Here it was that the Dean of Clogher, Mr. Langton, lost his life a century ago. He foolishly tried to ride his horse up the steep side of the Dale to the cave, and carry a young lady, Miss La Roche, behind him. The horse lost its foothold among the loose stones, and the rash equestrian fell. The Dean died two days afterwards, but the young lady recovered, saved by her hair having caught in the thorns of a bramble bush. High up, among the rocks on the Staffordshire side in a most secluded spot, is a cleft called Cotton's Cave, which extends something like 40 feet within the rock. Here it was that Charles Cotton, the careless, impecunious poet, the friend of Isaac Walton, was wont to conceal himself from his creditors. On the top of Lovers' Leap, a sheer precipice, is what was once a garden where the two anglers sat and smoked their pipes. Close by is an ancient watch-tower, from which was seen Cotton's wife's beacon-fire lit to announce to him that the coast was clear of duns, and to light him home in the black nights of winter.

Thor's Cave is in a lofty rock on the Manifold River. The cliff rises to an alt.i.tude of four or five hundred feet, terminating in a bold and lofty peak; and the cave is situated about half-way up the face of the precipice. The cave is arched at the entrance, a black yawning mouth in the white face of the limestone. It is a natural phenomenon, but appears to have been enlarged by cave-dwellers. It has been explored by a local antiquary, and has yielded evidence of having been inhabited from prehistoric times.

The name of Thor's Cavern carries us back to the time when the Nors.e.m.e.n occupied Deira and Derbyshire, and Jordas Cave in Yorkshire does the same--for the name signifies an Earth-Giant.

In the crevices of Bottor Rock in Hennock, Devon, John Cann, a Royalist, found refuge. He had made himself peculiarly obnoxious to the Roundheads at Bovey Tracey, and here he lay concealed, and provisions were secretly conveyed to him. Here also he hid his treasure. A path is pointed out, trodden by him at night as he paced to and fro. He was at last tracked by bloodhounds to his hiding-place, seized, carried to Exeter and hanged. His treasure has never been recovered, and his spirit still walks the rocks.

At Sheep's Tor, where is now the reservoir of the Plymouth waterworks, may be seen by the side of the sheet of water the ruins of the ancient mansion of the Elfords. The Tor of granite towers above the village.

Among the rocks near the summit is a cave in which an old Squire Elford was concealed when the Parliamentary troopers were in search of him.

Polwheel in his "Devon" mentions it. "Here, I am informed, Elford used to hide himself from the search of Cromwell's party, to whom he was obnoxious. Hence he could command the whole country, and having some talent for painting, he amused himself with that art on the walls of his cavern, which I have been told by an elderly gentleman who had visited the place was very fresh in his time." None of the paintings now remain on the sides of the rock.

The cave is formed by two slabs of granite resting against each other.

It is only about 6 feet long, 4 wide, and 5 feet high, and is entered by a very narrow opening.

CHAPTER V

CLIFF CASTLES. THE ROUTIERS

From a very early period in the Middle Ages--in fact from the dissolution of the Carlovingian dynasty--we find communities everywhere grouped about a centre, and that centre the residence of the feudal chief to whom the members of the community owed allegiance and paid certain dues, in exchange for which he undertook to protect his va.s.sals from robbery and outrage. By the Edict of Mersen, in 847, every freeman was suffered to choose his own lord, whether the King or one of his va.s.sals, and no va.s.sal of the King was required to follow him in war, unless against a foreign enemy. Consequently the subjects were able to make merchandise of their obedience. In civil broils the King was disarmed, helpless; and as he was incapable of defending the weak against their oppressors, the feeble banded themselves under any lord who could a.s.sure them of protection. The sole token that the great n.o.bles showed of va.s.salage to the Crown was that they dated their charters by the year of the Sovereign's reign.

As the security of the community depended on the security of the seigneur, it behoved that his residence should be made inexpugnable. To this end, where possible, a projecting tongue of land or an isolated hill was selected and rendered secure by cutting through any neck that connected it with other high ground, or by carving the sides into precipices. Like a race of eagles, these lords dwelt on the top of the rocks, and their va.s.sals crouched at their feet.

But although the dues paid to a seigneur were fixed by custom, it not infrequently happened that the receipts were inadequate to his wants.

He had to maintain armed men to guard his castle and his tenants, and these armed men had to be paid and kept in good humour. The lord accordingly was disposed to increase the burdens laid on his serfs, and that to such an extent as to drive them into revolt. He on his part was not unaware of the fact that he held a wolf by the ears, and his impregnable position was chosen not solely as a defence against foreign enemies, but also against his rebellious va.s.sals.

