onal sentiment was stronger. La Rochelle held out for months, and,
when its notables at last submitted, they declared: "We will accept the
English with our lips but never with our hearts". Much patriotic
feeling was manifested in Quercy. The consuls of Cahors made their
submission, weeping and groaning. "Alas!" they declared, "how odious it
is to lose our natural lord, and to pass over to a master we know not.
But it is not we who abandon the King of France. It is he who, against
our wishes, hands us over, like orphans, to the hands of the stranger."
It was not until two years after the signing of the treaty that Edward
entered into possession of the bulk of the lands granted to him. Even
then there were districts in Poitou, notably Belleville, which never
became English at all. One of the last districts to yield was Rouergue,
whose count, John of Armagnac, only made his submission under the
compulsion of irresistible necessity.

It was even more difficult to get the English out of the lands which
the treaty had assigned to the French. These districts were largely
held by companies of mercenaries, little under Edward's control and
indisposed to yield up the conquests won by their own hands because
their nominal lord had thought fit to make a treaty with the French
king. Despite the orders of Edward, the English garrisons in the north
and centre of France flatly refused to surrender their strongholds. In
Maine, Hugh Calveley took Bertrand du Guesclin prisoner when he sought
to receive the submission of his castles, and only released him on
payment of a heavy ransom. In Normandy, Du Guesclin had to buy off
James Pipe, who dominated all the central district from the fortified
abbey of Cormeilles, and to crush John Jowel in a pitched battle near
Lisieux. Even when the castles were surrendered, the garrisons joined
with each other to establish societies of warriors that now inflicted
terrible woes on France. The exploits of these free companies hardly
belong to English history, though many of their leaders and a large
proportion of the rank and file were Englishmen. Cruel, fierce, and
uncouth, they still preserved in all military dealings the strict
discipline which had taught the English armies the way to victory. The
combination of the order of a settled host with the rapacity of a gang
of freebooters made them as irresistible as they were destructive.
Though Edward formally repudiated them, it was more than suspected that