The castle of Benauges was hereditary in the Grailly family after having been granted to Jean I de Grailly in the early 1260s.
Jean III de Grailly, captal de Buch (d.1377), was a cousin of the Count of Foix and a renowned military leader in the Hundred Years' War who was praised by the chronicler Jean Froissart as an ideal of chivalry.
Attached to the English side in the conflict, he was made Count of Bigorre by Edward III of England, and also a Knight of the Garter. He played a decisive role as a cavalry leader under Edward, the Black Prince in the Battle of Poitiers in 1356.
In 1364 he commanded the forces of Charles II of Navarre in Normandy, where he was defeated and captured by Bertrand du Guesclin at Cocherel. After his release the following year, he defected to the French side and was made lord of Nemours by Charles V of France. However, he soon re-established his loyalty to the English, and in 1367 he went to Spain with the Black Prince, fighting at the Battle of Nájera. Here he again faced Bertrand du Guesclin, but this time it was du Guesclin who was captured, and the Captal was put in charge of the prisoner. He was rewarded for his service by being made the Constable of Aquitaine in 1371.
Again fighting for the English, he commanded an English relief force when the French attacked La Rochelle in 1372. While attempting to lift the siege of Soubise his force was surprised by a French force led by Owain Lawgoch, a Welsh soldier of fortune in the French service. The Captal and Sir Thomas Percy, seneschal of Poitou, were captured. The Captal spent the remainder of his life as a prisoner at the Temple in Paris because Charles V believed him too dangerous to ransom back to the English.
Froissart gives an account of the Captal de Buch's chivalry and courage at the time of the peasant uprising in 1358 called the Jacquerie (see link).
Since he left no heirs, his uncle, Archambaud, count of Foix and of Bigorre took the title Captal de Buch, which passed to his descendants the Counts of Foix.
See also
Captal de Buch
External links
References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Turnbull, Stephen. The Book of the Medieval Knight. London: Arms and Armour Press, 1985. ISBN 0-85368-715-3
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