Download PDF | Theodore Evergates - Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne_ His Life and Memoirs of the Fourth Crusade (Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultures)-Cornell University Press (2024).
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Two marshals born in the mid-twelfth century, one in England, the other in France, are remembered today through singular accounts of their extraordinary lives. William Marshal (1147–1219) is best known for his prowess as a tournament knight, for his close relations with and service to the Angevin kings of England, and for saving the royal dynasty after the death of King John, when some of the English barons were prepared to abandon their young king, Henry III, for Prince Louis of France. William Marshal’s life is known chiefly through a verse biography written in 1224–26 by a poet known only as John, who consulted the family’s archive of documents and gathered the recollections of the Marshal’s family, friends, and especially his trusted companion John of Earley.
The History of William Marshal (Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal) is such a remarkable depiction of a great English baron’s life that it has inspired a number of modern biographies. 1 Geoffroy of Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne (circa 1148– 1212/17), chief of staff of the Fourth Crusade and marshal of the Latin empire of Constantinople, is known primarily for his memoirs (1207–8) of the crusade and its aftermath. The memoirs, essentially war memoirs, have become the template through which historians view the cataclysmic encounter between the French, Venetians, and Byzantines. 2
They also occupy a prominent place in the canon of French literature as the earliest prose narrative in French and have been the subject of numerous literary analyses. Yet the marshal’s life and deeds have received slight attention since Jean Longnon’s study of Villehardouin and his family and Edmond Faral’s edition of the memoirs almost a century ago The two marshals came from modest backgrounds: William was the fourth son of a middling royal official in England and Geoffroy was the fourth son of a knight from Troyes in Champagne.
They were exact contemporaries who acquired renown through military service, although they traveled entirely different paths. Neither appeared destined for great deeds, much less to be remembered eight hundred years later. How that came to pass is a story of familial relationships, force of character, military prowess, contingent events, and the good sense of Queen Eleanor, who brought William into the royal entourage, and her daughter Marie, countess of Champagne, who appointed Geoffroy as her marshal. Both men were known as “the marshal” in their lifetimes, but while William Marshal’s life and deeds are now a staple of the modern historiography of medieval England, Geoffroy’s life remains largely unknown, overshadowed by the dramatic events he narrated.
This book describes Geoffroy’s life insofar as it can be recovered from the relatively few non-narrative documents mentioning him before the crusade and from his memoirs. It is not a history of the Fourth Crusade, of which there are numerous modern accounts. 4 It begins in Champagne, where Geoffroy was born and spent thirty years in military service, first as a knight in the count’s service in Troyes, then as marshal of Champagne. When he took the cross in November 1199 for the Fourth Crusade, he was in his early fifties, a veteran of the Third Crusade and a seasoned military officer and councilor. Eight years later, when he dictated his memoirs, he was about sixty.
In retrospect, he found the conquest of Christian Constantinople an improbable outcome for an expedition that had set out to recover Jerusalem after the failure of the Third Crusade. His recollections, spoken in sober but colloquial prose by one of the few surviving leaders of the crusade, provide a unique oral record of one of the major turning points in the history of the eastern Mediterranean. 5
The memoirs have long been regarded by copyists, their patrons, editors, and crusade historians as a chronicle or history, but the editor and translator Émile Buchet more accurately classified them as memoirs and went so far as to honor Villehardouin for being “the creator of a genre, Memoirs, which includes many masterpieces of French literature.” 6 Edmond Faral, editor of the standard modern edition of the memoirs, and Jean Longnon, who gathered most of what is known about the marshal and his companions, concurred in understanding Villehardouin’s narrative as a mémoire or mémoires. 7
Beryl Smalley classified it more precisely as belonging to the genre of “war memoirs,” and Yuval Harari found it to be the earliest “full-fledged military memoir” from the Middle Ages. 8 It is also the earliest original prose narrative (as opposed to translation) composed in Old French. 9 This book has been as much a collaborative enterprise as Geoffroy of Villehardouin’s memoirs. For their thoughtful comments, which saved me from errors and suggested new lines of inquiry that deepened my understanding of the marshal and his achievements, I thank Michael Angold, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Anne Lester, Thomas Madden, Randall Pippinger, Jeff Rider, and an anonymous reader. I also thank Lisa Russell for finding the numerous interlibrary books and articles essential to this study and Gordon Thompson for designing the illustrations that enhance the text.
