the French adopted a strategy of 'battle avoidance', preferring instead the tactic known as chevauchée, which simply required the armies to surround a town and set up camp, sometimes for months, cutting off all supplies until the inhabitants surrendered. Anyone who might command a ransom (such as church dignitaries and aristocrats) were taken captive; and the rest were subjected to taxes and tithes. The last and deciding battle took place in 1453 at nearby Castillon, where the French cannons of Jean Bureau defeated the archers of John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who was himself killed in the field of battle. A century of relative calm followed, and the village houses were repaired and reconstructed [see 'The Chateau' below]. But from the middle of the 16th century bloodshed and chaos returned, as Catholics fought Protestants – a period known as the 'Wars of Religion'. Limeuil had both a Catholic monastery (a surviving part of which is now the Mairie building); and a Protestant convent and church, both of which have now disappeared – the church was destroyed in 1683 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes: all that survives is an iron cross on an ancient stone pillar in the corner of the Place des Ormeaux in the upper village. The chateau At some point the early wooden defensive stronghold was rebuilt in local stone, but little evidence of this chateau fortification survives within the walls of today's Parc du Chateau. Perhaps the most famous of the occupants of this chateau was Isabeau de Limeuil, the daughter of Gilles de la Tour, lord of Limeuil and Abbot of Vigeois (which is north-east of Excideuil). They were related to Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France, and Isabeau was a mistress of Louis I de Bourbon, and bore him children. It is likely that this stone structure was demolished by the inhabitants themselves, sometime after 1453, as a clear demonstration that they had no wish to go on fighting these relentless defensive wars – as also happened with a number of other chateaux in the Périgord. Evidence of the truth of this theory can be seen in unexpected stone details set into some of the village houses; and two magnificent fireplaces bearing the Royal Coat of Arms, one in the Maison de la Justice in the upper village; and the other in the "Chais" restaurant down by the river. The castellated, rather