GEOFFREY, surnamed MARTEL (ioo6-1o6o), count of An jou, son of the count Fulk Nerra (q.v.) and of the countess Hilde garde or Audegarde, was born on Oct. 14, 1006. During his father's lifetime he was recognized as suzerain by Fulk l'Oison ("the Gosling"), count of Vendome, the son of his half-sister Adela. Fulk having revolted, he confiscated the countship, which he did not restore till 1050. On Jan. 1, 1032, he married Agnes, widow of William the Great, duke of Aquitaine, and taking arms against William the Fat, eldest son and successor of William the Great, defeated him and took him prisoner at Mont-Couer (Sept. 20, 1033) . He then tried to win recognition as dukes of Aquitaine for the sons of his wife Agnes by William the Great, who were still minors, but Fulk Nerra promptly took up arms to defend his suzerain William the Fat, from whom he held the Loudunois and Saintonge in fief against his son. In 1036 Geoffrey Martel had to liberate William the Fat, on payment of a heavy ransom, but the latter having died in 1038, and the second son of William the Great, Odo, duke of Gascony, having fallen in his turn at the siege of Mauze (March io, 1039) Geoffrey made peace with his father, and had his wife's two sons recognized as dukes. He had interfered in the affairs of Maine, though without much result; for having sided against Gervais, bishop of Le Mans, who was trying to make himself guardian of the young count of Maine, Hugh, he had been beaten and forced to make terms with Gervais in 1038. In 1040 he succeeded his father in Anjou and was able to conquer Touraine (1044) and assert his authority over Maine (see AN Jov) . He was four times married, but left no children, and was succeeded in the countship of Anjou by Geoffrey the Bearded, the eldest of his nephews. He died at Angers on Nov.
14, io6o.
See Louis Haiphen, Le Comte d'Anjou au XIe siecle (1906). A summary biography is given by Celestin Port, Dictionnaire histo rique, geographique et biographique de Maine-et-Loire (3 vols., Paris Angers, 1874-78), vol. pp. 252-253, and a sketch of the wars by Kate Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings (2 vols., 1887), vol. i. chs. iii. iv.