The Early Years Geoffroy of Villehardouin was born around 1148, the fourth son in a family of knights, canons, and nuns (but not monks). 1 His father, Vilain (ca. 1110–70), a younger son of Odo, lord of Arzillières, inherited the secondary property of Villehardouin, a small agricultural community originally settled by the Romans about twenty-five kilometers east of Troyes, the closest urban center (map 1). 2 At some point Vilain migrated to Troyes, where he received several grain mills in fief from the count of Champagne.
Geoffroy and his siblings spent most of their lives in Troyes. 3 Geoffroy’s older brothers Roscelin and Vilain II became canons in Troyes, while Jean, a knight, inherited most of the property in Villehardouin, where he later constructed a modest moated fortification and styled himself “lord of Villehardouin.” 4 As the fourth son, Geoffroy inherited only minor revenues in Villehardouin and in several outlying properties. 5 In the absence of a fortuitous collateral inheritance, the fourth son of a second son was fated to seek his fortune through marriage, a religious calling, or in service to a great lord. Geoffroy chose to enter military service with Count Henry the Liberal (r. 1152–81), who was in the process of transforming Troyes from an old episcopal city into the capital of his principality.
In the Count’s Service
Shortly after Vilain died in 1170, all of his children appeared at Count Henry’s court to give their consent to Roscelin’s exchange of their father’s grain mills in Troyes for a lifetime grain rent from the priory of Saint-Quentin in Troyes. Roscelin had been a well-known presence in Troyes ever since Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux had sponsored his reception as a cathedral canon two decades earlier. 6 Roscelin’s unnamed siblings, no doubt including Geoffroy, approved of the exchange, as did the count, since the mills were held from him in fief. 7
Three witnesses at court attested to the family’s web of ties: the count’s marshal William Rex of Provins; Roscelin’s colleague in the count’s chapel, Haice of Plancy (later bishop of Troyes); and Anselm of Courcelles, a nephew who owed castle-guard in Troyes and who later managed Geoffroy’s lands in Thrace after the Fourth Crusade. 8 Geoffroy was about twenty-two years old in 1170 and likely in the count’s service for the fief of Villy, a village just south of Troyes (map 3), but he is first recorded by name in 1178, in a list of Count Henry’s fiefholders: “Geoffroy of Villehardouin, liege, and he owes castle-guard [custodia] in Troyes.” 9 Forty of the count’s 120 fiefholders (33 percent) were knights who owed some form of annual castle-guard; others were townsmen or canons like Geoffroy’s brother Vilain, who was listed just after Geoffroy for a prebend in the count’s chapel. 10 Geoffroy was among the fourteen garrison knights (12 percent) who were on permanent duty in Troyes. 11 He was about thirty in 1178, married to a sister of the garrison knight Berengar of Villemaur, and the father of two young daughters who later entered convents in Troyes. 12 As a garrison knight guarding Count Henry’s capital city, and with social ties through his brothers to the cathedral and the count’s chapel, Geoffroy was fully embedded in the urban life of Troyes in the 1170s
Troyes in the 1170s
Geoffroy would have found Troyes a bustling urban center in full economic expansion. Unlike the count’s smaller, somnolent castle-towns like Vitry and Rosnay, where his brother Jean and their relatives performed castle-guard, Troyes was the thriving capital of a principality consisting of thirty or so walled towns and fortresses, all linked by a well-policed network of roads. Merchants from Italy and northern France who attended the trade fairs helped to commercialize the economy of the city and its hinterland, enriching both the count and the religious houses and knights who shared the revenues that Count Henry collected from tolls, duty taxes, and sales taxes. The count’s next largest towns of Provins and Bar-sur-Aube, both within a day’s journey from Troyes, experienced a similar economic takeoff in the years following the Second Crusade (1147–50), as the fairs of Champagne became centers of international commercial exchange.
