The Black Prince and Limoges

[Duncan Head]

BBC News has an interesting piece about a recently-unearthed letter and the massacre at Limoges.

[Andreas Johansson]

Hm. If the Prince had had 3000 civilians killed, would he'd been particularly eager to tell the count of Foix?

Not that I think Froissart is very reliable on numbers (how many inhabitants did Limoges have in 1370 anyway?), by the Prince is hardly an unbiased source either, and speaking of (presumably live) prisoners, not any victims of massacre. The local source mentioning 300 dead seems more significant than either.

[Duncan Head]

Yes, I think that's the key - a monk at a local abbey probably has no reason to downplay the death toll at Limoges. What the "200 prisoners" in the letter allows you to do, though, is figure out how many of the dead are likely to have been civilians - "only" 200 or so.

[Erpingham]

One might, playing devil's advocate, ask if only 200 civilians were killed, why the Limoges massacre came to be so notorious?  Massacres of civilians of this scale were not unknown and the English weren't famed for their distinction between combatants and non-combatants when it came to chevauchees.  Perhaps it was because of the involvement of such a pillar of chivalry?

[Patrick Waterson]

Pepin's conclusions seem to rest on "a contemporary, local source written at the abbey Saint-Martial of Limoges, which says there were around 300 fatalities in total in the city," and the obvious question is how reliable this source might be.  If it is correctly given as a) local and b) contemporary, it may well have greater value than Froissart's figure of 3,000 but two caveats remain:

1) If 2,700 or so of the dead are peasants from the surrounding hinterland and only 200-300 are citizens of Limoges per se, then both the local source and Froissart may be correct.

2) Anthony's original point that 200-300 dead townsmen would provide only a very modest level of notoriety still stands.

The Prince's letter does not state that the citizens were massacred; then again, it deals only with the garrison and does not specify that the inhabitants were spared.

[Duncan Head]

One might, playing devil's advocate, ask if only 200 civilians were killed, why the Limoges massacre came to be so notorious?

When did it become notorious? This blog cites Richard Barber as saying that - apart from Froissart's colourful story -

None of the sources which might be expected to make capital, for propaganda purposes, out of such a massacre, even mention it: the references in the papal and French records are purely factual, referring to some destruction of property.

So is the whole "Limoges is a stain on Edward's reputation" idea a later construct?

[Erpingham]

Good point Duncan.  I had read said blog and then gone back to read Barber's account last night, as well as Sumption's.  Both seem to imply that, corroborating the new letter, there was not an immediate outcry.  By the time we have Froissart's account, however, there clearly is a tradition of scandal attached.  It is possible, therefore, that the atrocity stories grew in relation to the political situation in Gascony and the shifts in allegiance of major families in the late 14th century.  Certainly, the Black Prince's reputation was no longer high in Gascony by this point.