Biography of Geoffrey "Martel" II Count Anjou 1006-1060

History of the Dukes of Normandy by William of Jumieges. While he remained there for some time in this siege, behold, scouts arrived announcing that he might seize the castle of Alençon without any loss of his own men. Immediately he stationed guards within the siege-works, and, riding all night with his army, arrived at Alençon at daybreak. There, in a certain suburb situated across the river, he found some who mocked him with insults. Rousing the spirits of the soldiers to great anger, he hastened to attack the place and, having set fire to it, burned it with destructive flames. And he ordered that those mockers, in sight of all who were within Alençon, should be deprived of their hands and feet. Without delay, just as he had commanded, thirty-two were mutilated. For they had beaten skins and hides in insult to the duke, and had mockingly called him a tanner, because the parents of his mother [Herleva] had been tanners².

In cujus procinctu dum aliquandiu moraretur, ecce adsunt exploratores, Alencium castrum absque suorum detrimento eum capere posse nuntiantes. Qui confestim custodes intra castra disposuit et cum exercitu tota nocte equitans diluculo Alencium venit, ubi in quodam municipio trans flumen posito quosdam se convitiis subsannantes reperit. Quod acerrime concitatis militum animis, expugnans festinanter cœpit igneque injecto exitialibus flammis cremavit. Illusores vero coram omnibus infra Alencium consistentibus, manibus privari jussit et pedibus. Nec mora, sicut jusserat, triginta duo debilitati sunt. Pelles enim et renones ad injuriam ducis verberaverant, ipsumque pelliciarium despective vocitaverant, eo quod parentes matris ejus pelliciarii [pollinctores] exstiterant.

Note 1. Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, 1006-1060, known as 'Martel' i.e. 'Hammer' was the last of the Counts of Anjou from the Ingelger family. He had no issue from his two marriages. He was succeeded as Count of Anjou by the two sons of his sister Ermengarde-Blanche who had married Geoffrey II Count of Gâtinais. Geoffrey and Ermengarde's great-grandson Geoffrey married Empress Matilda, daughter of King Henry I, grandson of William the Conqueror, whose issue, King Henry II, was the first of the Plantagenet Kings of England.

Note 2. Compare with the response of William's grandson King Henry I when reminded of his ancestors by Bishop Hugh of Lincoln as related by Adam of Eynsham: "Seeing these things, the bishop, and knowing that all this display of hostility was being put on because of him, looked down, as it were from some loftier watchtower of inward reason, upon the efforts of carnal thoughts from far away. And at last, turning to the king, with these few words he shattered the whole swollen pride of his heart, and struck him with such power that the king, unable to bear the force of the words, was even thrown backward onto his back. We will set down the very words, removing or adding nothing. So he said: 'How like you are just now to your cousins of Falaise.' By this shaft, gentle and light indeed, but marvellously piercing and sharp, the king, struck to the very heart, entwined his fingers and dissolved into laughter, letting his head fall back toward the ground. In this posture he long abandoned himself to unrestrained laughter."