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Adhemar had a personal enemy, one Jean Ducos, a kinsman of the Baron de Limeuil. These men, calculating that the garrison of La Roque would be off its guard on that holy day, arranged with the English garrison of the Rock of Tayac to surprise the town. They came upon it unobserved, and breaking in, massacred the people and the guards; then ensued a general pillage, and a conflagration.
In the Middle Ages the English companies turned the side of the rock into a stronghold which was the terror of the surrounding district. This fastness was called La Roque de Tayac, because the village of Tayac faces it on the other side of the river.
Then a tax was levied throughout Perigord to pay for the cost of the sieges of Bigaroque and the Rock of Tayac. We will now pass from Perigord to Quercy. Here the English Companies held the valley of the Lot from below Capdenac to the gates of Cahors, except the impregnable towns of Cajarc and Calvignac. Flowing into the Lot at Conduche is the river Cele that descends from Figeac.
But the next year, their numbers being again largely increased, they resumed their forays with the result that the Sarladais marched to the valley of the Vezere and regularly besieged the Roque de Tayac. The struggle was marked with great ferocity on both sides.
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.
It was not recovered by the French till 1443; somewhat later the Companies disbanded, and then they so completely destroyed the fortress that of it nothing now remains. The other stronghold was the Rock of Tayac. The white cliff streaked with black tears rises to the height of 300 feet, and is precipitous.
Again in calm water, I recognised, beyond the still grass and the scattered flame of the poppies, the high walls of the fortress-like church of Tayac, with the light of the sinking sun upon them.
Tayac, chief of the Piscataquas, received baptism, and his example was followed by the chiefs and inhabitants of Port Tobacco. The main trouble came from the Nanticokes on the eastern shore, and the fierce Susquehannas to the north of the settlements, and at different times armed expeditions were sent out against them; but there was nothing like a war.
Such was the stronghold which obtained so evil a reputation throughout a wide district as an almost impregnable den of bandits and cut-throats. We read that the English, who had fortified themselves at the Roque de Tayac, having ravaged the country of Sarlat in 1408, the men of Sarlat laid an ambush for them, and, taking them by surprise, cut them in pieces.
The proprietor also possesses a gramophone, and its strident notes we may well suppose imitate the tones of the first inhabitants of this den. Of the Roc de Tayac, in and against which this paradisaical hotel is plastered, I shall have more to say in another chapter.
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