onth after the marriage was but the
first step in a comprehensive design of depriving the common enemy of the
whole of his possessions. Henry met the danger with all the qualities
which mark a great general and a great statesman. Cool, untroubled,
impetuous, dashing from point to point of danger, so that horses sank and
died on the road in his desperate marches, he was ready wherever a foe
threatened, or a friend prayed help. Foreign armies were driven back,
rebel nobles crushed, robber castles broken down; Normandy was secured
and Anjou mastered before the year was out. The strife, however, had
forced him for the first time into open war with Stephen, and at twenty
Henry turned to add the English crown to his dominions.

Already the glory of success hung about him; his footsteps were guided by
prophecies of Merlin; portents and wonders marked his way. When he landed
on the English shores in January 1153, he turned into a church "to pray
for a space, after the manner of soldiers," at the moment when the priest
opened the office of the mass for that day with the words, "Behold there
cometh the Lord, the Ruler, and the kingdom is in his hand." In his first
battle at Malmesbury the wintry storm and driving rain which beat in the
face of Stephen's troops showed on which side Heaven fought. As the king
rode out to the next great fight at Wallingford, men noted fearfully that
he fell three times from his horse. Terror spread among the barons, whose
interests lay altogether in anarchy, as they saw the rapid increase of
Henry's strength; and they sought by a mock compromise to paralyse the
power of both Stephen and his rival. "Then arose the barons, or rather
the betrayers of England, treating of concord, although they loved
nothing better than discord; but they would not join battle, for they
desired to exalt neither of the two, lest if the one were overcome the
other should be free to govern them; they knew that so long as one was in
awe of the other he could exercise no royal authority over them." Henry
subdued his wrath to his political sagacity. He agreed to meet Stephen
face to face at Wallingford; and there, with a branch of the Thames
between them, they fixed upon terms of peace. Stephen's son Eustace,
however, refused to lay down arms, and the war lingered on, Stephen being
driven back to the eastern counties, while Henry held mid-England. In
August, however, Eustace died suddenly, "by the favour of God," said
lovers of