The nexus of three fair towns hosting an annual cycle of six trade fairs in southern Champagne became the motor of a regional economy that rivaled, and soon supplanted, the markets of the old episcopal cities of Reims, Châlons, Langres, and Sens that encircled the county. 13 As a garrison soldier Geoffroy would have acquired an intimate knowledge of the topography of Troyes and the walls surrounding its three quarters (fig. 1). The old city, dating from the Roman settlement, encompassed the cathedral and episcopal palace, an antiquated compound of the counts, and several monastic houses, including the Benedictine priory of Saint-Jean-enChâtel and the Augustinian chapter of Saint-Loup, which had property and later a chapel in Villehardouin. 14
The adjacent and much larger “new town,” walled in since 1125, was the commercial center of Troyes, with merchant halls, lodgings, and artisanal shops, as well as hospitals, religious houses, and a Templar house. By the late 1170s the fairs of Champagne had entered a period of high growth, as northern French merchants brought woolen cloth and Italians imported eastern spices and luxury wares to the three trade fairs held in Troyes—in mid-July (the hot fair), September (the cold fair), and January (the Fair of the Close). 15 Abutting the old and new towns was the count’s new campus. Built in the 1150s in an open field and walled in by 1170, it contained the count’s residence, the attached chapel of Saint-Étienne, and twenty-five individual houses for the chapel’s resident canons. 16 The count’s canons constituted a new class of secular canons in Troyes who staffed his chancery and filled major positions in the comital and ecclesiastical administrations. Count Henry usually held court in the main hall of his new residence, where a flow of litigants sought his adjudications and petitioners solicited his benefactions and confirmations of their private transactions. His chancery drafted the letters patent describing his acts at court, which his chancellor sealed and presented to the beneficiaries. With the construction of the count’s tomb in the early 1170s, his chapel promised to become a dynastic mausoleum as well, at a time when the monks of Saint-Denis and the cathedral canons of Reims were competing to house the mausoleum of the kings of France. 17
Geoffroy would have witnessed the transformation of Troyes from a quiescent episcopal town into the administrative center of the count’s principality and a hub of international commerce. Its location on the trunk route passing through Burgundy to the Rhône and the Mediterranean ports and through the Alps to the Italian cities also made Troyes a convenient stopover for pilgrims and ecclesiastics from northern Europe on their way to Rome and the eastern Mediterranean. Geoffroy’s garrison duty, involving oversight of the trade fairs and security for merchants and travelers on the roads leading to Troyes, as well as defense of the city’s walls, defined his life for fifteen years in his twenties and early thirties (ca. 1170–85).
an reasonably infer the following about his social life in Troyes in these years. He would have interacted with the garrison knights as well as with those who brought their wives and families with them when performing their annual tours of duty, which could range from several weeks to several months. 18 For knights who lived most of the year in the countryside on their inherited (allodial) properties and the fiefs they held from the count and other lords, castle-guard in the count’s towns was an occasion for socializing with regional knights and their families, thereby contributing to the social cohesion of a class of propertied families standing between castle lords and rural tenants.
Geoffroy and Roscelin also belonged to a network of those who served Count Henry as canons and officers. Roscelin was a colleague of the count’s brother William, provost of the cathedral (1152–68), then archbishop of Sens (1168–76) and Reims (1176–1202). 19 Roscelin’s prebend in the count’s newly built chapel also made him a colleague of Haice of Plancy, master of the chapel school and later dean of the cathedral, chancellor of the count, and bishop of Troyes. 20 Roscelin developed such a close friendship with Manasses of Pougy, first provost of the count’s chapel and later bishop of Troyes (1181– 90), that Manasses established anniversary Masses at the cathedral for Roscelin and himself. 21 Bishop Manasses was the brother of Count Henry’s constable Odo of Pougy. The count’s marshal William Rex of Provins and his chancellor William were brothers of Bishop Mathieu of Troyes (1169–80). 22 To all appearances Roscelin was a well-connected figure in Troyes before Geoffroy entered the count’s service and during his years as a garrison knight.
Although Geoffroy was an unremarkable garrison knight on the face of the evidence, he would have interacted with a wide circle of those in the count’s service in Troyes in the 1170s and early 1180s, including fellow knights performing castle-guard, secular canons of the cathedral and the count’s chapel, the count’s high officers, and the most important religious leaders residing in the capital. Four of Geoffroy’s siblings also lived in Troyes: Roscelin and Vilain as canons and his sisters as nuns, Emeline in Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains, the aristocratic convent directly opposite the count’s residence, and Haye in the Fontevrist priory of Foissy, just beyond the city walls. Despite the lack of explicit evidence of his interactions with Count Henry and Countess Marie, a garrison knight in the relatively small town of Troyes would have known their children from their earliest years—Henry II (born 1166), Marie (born 1170), Scholastique (born in the 1170s), and Thibaut III (born 1179). The fact that Countess Marie appointed Geoffroy as marshal, and that he later spoke movingly of the early deaths of Thibaut in 1201 and Marie, countess of Flanders, in 1204, suggests a close relationship with the comital family. 23 For Geoffroy and his siblings, the Villehardouin patronymic failed to capture the rich context of their lives lived within the largest and most vibrant urban center in southern Champagne in full demographic and commercial expansion.
