Richard’s next task was to recover control of Aquitaine. He had in 1190 left that country to the joint care of its duchess and of a tried serjeant-at-arms, Peter Bertin, whom he had early in that year made seneschal of Poitou.[1164] In or about 1192, Eleanor being no longer in the duchy, Aimar of Angoulême attacked Poitou “with horse and foot,” but was defeated and taken prisoner by the Poitevins.[1165] About the same time nearly all the barons of Gascony took advantage of the illness of the seneschal of that county to rise in rebellion under the leadership of Count Elias of [Sidenote: c. 1192] Périgord[1166] and the viscount of La Marche. The seneschal tried in vain to make terms with them; on recovering his health, however, he attacked Périgord, captured or destroyed nearly all the fortresses of its count, and then dealt in like manner with La Marche, “which he thus brought once for all under the control of the king.” Sancho of Navarre then joined him with eight hundred knights, and their united forces harried the county of Toulouse up to the very gates of its capital city, and spent a night almost under its walls before they went their several ways home.[1167] After this Aquitaine seems to have been comparatively quiet [Sidenote: 1194 _March_] till March 1194, when the old arch-troubler of the land, Geoffrey of Rancogne, threw off his allegiance and with [Sidenote: _June_] Bernard of Brosse did liege homage to Philip.[1168] In June Sancho, on his way to join Richard before Loches, led his men through the lands of Rancogne and Angoulême and ravaged them “from one end to the other.”[1169] All this timely help from Navarre resulted in making Richard’s march into Aquitaine after the affair of Fréteval a progress of unbroken triumph. On July 22 the king wrote to his justiciar in England that he had captured Taillebourg, Marcillac, “all the castles and all the land” of Geoffrey of Rancogne, the city and suburb of Angoulême—“which we took in one evening”—and all the castles and lands of its count, with some three hundred knights and forty thousand men-at-arms.[1170] From Verneuil to “Charles’s Cross” he was master once more.[1171]