[302] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. The first viscount of Thouars, a brother of Ebles, count of Poitou, had married Roscilla, daughter of Fulk the Red. Chron. Com. Pictaviæ in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 294, 295. The boy count had well won his spurs on the field of Conquereux. With the control over Nantes he had secured the control over the whole course of the Loire from his own capital down to the sea--a most important advantage in an age when the water-ways were the principal channels of communication, whether for peace or war. The upper part of the Loire valley, its richest and most fertile part, was in the hands of the count of Blois. But his sway was not unbroken. Midway between his two capitals, Blois and Tours, stood Amboise, the heritage of the Red Count’s mother; farther south, in the valley of the Indre, stood Loches, the heritage of his wife. It was not in human nature--certainly not in Angevin nature--that the owner of Amboise and Loches should not seek to extend his power a little further at the expense of his neighbour in Touraine; and no great provocation on the part of Odo of Blois was needed to make the fiery young Angevin dash into his territories, and ride plundering, wasting and burning to the outskirts of Blois itself.[303] Raid and counter-raid went on almost without ceasing, and once it seems that King Hugh himself came to help his Angevin ally.[304] In 995 Odo died, and his widow, Bertha, shortly afterwards married Robert of France, who next year became king on the death of his father Hugh Capet. Robert and Bertha were cousins; the Church pronounced their marriage illegal, and punished it with an interdict on the realm; amid the general confusion which followed, Fulk carried on a desultory warfare with Odo’s two elder sons, Thierry and Theobald, till the death of the latter in 1004 brought him face to face with his lifelong antagonist, Odo II. The contest made inevitable by circumstances was to be rendered all the more bitter by the character of the two men who were now to engage in it. Odo, indeed, was even yet scarcely more than a boy;[305] but, like Fulk, he had begun his public career at a very early age. His beginning was as characteristic as Fulk’s beginning at Conquereux. In 999 he openly insulted his royal step-father by wresting the castle of Melun from Robert’s most trusty counsellor, Count Burchard of Vendôme; and no might short of that of the Norman duke, who had now grown from a “leader of the Pirates” into the king’s most valued supporter, sufficed to avenge the outrage.[306] The boy’s hasty, unprovoked spoliation of Burchard, his insolent defiance of the king, his overweening self-confidence, ending suddenly in ignominious flight, were typical of his whole after-career. Odo’s life was as busy and active as Fulk’s, but his activity produced no lasting effects. His insatiable ambition lacked the restraint and regulation of the Angevin practical sagacity, and