Foix the fox (3)

One of the sources of tension between England and France was the comté of Bigorre, on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees and part of the duchy of Gascony. Today it is part of the département of Hautes-Pyrénées, with two small enclaves in the neighbouring Pyrénées Atlantiques.

Philip IV’s intentions towards Gascony were becoming clear as early as 1284. In that year his lawyers challenged Edward I’s right to hold Bigorre free of subjection to the French crown. The English king was technically in the right, since the bishop and chapter of Le Puy in Velay had sold their rights to homage in Bigorre to Henry III in 1253.

The French king’s lawyers thought otherwise. After much nodding and frowning and pursing of lips, the Paris parlement gave Bigorre back to Le Puy. This was in the teeth of Edward’s protests and those of Count Roger-Bernard, who claimed to be acting on behalf of his sister-in-law Constance, daughter of Gaston of Béarn.

(Yes I know this is complicated. Keep up at the back)

Roger-Bernard decided to make a stand and occupied the castle of Vic-de-Bigorre, in defiance of the Paris judgement. At this point the true intentions of the French were revealed. When the dean of Le Puy came to take possession, he brought with him the lieutenant of King Philip’s seneschal of Toulouse. These men seized Roger-Bernard by his clothing and physically threw him out of the castle. The banners of the King of France were then set up over the barbican, signifying that Bigorre was now a fiefdom of the Capets.

The whole thing was a set-up: Edward had been robbed, Roger-Bernard humiliated, and the canons of Le Puy no doubt compensated for their loss with a hefty casket of French gold. Despite this, when war finally broke out in 1294, Roger-Bernard chose to fight for the French. He had to choose one or the other, and the French were a lot closer. They were also prepared to pay through the nose for his services.

Unfortunately for Dodgy Roger, his own chickens now came home to roost. He had build up his power by forced marriages, alliances and sheer brute force, bullying the lesser lords of Béarn into becoming his vassals. These nobles now took their revenge by serving Edward against the French, and the majority of the Béarnais gentry would remain loyal to the Plantagenets throughout the Hundred Years War.