continual forays in the surrounding region, they were capable of withstanding a long siege even against an enemy many times as numerous as themselves, for the reason that only a few men could attack them at the same time, and the defenders had an enormous advantage in the struggle.  It is a very general belief in the district that there was formerly a passage by which this cavern communicated with the causse; no trace of it, however, has been discovered.

M. Delpon, author of a work published in 1831, and entitled ‘Statistique du Departement du Lot,’ mentions these fortified caverns of the Quercy in the following passage, which gives a vivid picture of the kind of life that the English companies led and made others lead in the fourteenth century: 

’They (the English) possessed in the Quercy the forts of Roc-Amadour, Castelnau, Verdale, Vayrac, Lagarennie, Sabadel, Anglars, Frayssinet, Boussac and Assier, and some other castles on escarped hills from which it was difficult to expel them.  They also seized upon caverns formed by nature in the flanks of precipitous rocks, and fortified them with walls in which all the character of English structures can still be recognised.  The garrisons that occupied these places represented six thousand lances distributed over the Quercy, the Rouergue, and High Auvergne.  When they sallied forth, the earth, to use an expression of one or their chiefs, Emerigot, surnamed Black Head, trembled under their feet.[*] They robbed travellers, made citizens prisoners—­especially ecclesiastics—­in order to extort exorbitant ransoms, they took from the peasants their beasts and their crops, and forced them to work in strengthening the dens of their spoliators with new fortifications.  In fine, the Quercy was continually devastated, and the inhabitants only tilled the earth to satisfy the avidity of the English companies.  The population could shield themselves from their violence only by concealing themselves in subterranean retreats, where traces of their sojourn are still observable.  The English were continually recruited by all the depraved men of the provinces which they laid under contribution.’

  [*] The entire passage from which these words are taken is to be
     found in Froissart’s chronicles, and it runs as follows, the
     spelling being modernized:  ’Que nous etions rejouis quand nous
     chevaussions a l’aventure et que nous pouvions trouver sur le
     champ un riche prieur ou marchand ou des mulets de Montpellier,
     de Narbonne, de Carcassone, de Limoux, de Beziers, de Toulouse,
     charges de draps, de brunelles, de pelleterie, venant de la foire
     de Landit, d’epiceries venant de Bruges, de draps de soie, de
     Damas ou d’Alexandrie.  Les vilains nous pourvoyaient et
     apportaient dans nos chateaux le ble, la farine, le pain tout
     cuit, l’avoine pour les chevaux, le bon vin, les boeufs, les
     brebis, les moutons tous gras, la poulaille et la volataille. 
     Nous etions servis, gouvernes et etoffes comme rois et princes,
     et quand nous chevaussions le pays tremblait devant nous.’