Wars, Tournaments, Crusade It is unlikely that Geoffroy joined Count Henry’s three military expeditions beyond the county in the 1170s, since castle-guard, especially for garrison soldiers, was for defensive purposes, not for service in the field. 24 In 1172 the count sent armed forces into the lands of his brother-in-law, Archbishop Henry of Reims, who had demolished the count’s fortress at Sampigny on the Vesle River, claiming that brigands used it as a refuge after attacking travelers on the road between the episcopal cities of Reims and Châlons.
The archbishop, well known for his bellicosity, excommunicated the count for the audacity of invading archiepiscopal lands. 25 The next year Count Henry and his three brothers— Archbishop William of Sens and counts Thibaut V of Blois (the royal seneschal) and Stephen of Sancerre—joined Louis VII (and their sister Queen Adele) in supporting the sons of King Henry II of England in revolt against their father. But after two unsuccessful summer incursions into Normandy the revolt collapsed. Count Henry had returned home by October 1174. 26 While those external matters engaged the count, a number of tournaments were being held along the northern border of his lands. Count Henry is not known to have attended any tournament after the spring of 1149, when he and the king’s brother Robert of Dreux sponsored a tournament to celebrate their return from the Second Crusade. 27 It appears that after his accession, Count Henry prohibited tournaments in his lands, in large part because their sporting violence and the passage of bands of armed knights threatened the good order of the trade fairs, which were transforming the economic life of the county. The young count Baldwin V of Hainaut (r. 1171–95), who led a company of eighty knights on a circuit of events at Bussy, Rethel, and Braine, was largely responsible for popularizing tournaments in the early 1170s. According to his chancellor, Gislebert of Mons, the tournament at Braine in 1175 was attended by many knights from Champagne and the Ile-de-France. 28
It was not a coincidence that the tournament sites along the river Aisne— Braine, Roucy, Château-Porcien, and Rethel (see map 1)—were in lands held in fief from the archbishop of Reims, and that the new archbishop, William of Champagne, transferred lordship over them to his brother Count Henry in 1178. 29 The last, most spectacular, and long-remembered tournament in this region was sponsored by fourteen-year-old King Philip II in November 1179 at Lagny, on the border between Champagne and the royal domain, to celebrate his accession. Henry the Young King of England participated with his mentor William Marshal, whose exploits were celebrated in verse four decades later by a poet who cited a still-extant tournament roll of participants identified by their region of origin: the Ile-de-France, Flanders, England, Normandy, Anjou, and Burgundy—but not Champagne. 30
The barons and knights of Champagne had left for Jerusalem five months earlier with Count Henry. The allure of Jerusalem was fanned by Pope Alexander III in response to increasingly disturbing reports from the Levant that Nur-ad-Din (r. 1146–74) was posing an existential threat to the western settlements. Alexander’s bull of 14 July 1165 encouraged Western leaders to organize a relief expedition to the Holy Land in hopes of repeating the success of the First Crusade. 31 Alexander promised the same spiritual benefits that Pope Eugenius had granted crusaders twenty years earlier for the Second Crusade, when Count Henry and a large number of Champenois barons and knights took the cross with Louis VII and Queen Eleanor. 32
Thereafter, a steady stream of French princes and barons journeyed to Jerusalem, some as simple pilgrims and religious tourists, others as armed pilgrims intending to aid an increasingly precarious Western occupation of Palestine-Syria, but the response in Champagne was muted. On 29 January 1176 Alexander appealed to the king and princes of France: since Emperor Manuel Komnenos (r. 1143–80) had recovered land from the Turks, the roads were safe for travel to Jerusalem. 33 The pope sent a legate to reconcile the kings of France and England, who made peace at Nonancourt on 21 September 1177. Shortly before Christmas, Count Henry took the cross from the hand of the papal legate, Abbot Henry of Clairvaux, and promised to lead an expedition under the pope’s auspices. Count Henry and Louis VII, both in their fifties, planned to travel together, reliving their experiences on the Second Crusade thirty years earlier, but Louis became too ill to travel and Henry had to go alone. 34