The village of Les Eyzies is dominated by the ruins of a castle of the tenth or eleventh century, that was restored in the fifteenth, when a graceful turret was added. The keep is planted on a precipitous rock, and rises to the overhanging roof of chalk that is pierced with rafter- holes for the reception of roof beams, and with openings only to be reached by ladders leading to caves that served as storehouses. At the junction of the Beune with the Vezere, a little further down is a rock standing by itself, shaped like a gigantic fungus. This is called the Roche de la Peine, as from the top of it the Sieur de Beynac, who was also lord of Les Eyzies, precipitated malefactors. But under that designation he was disposed to reckon all such as in any way offended him. In 1594 the Sieur, to punish two of his peasant va.s.sals who had committed a trifling offence, killed one, and dragged the other over stones, attached to the tail of his horse. This act of barbarity roused public indignation, and a deputation waited on the seneschal of Perigord to demand retribution. But having received no satisfaction from this officer, in 1595, the peasants took the matter into their own hands, revolted and besieged the castle. As they failed to take it, they turned on the property of the seigneur, tore up his vines, cut down his woods, and burnt his granges.

The incessant wars that swept France, its dismemberment into duchies and counties and seigneuries, practically independent, and above all the English domination in Guyenne for three hundred years, enabled the petty n.o.bles to shake off the very semblance of submission to their liege lords, and to prosecute their private feuds without hindrance.

After Poitiers, 1356, and the captivity of King John, anarchy reigned in the land; bands of plunderers ranged to and fro, threatening persons and ravaging lands; and the magistrates could not, or would not, exercise their authority. Local quarrels among rival landowners, the turbulent and brutal pa.s.sions of the castle-holders, filled the land with violence and spread universal misery, from which there seemed to be no escape, as against the wrongdoers there was no redress. After the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, Aquitaine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted in the interests of the King of England into an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces of Poitou, the Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois and Rouergue, greatly to the dissatisfaction of the people, who remonstrated against being handed over to a foreign lord. Charles V.

and Charles VII. sought on every available occasion to escape from its obligations, and the towns were in periodic revolt. William de Nangis says of the condition of the country under Charles V.: "There was not in Anjou, in Touraine, in Beauce, in Orleans, and up to the very approaches of Paris, any corner of the country that was free from plunderers. They were so numerous everywhere, either in little castles occupied by them, or in villages and the countryside, that peasants and tradesmen could not travel except at great expense and in mighty peril.

The very guards told off to protect the cultivators of the soil and the travellers on the highways, most shamefully took part in hara.s.sing and despoiling them. It was the same in Burgundy and the neighbouring countries. Some knights who called themselves friends of the King, whose names I am not minded to set down here, kept brigands in their service, who were every whit as bad. What is more strange is that, when these ruffians went into the cities, Paris, or anywhere else, everybody knew them and pointed them out, but none durst lay hands on them."

The condition of Germany was but little superior to that of France. The central authority, if that can be called central which was always shifting its position, was unequal to restrain the violent. Its pretensions were in inverse proportion to its efficiency. The Emperor was too far off to see to the policing of the Empire, too weak to enforce order; and his long absences in Italy left the German lords and lordlings to pursue their own courses unrestrained. When the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa visited the Baron van Kingen in his castle near Constance, the freiherr received him seated, because, as he said, he held his lands in fee of none but the sun. Although he was willing to receive the Emperor as a guest, he refused to acknowledge him as his lord. If this was the temper of the petty n.o.bility in a green tree, what must it have been in the dry. After that the great houses of Saxony and Swabia had been crushed out by the policy of the Papacy, it was to the interest of the electors to keep the Emperor weak; and the fact that the Imperial Crown was elective enabled the electors to sell their votes for extended privileges. At last, against the raids of the petty n.o.bles, whom the Emperor could not control, the cities leagued together, took the matter in hand, attacked the fortresses, levelled them and gave to the inmates short shrift, a halter and a tree. In Italy the towns proceeded in a less summary manner. Surrounded as they were on all sides by a serried rank of castles, where the n.o.bles held undisputed sway over their serfs and controlled the arteries of trade, the cities were compelled to proceed against them; but instead of sending them to the gallows, they contented themselves with forcing them to take up their residence within the town walls. But though the feudal lordship of these n.o.bles had been destroyed, their opulence, their lands, the prestige of their names remained untouched, and in place of disturbing the roads they filled the streets with riot. They reared in the towns those wonderful towers that we still see at Bologna, San Gemigniano, Savona, &c. "From the eighth to the thirteenth century," says Ruskin, "there was little change in the form;--four- square, rising high and without tapering into the air, storey above storey, they stood like giants beside the piles of the basilicas and the Lombardic churches... their ruins still frown along the crests of every promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far away in the great Lombard plain, from distances of half a day's journey, dark against the amber sky of the horizon." [Footnote: Lectures on Architecture, 1853.]

