This last remark is only too well justified by the evidence which those centuries have handed down.  Indeed, to such an extent were these companies composed of Aquitanians, that one may well ask if some of them contained a single genuine Englishman.  I have found no record in the Quercy of the captain of a company of routiers having borne an Anglo-Saxon name.  Two English captains who took Figeac by surprise (a document relating to this event, written in Latin of the fourteenth century, is to be found in the municipal archives) were named Bertrand de Lebret and Bertrand de Lasale.  Those who captured Martel had names equally French.  There is, of course, the hypothesis that these leaders were Anglicised Normans, but the stronger probability is that they were native adventurers of Aquitaine who found it to their interest to place themselves under the protection of the King of England.

Towards the close of the fourteenth century, all those who wished to drive the English out of Guyenne rallied round the chiefs of the house of Armagnac.  This great family of the Rouergue, which was ultimately absorbed by the Royal House of France and became extinct, at one time espoused the British cause; but it contributed more than any other to the final dispersion of the English companies in Guyenne.  In 1381 the people of the Gevaudan, the Quercy, and High Auvergne, solicited the help of the Count of Armagnac against the companies, and he accepted the leadership of the coalition.  He convened a meeting of delegates at Rodez, to which the English chiefs were invited, and the decision that was then come to did not say much for the sagacity or the valour of those who represented the majority.  It was agreed that the sum of 250,000 francs—­equivalent to about £200,000 to-day—­should be paid to the English on condition of their surrendering the fortresses which they occupied.  This fact goes far to prove that the companies were virtually independent, and that although all their outrages were ostensibly committed in the British name, they were freebooters in the fullest sense of the word.  Of the sum that was to be paid to them, the clergy were to contribute 25,000 francs, the nobles 16,660.  The inhabitants of the Quercy agreed to pay 50,833 francs.  The captains of the companies took oath that on receiving the money they would quit Guyenne for ever.  They may have kept their oath, but their followers were not to be induced to change their habits so easily.  The routiers, still going by the name of the English companies, continued to hold the least accessible places in Guyenne, fortified in the main by nature, until long after the British sovereigns had abandoned their ambitious designs in France.