wife, Jeanne of Toulouse visited the hospice located here, founded in 1222 ( the oldest building in the village, it still serves 110 pensioners.) When Alphonse died, Lauzerte passed directly to the King of France. The English king contested the will, as The Treaty of Paris had granted Quercy to the King of England who garnered a rent of 3,000 pounds a year. The many weapons and bones in the charnel house indicate the extent of slaughter and resistance to the English. During the Hundred Years' War, Lauzerte was occupied by the English. Despite foreign occupation, some Lauzertins charged interest in exchange for ransom fees to nobility captured by the English. From this same period, legend has it that an old lady named Gandilhonne noticed the English were leaving. Although illiterate, she counted the number departing by putting a chestnut in her pocket to count each individual. She reported the exodus to the town consuls, who closed the gates, thus preventing the English from reentering. Fourteenth century: A Carmelite convent was established. “Pastoureux”, the shepherds who preyed on pilgrims and other travellers, conducted a massacre of Jews. Sixteenth century: Lauzerte passed first to Protestant control, after a battle resulting in 567 deaths, then back to Catholic control under the leadership of Terride. Lauzerte continued to prosper for various reasons. It was the seat of a secondary seneschalsy (court of appeals) and administrative center for collecting taxes from the surrounding countryside. The region provided much of the wheat for Cahors. Pilgrims provided income to Lauzerte as well. At the time of the Revolution, the town elected Gouges Cartou, a bourgeois, to represent the town at the new Estates General, the parliament. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Napoleon created the Departement of Tarn et Garonne. Lauzerte, which was until then part of the Lot, was attached to the new Departement. The cellist and composer Louis-Charles-Joseph Rey (1738–1811) was born in Lauzerte as well as his elder brother Jean-Baptiste Rey (1734–1810), conductor and composer. Architecture The mairie, the town hall, originally housed the Mirepoise Sisters, nuns who founded a school for daughters of the nobility in the eighteenth century. Next to this were housed the “Penitents Bleus”, a Catholic brotherhood and mutual help society. The leather Christ on the Cross displayed in the Church would have been carried in processions by the brothers on Mardi Gras and Good Friday. The senechaussee,