In the ten years of misery and confusion which followed the death of Odo I. and the re-marriage of his widow, Fulk had time nearly to complete a chain of fortresses which, starting from Angers and sweeping along the line of Geoffrey Greygown’s Poitevin conquests in a wide irregular half-circle up again to Amboise, served the double purpose of linking his own outlying possessions in Touraine with his head-quarters in Anjou, and of cutting in halves the dominions of his neighbour. The towers of Montreuil, Passavant and Maulévrier, of Loudun and the more remote Mirebeau, were a standing menace to Saumur and Chinon. Sᵗᵉ·-Maure was an eyesore to the garrison of Ile-Bouchard.[308] Farther east, on a pile of rock with the little blue Indre winding round its foot, rose, as it rises still in ruined majesty, the mighty keep of Loches; and on the banks of the Indrois that of Montrésor, whose lord, Roger, rejoiced in the surname of “the devil.”[309] To Roger Fulk also intrusted the command of another great fortress, Montrichard, whose dark donjon frowned down upon the Cher from a plot of ground stolen from the metropolitan see of Tours.[310] At Amboise itself, the site of the Roman governor’s palace--now crowned by the modern castle--was occupied by a strong _domicilium_ of the Angevin count,[311] and the place was a perpetual obstacle between the archiepiscopal city of S. Martin and the secular capital of its rulers. Langeais and Montbazon, which for a while threatened Tours more closely still, were soon wrested from their daring builder;[312] but the whole course of the Indre above Montbazon was none the less in Fulk’s hands, for either by force or guile, the lords of all the castles on its banks had been won over to his cause; he had gained a foothold on every one of the affluents of the Loire upon its southern side; while on the north, in the valley of the Loir, Hugh of Alluye, the lord of Château-la-Vallière and St.-Christophe, was so devoted to the Angevin interest that the count’s usual route to and from Amboise lay through his lands.[313] [308] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 377. [309] _Gesta Cons._ (_ibid._), p. 107; _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 167. [310] _Gesta Cons._, as above. [311] _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (as above), p. 175. [312] That Montbazon was built by Fulk appears by a charter of King Robert (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 577, 578), date seemingly about A.D. 1000. It had, however, passed into Odo’s hands. Langeais, whose building is recorded by Fulk Rechin (as above), was probably taken by Odo I. in 995; there is a charter of his dated “at the siege of Langeais” in that year. Mabillon, _Ann. Bened._, vol. iv. p. 96. [313] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 91. _Gesta Amb. Domin._ (_ibid._), p. 164.