I propose dividing my subject of cliff castles into four heads:--

1. Those that were seigneural strongholds.

2. Those that with castle and town occupied a rock.

3. The fastnesses of the _routiers_, the Companies in the Hundred Years' War.

4. Outpost stations guarding fords, roads into a town, and pa.s.ses into a country.

And I shall begin with No. 3--The Castles of the _routiers_.

The face of a country is like that of a woman. It tells the story of its past. The many-windowed English mansion sleeping among turfy lawns to the plash of a fountain, and the cawing of rooks in the beechwood, tell of a tranquil past life-record broken only by transient unrest; whereas the towers on the Continent with their _meurtrieres_ and frowning machicolations, bristling on every hill, frequent as church spires, now gutted and ruinous, proclaim a protracted reign of oppression and then a sudden upheaval in resentment and a firebrand applied to them all. The old English mansion has its cellars, but never an _oubliette_, its porch-door always open to welcome a neighbour and to relieve the indigent. It was not insulated by a d.y.k.e, and its doors clenched with a portcullis. The spoils of the chase were not a drove of "lifted" cattle taken from a peasant left stark upon his threshold, but foxes' masks and the antlers of deer. The pigeons coo about the English gables and the peac.o.c.k dreams in the sun on the bal.u.s.trade of the terrace, as in past centuries, but the castle of the French n.o.ble and the burg of the German ritter are given over to the bats and owls, and are quarries whence the peasants pick out the heraldic carvings for the construction of their pig-styes.

Nowhere did tears so stain and furrow the face of the land as in that portion of France that was ceded to England. De Quincey says: "Within fifty years in three pitched battles that resounded to the ends of the earth, the chivalry of France had been exterminated. Her oriflamme had been dragged through the dust. The Eldest Son of Baptism had been prostrated. The daughter of France had been surrendered on coercion as a bride to her English conqueror. The child of that marriage, so ignominious to the land, was King of France by the consent of Christendom; that child's uncle domineered as regent of France; and that child's armies were in military possession of the land. But were they undisputed masters? No!--under a perfect conquest there would have been repose; whereas the presence of the English armies did but furnish a plea, making strong in patriotism, for gathering everywhere of lawless marauders, of soldiers that had deserted their banners, and of robbers by profession. This was the woe of France more even than the military dishonour." [Footnote: Essay on Charles Lamb.]

The Hundred Years' War, that has left ineffaceable traces in the south of France, began in 1336 before the conclusion of the Treaty of Bretigny, which was in 1360, and it lasted till 1443--over a century, though not without interruption; and it desolated the fields of Perigord, Quercy, and to a less degree Rouergue and the Limousin, and wrought havoc to the gates of Paris.

The close of the fourteenth century saw no hope anywhere, only gathering storms. In France, to the prudent Charles V. succeeded the mad fool Charles VI. In England the strong King Edward III. was followed by the incompetent Richard II. In Germany the Emperor Charles IV., a statesman, had as his successor the drunken sot Wenceslas. In England the Wars of the Roses were looming in the future. Agincourt proved more disastrous to England than to France. There was hopeless turmoil everywhere. As Luther said when a somewhat similar condition existed in Germany--"G.o.d, tiring of the game, has thrown the cards on the table." In France the free Companies ran riot unrestrained. About them one word.

The engagement of mercenaries in the war between England and France had begun early. As Michelet says: "The population of the North saw appear among them mercenary soldiers, the _routiers_, for the most part in the service of England. Some came from Brabant, some from Aquitaine; the Basque Marcader was one of the princ.i.p.al lieutenants of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The mountaineers of the South, who to-day descend into France and Spain to gain a little money by huxtering, did so in the Middle Ages, but then, their sole industry was war. They maltreated priests as they did peasants, dressed their wives in consecrated vestments, beat the clergy, and made them sing ma.s.s in mockery. It was also one of their amus.e.m.e.nts to defile and break the images of Christ, to smash the legs and arms, treating Him worse than did the Jews. These _routiers_ were dear to the princes precisely on account of their impiety, which rendered them insensible to ecclesiastical censures."

[Footnote: _Histoire de France_, ii. p. 362. The first to introduce them was Henry Courtmantel when he rebelled against his father. On his death in 1163 they disbanded, and then reunited under elected captains, and pillaged the country.]

