CLIFF CASTLES
with the exception of some few small places that are very poor and miserable, and though at one time they were great and rich, they have been to such an extent depopulated—partly through the war and partly through pestilences that have ensued—there are now hardly one hundredth part of the people remaining, and those who do remain are but poor labourers and men of servile class; and these are kept night and day harassed by watching against enemies, and yet are compelled to buy them off with patis and pensions, so that the greater portion of their substance is consumed in this way;—therefore, &c."
In 1450 the English were driven out of Guyenne, but a fresh attempt to recover it was made, that ended in the defeat and death of Talbot, in 1453. The Companies had then to dissolve. Out of a thousand churches in Quercy but four hundred were in condition for the celebration of divine service; many had been converted into fortresses. Most of the little towns in Upper Quercy had lost the major portion of their inhabitants; the villages were void of inhabitants. None knew who were the heirs to the deserted houses and untilled fields.[1] An emigration from Limousin and the Rouergue was called for to repeople the waste places. Grammat, that had been a thriving town, in 1460 was left with only five inhabitants, Lavergne with but three. Lhern, once a flourishing place, was absolutely desert, the fields covered with briars and thorns, not one house tenanted, and in the church a she-wolf had littered her cubs.
Throughout the country can be distinguished the churches built when the war was over—quadrangular structures, without ornament.
Two of the strongest fortresses held by the English in
- ↑
"Agros atque Lares proprios, habitandaque fana
Apres reliquit, et rapacibus lupis,
Ire, pedes quocunque ferent."—Horace, Epod. Od., 16.
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