Martin.” Once, it was said, when the citizens of Tours were sore pressed by the besieging hosts of the northmen, they resolved to intrust their cause to a heavenly champion, and brought out upon the walls the corpse of the saint, which had been deposited for safety within the city. The living heathen fled at once before the dead saint; they were pursued by the triumphant citizens, still carrying their patron in their midst, and utterly routed at a spot which thence received the name of “S. Martin of the Battle.”[418] This story seems to belong to the siege of 903, when Marmoutier was destroyed, and the abbey of S. Martin burnt to the ground for the third time. When the canons again rebuilt it, they took the precaution of encircling it with a wall, and procured from Charles the Simple a charter which resulted in the creation of a new fortified borough, exempt from the jurisdiction of both bishop and count, and subject only to its own abbot--in other words, to the duke of the French, who from the middle of the eighth century always held _in commendam_ the abbey of S. Martin at Tours, as he did that of S. Denis at Paris.[419] Thus, side by side with the old city of the Turones, Cæsarodunum with its Roman walls, its count, its cathedral and its archbishop, there arose the “Castrum Novum,” Châteauneuf, “Castellum S. Martini,” Martinopolis as it is sometimes called, with its own walled enclosure, its collegiate church and its abbot-duke. The counts of Anjou, who followed so steadily in the train of the ducal house, were not blind to the means of gaining a footing in such tempting neighbourhood to the walls of Tours; from an early period they took care to connect themselves with the abbey of which their patron was the head. The first count of Anjou and his father play an important part in the legendary history of the two great “reversions”; Fulk the Good is almost more familiar to us as canon than as count, and the stall next to that of the dean of S. Martin’s, which he so loved to occupy, whence he wrote his famous letter, and where he saw his vision of the saint, seems to have become hereditary among his descendants like the abbotship among those of Hugh the Great. Good Canon Fulk prized it as a spiritual privilege; his successors probably looked upon it rather in the light of a political wedge whereby they might some day force an entrance into the greedily-coveted city itself. Tours was the point towards which Fulk the Black had worked steadily all his life long; and when he left his son to complete his labours, that point was almost reached. But, with her broad river and her Roman walls, Tours was still hard to win. To block the river was impossible; to break down the walls would need nothing less than a regular siege, and one which could not fail to be long, tedious and costly. Geoffrey seems to have delayed the task until by the king’s grant of the investiture it became a point of honour as well as a matter of the most