The victory of the Black Prince at Poitiers, followed by the treaty of Bretigny, made the King of England absolute master of the Quercy.  The Prince of Wales came in person to take possession of Cahors in 1364, and despatched his seneschal, Thomas de Walkaffara, to Figeac to receive from the inhabitants the oath of fealty.  They swore obedience, but with much soreness of soul.  They afterwards got released from their oath by the Pope, and joined a fresh league formed against the English.  After enjoying the sweets of French nationality again for a brief period, they were made English once more by the treaty of Troyes.  But the British domination in Guyenne was now approaching its close.  The maid of Domremy was about to change her distaff for an oriflamme.  The year 1453 saw the English power completely broken in Aquitaine; a collapse which an old rhymer records with more relish than inspiration: 

    ’Par Charles Septieme a grande peine
      Furent chasses en durs detroits
    Les Anglais de toute Aquitaine,
      Mil quatre cent cinquante trois.’

Figeac escaped the horrors which were spread through the South of France by the religious wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but it was not similarly spared by those of the sixteenth century.  The Huguenots laid siege to the town in 1576, and entered it by the treasonable help of a woman—­the wife of one of the consuls.  There was the usual massacre that followed victory, whether on the side of Protestants or Catholics, and the people became Calvinists for the same reason that they had centuries before become English.  In less than fifty years afterwards they were all Catholics again.  During this unsettled period, however, there was great domestic dissension in the town, owing to the circumstance that many women belonging to the old Catholic stock had married Protestants who had come into the place.  As they could not agree with their husbands, and as many of these refused to be converted for their sake (they may have been thankful for an opportunity of getting rid of them), a refuge called ’L’hospice des mal-mariees’ was built for the unhappy wives.  When the need for this very singular institution no longer existed it was pulled down.

The Church of St. Sauveur, as we see it to-day, is disappointing.  It has been so much rebuilt after different convulsions, and pulled about when there has been less excuse, that many a church in an obscure village gives more pleasure as a whole to the eye that seeks unity of design and inspiration in a work of art.  Nevertheless, there are details here that no archaeologist will despise.  In the nave are the piers and Romanesque capitals of an early, but not the earliest, church on the spot.  They are certainly not later than the twelfth century.  Baptismal fonts, now used as holy-water stoups, are probably of anterior workmanship.  Cut out of solid blocks of stone, their carving shows all the interlacing lines and exquisite finish of detail, purely ornamental, that marks the pre-Gothic period in the South of France, when the artistic spirit of Christianity was still confined to the close imitation of Roman and Byzantine art.