While he seemed to be throwing his whole energies into the occupation of the moment--whether it were the building or the besieging of a fortress, the browbeating of bishop or king, the cajoling of an ally or the crushing of a rival on the battle-field--that work was in reality only a part of a much greater work. Every town mirrored in the clear streams that water the “garden of France”--as the people of Touraine call their beautiful country--has its tale of the Black Count, the “great builder” beneath whose hands the whole lower course of the Loire gradually came to bristle with fortresses; but far above all his castles of stone and mortar there towered a castle in the air, the plan of a mighty political edifice. Every act of his life was a step towards its realization; every fresh success in his long career of triumph was another stone added to the gradual building up of Angevin dominion and greatness. [296] Ademar of Chabanais, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 146. The date seems to be about 990; but Ademar has confused Odo I. of Blois with his son Odo of Champagne. Fulk’s first victory was won before he was fourteen, over a veteran commander who had been more than a match for his father ten years earlier. The death of Geoffrey Greygown was soon followed by that of Count Guerech of Nantes; he, too, left only a young son, Alan; and when Alan also died in 990, Conan of Rennes, already master of all the rest of Britanny, seized his opportunity to take forcible possession of Nantes,[297] little dreaming of a possible rival in his young brother-in-law beyond the Mayenne. While his back was turned and he was busy assembling troops at Bruerech, at the other end of Britanny, the Angevin worked upon the old hatred of the Nantes people to the house of Rennes; with the craft of his race he won over some of the guards, by fair words and solid bribes, till he gained admittance into the city and received oaths and hostages from its inhabitants. He then returned home to collect troops for an attack upon the citadel, which was held by Conan’s men. Conan, as soon as he heard the tidings, marched upon Nantes with all his forces; as before, he brought with him a body of Norman auxiliaries, likely to be of no small use in assaulting a place such as Nantes, whose best defence is its broad river--for the “Pirates” had not yet forgotten the days when the water was their natural element and the long keels were their most familiar home. While the Norman ships blocked the river, Conan’s troops beset the town by land, and thus, with the garrison shooting down at them from the citadel, the townsfolk of Nantes were between three fires when Fulk advanced to their rescue.[298] Conan at once sent the audacious boy a challenge to meet him, on such a day, in a pitched battle on the field of Conquereux, where ten years before a doubtful fight had been waged between Conan and Fulk’s father. This time the Bretons trusted