CHAPTER IXTHE WALLS OF CARCASSONNE

“Arrête, voyageurs! Le Maître des humainsA fait descendre ici la force et la lumière.Il a dit au Pasteur: Accomplis mon dessein,Et le Pasteur des monts a brisé la barrière.”

Surely this is a more noble monument to the Abbé Arnaud than that in marble at Quillan. The actual “Gorge” is not more than fifteen hundred metres in length, but even this impresses itself more profoundly by reason ofthe great height of the rock walls on either side of the gushing river. At Saint Martin-Lys, midway between Quillan and Axat, is the church where the Abbé Arnaud served a long and useful life as the pastor of his mountain flock.

Axat, at the upper end of the Gorge, will become a mountain summer resort of the very first rank if a boom ever strikes it; but at present it is simply a delightful little, unspoiled Pyrenean town, where one eats brook trout and ortolans in the dainty little Hotel Saurel-Labat, and is lulled to sleep by the purling waters of the Aude directly beneath his windows. This quiet little town has a population of three hundred, and is blessed with an electric supply so abundant and so cheap, apparently, that the good lady who runs the all-satisfying little hotel does not think it worth while to turn off the lamps even in the daytime. This is not remarkable when one considers that the electricity is a home-made product of the power of the swift flowing Aude, which rushes by Axat’s dooryards at five kilometres an hour.

AXATAXAT

AXAT

Two kilometres above the town are the Gorges de St. Georges, also with a superb roadway burrowed out of the rock. Here is thegiganticusine-hydro-électriqueof 6,000 horse-power obtained from a three-hundred-foot fall of water. That such things could be, here in this unheard of little corner of the Pyrenees, is far from the minds of most European travellers who know only the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen. Axat has a ruined château on the height above the town which is a wonderful ruin although it has no recorded history. To imagine its romance, however, is not a difficult procedure if you know the Pyrenees and their history. Its attractions are indeed many; but it would be a paradise for artists who did not want to go far from their inn to search their subjects. There are in addition a quaint old thirteenth-century church, a magnificently arched stone bridge, and innumerable twisting vaulted passages high aloft near the château.

Away above Axat is the plateau region known as the Capcir, thought to be the ancient bed of a mountain lake. It is closed on all sides by a great fringe of mountains, and is comparatively thickly inhabited because of its particularly good pasture lands; and has the reputation of being the coldest inhabited region in France, though it may well divide this honourwith the Alpine valleys of the Tarentaise in Savoie. One passes from the Capcir into the Cerdagne lying to the eastward by the Col de Casteillon.

NEVERwas there an architectural glory like that of Carcassonne. Most mediæval fortified bourgs have been transformed out of all semblance to their former selves, but not so Carcassonne. It lives to-day as in the past, transformed or restored to be sure, but still the very ideal of a walled city of the Middle Ages.

The stress and cares of commerce and the super-civilization of these latter days have built up a new and ugly commercial city beyond the walls, leavingLa Citéa lonely dull place where the very spirit of mediævalism stalks the streets and passages, and the ghosts of a past time people the château, the donjon, and the surrounding buildings which once sheltered counts and prelates and chevaliers and courtly ladies. The old cathedral, too, dedicated to St. Nazaire, as pure a Gothic gem as may be found outside Sainte Chapelle in Paris, is as much of the past as if it existed only in memory, for services are now carried on in agreat, gaunt church in the lower town, leaving this magnificent structure unpeopled and alone.

Carcassonne, as seen from the low-lying plain of the valley of the Aude, makes a most charmingmotiffor a picture. In the purple background are the Pyrenees, setting off the crenelated battlements of walls, towers and donjon in genuine fairy-land fashion. It is almost too ethereal to be true, as seen through the dim mist of an early May morning. “A wonderful diadem of chiselled stone set in the forehead of the Pyrenees,” an imaginative Frenchman called it. It would not be wise to attempt to improve on this metaphor.

This world’s wonder—for it is a world’s wonder, though not usually included in the magic seven—has enchanted author, poet, painter, historian and architect. Who indeed could help giving it the homage due, once having read Viollet-le-Duc’s description in his “Dictionnaire Raisonée d’Architecture,” or Nadaud’s lines beginning:—

“Je n’ai jamais vu Carcassonne.”

Five thousand people from all over the world pass its barbican in a year, and yet how few one recalls among his acquaintances who have ever been there.

