to lure their enemies to complete destruction by a device which, in days long after, was successfully employed by Robert Bruce against the English army at Bannockburn; they dug a series of trenches right across the swampy moor, covered them with bushes, branches, leaves and thatch, supported by uprights stuck into the ditches, and strewed the surface with ferns till it was indistinguishable from the surrounding moorland. Behind this line of hidden pitfalls Conan drew up his host, making a feint of unwillingness to begin the attack. Fulk, panting for his first battle with all the ardour of youth, urged his men to the onset; the flower of the Angevin troops charged right into the Breton pitfalls; men and horses became hopelessly entangled; two thousand went down in the swampy abyss and were drowned, slaughtered or crushed to death.[299] The rest fled in disorder; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and fell to the ground, weighed down by his armour, perhaps too heavy for his boyish frame. In an instant he was up again, wild with rage, burning to avenge his overthrow, calling furiously upon his troops. The clear, young voice of their leader revived the courage of the Angevins; “as the storm-wind sweeps down upon the thick corn-rigs”[300]--so their historian tells--they rushed upon the foe; and their momentary panic was avenged by the death of Conan and the almost total destruction of his host.[301] The blow overthrew the power of Rennes; the new duke Geoffrey, the son of Conan and Hermengard, was far indeed from being a match for his young uncle. In the flush of victory Fulk marched into Nantes; the citizens received him with open arms; the dismayed garrison speedily surrendered, and swore fealty to the conqueror; the titular bishop, Judicaël, a young son of Count Hoel, was set up as count under the guardianship of Aimeric of Thouars, a kinsman of the Angevin house, who ruled solely in Fulk’s interest;[302] while the territory on the right bank of the Mayenne, lost a century and a half before by the treason of Count Lambert, seems to have been reunited to the Angevin dominions. [297] Morice, _Hist. de Bret._, vol. i. p. 64 (from a seemingly lost bit of the Chron. Namnet.). [298] Richer, l. iv. c. 81. [299] _Ib._ cc. 82–85. Rudolf Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 15). [300] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 15). [301] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. R. Glaber (as above) says that Conan was not slain, but only taken prisoner with the loss of his right hand--a confusion with the first battle of Conquereux. Conan’s death appears in all the chief Breton chronicles, especially Chron. S. Michael. a. 992 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 175), etc. See also Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377. The _Gesta Cons._ copy R. Glaber.