Northmen, who pushed up every river, destroying, pillaging, and showing
no mercy to man or beast. The most redoutable of these pirates was
Hastings, who ravaged the banks of the Loire between 843 and 850,
sacked Bordeaux and Saintes and menaced Tarbes. In 866 he was again in
the Loire, and penetrated as far as Clermont Ferrand. There seemed to
be no other means of appeasing him than by granting him the country of
Chartres. But this did not content his turbulent spirit, and at the age
of nearly seventy he abandoned his county to resume his piracies.

An Icelandic Saga relating the adventures of a Viking, Orvar Odd in
Aquitaine, describes how he saw some of the natives taking refuge in an
underground retreat, and how he pursued and killed them all. [Footnote:
_Fornmanna Soegwr_, Copenhagen, 1829, ii. p. 229.]

In the persecution of the Albigenses at the instigation of Pope
Innocent III. the unfortunate heretics fled to the caves, but were
hunted, or smoked out and massacred by the Papal emissaries.
Nevertheless, a good many escaped, and in 1325, when John XXII. was
reigning in Avignon, he ordered a fresh _battu_ of heretics. A
great number fled to the cave of Lombrive near Ussat in Ariege. It
consists of an immense hall, and runs to the length of nearly four
miles. In 1328 the papal troops, to save themselves the trouble or risk
of penetrating into these recesses after their prey, built up the
entrance, and left from four to five hundred Albigenses along with
their bishops to perish therein of starvation. Of late years the bones
have been collected, removed, and buried. From 1152, the Bordelois,
Saintonge, Agenois, Perigord, and the Limousin were nominally under the
English crown. But the people did not bear their subjection with
patience, and often rose in revolt, and their revolts were put down
with ferocity. As to the Barons and Seigneurs of Guyenne, they took