Arnaud cried: “Ah! my lord, you act not as beseemeth gentle knight. You invited me here and it is thus you put me to death.”
This base act did no good. John was as faithful to his trust as his brother Arnaud. His appointment was confirmed by the King of England,[159] and the English flag was not taken down till the year 1425, when the citadel of Lourdes surrendered to John of Foix, the companion in arms of Dunois the brave, and the illustrious Barbazan, first to be styled Sans peur et sans reproche. Then the war-cry, “S. George for Lourdes!” was heard for the last time in the land, and the red flag of England taken down for ever.
Lourdes was attacked by the Huguenots in 1573. The town was taken by assault, pillaged, and partly burned, but they made no impression on the castle. A cry of alarm, however, resounded all through the Seven Valleys. The mountaineers of Lavedan knew the importance of the castle, which, once taken, would expose them to an invasion it would be impossible to resist, and they seized their arms and gathered under the banners of the lords of Vieuzac and Arras to defend the entrance to their valleys. The Huguenots, astonished at their determined resistance, were obliged to retreat to Béarn.
The union of Bigorre with the crown of France by Henry IV. was favorable to the prosperity and happiness of Lourdes, but fatal to the military importance of the castle. After being for ages the chief defence of the land, it now became the most unimportant fortress in the country.
In the XVIIIth century it was made the Bastile of the Pyrenees—a prison “created by despotism on the frontiers of liberty”—and was called the Royal Prison of Lourdes. Here, as the Comte de Marcellus says:
“Dans d’effroyables cachots,
Entouré d’épaisses ténèbres,
Plus d’un captif, couché sous des voûtes funèbres,
Attendrissait leurs lugubres échos