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Updated: May 29, 2025
The fact that the English left no mark upon the language in Guyenne is almost a conclusive proof that such of the Anglo-Saxon stock as followed the Norman leaders into Aquitaine, and who remained in the country any length of time, were not sufficiently numerous to impose their idiom upon others.
The siege of Bayonne, which was begun on the 6th of August, came to an end on the 20th by means of a similar treaty. Guyenne was thus completely won. But the English still had a considerable following there. They had held it for three centuries; and they had always treated it well in respect of local liberties, agriculture, and commerce. Charles VII., on recovering it, was less wise.
They concluded with observing that, with regard to the King my husband, the government of Guyenne was taken out of his hands; neither was he permitted to visit that or any other of his dominions. It was hereupon resolved to pursue the counsel now given, and that the King my husband and my brother should immediately withdraw themselves from Court.
M. L. Druyn, in his La Guyenne Militaire, Bordeaux, 1865, gives the following account of a refuge he explored. "Ascending the valley that separates the castle of Roquefort from the church of Lugasson, after having passed the village of Fauroux, one reaches, on the left side of the road, a splendid quarry of hard stone, but a few paces further on, upon the same side, the stone becomes soft.
"That is the minimum; let us pass to Guyenne; here it is, this figure like a calf walking on one leg. Of course, you will not be astonished to find discontent in Guyenne; it is an old focus for revolt, and will be enchanted to rise. They can furnish 8,000 soldiers; that is not much, but they are well trained.
It is true that the name of this town in all old charts is spelt Gordon; but, inasmuch as it is a compound of two Celtic words meaning raven's rock, it might as feasibly have been handed down by the Gaelic Scotch as by the Cadurcians. The Plantagenets came to be termed 'the devil's race' by the people of Guyenne.
As an illustration, it may not be amiss to translate the following passages from 'Les Anglais en Guyenne, by M. D. Brissaud: 'The Aquitanians had reason to thank the English Government for not having treated them as foreigners, like the inhabitants of a conquered province, as the people of Ireland, for example, had been treated, and for having confined its action to the development of judicial institutions, of which the germ was found in the feudal system of France.... The kings of England not only refrained from setting themselves in opposition to the local justice of the arriere-fiefs; we have seen them, and we shall see them again in the history of the communal movement, favour the extension of trial by peers, while accommodating at the same time their administrative system to the spontaneous manifestations of opinion in a continental country.
The security which the position afforded could hardly have been lost sight of in the days when the inhabitants of Guyenne were in constant dread of being attacked.
On the side of the bridge looking up-stream, each pier is built out in the form of a sharp angle This was intended to lessen the push of the current upon the masonry in time of flood. A great many old bridges in Guyenne show a similar design.
The common dialect is not quite the same throughout Guyenne and Languedoc; but the local variations are much less marked than one would expect, considering that the langue d'oc has been virtually abandoned as a literary vehicle for centuries. The c in the word is not pronounced perhaps it never was and the o is usually joined to bè, which has the same meaning as bien in the French language.
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