Having for the moment reduced northern Aquitaine to subjection, Richard set himself to a like task in Gascony. After keeping Christmas at Bordeaux he marched upon Dax, which had been fortified against him by its viscount [Sidenote: _Jan._ 1177] with the help of the count of Bigorre. Its recovery by Richard was quickly followed by that of Bayonne, held against him by its viscount Ernald Bertram. Thence he marched up to the very “Gate of Spain”—St. Pierre de Cize, on the Navarrese border at the foot of the Pyrenees—took the castle of St. Pierre in one day, razed it, compelled the Basques and Navarrese to swear that they would keep the peace, “destroyed the evil customs which had been introduced at Sorde and Lespéron” (two towns in the Landes) “where it was customary to rob pilgrims on their way to or from S. James,” and by Candlemas was back at Poitiers, having—for the moment—“restored all the provinces to peace.”[78] The count of Bigorre in the south and a few barons of Saintonge and of the Limousin had not yet submitted; Richard, however, made no further movement against any of them for many months. His inaction may have been due to instructions from his father, who was probably unwilling to let him engage in another campaign against these rebels at a moment when all the available forces of the Angevin house and the presence of Richard himself seemed likely to be needed in another quarter. The richest baron of Aquitanian Berry, Ralf of Déols, the lord of Châteauroux, whose lands were said to be worth as much as the whole ducal domains of Normandy,[79] had died at the close of 1176 leaving as his sole heir a daughter three years old. The wardship of this child and of her heritage belonged of right to her suzerain, the Duke of Aquitaine; but her relations were resolved to keep, if possible, both herself and her lands in their own power,[80] so they carried her off to La Châtre,[81] and prepared her castles and their [Sidenote: 1176] own for defence and defiance. When these tidings reached King Henry in England, he sent urgent orders to his eldest son to assemble the Norman host without delay and take forcible possession of the lands of Déols.[82] Henry’s action in this matter is noticeable as showing that he regarded Richard’s tenure of the dukedom of Aquitaine at this period as merely nominal or delegated; he claimed Denise of Déols as his own vassal, not as Richard’s. It is, however, not at once apparent why, since he had intrusted to Richard the task of subduing the other Aquitanian rebels, he did not leave the affair of Déols to the same hands. The reason may have been mainly a geographical one. These things [Sidenote: 1176-7] may have taken place at a moment when Henry knew Richard to be busily engaged at the very opposite end of the duchy, at any rate somewhere in Gascony, perhaps at its extreme southern border. The young king, on the other hand, was in Normandy, whence it would be easy for him to