Cool-headed, clear-sighted, quick to resolve, quicker to strike, Fulk's career was one long series of victories over all his rivals.

He was a consummate general, and he had the gift of personal bravery, which was denied to some of his greatest descendants.

There was a moment in the first of his battles when the day seemed lost for Anjou; a feigned retreat of the Bretons drew the Angevin horsemen into a line of hidden pitfalls, and the Count himself was flung heavily to the ground.

Dragged from the medley of men and horses, he swept down almost singly on the foe "as a storm-wind" (so rang the paean of the Angevins) "sweeps down on the thick corn-rows," and the field was won.

But to these qualities of the warrior he added a power of political organization, a capacity for far-reaching combinations, a faculty of statesmanship, which became the heritage of his race, and lifted them as high above the intellectual level of the rulers of their time as their shameless wickedness degraded them below the level of man.