The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Duke Henry of Anjou in 1152 brought much of south-western France into a shared relationship with the lands of the kings of England, and until 1453 the King of England was also Duke of Aquitaine. Was Gascony, as it was also called, part of a proto-English empire, the first of England's overseas possessions, or were the English and their kings as remote as their French counterparts? Aquitaine had been a Roman province, and its language was a mix of tongues, its history in the middle ages as much about creeping French authority as English rule. Studying this part of medieval Europe allows us to understand the formation of its medieval peoples and territories.
Apart from its own fascinating narrative, historians of south-western France are fortunate in the survival of a wide range of source materials. These include the voluminous records of English administration in Gascony. Every year from 1273 a ‘Gascon roll’ was drawn up by the English royal administration, recording a wide range of business and mentioning many people and places. The rolls were continued until 1468 even though the area was lost by the English in 1453, and are to be found today in The National Archives at Kew in class C 61. A few rolls were published in their original language, mostly Latin, but since 2009 a large-scale research project, involving English and French scholars, have been producing an online calendar of the rolls. Dr Philip Morgan was on the advisory board of the project, and since 2013 has been one if its leaders, so students will have the chance to see how modern research into medieval records is conducted.
After Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage to Duke Henry, Aquitaine became part of the Angevin empire, an agglomeration of lands under the authority of the kings of England which stretched from the north of Britain to the Pyrenees. Conflict with medieval-Europe’s other state-building enterprise led by the kings of France was a recurring theme in the rest of the middle ages, disputes often revolving around the competing authorities of the two kings and the particular squeamishness of kings of England who were obliged to do homage for their duchy in Aquitaine. The ‘Gascon question’ was thus inevitably a part of the explanation for the outbreak of the Hundred Years War in the 1330s, its long-term causes going back to the Treaty of Paris in 1259. English kings, as dukes, were rare visitors to their duchy, although both Henry III and Edward I spent lengthy periods there. In the fourteenth century royal dukes and princes, notably Henry Grosmont, earl of Lancaster, John of Gaunt and Edward the Black Prince acted in the king-duke’s place. In the 1340s, Gascony featured in the English king’s grand strategy which culminated in the battle of Crecy, and in the 1350s Edward the Black Prince won a famous victory at Poitiers after a lengthy campaign from Aquitaine which resulted in the capture of the French king. The later phases of the war led to the erosion of English authority from the 1370s and, despite Henry V’s victory at Agincourt, the gradual increase of the influence of the French king. John Talbot’s defeat at Castillon in 1453 virtually ended Anglo-Gascon Aquitaine.
But, as well as the narrative of great events and battles, this region and period provide unique insights into the medieval economy, Gascony being famous for a rash of new town foundations known as bastides, fortified and unfortified trading centres. Bordeaux was already the centre of the wine trade with England from where it imported grain supplies, and Bayonne was a competitor in shipping and trade with Flanders. The Gascon nobility frequently found themselves faced by difficult choices when it came to their loyalty to the English duke, and revolts were not uncommon. The Gascon Rolls, written largely in Latin, but with French and Gascon documents also enrolled, provide a valuable record of these individual stories of loyalty and treason, reward and punishment.
