Armagnac

“ Till 732, Auch stood on the right bank of the Gers, but in that year the ravages of the Saracens drove the inhabitants to take refuge on the left bank of the river, where a new city was formed. In the 10th century Count Bernard of Armagnac founded the Benedictine abbey of St Orens, the monks of which, till 1308, shared the jurisdiction over Auch with the archbishops—an arrangement which gave rise to constant strife. The counts of Armagnac possessed a castle in the city, which was the capital of Armagnac in the middle ages. ”

“ The Queen of Navarre boldly avowed her sentiments, but declared her policy to be pacific: "Je ne fay rien par force; il n'y a ny mort ny emprisonnement, ny condemnation, qui sont les nerfs de la force." But she refused to recognize Armagnac—who was papal legate in Provence, Guyenne, and Languedoc—as having any such office in Béarn, proudly writing: "Je ne recognois en Béarn que Dieu auquel je dois rendre conte de la charge qu'il m'a baillée de son peuple." ”

“ The Count of Armagnac, the strongest supporter of Orleans and the war party, led troops against the frontier of Guienne. But the weakness of France and the exhaustion of its treasury prevented any formal denunciation of the truce or declaration of war. Though Henry could spare not a soldier for Guienne Armagnac did little hurt. An English fleet repaid the ravages of the Bretons by harrying the coast of Britanny; and the turn of French politics soon gave Frenchmen too much work at home to spare men for work abroad. ”

“ The several divisions were commanded by the great Armagnac generals, La Hire, and Marshal de Boussac, the Sire de Retz, Florent d'Illiers, and Poton de Saintrailles.
Each in his degree was tough, and there were three degrees—tough, tougher, toughest—and La Hire was the last by a shade, but only a shade. They were just illustrious official brigands, the whole party; and by long habits of lawlessness they had lost all acquaintanceship with obedience, if they had ever had any. ”

“ And of such great authority in France
As his alliance will confirm our peace
And keep the Frenchmen in allegiance.
GLOUCESTER And so the Earl of Armagnac may do,
Because he is near kinsman unto Charles.
EXETER Beside, his wealth doth warrant a liberal dower,
Where Reignier sooner will receive than give.
SUFFOLK A dower, my lords! disgrace not so your king,
That he should be so abject, base and poor,
To choose for wealth and not for perfect love. ”

“ The factions of the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons cost Paris a river of blood in the early years of the fifteenth century, and the massacre of the Armagnacs in May-August, 1418, was a terrible affair. On the first day, five hundred and twenty-two were put to the sword by the Bourguignons in the streets of the capital. Every Armagnac, or suspected Armagnac, was laid hold of, and the prisons overflowed with the captives. The Bourguignons assailed the Châtelet, "and the threshold of the prison became the scaffold of fifteen hundred unfortunates." ”

“ The Count of Armagnac was much mortified at this straight-forward answer, and began to devise what could be done. He bethought him of the power of beauty; and applied to the right person.
Gaston Phoebus arrived at Tarbes, from Pau, with a retinue of six hundred horse, with sixty knights of high birth, and a great train of squires and gentlemen. He was received with much joy and state by the prince and princess, and entertained with infinite honour. ”

“ The county of Rodez, after having been in the possession of the houses of Toulouse and Carlat, fell in the 14th century into that of Armagnac. Jean II. of Armagnac having served Charles V. faithfully during his wars with England, received from him, in 1374, what were called the four “châtellenies” with the “Commun de la paix,” a tax which had been established there to organize resistance against foreigners. ”

“ When all was done, D’Armagnac addressed a letter to the magistrates, informing them, that, as he understood he was to remain some time in Pamplona, he felt himself obliged to insure its safety in a military manner; and he had therefore ordered a battalion to the citadel, in order to garrison it, and do duty with the Spanish troops: “I beseech you,” he added, “to consider this as only a trifling change, incapable of disturbing the harmony which ought to subsist between two faithful allies.” ”

“ One night, during the darkness, D’Armagnac secretly introduced three hundred grenadiers into the house he occupied, which was opposite the principal gate of the citadel. Some of the ablest and most resolute men were selected to go as usual for the rations, but with arms under their cloaks. The ground happened to be covered with snow, and some of the French, the better to divert the attention of the Spaniards, pelted each other with snow-balls; and some running, and others pursuing, as if in sport, a sufficient number got upon the drawbridge to hinder it from being raised ”

“ Forcing their way to the palace they seized the King, induced him to grant all their demands and rode away with him. Armagnac escaped in disguise; Tanneguy du Chastel, provost of Paris, aroused by the noise and tumult, hastened to the hôtel of the Dauphin, wrapped him in a cloak,287 and hurried him and the Dauphine into the Bastille where some of their party had taken refuge. ”

“ In these times, it was enough if one man hated another at Paris, of whatever rank he might be, Burgundian or not, to say, 'There goes an Armagnac,' and he was instantly put to death, without further inquiry being made. ”

“ This was in 1409; that same year, Charles of Orleans, son of the murdered duke, lost his wife, Isabel of France, daughter of the king. A year later he married Bonne d'Armagnac, daughter of Bernard of that name, a Count of Southern France, bold, ambitious, unscrupulous. Count Bernard instantly took command of the Orleanist party, in the name of his son-in-law. He vowed revenge on Burgundy for the murder of Duke Louis, and called upon all good and true men to join his standard; thenceforward the party took his name, and Burgundian and Armagnac arrayed themselves against each other. ”

“ Toward the end of October, it happened, as the lord de Beaujeu, brother to the duke of Bourbon, was travelling, by the king's orders, through the county of Armagnac, as governor of Guienne, well attended by nobles and gentlemen, that while he was residing in the city of Lectoure [44] , he was betrayed into the hands of the count de Armagnac,—by which means, the said count regained his city of Lectoure. Having thus won it, he set at liberty many of the lords who had accompanied the lord of Beaujeu ”

“ But nothing can be done without the indispensable Visconti. What is his plan? At first he holds back, loving by nature the attitude of suspense. But in 1392 the moment came to decide. Armagnac at that moment was invading Italy in defence of the rights of his sister Beatrice and the elder branch of Visconti. He suffered defeat, indeed, and death at the hands of Milan, but not before he had inflicted so severe a check upon his victor that Giangaleazzo no longer saw his triumph clear. ”

“ About the middle of May, D’Armagnac’s division of the army of the centre came to Valladolid, Villatte’s division of the army of the south reinforced by some cavalry occupied the line of the Tormes from Alba to Ledesma. Daricau’s, Digeon’s, and D’Armagnac’s divisions were at Zamora, Toro, and other places on both sides of the Duero, and Reille’s cavalry was still on the Esla. The front of the French was thus defined by these rivers, for the left was covered by the Tormes, the centre by the Duero, the right by the Esla. ”

“ Wherever they marched, terror ran before them. They summoned the peasantry to bind on the white cross of Armagnac; he who refused lost arm, leg, or life itself, on the spot. This method of recruiting proved eminently successful, and the Count soon had a goodly army.
John the Fearless of Burgundy ("who," says a French writer, "might better have been called John the Pitiless, since the only fear he was without was that of God") was hardly less ferocious than his enemy. In one battle he slew some thousands of unarmed citizens: in another he massacred twenty-five thousand Armagnacs at one stroke. ”

“ The young duke Charles of Orleans married the daughter of the Gascon count Bernard VII. of Armagnac, and presently formed alliances with the dukes of Berry, Bourbon and Brittany, and others who formed the party known as the Armagnacs (see Armagnac) , against the Burgundians who had gained the upper hand in the royal council. ”

“ No Burgundian priest would baptise a little Armagnac. Why should he save an enemy's brat from damnation?
[Pg 201]
"The children played with the corpses in the streets. The body of the Constable and others lay for three days in the palace, a butt for the jests of the passers by. Some of them remembered to take a strip of skin from his back, so that he, too, might wear in death, the white emblem of the living Armagnacs." At last the stench forced them to throw all the debris into the tomberaux; thence, without priest or prayer, into an open ditch in the pig-market. ”

“ Charles III.’s daughter, Beatrix, brought the duchy to her husband Jacques de Bourbon, count of La Marche, and by the marriage of their daughter, Eleanor, to Bernard of Armagnac, count of Pardiac, it passed to the house of Armagnac. After being confiscated and restored several times, the duchy reverted to the French crown in 1505, after the extinction of the house of Armagnac-Pardiac. ”

“ Joan of Arc said that, in her native village, Domremy on the Lorraine border, there was but one Burgundian, and his head she wished were cut off; but Domremy and Vaucouleurs constituted the only Armagnac spot in northeastern France, and its boys used to have frequent fights with the Burgundian boys of Marey, from which they{339} would be brought home wounded and bleeding. ”

“ It seems to have been caused in the first place by Armagnac, who, in consequence of the death soon after each other of the King’s two elder sons, the Duc de Berry, the King of Sicily, and the Comte de Hainault, had become exceedingly powerful and, the only person whose power and influence might stand in his way being the Queen, proceeded to make mischief between her, the Dauphin, a weak, characterless boy, and the King, whose mind was now more clouded and his intellect feebler during the intervals between the attacks of his terrible malady. ”

“ From this time onward the Armagnac party, with the dauphin, afterwards King Charles VII., at its head, was the national party, while the Burgundians united with the English. This division in France continued until the treaty of Arras, on the 21st of September 1435. The rivalry of the Burgundians and Armagnacs brought terrible disasters upon France, and for many years afterwards the name of “Armagnacs” was bestowed upon the bands of adventurers who were as much to be feared as the Grandes Compagnies of the preceding age. ”

“ The Dauphin of France, afterwards Louis XI., at the head of a large army of the mercenary troops called Armagnacs, from the Counts D’Armagnac, two of their chiefs, advanced against Basle for the purpose of breaking up the council of the church then sitting there in defiance of the Pope, and to assist Frederic of Austria, the Emperor of Germany, in recovering the possessions in Switzerland which his ancestors had lost. ”

“ Scarcely was the order issued, when D'Armagnac, who had already posted his artillery on a rising ground in the park, opened a terrible fire upon the Spaniards who were passing through the breach, and not only caused great destruction among them, but threw them into such disorder, that they fled for shelter to a hollow where they were safe from the murderous fire.
“Ha! by Saint Denis, they are routed already!” exclaimed the king, laughing. “Charge them!” ”

“ It seems, from the excellence of the French Cognac brandy, the best, and the farthest north of any denomination of brandy which we know, that the extreme south is not the most favourable for the delicacy, though it is for the quantity of that spirit. The Cette brandy of France is not liked here, but it has been said that much Armagnac brandy is used in Paris. The celebrated French chemist [21] of the grape and of distilled and fermented wine spirits, was a native of Montpelier, and took very great pains to improve the vine, and all its liquors, in that southern region. ”

“ The Ambitious Statesman, or The Loyal Favourite (1679) , one of the most extravagant of his heroic efforts, deals with the history of Bernard d’Armagnac, Constable of France, after the battle of Agincourt ”

“ Burgundy was now master of Paris, but the Armagnacs were swarming in the country around and the English marching without let on the city. In these straits he sought a reconciliation with the dauphin and his Armagnac counsellors at Melun, on 11th July 1419. On 10th September a second conference was arranged, and duke and dauphin, each with ten attendants, met in a wicker enclosure on the bridge at Montereau. Jean doffed his cap and knelt to the dauphin, but before he could rise was felled by a blow from an axe and stabbed to death. ”

“ The latter comprised the "Armagnac" or "Royalist" party. The children, ever the imitators of their parents, likewise became "Armagnacs" and "Burgundians" when they played war. In these games the two parties ever finished by taking their roles seriously; when imprecations and actual blows with sticks and stones exchanged by the two "armies" gave these affairs the actual semblance of war.
The people of Domremy belonged mostly to the royalist, and those of St. Pierre and Maxey to the English party ”