It began to dawn upon the French away back in 1835, at the instigation of Prosper Merimée, that they had within their frontiers the most wonderfully impressive walled city still above ground. It was the work of fifty years to clear its streets and ramparts of a conglomerate mass of parasite structures which had been built into the old fabric, and to reconstruct the roofings and copings of walls and houses to an approximation of what they must once have been.

Carcassonne is not very accessible to the casual tourist to southern France who thinks to laze away a dull November or January at Pau, Biarritz, or even on the Riviera. It is not in the least inaccessible, but it is not on the direct line to anywhere, unless one is en route from Bordeaux to Marseilles, or is making a Pyrenean trip. At any rate it is the best value for the money that one will get by going a couple of hundred kilometres out of his way in the whole circuit of France. By all means study the map, gentle reader, and see if you can’t figure it out somehow so that you may get to Carcassonne.

Carcassonne, the present city, dates from the days of the good Saint Louis, but all interest lies with its elder sister,La Cité, a bouquet ofwalls and towers, just across the eight-hundred-year-old bridge over the Aude.

Close to the feudal city, across the Pont-Vieux, was the barbican, a work completed under Saint Louis. It gave immediate access to the city of antiquity, and defended the approaches to the château after the manner of an outpost, which it really was. This one learns from the old plans, but the barbican itself disappeared in 1816.

Plan de la Cite de Carcassonne

Carcassonne was a most effective stronghold and guarded two great routes which passed directly through it, one the Route de Spain, and the other running from Toulouse to the Mediterranean, the same that scorching automobilists“let out” on to-day as they go from one gaming-table at Monte Carlo to another at Biarritz.

The Romans first made Carcassonne a stronghold; then, from the fifth to the eighth centuries, came the Visigoths. The Saracens held it for twenty-five years and their traces are visible to-day. After the Saracens it came to Charlemagne, and at his death to the Vicomtes de Carcassonne, independent masters of a neighbouring region, who owed allegiance to nobody. This was the commencement of the French dynasty of Trencavel, and the early years of the eleventh century saw the court of Carcassonne brilliant with troubadours, minstrels andCours d’Amour. TheCours d’Amourof Adelaide, wife of Roger Trencavel, and niece of the king of France, were famous throughout the Midi. The followers in her train—minstrels, troubadours and lords and ladies—were many, and no one knew or heard of the fair chatelaine of Carcassonne without being attracted to her.

Simon de Montfort pillaged Carcassonne when raiding the country round about, but meanwhile the oldCitéwas growing in strength and importance, and many were the sieges it underwent which had no effect whatever on itswalls of stone. All epochs are writ large in this monument of mediævalism. Until the conquest of Roussillon, Carcassonne’s fortress held its proud position as a frontier stronghold; then, during long centuries, it was all but abandoned, and the modern city grew and prospered in a matter-of-fact way, though never approaching in the least detail the architectural magnificence of its hill-top sister.

The military arts of the Middle Ages are as well exemplified at Carcassonne as can anywhere be seen out of books and engravings. The entrance is strongly protected by many twistings and turnings of walled alleys, producing a veritable maze. The Porte d’Aude is the chief entrance, and is accessible only to those on foot. Verily, the walls seem to close behind the visitor as he makes his way to the topmost height, up the narrow cobble-paved lanes. Four great gates, one within another, and four walls have to be passed before one is properly within the outer defences. To enter theCitéthere is yet another encircling wall to be passed.

Carcassonne is practically a double fortress; the distance around the outer walls is a kilometre and a half and the inner wall is a full kilometre in circumference. Between thesefortifying ramparts unroll the narrow ribbons of roadway which a foe would find impossible to pass.

The Walls of CarcassonneThe Walls of Carcassonne

The Walls of Carcassonne

Finally, within the last line of defence, on the tiny wall-surrounded plateau, rises the old Château de Trencavel, its high coiffed towers rising into the azure sky of the Midi in most spectacular fashion. On the crest of the inner wall is a little footpath, known in warlike times as thechemin de ronde, punctuated by forty-eight towers. From such an unobstructed balcony a marvellous surrounding panorama unrolls itself; at one’s feet lie the plain and the river; further off can be seen the mountains and sometimes the silver haze shimmering over the Mediterranean fifty miles away. Centuries of civilization are at one’s hand and within one’s view.

