Lacy's war

On the Feast of St John the Baptist (24 June) 1296, Henry de Lacy set out to besiege Dax, a fortified town just forty kilometres northeast of Bayonne, the main English stronghold in Gascony. Dax had fallen to the French in 1294, and its garrison threatened the ducal enclave in the south of the duchy.

Dax

Lacy chose to attack Dax while the French field army was concentrated on Bourg in the north. First he had to recreate the ducal army that had disintegrated after the death of his predecessor, Edmund of Lancaster. He was short of funds and could only hire one knight, Sir Montasivus de Noillan, who received £40 to serve with horses and arms for eight weeks. Montasivus had presumably completed his feudal term of service and now continued on mercenary pay.

Somehow Lacy scraped together enough men, and laid siege to Dax from about 24 June to 12 August. The Anglo-Gascons threw everything they had at the town, with daily assaults for almost seven weeks; the scale of the effort is reflected in financial accounts, which show the besiegers consumed almost £100 worth of wheat, while labourers were hired to press the attack by land and river.

The siege failed due to lack of food, and the build-up of another French army at nearby Mont-de-Marsan. Lacy was not prepared to risk the only English field army in Gascony in a pitched battle, so withdrew to Bayonne.

Lacy’s failure at Dax could also be attributed to the attitude of the citizens. Unlike many towns in southern Gascony, the people of Dax were not uniformly loyal to the king-duke of England: as early as 1278 Edward I had pardoned them for their ‘disobedience’. Immediately after the siege in 1296, on 25 August, Robert of Artois granted the citizens a privileged exemption from tolls. In context this looks like either a reward or a bribe. In addition, Dax does not appear on the lists of towns in Gascony that advanced loans to the English cause.

The war was rapidly drifting into stalemate: neither side made any ground in the roasting summer of 1296, and the English and French commanders had failed dismally in their siege operations.