But, before this, William was to show himself as a warrior beyond the bounds of his own duchy, and to take seizin, as it were, of his great continental conquest.  William’s first war out of Normandy was waged in common with King Henry against Geoffrey Martel Count of Anjou, and waged on the side of Maine.  William undoubtedly owed a debt of gratitude to his overlord for good help given at Val-es-dunes, and excuses were never lacking for a quarrel between Anjou and Normandy.  Both powers asserted rights over the intermediate land of Maine.  In 1048 we find William giving help to Henry in a war with Anjou, and we hear wonderful but vague tales of his exploits.  The really instructive part of the story deals with two border fortresses on the march of Normandy and Maine.  Alencon lay on the Norman side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy.  Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy.  The town was a lordship of the house of Belleme, a house renowned for power and wickedness, and which, as holding great possessions alike of Normandy and of France, ranked rather with princes than with ordinary nobles.  The story went that William Talvas, lord of Belleme, one of the fiercest of his race, had cursed William in his cradle, as one by whom he and his should be brought to shame.  Such a tale set forth the noblest side of William’s character, as the man who did something to put down such enemies of mankind as he who cursed him.  The possessions of William Talvas passed through his daughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery, a man who plays a great part in William’s history; but it is the disloyalty of the burghers, not of their lord, of which we hear just now.  They willingly admitted an Angevin garrison.  William in return laid siege to Domfront on the Varenne, a strong castle which was then an outpost of Maine against Normandy.  A long skirmishing warfare, in which William won for himself a name by deeds of personal prowess, went on during the autumn and winter (1048-49).  One tale specially illustrates more than one point in the feelings of the time.  The two princes, William and Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each gives the other notice of the garb and shield that he will wear that he may not be mistaken.  The spirit of knight-errantry was coming in, and we see that William himself in his younger days was touched by it.  But we see also that coat-armour was as yet unknown.  Geoffrey and his host, so the Normans say, shrink from the challenge and decamp in the night, leaving the way open for a sudden march upon Alencon.  The disloyal burghers received the duke with mockery of his birth.  They hung out skins, and shouted, “Hides for the Tanner.”  Personal insult is always hard for princes to bear, and the wrath of William was stirred up to a pitch which made him for once depart from his usual moderation towards conquered enemies.  He swore that the men who had jeered at him should be dealt with like a tree whose branches are cut off with the pollarding-knife.