host” he again proceeded into Gascony[101] as far as Dax. There, to his delight, he found that the count of Bigorre, who two winters before had helped the viscount of Dax to hold the city against the duke, had somehow incurred the displeasure of the citizens and was fast in their prison. They seem to have handed him over to Richard; “but [Sidenote: 1177] King Alfonso of Aragon, grieving that his friend the count of Bigorre was held in chains, came to the said duke, and entreating that his friend might be liberated, stood surety for him that he would do the will of the duke and of his father the king of England; and the count of Bigorre, that he might be set free, gave up to the duke Clermont and the castle of Montbron.” Richard then went northward again, and after keeping Christmas at Saintes gathered another “great host” for the subjugation of Saintonge and the Angoumois.[102] These two districts had been for years, and indeed for generations, a seed-plot of rebellion. Richard seems to have been bent upon reducing them to order once [Sidenote: 1178] for all. The moving spirits of defiance there were Vulgrin of Angoulême and Geoffrey of Rancogne. Count William of Angoulême, after being reinstated by Henry in his capital city, seems to have made over the government of his county to his eldest son, Vulgrin, who had headed the resistance to Richard in 1176. Geoffrey of Rancogne took his name from a place in the same county, and was also owner of two lordships of far greater importance in Saintonge, one of which, Pons, lay close to the border of the Angoumois, and the other, Taillebourg, was a fortress of great strength, about half way between Saintes and St. Jean d’Angély. It was to Pons that Richard now laid siege. After some weeks, finding that he made no progress, he left his constables [Sidenote: 1179] there with a part of his forces, and led the rest, in Easter week (April 1-8), into the Angoumois. A three days’ siege won the castle of Richemont; four other castles—Genzac, Marcillac, Gourville, Auville—were taken in the last fortnight of April and levelled with the ground. Then he turned westward again, re-crossed the border, and marched upon Taillebourg.[103]