The news of the battle quickly reached Gascony, where much of the duchy had been under French occupation for eight years. At Bordeaux, the chief city and centre of the wine trade, it inspired the citizens to rise up and drive out the French garrison. Their ringleader was one Arnaud Caillau, who hated the French with a pathological intensity. When his fellow citizens tried to appeal to the king of France, he said to them:
“Why do you appeal from us to the French? We will kill you, and the king of France has so many things to do with the Flemings that he will not help you, and if a war begins and you are appellants, the English king will conquer Normandy and you will gain nothing unless you give up your appeal”.
Once the French were gone, Arnaud turned over Bordeaux to the English. A grateful Edward I made him Mayor of Bordeaux and receiver of the customs of the wine trade. This meant that all the profits passed through his hands, and probably stayed there. Arnaud showed his hatred of the French on other occasions. When confronted by a French lawyer, he tore out the man’s tongue and murdered him on the spot. When a French envoy came to Bordeaux, he made the man stand on a table and then tipped him out of a window, breaking both limbs. This particular Gascon clearly did not see himself as a part of a greater France.
As an aside, the quote above implies that Gascons such as Arnaud thought the English could still reconquer Normandy. This was never on the cards - Henry III, Edward I and Edward II had no ambitions in this vein - but their subjects in Gascony seem to have regarded it as a possibility.
The pic is of Flemish infantry, taken from the Florentine ‘Nuova Cronica’ and uploaded to Wikicommons, public domain.
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