One saw nothing but tossing steel; yet Richard ever emerged, red but scatheless, on the further side.
Upon this man the brunt of war fell naturally: having begun, he did not hold his hand.

By the beginning of February he had laid his plans, by the end of it he had taken Saumur, cut Angers off from Tours, and turned all the valley of the Loire into a scorched cinder-bed.

In the early days of March he sat down before Tours with his siege-engines, petraries, mangonels, and towers, and daily battered at the walls, with intent to reduce it before the war was really afloat.

The city of Saint Martin was doomed; no help from Anjou could save it, for none could come that way.

Meantime the King his father had landed at Honfleur, assembled his Normans at Rouen, and was working his way warily down through the duchy, feeling for the French on his left, and for the Bretons on his right.