Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
The crusading spirit was, however, strong in the house of Anjou, and so continued for full three hundred years: and though Foulques was considerably past forty, he accepted the offer, gave up his country to his son Geoffrey, and set forth in 1127, married Melisende, and, four years after, became King of Jerusalem.
A few days after, Louis received the following letter: "The Count of Anjou to the King of France. Hail. Learn, my liege Lord, that an unlettered King is no better than a donkey with a crown on." In spite of his devotion, to St. Martin, Foulques sacrilegiously robbed the treasury of two golden vessels, and did not restore them till a severe illness brought him to the point of death.
His eldest son, Geoffrey, called the Beloved of Ladies, died before him; and Foulques, who succeeded him, though termed "le bon," had little claim to such a title, unless it was derived from his love of learning and his friendship with the monks of Tours.
On learning his death Foulques and Hugues and their ladies, who knew not that he had been poisoned, united their bitter with Ninette's feigned lamentations, and gave him honourable sepulture.
Among these, were the arms of Foulques Taillefer, together with all those of the warriors he had slain; and that it was an immemorial usage with the Foulquerres to have the weapons deposited there which they had wielded either in war or in single combat. This, then, was the reason of the dying injunction of the commander respecting his sword.
It was old Foulques Taillefer who stood before me, armed cap-a-pie, and presenting the point of his sword. I made the sign of the cross, and the spectre vanished, but I received the same red-hot thrust in the heart which I had felt in the armory, and I seemed to be bathed in blood. I would have called out, or have arisen from my bed and gone in quest of succor, but I could neither speak nor stir.
Released the same morning, and told that Ninette had been cast into the sea, Foulques and Hugues, fully believing that so it was, came home, thinking how they should console their ladies for the death of their sister; but, though Madeleine was at great pains to conceal Ninette, Foulques nevertheless, to his no small amazement, discovered that she was there; which at once excited his suspicion, for he knew that the Duke had been enamoured of Madeleine; and he asked how it was that Ninette was there.
The Angevins were much more French than any of these neighbors; and their domain being smaller, they generally held by the King. They were his hereditary grand seneschals, carving before him on great occasions; and Geoffrey Grise gonnelle, who succeeded Foulques le Bon in 958, was on the side of the crown in all the war with Richard the Fearless of Normandy.
Meantime Madame Jacquières had not been idle, and was ready to fulfil her promise to send a messenger to the Duchess d'Angoulême. Her chosen emissary was a Norman gentleman named Jacques Charles de Foulques, an ardent Bourbonist and a lieutenant-colonel in the army. This officer was both brave and suave, and seemed in every respect a fitting person to act as an ambassador to the Tuileries.
Armed with this extraordinary document, Lieutenant-Colonel de Foulques set out for Paris, honoured by his mission, and convinced that he had only to present himself at the Tuileries to obtain easy access to the duchess, and only to gain her ear to insure her co-operation in the sacred task of placing her long-lost and ill-treated brother on the throne of France.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking