Page:Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe.djvu/137

 into duchies and counties and seigneuries, practically independent, and above all the English domination in Guyenne for three hundred years, enabled the petty nobles to shake off the very semblance of submission to their liege lords, and to prosecute their private feuds without hindrance. After Poitiers, 1356, and the captivity of King John, anarchy reigned in the land; bands of plunderers ranged to and fro, threatening persons and ravaging lands; and the magistrates could not, or would not, exercise their authority. Local quarrels among rival landowners, the turbulent and brutal passions of the castle-holders, filled the land with violence and spread universal misery, from which there seemed to be no escape, as against the wrongdoers there was no redress. After the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, Aquitaine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted in the interests of the King of England into an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces of Poitou, the Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois and Rouergue, greatly to the dissatisfaction of the people, who remonstrated against being handed over to a foreign lord. Charles V. and Charles VII. sought on every available occasion to escape from its obligations, and the towns were in periodic revolt. William de Nangis says of the condition of the country under Charles V.: "There was not in Anjou, in Touraine, in Beauce, in Orleans, and up to the very approaches of Paris, any corner of the country that was free from plunderers. They were so numerous everywhere, either in little castles occupied by them, or in villages and the countryside, that peasants and tradesmen could not travel except at great expense and in mighty peril. The very guards told off to protect the cultivators of the soil and the travellers on the highways, most shamefully took part in harassing and despoiling them. It was the same in Burgundy and the neighbouring countries. Some knights who called themselves friends of the King, whose names I