martel as therein stated are alike devoid of all show of reason. In the account of the war itself, too, there are strong traces of confusion; Saintes is assumed to have passed back into the duke’s hands, of which there is no sign elsewhere; and to crown all, the scene of the battle in which William is taken is laid, not as by the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 1032, Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 392) and Fulk Rechin (_Comtes_, p. 378), at S. Jouin-de-Marne or Montcontour, but at Chef-Boutonne. The question then arises: Can this wild tale in the _Gesta_, which is quite impossible as an explanation of Martel’s war with William V., be interpreted so as to explain his successor’s war with William VII.?