castle of Carlat, and 12,500 to the Bastard of Albret for five others.
In 1387 he convened an assembly of the States of Auvergne, Velay,
Gevaudan, Rouergue, Quercy, &c., to debate what was to be done to rid
the country of these pests. Instead of resolving on an united effort to
put them down by force of arms, they agreed to pay them 250,000 francs
to quit. They took the money, but remained. Every town, every village
was forced to come to terms with the brigands, by means of a
_patis_ or convention to pay a certain sum annually, to save it
from pillage. Should the covenanted money not be forthcoming to the
day, the place was sacked and burnt.

At length the inhabitants, unable to endure the exaction of the
_routiers_ on one side and those of the King and the seigneurs on
the other, migrated to Spain and never returned. In 1415, as all the
inhabitants of Caudon had crossed the frontier, the cure applied to
have his cure united to that of Domme. He had no parishioners left.
Domme had been reduced from a thousand families to a hundred and
twenty, and these would have abandoned their homes unless stopped by
the Seneschal of Perigord.

In 1434 the inhabitants of Temniac and Carlux began to pack their goods
for leaving, but the citizens of Sarlat stopped them, by promising to
feed them till the conclusion of the war. Some of the large towns had
lost so many of their citizens that they were glad to receive peasants
out of the country and enrol them as burgesses. In 1378, as the Causse
of Quercy was almost denuded of its population and nothing remained to
be reaped, the Companies abandoned it for the Rouergue, the Gevaudan
and the Limousin and Upper Auvergne. Thence the wretched peasants fled
to the deserted limestone Causse of Quercy and occupied the abandoned
villages and farms. They obtained but a short respite, for in 1407 the