Two kings, two masters

In 1276 Girard VI, Count of Armagnac in southern Gascony, was summoned to arms by Philip le Hardi (the Bold), King of France. Along with other Gascon nobles, Armagnac was sent into the kingdom of Navarre, south of the Pyrenees, to lay siege to the city of Pamplona. The situation was très compliqué. Henri III, the last king of Navarre, had died in 1274 without a male heir, so all the other kingdoms south of the Pyrenees scrambled to grab the vacant throne.

The arms of Armagnac (pre-1304)

The barons of Navarre appealed to Philip for help, and he sent a French army under Eustace de Beaumarchais to defend Pamplona. Unfortunately the French made themselves unpopular, and in 1276 violence exploded in the city between pro and anti-French factions. This was why Armagnac and his comrades were dispatched to deal with the situation. They laid siege to Pamplona, only for the Navarrese barons to escape at night. This was allegedly due to treachery on the past of Gaston de Béarn, a Gascon nobleman who had previously fought against Henry III and Edward I of England. Gaston was a kinsman to Don Almovarist, one of the barons of Navarre, and so conspired to help the rebels get away. Shortly afterwards Pamplona fell to the French and was sacked with terrible brutality.

An aerial view of Pamplona

Six years later, Armagnac was summoned to arms again. This time he was part of the Gascony expeditionary force to North Wales, raised by Edward I to spearhead the invasion of Gwynedd. Armagnac and the other lords of the South were ‘Montagnards’, warlike mountain people, and Snowdonia held no terrors for them:

“They [the Gascons] remain with the king, receive his gifts,
In moors and mountains they clamber like lions.
They go with the English, burn down the houses,
Throw down the castles, slay the wretches;
They have passed the Marches, and entered into Snowdon”.

Armagnac’s service in Navarre and Wales was a consequence of the Treaty of Paris in 1259. This made the Gascon nobility subject to two masters: the king of England as their immediate lord, and the king of France as overlord. This arrangement enabled both kings to exploit the military resources of Gascony, and meant the likes of Armagnac was a soldier of England and France. His son, Bernard, fought for Philip le Bel in Flanders.