Charles the Bald and Robert the Brave against the northmen: Charles set him to keep the pirates out of Touraine, and gave him a congenial post as forester of a wooded district known as the “Nid-de-Merle”--the Blackbird’s Nest. In its wild fastnesses Tortulf lay in wait for the approach of the marauders, and sprang forth to meet them with a daring and a success which earned him his sovereign’s favour and the alliance of the duke of the French. His son, Ingelger, followed in his steps; marriage came to the help of arms, and with the hand of Ælendis, niece of the archbishop of Tours, Ingelger acquired her lands at Amboise. The dowry was a valuable one; Amboise stood in the midst of one of the most rich and fertile districts of central France, half way between Tours and Blois, on the south bank of the Loire, which was spanned at this point by a bridge said to have been built by Julius Cæsar; two centuries later tradition still pointed out the site of Cæsar’s palace on the banks of the little river Amasse, at the western end of the town; while opposite the bridge a rocky brow, crowned to-day by the shell of a magnificent castle of the Renascence, probably still kept in Ingelger’s days some traces of a fortress built there by a Roman governor in the reign of the Emperor Valens. A mightier stronghold than Amboise, however, was to be the home of Ingelger’s race. His son, a ruddy youth named Fulk, early entered the service of Count Odo of Paris and remained firmly attached to him and his house; and one of the earliest acts of Odo’s brother Robert, who succeeded him as duke of the French--if indeed it was not rather one of the last acts of King Odo himself--was to intrust the city of Angers to Fulk the Red as viscount.[242] The choice was a wise one; for Fulk was gifted with a sound political instinct which found and kept the clue to guide him through all the revolutions and counter-revolutions of the next forty years. He never swerved from his adherence to the dukes of the French; and by his quiet tenacity he, like them, laid the foundation of his house’s greatness. Preferments civil and ecclesiastical--the abbacies of S. Aubin and S. Licinius at Angers, the viscounty of Tours, though this was but a momentary honour--were all so many stepping-stones to his final investiture, shortly before the death of Charles the Simple, as count of the Angevin March. [242] On the whole story of Tortulf, Ingelger and Fulk, see note A at end of chapter. [Illustration: Map I. GAUL c. 909–941. Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co. ]