A curious tower—one of the forty-eight—spans the two outer walls. It is known as the Tour l’Évêque and possesses a very beautiful glass window. Here Viollet-le-Duc established his bureau when engaged on the reconstruction of this great work.

Almost opposite, quite on the other side of theCité, is the Porte Narbonnaise, the only way by which a carriage may enter. One rises gently to the plateau, after first passing thismonumental gateway, which is flanked by two towers. Over the Porte Narbonnaise is a rude stone figure of Dame Carcas, the titular goddess of the city. Quaint and curious this figure is, but possessed of absolutely no artistic aspect. Below it are the simple words, “Sum Carcas.”

The Tour Bernard, just to the right of the Porte Narbonnaise, is a mediæval curiosity. The records tell that it has served as a chicken-coop, a dog-kennel, a pigeon loft, and as the habitation of the guardian who had charge of the gate. Here in the walls of this great tower may still be seen solid stone shot firmly imbedded where they first struck. The next tower, the Tour de Benazet, was the arsenal, and the Tour Notre Dame, above the Porte de Rodez, was the scene of more than one “inquisitorial” burning of Christians.

The second line of defence and its towers is quite as curiously interesting as the first.

From within, the Porte Narbonnaise was protected in a remarkable manner, the Château Narbonnaise commanding with its own barbican and walls every foot of the way from the gate to the château proper. Besides, there were iron chains stretched across the passage, low vaulted corridors, wolf-traps (or somethingvery like them) set in the ground, and loop-holes in the roofs overhead for pouring down boiling oil or melted lead on the heads of any invaders who might finally have got so far as this.

The château itself, so safely ensconced within the surrounding walls of theCité, follows the common feudal usage as to its construction. Its outer walls are strengthened and defended by a series of turrets, and contain within acour d’honneur, the place of reunion for the armour-knights and the contestants in the Courts of Love.

On the ground floor of this dainty bit of mediævalism—which looks livable even to-day—were the seigneurial apartments, the chapel and various domestic offices. Beneath were vast stores and magazines. A smaller courtyard was at the rear, leading to the fencing-school and the kitchens, two important accessories of a feudal château which seem always to go side by side.

On the first and second floors were the lodgings of the vicomtes and their suites. The great donjon contained a circular chamber where were held great solemnities such as the signing of treaties, marriage acts and the like. To the west of thecour d’honneurwere thebarracks of the garrison. All the paraphernalia and machinery of a great mediæval court were here perfectly disposed. Verily, no such story-telling feudal château exists as that of the Château de Narbonnais of the Trencavels in the oldCitéof Carcassonne.

The Place du Château, immediately in front, was a general meeting-place, while a little to the left in a smaller square has always been the well of bubbling spring-water which on more than one occasion saved the dwellers within from dying of thirst.

Perhaps, as at Pompeii, there are great treasures here still buried underground, but diligent search has found nothing but a few arrowheads or spear heads, some pieces of money (money was even coined here) and a few fragments of broken copper and pottery utensils.

Finally, to sum up the opinion of one and all who have viewed Carcassonne, there is not a city in all Europe more nearly complete in ancient constructions, or in better preservation, than this old mediævalCité. Centuries of history have left indelible records in stone, and they have been defiled less than in any other mediæval monument of such a magnitude.

Gustave Nadaud’s lines on Carcassonne comevery near to being the finest topographical verses ever penned. Certainly there is no finer expression of truth and sentiment with regard to any architectural monument existing than the simple realism of the speech of the old peasant of Limoux:—

“‘I’m sixty years; I’m getting old;I’ve done hard work through all my life,Though yet could never grasp and holdMy heart’s desire through all my strife.I know quite well that here belowAll one’s desires are granted none;My wish will ne’er fulfilment know,I never have seen Carcassonne.”. . . . . . . . . .“‘They say that all the days are thereAs Sunday is throughout the week:New dress, and robes all white and fairUnending holidays bespeak.’. . . . . . . . . .“‘O! God, O! God, O! pardon me,If this my prayer should’st Thou offend!Things still too great for us we’d seeIn youth or near one’s long life end.My wife once and my son Aignan,As far have travelled as Narbonne,My grandson has seen Perpignan,But I have not seen Carcassonne.’”

