Els Bels

Limoges and Béarn (1)

In 1273 the Limousin was a disputed land between France and Aquitaine, torn by an exceptionally bloody civil war. The commune of Limoges was on one side, and on the other the Viscomtesse Marguerite: she claimed the city was hers by right, while the commune argued they were not her men at all, but owed direct homage to the king of France.

Limoges

Thrown into the mix was the Plantagenet claim to Limoges, left outstanding after the Treaty of Paris. There were suspicions in Paris that the commune preferred to be ruled by the English. A local annalist wrote:

“They [the French] hated us because…those who had raised the spirits of the King and of his advisers against us claimed wrongfully that we love the English best.”

King Philip ordered the Viscomtesse to stop attacking the people of Limoges. She ignored him and gathered an army at Chalusset, from where her soldiers rode to plunder, mutilate cattle, scatter wheat and perform “all kinds of wickedness.”

Philip seemed to cave to her pressure: at the Paris parlement of Pentecost 1273, he reversed his earlier decision and announced that the city of Limoges should give their homage to Marguerite. To add insult to injury, he ordered the citizens to release soldiers of the Viscomtesse they had taken prisoner, but did not order Marguerite to release her prisoners.

The enraged bourgeois of Limoges rose in arms and, on 5 July, attacked Marguerite’s castle at Aixe. They were thrashed out of sight by her troops and suffered terrible casualties. In desperation they now appealed to Edward I of England, who had gone from Paris to Gascony, and asked him to be their overlord. A fragment of their appeal survives (attached, second pic) expressed in the usual grovelling terms:

“To the most excellent lord Edward, by the grace of God, illustrious King of England, lord of Ireland and Aquitaine, king of the swingers, God-Emperor of Mars, high priest of all the things and rightful seigneur of sexy times…(etc etc)…”

Edward I & Eleanor of Castile

Perhaps Edward couldn’t resist the notion of galloping to the rescue; he did technically have right on his side, since the French should have coughed up Limoges back in 1259. For the present he was too busy in Gascony, so he sent his wife Eleanor of Castile with an army of Gascons to help the bourgeous of Limoges.

Els Bels arrived on 25 July and was led in procession to Saint-Martial “with great honours”.