Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe by Sabine Baring-Gould (books to read to improve english TXT) 📖

They marched into Burgundy, where they had captains of all nations--Germans, Scots, and people from every country--'and they agreed to disregard the treaty and to surprise towns and castles as before.' A notorious Breton captain on his deathbed said: 'Such has been my manner of carrying on war, in truth, I cared not against whom. I did indeed make it under shadow of the King of England's name, in preference to any other; but I always looked for gain and conquest, wherever it was to be had.'"

When they captured a town or castle, nominally for the English, they were quite ready to sell it to the French for a stipulated sum.

Froissart says that the Ribauds were "Germans, Brabantines, Flemings, Gascons, and bad Frenchmen, who had been impoverished by the war" (i. c. 204). He gives in one place the names of twenty of these captains, not one English. [Footnote: Robert King of Puy Guihbem was an Englishman, but an authorised governor and commander under the English crown.] In another place he enumerates ten, all French or Gascons (ii. c. 10). Among those who harassed the Languedoc, Quercy and Perigord, not a single captain was English. The Bastard de Beby, the Bastard d'Albret, Amadeu de Pons, Benezet Daguda, De l'Esparre, Menard de Favas, l'Archipretre, Bertrand de la Salle, Le Non de Mauroux, Jean l'Esclop, Nolibarba, Bertrand de Besserat, Perrot de Savoie, Ramonet del Sort, and a score more, all base French or Gascon names. "These brigands," says Lacoste, "were mainly composed of French soldiers to whom the State had been unable to pay their wages." One whole company was entitled that "des Bretons."

But it was not the captains of the Companies alone who were Gascons, French, and Bretons. The nobles throughout Guyenne were more than half of them on the English side. The famous commander who did so much towards achieving the victory of Poitiers was a Frenchman, the Captal de Buch, Jean de Greuilly, Constable of Aquitaine for the English crown. Amandeu and Raymond de Montaut, the Sire de Duras, Petiton de Courton, Jean de Seignol, the Sire de Mussidan, and many more. "Following their interests or their passions, all these nobles passed from side to side, now that of the English, then that of the French; but they preferred the English side to the other, for war against the French is more pleasant than that against the English,"--that is to say, it was more profitable. The _Livre de Vie_ of Bergerac under the date 5th April 1381, speaks of Perducat d'Albret as "loyally French." But his loyalty lasted but for a moment. Froissart has a characteristic passage upon the Gascons that deserves quotation. After giving a list of towns and castles on the Garonne and the Dordogne, he says: "Some of these being English, and others French, carried on a war against each other; they would have it so, for the Gascons were never, for thirty years running, steadily attached to any one lord. I once heard the Lord d'Albret use an expression that I noted down. A knight from Brittany inquired after his health, and how he managed to remain steady to the French. He answered, 'Thank God my health is good, but I had more money at command, as well as my people, when I made war for the King of England, than I have now; for, whenever we took any excursions in search of adventures, we never failed meeting some rich merchants from Toulouse, Condom, La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which made us gay and debonair, but now all that is at an end.' On hearing this I concluded that the Lord d'Albret repented having turned to the French in the same manner as the Lord of Mucidens, who swore to the Duke of Anjou he would set out for Paris and become a good Frenchman. He did go to Paris, when the King handsomely received him; but he slunk away and returned to his own country, where he again became an Englishman, and broke all his engagements with the Duke of Anjou. The Lords of Rosem, Duras, Langurant, did the same" (iii. c. 21).

As with the captains of the Companies, so with the knights and seigneurs who fought in the South for the Crown of England--their names are for the most part French and Gascon, and not English. [Footnote: Let it not be forgotten that those who condemned Joan of Arc to be burnt were Frenchmen. The University of Paris denounced her as a heretic. Her judges were the Bishop of Beauvais, a Frenchman by birth, Jean Graveraut, Professor of Theology at the University of Paris, Grand Inquisitor of France, Jean Lemaitre, prior of the Dominicans at Rouen. Her bitterest accuser was the Canon Jean d'Estivet, general procurator, who after the execution drowned himself in a pool. The Bastard of Vendome sold her to John of Luxembourg, and John of Luxembourg sold her to the English for 10,000 francs. Charles VII. and his friends did not raise a finger in her behalf. They forgot her at once, as a thing that had answered its purpose and was no longer of use.]

