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The Seigneurs were not greatly, if at all, to be distinguished from the Captains of the routiers in their mode of life and in their fortresses, save only this, that the latter were elected by their followers, and the former were on their hereditary estates and could demand the services of their vassals. In the matter of scoundreldom there was not a pin to choose between them.
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.
The interior of the chasm reveals a whole labyrinth of passages and vaults dug out in the heart of the calcareous rock. The chambers had openings as windows looking out upon a river, and the rock was converted into a barrack that could accommodate a large garrison. The last of the rock fastnesses of the routiers that I purpose describing is of a totally different character from the rest.
This last remark is only too well justified by the evidence which those centuries have handed down. Indeed, to such an extent were these companies composed of Aquitanians, that one may well ask if some of them contained a single genuine Englishman. I have found no record in the Quercy of the captain of a company of routiers having borne an Anglo-Saxon name.
A terrible legacy of the Hundred Years' War, which, indeed, was not yet entirely ended by the Peace of Tours, was the existence of bands of men trained to nothing but war and rapine, and devoid of any other means of subsistence than freebooting on the peasantry or travellers, whence they were known as routiers highwaymen, and ecorcheurs flayers.
'Sir, Sir, what will they think of me the Lady Esclairmonde and all if they hear I have sat down tamely with a blow? 'She will never think about you at all but as a sullen malapert ne'er-do- weel, if you go off to that camp of routiers, trying to prop a bad cause because you cannot take correction, nor observe discipline.
"Ay, there is the strangest part of the tale," said Fulk Clarenham, with a sneer, "since he left the poor simple men at Lynwood believing that he was coming at full speed to seek my Lord the Prince's protection for the child, a convenient excuse for eluding the inquiries of justice into his brawls at the funeral, as well as for the rents which he carried off with him; but somewhat inconsistent when it is not for five months that he makes his appearance at Bordeaux, and then in the society of a band of routiers."
They are nearly all vine-growers, and display a remarkable inflexibility of manners and customs, due, undoubtedly, to their origin, perhaps also to their victory over the Cottereaux and the Routiers, whom they exterminated on the plain of Charost in the twelfth century.
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 passes 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.
Their attempts at proselytising was not with velvet gloves, but with fire-brand, sword, and the hangman's rope. In that horrible period, exceeding far in barbarity that of the routiers in the Hundred Years' War, it is hard to decide on which side the worst atrocities were committed. Later still, in the Reign of Terror, the grottoes may have harboured priests and nobles hiding for their lives.
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