From 1204 to 1222 was the period of the Crusade against the Albigenses.

Pope Innocent III. poured over that beautiful land in the south of France--beautiful as the Garden of G.o.d--a horde of ruffians, made up of the riffraff of Europe, summoned to murder, pillage and outrage, with the promise of Heaven as their reward. After committing atrocities such as people h.e.l.l, these scoundrels, despising the religion they had been summoned to defend, with every spark of humanity extinguished in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, looked about for fresh mischief, and found it, by enrolling themselves under the banner of England; their tiger cubs grew up with the l.u.s.t of blood and rapine that had possessed their fathers.

Generation after generation of these fiends in human form ranged over the soil of France committing intolerable havoc. A carpenter of Le Puy formed an a.s.sociation for the extermination of these bands. Philip Augustus encouraged him, furnished troops, and in one day slaughtered ten thousand of them. But so long as the English claim on so large a portion of the soil of France was maintained, the bands were incessantly recruited. The French King hired them as well as the King of England. So, later, did the Popes, when they quitted Avignon, and by their aid recovered the patrimony of S. Peter.

The barons and seigneurs in the South were no better than the _routiers_. They transferred their allegiance from the Leopards to the Lilies, or _vice versa_, as suited their caprices. The Sieur de Pons went over to the side of France because he quarrelled with his wife, who was ardent on the English side. The local n.o.bility helped the _routiers_, and the _routiers_ a.s.sisted them in their private feuds.

The knights of the fourteenth century were no longer the protectors of the weak, the redressers of wrongs, loyal to their liege lords, observers of their oaths. They had reversed the laws of chivalry. Their main function was the oppression of the weak. They forswore themselves without scruple. The Sire d'Aubrecicourt plundered and slaughtered at random _pour meriter de sa dame_, Isabella de Juliers, niece of the Queen of England, "for he was young and outrageously in love." The brother of the King of Navarre plundered like the rest. When the n.o.bles sold safe-conducts to the merchants who victualled the towns, they excepted such articles as might suit themselves--silks, harness, plate.

A prince of the blood sent as hostage to England returned to France in defiance of treaties, and if King John surrendered himself, it was because of the ease and pleasures he enjoyed in London, and to be rid of cares. The name given to the Companies in the South was Raobadous (Ribauds)--the very name has come to us under the form of _ribald_, as indicative of all that is brutal, profane, and unseemly.

Among the commanders very few were English. There was the Welshman Griffith, whom Froissart calls Ruffin, who ravaged the country between the Seine and the Loire. Sir Robert Knollys, or Knolles, led a band of English and Navarrese, "conquering every town and castle he came to. He had followed this trade for some time, and by it gained upwards of 100,000 crowns. He kept a great many soldiers in his pay; and being very liberal, was cheerfully obeyed." So says Froissart. Sir Robert Cheney was another; so was Sir John Amery. Sir John Hawkwood was taken into the service of Pope Gregory XI., and sent to ravage in Italy.

Bacon, a notorious brigand, may or may not have been English. The name is common in lower Brittany. "This robber," says Froissart, "was always mounted on handsome horses of a deep roan colour, apparelled like an earl, and very richly armed."

But usually the free Companies enrolled themselves under some b.a.s.t.a.r.d (Bourg) of a n.o.ble house in France or Guyenne. It was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d warfare on their side; they stood in the same relation to the regular forces that privateers do to a fleet of the Royal Navy. They paid no regard to treaties. As the Bourg d'Espaign told Froissart: "The treaty of peace being concluded, it was necessary for all men-at-arms and free Companies, according to the treaty, to evacuate the fortresses and castles they held. Great numbers collected together, with many poor companions who had learnt the art of war under different commanders, to hold councils as to what quarters they should march, and they said among themselves that, though the kings had made peace with each other, it was necessary for them to live. 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 hara.s.sed the Languedoc, Quercy and Perigord, not a single captain was English. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d de Beby, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 ent.i.tled that "des Bretons."

But it was not the captains of the Companies alone who were Gascons, French, and Bretons. The n.o.bles 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, Pet.i.ton de Courton, Jean de Seignol, the Sire de Mussidan, and many more.

"Following their interests or their pa.s.sions, all these n.o.bles pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Albret for five others.

In 1387 he convened an a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.sed 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, a.s.sailed, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cla.s.s; and these are kept night and day hara.s.sed 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."

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: LE DeFILe DES ANGLAIS, LOT. A fortress of the English commanding the road to Cahors. Several chambers are excavated out of the rock.]

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.