It was not likely that a woman of the character of Eleanor and of her unusual attractions, alike of person and possessions, would quietly accept as final the position in which this divorce had left her. After escaping the importunate wooings of a couple of suitors who sought to intercept her return to her own dominions, she sent a message to Henry of Anjou, and he responded at once. In the third week of May they were married at Poitiers, two months after the divorce. In a few weeks' time, by two brief ecclesiastical ceremonies, the greatest feudal state of France, a quarter of the kingdom, had been transferred from the king to an uncontrollable vassal who practically held already another quarter. The king of France was reduced as speedily from a position of great apparent power and promise to the scanty territories of the Capetian domain, and brought face to face with the danger of not distant ruin to the plans of his house. To Henry, at the very beginning of his career, was opened the immediate prospect of an empire greater than any which existed at that time in Europe under the direct rule of any other sovereign. If he could gain England, he would bear sway, as king in reality if not in name, from Scotland to the Pyrenees, and from such a beginning what was there that might not be gained? Why these hopes were never realized, how the Capetian kings escaped this danger, must fill a large part of our story to the death of Henry's youngest son, King John. At the date of his marriage Henry had just entered on his twentieth year. Eleanor was nearly twelve years older. If she had sought happiness in her new marriage, she did not find it, at least not permanently; and many later years were spent in open hostility with Henry, or closely confined in his prisons; but whatever may have been her feelings towards him, she found no occasion to regard her second husband with contempt. Their eldest son, William, who did not survive infancy, was born on August 17, 1153, and in succession four other sons were born to them and three daughters.