Just before the count’s departure, Count Baldwin V of Hainaut arrived in Troyes to confirm the contract he had sealed in 1171 for the betrothal of his daughter Isabelle with Count Henry’s five-year-old son Henry (II) and his son Baldwin with Henry’s infant daughter Marie. On that very day, Sunday 13 May 1179, according to Gislebert of Mons, Countess Marie delivered her second son, Thibaut. 35 Geoffroy could not have imagined at the time how Thibaut, another younger son, would inflect his own life course. Geoffroy is not mentioned in any of the documents drawn up preparatory to the count’s expedition. He might well have dreamed of visiting Jerusalem and the holy sites with the count. Growing up in the shadow of the Second Crusade, he would have heard the count and his companions reminisce about the places they had visited, notably the marvels of Constantinople and its Francophile emperor Manuel Komnenos, who had knighted young Henry during his passage through Constantinople in 1148. But Geoffroy very likely remained with the garrison in Troyes to protect Countess Marie, who would rule the county in the absence of Count Henry and his chief officers, including his marshal William Rex of Provins, chaplain Peter, almoner (and Templar brother) William, chancellor Stephen, notary William, scribe Thibaut of Fismes, and treasurers Artaud of Nogent, Milo (Breban) of Provins, and Robert of Milly. Count Henry and his contingent of barons and knights took the southern route from Troyes, heading down the Rhône River to Marseille, then sailing to Brindisi and on to the Syrian coast, where they landed in August 1179. After an indecisive skirmish with Saladin’s troops, they visited Jerusalem, Hebron, Sebaste, and Nazareth, sites that Count Henry had seen three decades earlier. But while returning home in the spring or summer of 1180, the count and his party were captured by Turks. Henry’s treasurers Artaud and Milo Breban later testified that they witnessed Henry vow that, if he were liberated, he would grant a 30l. revenue to the cathedral of Saint-Mamas of Langres. 36 We do not know how Henry was released, but in September 1180 he appeared in Constantinople, where he witnessed the coronation of Emperor Alexios II and Countess Marie’s half-sister, Agnes of France. Henry returned to Champagne in early March 1181 and died in Troyes on 16 March. 37 His marshal William Rex of Provins was among those who failed to return with him
Death of a Marshal
Among Countess Marie’s first duties as regent for fifteen-year-old Henry II was the appointment of new officers to replace those lost on her husband’s expedition. As her marshal she selected Lucas, a garrison knight in Troyes and son of Girard Manducator, her provost in Ervy. 39 Two years later, for unknown reasons, she replaced Lucas with Erard of Aulnay, a garrison knight in Vitry and son of Geoffroy’s sister Adeline. 40 But Marshal Erard, who had a history of contentious behavior, had the misfortune to die under excommunication after tangling with the canons of Châlons. 41 In July 1185 his widow Helvide, daughter of the garrison knight Bertrand of Vitry, gathered Erard’s siblings and friends (amici) in the cathedral of Châlons to restore his good standing with the church and to secure the salvation of his soul. In the presence of Bishop Guy (of Joinville), Helvide made peace (pax) with the cathedral canons, who had excommunicated Erard for harming their tenants in the village of Saint-Amand near Vitry. 42 The canons were not easily mollified and peace came at a high price: surrender of all the rents and land that Helvide and Erard possessed within and beyond the village. In his letter describing the reconciliation, Bishop Guy named those in Helvide’s party: Erard’s brothers Oudard and Vilain, his sister Mathilda and her son Erard, several of Erard’s “friends” (amici) identified as knights—Guy II of Dampierre and his brother Jean of Arcis-sur-Aube, Milo II of Nogent-sur-Seine, Oger of Saint-Chéron, Geoffroy of Mousson—and lastly “Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Erard’s [maternal] uncle [avunculus].” 43 They all swore “on holy relics” (super sanctis reliquias) that if Helvide did not deliver the promised property, they would place themselves in captivity (captio), understood as honorable captivity, in Reims until she made good. Helvide’s party then proceeded to Reims, where they confirmed to Archbishop William (of Champagne) the peace she had made with the chapter of Châlons and her promise to transfer the property. The archbishop sealed a confirmation of the settlement but added a clause, ostensibly to soften the blow, stating that the canons of Châlons promised to celebrate an annual Mass for Erard “as customary for a knight” (juxta morem militum). 44 Soon thereafter, still in July, the archbishop’s letter was presented to Countess Marie at court in Troyes in the presence of Geoffroy of Villehardouin, who was identified as her new marshal (Gaufridus marescallus). 45 The countess and nineteen-year-old Henry consented to Helvide’s alienation of Saint-Amand to the canons “because it is our fief,” said Marie, and they approved of the compensation Helvide agreed to pay both for the damages Erard had inflicted and “for the salvation [remedium] of his soul.” Marshal Geoffroy also witnessed as Countess Marie confirmed a document drawn up by the Cistercian monks at Trois-Fontaines, who agreed to bury Erard in their cemetery and to remember his anniversary in return for certain pasture and fishing rights. 