The English chronicler who records Richard’s treatment of the captured invaders may have been shocked at the indiscriminate ruthlessness which slew mercenaries and knights all alike; but the Prior of Vigeois evidently saw nothing more than just retribution in the fate of the sacrilegious “children of darkness” who were made prisoners at Gorre. Richard dragged them to Aixe and there “caused some of them to be drowned in the Vienne, some to be slain with the sword, and the rest to be blinded.”[189] It was almost a necessity to get rid of these men. The league was no longer secret; many of the conspirators were delivering up their castles to the young king.[190] The danger was evident enough to make Richard send an urgent message to his father asking him to come to the rescue at once.[191] Henry accordingly advanced towards Limoges. A watchman on the castle wall cried out that the city folk were bringing up troops to destroy their rivals of the castle; someone else spread a report that Geoffrey of Britanny was in great danger outside the walls; the townsfolk rushed out and began a fierce fight which was with difficulty stopped when the royal banners were recognized.[192] The king withdrew to Aixe. At night young Henry—still maintaining a pretence of loyalty—went to his father and tried to excuse the blunder of the townsfolk; but his excuses were rejected. “Then, at the viscount’s command, the people swore fealty to the young king in the church of S. Peter of Carfax.”[193] All concealment was now flung aside. Walls and ramparts, turrets and battlements, rose with incredible speed all round Limoges; the material being of course mostly wood, derived, it seems, from some half dozen or more churches which castle folk and city folk alike pulled down without scruple. Another horde of Routiers, hired by the viscounts of Limoges and Turenne, and commanded by one Sancho “of Sérannes” and another leader who seems to have adopted the heathen appellation of Curbaran,[194] appeared at Terrasson in Périgord, crossed the Limousin frontier, seized Yssandon, and swept across the viscounty of Limoges as far north as Pierre-Buffière, which they wrested from King Henry’s soldiers and restored to its rebel owner and to the viscount; thence they went south again and after an unsuccessful attempt on Brive took up their quarters at Yssandon. Other “Tartarean legions” poured in from the north, sent by Philip of France to support the cause of his brother-in-law.[195] If these Routiers could have been controlled by their employers, Henry and Richard might probably have been easily surrounded and captured. Nothing of the kind was, however, attempted. Instead, “the whole assembly of malignants, gathered together from divers parts,” were left to take their own way and spread themselves over the whole of Périgord, the Angoumois and Saintonge; the country was ravished, shrines were plundered, altars desecrated, and expelled monks fled