"Fulc Nerra, Fulc the Black [A. D. 987-1040] is the greatest of the Angevins, the first in whom we can trace that marked type of character which their house was to preserve with a fatal constancy through two hundred years. He was without natural affection. In his youth he burned a wife at the stake, and legend told how he led her to her doom decked out in his gayest attire. In his old age he waged his bitterest war against his son, and exacted from him when vanquished a humiliation which men reserved for the deadliest of their foes. 'You are conquered, you are conquered!' shouted the old man in fierce exultation, as Geoffry, bridled and saddled like a beast of burden, crawled for pardon to his father's feet. ... But neither the wrath of Heaven nor the curses of men broke with a single mishap the fifty years of his success. At his accession Anjou was the least important of the greater provinces of France. At his death it stood, if not in extent, at least in real power, first among them all. ... His overthrow of Brittany on the field of Conquereux was followed by the gradual absorption of Southern Touraine. ... His great victory at Pontlevoi crushed the rival house of Blois; the seizure of Saumur completed his conquests in the South, while Northern Touraine was won bit by bit till only Tours resisted the Angevin. The treacherous seizure of its Count, Herbert Wake-dog, left Maine at his mercy ere the old man bequeathed his unfinished work to his son. As a warrior, Geoffry Martel was hardly inferior to his father. A decisive overthrow wrested Tours from the Count of Blois; a second left Poitou at his mercy; and the seizure of Le Mans brought him to the Norman border. Here ... his advance was checked by the genius of William the Conqueror, and with his death the greatness of Anjou seemed for the time to have come to an end. Stripped of Maine by the Normans, and weakened by internal dissensions, the weak and profligate administration of Fulc Rechin left Anjou powerless against its rivals along the Seine. It woke to fresh energy with the accession of his son, Fulc of Jerusalem. ... Fulc was the one enemy whom Henry the First really feared. It was to disarm his restless hostility that the King yielded to his son, Geoffry the Handsome, the hand of his daughter Matilda." _J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People, chapter 2, section 7._ ALSO IN _K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, volume 1, chapter 2-4._ ANJOU: A. D. 1154. The Counts become Kings of England. See ENGLAND: A. D. 1154-1189. ANJOU: A. D. 1204. Wrested from the English King John. See FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224. ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442. English attempts to recover the county. The Third and Fourth Houses of Anjou. Creation of the Dukedom.