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Updated: May 29, 2025
She pressed him, she entreated him in the most eloquent manner, to take her away to his estates of Guyenne, and leave her there until the King had forgotten her or chosen another mistress.
'Bad enough, he answered, 'unless you can make the more speed there! then making obeisance to Berenger he continued his report, saying that Captain Falconnet was sending him to M. le Duc with information that the Guisards were astir, and that five hundred gens d'armes, under the black Nid de Merle, as it was said, were on their way intending to surprise Pont de Dronne, and thus cut the King of Navarre off from Guyenne and his kingdom beyond it.
Before the main body of the British force that subdued Roc-Amadour as related by Froissart arrived in the Haut-Quercy, the castle of Prangères, near Gramat, was entered by a troop of armed men in the English service under Jéhan Péhautier, one of those brigand captains of whom the mediaeval history and legends of Guyenne speak only too eloquently.
They were fairly matched in numbers, and as day broke both marched resolutely to the encounter, amid opposing shouts of "King Henry for Castile" and "St. George and Guyenne." It was a hard, fierce, bitter struggle that followed, in which the onset of Du Guesclin was so impetuous as for a moment to break the English line.
Not a few of them keep the name of La bastide, in combination with some other to this day. They are to be found all over Guyenne and a great part of Languedoc. They were often fortified with a wall, a palisade, and a moat.
"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.
From the Old-English town of Martel, in Guyenne, I turned southward towards the Dordogne. For a few miles the road lay over a barren plateau; then it skirted a desolate gorge with barely a trace of vegetation upon its naked sides, save the desert loving box clinging to the white stones. A little stream that flowed here led down into the rich valley of Creysse, blessed with abundance of fruit.
Two thousand two hundred German horsemen, a portion of the large force sent by the Catholic princes of Germany, had joined him; and the Count de Tende had brought 3000 soldiers from the south of France. Other nobles came in, as the winter broke, with bodies of their retainers. The southern Huguenot leaders, known as the Viscounts, remained in Guyenne to protect the Protestant districts.
Of the sum that was to be paid to them, the clergy were to contribute 25,000 francs, the nobles 16,660. The inhabitants of the Quercy agreed to pay 50,833 francs. The captains of the companies took oath that on receiving the money they would quit Guyenne for ever. They may have kept their oath, but their followers were not to be induced to change their habits so easily.
Another legend of the Maiden's Leap is more romantic, but less supernatural. It is a story of the English occupation of Guyenne, and the revolt of the Quercynois in 1368.
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