. . to an eminence which was the wonder and dread of all neighbouring nations. Lord Macaulay1 In 999 a Plantagenet forebear, Count Fulk the Black of Anjou, had his young wife, Elisabeth of Vendôme, burned alive in her wedding dress in the marketplace at his capital of Angers, in front of the cathedral, after catching her in flagrante with a goatherd.2 A few days later, all Angers went up in flames, torched by unknown hands, and the townsmen suspected Fulk. There is no record of what happened to the goatherd. The Black Count was just as merciless on campaign, slaying and destroying, robbing and raping. When, as an old man, he put down a rebellion by his equally ferocious son, Geoffrey the Hammer, he made him crawl around the floor in front of his courtiers, saddled and bridled like a horse, begging for mercy, while his father screamed, ‘You’re broken in, broken in!’ Yet on pilgrimages to the Holy Land Fulk ordered his servants to flog him through the streets of Jerusalem as he howled for God’s forgiveness.