What emotion, what devotion these lines express, and what a picture they paint of the simple faiths and hopes of man. He never didsee Carcassonne, this old peasant of Limoux; the following lines tell why:—

“Thus did complain once near LimouxA peasant hard bowed down with age.I said to him, ‘My friend, we’ll goTogether on this pilgrimage.’We started with the morning tide;But God forgive. We’d hardly goneOur road half over, ere he died.He never did see Carcassonne.”

In August, 1898, a great fête and illumination was given in the oldCité de Carcassonne. All the illustrious Languedoçians alive, it would seem, were there, including theCadets de Gascogne, among them Armand Sylvestre, D’Esparbès, Jean Rameau, Emil Pouvillon, Benjamin Constant, Eugène Falguière, Mercier, Jean-Paul Laurens, et als.

All the artifice of the modern pyrotechnist made of the old city, at night, a reproduction of what it must have been in times of war and stress. It was the most splendid fireworks exhibition the world has seen since Nero fiddled away at burning Rome. “La Cité Rouge,” Sylvestre called it. “Oh, l’impression inoubliable! Oh! le splendide tableau! It was so perfectly beautiful, so completely magnificent! I have seen the Kremlin thus illuminated; Ihave seen old Nuremberg under the same conditions, but I declare upon my honour never have I seen so beautiful a sight as the illuminations of Carcassonne.”

One view of theCiténot often had is from the Montagne Noire, where, from its supreme height of twelve hundred metres (the Pic de Nore) there is to be seen such a bird’s-eye view as was never conceived by the imagination. On the horizon are the blue peaks of the Pyrenees cutting the sky with astonishing clearness; to the eastward is the Mediterranean; and northwards are the Cevennes; while immediately below is a wide-spread plain peopled here and there with tiny villages and farms all clustering around the solid walls of Carcassonne—theVilleof to-day and theCitéof the past.

Over the blue hills, southward from Carcassonne, lies Limoux. Limoux is famous for three things, its twelfth-century church, its fifteenth-century bridge and its “blanquette de Limoux,” less ancient, but quite as enduring.

If one’s hunger is ripe, he samples the last first, at the table d’hôte at the Hotel du Pigeon. “Blanquette de Limoux” is simply an ordinarily good white, sparkling wine, no better than Saumur, but much better than the hocks which have lately become popular in England,and much, much better than American champagne. The town itself is charming, and the immediate environs, the peasants’ cottages and the vineyards, recall those verses of Nadaud’s about that old son of the soil who prayed each year that he might make the journey over the hills to Carcassonne (it is only twenty-four kilometres) and refresh his old eyes with a sight of that glorious mediæval monument.

North of Carcassonne, between the city and the peak of the Montagne Noire, is the old château of Lastours, a ruined glory of the days when only a hill-top situation and heavy walls meant safety and long life.

THEComté de Foix and its civilization goes back to prehistoric, Gallic and Roman times. This much we know, but what the detailed events of these periods were, we know not. Archæology alone, by means of remaining monuments in stone, must supply that which history omits. The primitives of the stone age lived mostly in caverns, but here they lived in some species of rude huts or houses. This at any rate is the supposition. With the Romans came civic importance; and fortified towns and cities sprang up here and there of which existing remains, as at St. Lizier, tell a plain story.

The principal historical events of the early years of the Middle Ages were religious in motive. Written records are few, however, and are mostly legendary accounts. Dynasties of great families began to be founded in the ninth century; and each region took on different manners and customs. The Couserans, a dismemberment of Comminges, became practicallyGascon; while Foix cast off from Toulouse, had its own development. Victor Balaguer, the poet, expresses this better than most historians when he says: “Provence et Pyrénées, s’écriet-il, portent le deuil du monde latin. Le jour où tombèrent ceux de Foix tomba aussi la Provence.”

The resistance of the counts in the famous wars of the Albigeois only provoked the incursion of the troops of the cruel Simon de Montfort. The Comte de Foix fell back finally on his strong château; and, on the sixteenth of June, 1229, in the presence of the papal legate, representative of the king of France, Roger-Bernard II made his submission without reserve.

