Nearly three months passed away before war actually broke out; but when the outburst came, the list of those who were engaged in it shews that the whole Angevin empire had become a vast hotbed of treason; though, on the other hand, it shews also that the treason was almost entirely confined to one especial class. Its local distribution, too, is significant. The restless barons of Aquitaine, still smarting under their defeat of 1169, were but too eager, at the instigation of their duchess and their newly-crowned duke, to renew their struggle against the king. Foremost among them were, as before, the count of Angoulême,[660] the nobles of Saintonge, and Geoffrey of Lusignan, beside whom there stood this time his young brother Guy, now to begin in this ignoble strife a career destined to strange vicissitudes in far-off Palestine.[661] The heart of the old Angevin lands, Anjou itself, was in the main loyal; we find there the names of only five traitors; and three of these, Hugh, William and Jocelyn of Ste.-Maure, came of a rebellious house, and were only doing over again what their predecessors had done in the days of Geoffrey Plantagenet’s youth.[662] The same may be said of Henry’s native land, Maine; this too furnished only seven barons to the traitor’s cause; and five of these again are easily accounted for. It was almost matter of course that in any rising against an Angevin count the lord of Sablé should stand side by side with the lord of Ste.-Maure. Brachard of Lavardin had a fellow-feeling with undutiful sons, for he was himself at strife with his own father, Count John of Vendôme, a faithful ally of Henry II.; the same was probably the case of Brachard’s brother Guy.[663] Bernard of La Ferté represented a family whose position in their great castle on the Huisne, close to the Norman border, was almost as independent as that of their neighbours the lords of Bellême, just across the frontier. Hugh of Sillé bore a name which in an earlier stage of Cenomannian history--in the days of the “commune,” just a hundred years before--had been almost a by-word for feudal arrogance; and whether or not he inherited anything of his ancestor’s spirit, he had a personal cause for enmity to the king if, as is probable, he was akin to a certain Robert of Sillé, whose share in the southern revolt of 1169 was punished by Henry, in defiance of treaties, with an imprisonment so strict and cruel that it was speedily ended by death.[664] [660] _Ib._ p. 47. [661] _Ib._ p. 46. The other Aquitanian rebels, besides the count of Angoulême and the two Lusignans, were Geoffrey of Rancogne, the lords of Coulonges and Rochefort in Saintonge, of Blaye (“Robertus de Ble”--this might possibly be Blet in Berry) and Mauléon in Gascony, and of Chauvigny in Poitou, with Archbishop William of Bordeaux and Abbot Richard of Tournay (_ib._ pp. 46, 47); to whom we may add Ralf of Faye.