Eudes II, count of Blois, desired to seize the kingdom of Provence and afterwards Lorraine, and to this reconstructed Lorraine he hoped to add the crown of Italy. But a battle in Barrois ended the schemes of the turbulent baron. Eudes was defeated and killed (1037); his wife alone was able to recognise his body among the corpses which strewed the field, and pay the last honours to his remains. [Sidenote: [987-1066 A.D.]] A prince against whom Eudes often fought, Fulk (Foulques) Nerra--or the Black--count of Anjou, was even more renowned. Thrice did he make pilgrimages to the Holy Land. On the last he caused himself to be drawn on a sledge, naked, and with rope around the neck, through the streets of Jerusalem, whipped the while with great blows by two valets, and crying with all his might, “Lord have mercy on the traitor, the perjurer Fulk.” Then he attempted to return on foot, but died on the way (1040). Fulk had indeed many crimes to expiate. Queen Constance was his niece. One day she complained to him of one of her husband’s favourites, and Fulk immediately despatched twelve knights with orders to stab the favourite wherever they might find him. Of his two wives, he had one burned to death, or according to other accounts stabbed her himself after she had been rescued from a precipice over which he tried to throw her; the other he compelled by ill treatment to retire to Palestine. His son Geoffrey Martel was also a fighter. He tried by force of arms in 1036 to compel his father to cede him the county of Anjou, but the old Fulk defeated and made him undergo the punishment of the _harnescar_. The rebel son had to travel several miles on all fours, a saddle on his back, to reach the count’s feet and implore his pardon. Geoffrey Martel, jealous of the duke of Normandy’s power, united with Henry I against him. His successors kept up this policy and the kings of France found the Angevin counts useful allies against the Norman duke--now become kings of England, at least until the moment the counts inherited the English crown themselves. It is related that Geoffrey Martel’s wife was fond of reading, but such was the scarcity of books that she was obliged to give two hundred sheep, five quarters of wheat, and as much rye and millet for a manuscript of the homilies. The beautiful cathedral of Angers was begun under Fulk Nerra.[c] PHILIP I (1060-1108 A.D.)