The Companies formed their nests in the rocks, which they fortified, or in castles they had captured, or in such as had been abandoned by the French, from inability to garrison them. The Causse was in their possession from the Dordogne to the Lot, and Perigord to the gates of the capital. They overran Auvergne, the Gevaudan, Poitou, the Angoumois, the Rouergue and the Saintonge, to speak only of provinces south of the Loire. The Government exhibited incredible feebleness towards them. In 1379 the Count d'Armagnac, Royal Lieutenant in the south, paid 24,000 francs to one of the _routiers_ to evacuate the castle of Carlat, and 12,500 to the Bastard of Albret for five others. In 1387 he convened an assembly of the States of Auvergne, Velay, Gevaudan, Rouergue, Quercy, &c., to debate what was to be done to rid the country of these pests. Instead of resolving on an united effort to put them down by force of arms, they agreed to pay them 250,000 francs to quit. They took the money, but remained. Every town, every village was forced to come to terms with the brigands, by means of a _patis_ or convention to pay a certain sum annually, to save it from pillage. Should the covenanted money not be forthcoming to the day, the place was sacked and burnt.

At length the inhabitants, unable to endure the exaction of the _routiers_ on one side and those of the King and the seigneurs on the other, migrated to Spain and never returned. In 1415, as all the inhabitants of Caudon had crossed the frontier, the cure applied to have his cure united to that of Domme. He had no parishioners left. Domme had been reduced from a thousand families to a hundred and twenty, and these would have abandoned their homes unless stopped by the Seneschal of Perigord.

In 1434 the inhabitants of Temniac and Carlux began to pack their goods for leaving, but the citizens of Sarlat stopped them, by promising to feed them till the conclusion of the war. Some of the large towns had lost so many of their citizens that they were glad to receive peasants out of the country and enrol them as burgesses. In 1378, as the Causse of Quercy was almost denuded of its population and nothing remained to be reaped, the Companies abandoned it for the Rouergue, the Gevaudan and the Limousin and Upper Auvergne. Thence the wretched peasants fled to the deserted limestone Causse of Quercy and occupied the abandoned villages and farms. They obtained but a short respite, for in 1407 the Companies returned to their former quarters. Charles VI. imposed a heavy tax on the whole kingdom to enable him to carry on the war against the English. But Quercy was wholly unable to meet the demands, and the King, in a letter dated the last day of February 1415, gives a graphic account of the condition to which the land had been reduced.

"Whereas, this land, at the time when it passed under the obedience of the King of England, was the richest and most populous in all the Duchy of Guyenne, and contained the finest cities, towns, and castles and fortresses in the said duchy, which were free and quit of all taxes and imposts, and with privileges conferred on them and confirmed by the King of France when they shook off the English yoke; and the said land of Quercy, after having returned to its legitimate sovereigns, has testified to them the greatest loyalty; yet have its inhabitants been grievously injured, assailed, beaten, robbed, pillaged, imprisoned, killed, maltreated by the English in divers ways, which enemies have since taken and occupied the greater part of the finest towns and fortresses of the land; on which account the land of Quercy has since continued in a condition of mortal warfare with the said enemies for the space of fifty-five years; and this carried on without aid from us, or from any one:--This unfortunate land has resisted to the utmost of its powers and is doing so still; and it has been surrounded for long by our said enemies, and is as it were destroyed and uninhabitable, and the greater number of its towns, castles, and strongholds have become desert and wild, covered with forest and scrub, inhabited by wild beasts, with the exception of some few small places that are very poor and miserable, and though at one time they were great and rich, they have been to such an extent depopulated--partly through the war and partly through pestilences that have ensued--there are now hardly one hundredth part of the people remaining, and those who do remain are but poor labourers and men of servile class; and these are kept night and day harassed by watching against enemies, and yet are compelled to buy them off with _patis_ and pensions, so that the greater portion of their substance is consumed in this way;--therefore, &c."

In 1450 the English were driven out of Guyenne, but a fresh attempt to recover it was made, that ended in the defeat and death of Talbot, in 1453. The Companies had then to dissolve. Out of a thousand churches in Quercy but four hundred were in condition for the celebration of divine service; many had been converted into fortresses. Most of the little towns in Upper Quercy had lost the major portion of their inhabitants; the villages were void of inhabitants. None knew who were the heirs to the deserted houses and untilled fields.

[Footnote: "Agros atque Lares proprios, habitandaque fana
Apres reliquit, et rapacibus lupis,
Ire, pedes quocunque ferent,"

--HORACE, _Epod. Od._, 16.]

An emigration from Limousin and the Rouergue was called for to repeople the waste places. Grammat, that had been a thriving town, in 1460 was left with only five inhabitants, Lavergne with but three. Lhern, once a flourishing place, was absolutely desert, the fields covered with briars and thorns, not one house tenanted, and in the church a she-wolf had littered her cubs.

Throughout the country can be distinguished the churches built when the war was over--quadrangular structures, without ornament.

Two of the strongest fortresses held by the English in Perigord were Bigaroque and the Roc de Tayac. The former belonged to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, staunch in his adhesion to the English cause, and he placed a garrison in it. The French did not attempt a siege, but in 1376 they raised a large sum in the neighbourhood and bought the garrison out. Either they culpably neglected to place troops in it, or were too weak to do so, and in 1386 the English reoccupied it