Ghastly Gaston

Limoges and Béarn (3)

“They will do nothing but rob the land, and burn and plunder, and put the people to ransom, and ride by night like thieves by twenty or thirty or forty in different parts.”

- Simon de Montfort to Henry III in 1250, reporting on the state of Gascony and the nature of the Gascony gentry. He was referring indirectly to Gaston Moncada, the perpetually dissatisfied Vicomte of Béarn.

Béarn

Over twenty years later, in 1273, Gaston went into revolt yet again. What he hoped to achieve is unclear. In his youth he had aspired to be seneschal of Gascony under Alfonso X, after the Castilian king had conquered the duchy from the English. That plan failed, and by the 1270s Castile was a staunch ally of England. Possibly he hoped to take advantage of the death of Henry III, or - this being Gaston - he was just being an asshole.

In the autumn of 1273, after he had sworn homage to Philippe le Hardi in Paris, Edward went south to deal with the problem. At first he sent one of his knights, Géraud de Laur, to Gaston’s castle at Orthez to try and negotiate. Gaston seized the man, threw him into prison and tortured him.

The English king's response demonstrated his wish to proceed in accordance with the customs of Gascony. His men arrested Gaston and imprisoned at Sault-de-Navailles, on the edge of the Pyrenees, where on 2 October the captive was induced to make several promises: he would do what was required of him by the court of St Sever, and otherwise yield himself up entirely to the king’s will.

Gaston promptly broke his promise and escaped, in remarkably similar circumstances to Edward’s escape from Hereford, shortly before the battle of Evesham. He used exactly the same trick, galloping away on a fresh horse while his guards stood about like a bunch of lemons.

Still the king stayed his hand. In the British Isles he could deal with troublesome vassals as he liked, but in France he was merely the Duke of Aquitaine, and had to watch his step. At the same time he had to deal with the war raging beyond the northern borders of Gascony, in Limoges.

On 23 October Edward wrote to the seneschals of Gascony and Limousin, and the Viscount of Ventadour, asking them to rescue the town of Limoges from the predatory Viscomtesse Marguerite. Edward was doubly concerned, since his wife Eleanor was also shut up inside the town, having probably taken refuge in the abbey.