46 The affair of Marshal Erard’s death and how it played out illustrate several aspects of knightly society in Champagne. Erard’s “friends” who supported his grieving widow were fellow knights, landed proprietors related by marriage and lineage whose ancestral lands lay between the Marne and Seine rivers in the countryside between Vitry and Troyes and who rendered castle-guard for their comital fiefs in the walled towns of Champagne. Helvide’s father Bertrand, like Erard, was a garrison knight at the count’s hilltop castle at Vitry, where the castellan also was on permanent duty. 47 Oger of Saint-Chéron, Countess Marie’s escort Nevel of Aulnay, and Geoffroy’s brother Jean of Villehardouin owed annual guard duty at the count’s town of Rosnay (map 1). 48 Guy II of Dampierre, nephew of Helvide’s sister, owed castle-guard in Troyes where he was viscount; he and his brother Jean II of Arcis-sur-Aube were among the count’s most important resident fiefholders. 49 Of all Marshal Erard’s “friends,” only Milo II, lord of Nogent-sur-Seine, did not owe castleguard at one of the count’s towns. 50 The fallout from Erard’s death illustrates another aspect of knightly society in Champagne: the role played by widows, not only as regents for underage heirs, but also as appeasers and rectifiers of their husbands’ sins of commission or omission, in both practical and spiritual matters. In the absence of her own children, Helvide was supported by Erard’s brothers and sister, his two uncles, her own nephews, and several of Erard’s companions in sorting out her husband’s unfinished business. It was a wrenching experience involving the loss of substantial economic assets. Even so, the office of marshal was retained within the kinship, and Erard’s friends would remain close to the comital family and to Marshal Geoffroy through the next two decades. One witness at Marie’s court in 1185 who did not appear earlier at Châlons and Reims was Milo Breban, a knight and treasury official from Provins who was, like Geoffroy, in his mid-thirties. 51 Milo had come to the attention of Countess Marie shortly after she arrived in Troyes in 1166, when she gave him a revenue for which he did homage. 52 Thereafter he often appeared at court with the count’s chief treasurer Artaud as “Artaud camerarius and Milo Breban (or of Provins).” 53 Milo’s brother Jean, also a knight in the count’s service, occasionally appeared with him at court. 54
The brothers could be classified as urban knights who apparently provided security for the count’s treasury, located under the church of Saint-Quiriace in Provins. 55 Artaud and Milo Breban had accompanied Count Henry on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1179 and were captured and ransomed with him before returning to Troyes in March 1181. In 1186, the year after Countess Marie made Geoffroy her marshal, she promoted Milo to camerarius, her chief financial officer. 56 Thereafter, for more than a quarter century, Geoffroy and Milo were fast companions; they joined the Third and Fourth Crusades and spent their last years as marshal and butler of the Latin emperor of Constantinople. The fact that Countess Marie was quick to replace Erard of Aulnay as marshal with his uncle Geoffroy suggests that she knew Geoffroy from his military service in Troyes and trusted him for his character and competence. He was typical of a new generation of comital officials, men of knightly background recruited by Marie to office and court as Count Henry’s crusade companions gradually withdrew or died. Geoffroy, who had performed garrison duty in Troyes for fifteen years, was at that time best described as a professional soldier.
He was in his mid-thirties and married to his second wife Chane, heiress of the knight William of Lézinnes. 57 He inherited several minor properties and revenues, acquired assets from two marriages within his knightly class, and held at least two comital fiefs, including one formerly held by the marshal William Rex. 58 His “friends” and relatives were of the same class of knights who performed castle-guard in the count’s towns and canons who, like his brothers Roscelin and Vilain, acquired placements in Count Henry’s chapters in Troyes, Provins, Bar-sur-Aube, and Sézanne. Geoffroy would spend the next thirteen years as marshal of Countess Marie and Henry pouvoir en Champagne, 564, genealogical table 21-1) or the oldest son of the second marriage (Evergates, Aristocracy, 263, genealogical table 16). In either case, Vilain’s properties passed to his sons according to the custom of partible (but not equal) inheritance in Champagne; see Evergates, Aristocracy, 120–23, 134.
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