In camp before Brigelac

In the summer of 1254, towards the end of the conflict in Gascony, the future Edward I tasted his first experience of warfare.

Bergerac on the Dordogne

The cause was a succession crisis over the lordship of Bergerac, east of Bordeaux. Henry III had promised it to a cadet branch of the Rudell family, which had run out of male heirs in the direct line. One of the women married Renaud Pons, a vassal of the King of France, who claimed the lordship by right of his wife. The citizens of Bergerac supported Renaud and took up arms on his behalf.

Henry refused to accept Renaud’s homage, so the Frenchman treacherously seized a band of English nobles as they passed through Pons (in Poitou) on their way home. One of them, Gilbert de Segrave, was so badly mistreated he died in prison. On 12 May the enraged English king ordered all goods, wines and people coming from Bergerac to be seized, and exactly a month later summoned knights and militia from Gascon towns.

Edward had arrived in Gascony to join his father in June. Together they went to deal with Renaud, and were ‘in camp before Brigelac’ by 10 July. On that day, while the siege was in progress, Edward confirmed a grant of land in Connaught in Ireland to his kinsman, Geoffrey Lusignan. The witness list is a formidable set of names, implying the Bergerac affair was taken seriously: the bishops of Bath and Wells and Hereford were present, as were Robert Walerand, the earl of Warwick, the king’s half-brother William de Valence, and various other bigwigs.

The siege lasted only a few days and ended with Renaud being taken captive, presumably after he threw in the towel. He was Edward’s prisoner until January 1255, when he and all the other competing heirs to Bergerac were brought before the prince’s court to judge the case. Edward subsequently learned a lesson in distorted legalism, as Renaud and his wife Marguerite made one excuse after another to avoid appearing in court. Marguerite even appears to have feigned pregnancy, a short-term strategy if ever there was one.

There the matter rested until 1259, when the gruesome twosome popped up at the French court to urge King Louis to restore their inheritance. They persuaded the queen of France to award them the lordship, though it wasn’t until June 1267 that King Henry finally accepted her decision.