In 1272, under Comte Roger-Bernard III, the Château de Foix underwent a siege at the hands of Philippe-le-Hardi; and, at the end of three days, seeing the preponderance of numbers against him, and being doubtful of his allies, he surrendered. By marriage with Marguerite de Moncade, daughter of the Vicomte de Béarn, he inherited the two important fiefs of Catalogne and Béarn et Bigorre, thus preparing the way for possession of the throne of Navarre. By the thirteenth century the great feudal families of the Midi were dwindling innumbers, and it was this marriage of a Comte de Foix with the heiress of Béarn which caused practically the extinction of one.

The modern department of the Ariège, of which the ancient Comté de Foix formed the chief part, possesses few historical monuments dating before the Middle Ages. There are numerous residential châteaux scattered about, and the most splendid of them all is at Foix itself. Fine old churches and monasteries, and quaint old houses are numerous; yet it is a region less exploited by tourists than any other in France.

Not all these historic shrines remain to-day unspoiled and untouched. Many of them were destroyed in the Revolution, but their sites and their ruins remain. The mountain slopes of this region are thickly strewn with watch-towers and observatories; and though all but fallen to the ground they form a series of connecting historical links which only have to be recognized to be read. The towers or châteaux of Quié, Tarascon-sur-Ariège, Gudanne, Lourdat and Vic-Dessos are almost unknown to most travellers. They deserve to become better known, however, especially Lourdat, one of the most spectacularly endowed château ruins extant.

The fourteenth century was the most brilliant in the history of Foix. These were the days of Gaston Phœbus; and the description of his reception of Charles VI of France at Mazères, as given by the chroniclers, indicates an incomparable splendour and magnificence. Gaston Phœbus, like Henri de Béarn, was what might be called a good liver. Here is how he spent his day—when he was not warring or building castles. He rose at noon and after a mass he dined. Usually there were a great number of dishes; and, on really great occasions, as on a fête orfestin, the incredible number of two hundred and fifty. These princes of the Pyrenees loved good cheer, and their usage was to surcharge the tables and themselves with the good things until the results were uncomfortable. Gaston’s two sons, Yvain and Gratain, usually stood behind him at table, and the youngest son, another Gaston, first tried all the dishes before his august father ate of them. He was weak and sickly, a “mild and melancholy figure,” and no wonder! The feasting terminated, Gaston and his court would pass into the Salle de Parlement, “where many things were debated,” as the chroniclers put it. Soon entered the minstrels and troubadours, while in the courts there were trials ofskill between the nobles of one house and another, stone throwing, throwing the spear, and thejeu de paume. The count—“toujours magnifique” (no chronicler of the time neglects to mention that fact)—distributed rewards to the victors. After this there was more eating, or at least more drinking.

When he was not sleeping or eating or amusing himself, or conducting such affairs as he could not well depute to another, such as the planning and building of castles, Gaston occupied himself, like many other princes of his time, with belles-lettres and poesy. He had foursecrétairesto do his writing; and it is possible that they may have written much which is attributed to him, if the art of employing literary “ghosts” was known in that day. He composedchansons,ballades,rondeauxandvirelais, and insisted on reading them aloud himself, forbidding any one to make a comment on them. How many another author would like to have the same prerogative!

Gaston Phœbus de Foix, so named because of his classic beauty, was undoubtedly a great author in his day. This bold warrior wrote a book on the manners and usage of hunting in mediæval times, entitled the “Miroir de Phœbus;” and, while it might not pass musteramong the masterpieces of later French literature, it was a notable work for its time and literally a mirror of contemporary men and manners in the hunting field.

Gaston de Foix was another gallant noble. He died at the age of twenty-four at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512. Jacques Fournier, who became Pope Benoit XII, also came from Foix.

The honour of being the most celebrated of the Counts of Foix may well be divided by Gaston Phœbus (1343-1390) and Henri Quatre (1553-1610). The latter was the last of the famous counts of the province; and he it was who united it with the royal domain of France, thus sinking its identity for ever, though his predecessors had done their utmost to keep its independence alive.

During the Hundred Years War the Comtes de Foix, masters of the entire middle chain of the Pyrenees, were the strongest power in the southwest; and above all were they powerful because of their alliances and relations with the Spanish princes, whose friendship and aid were greatly to be desired, for their support meant success for their allies. This is proven, absolutely, from the fact that, when the English were ultimately driven from France, it was through the aid and support of Gaston Phœbushimself and his successors, Archambaud, Jean I and Gaston IV.

The fifteenth century saw the apogee of the house of Foix. One of its princes married Madeleine de France, sister of Louis XI. The sixteenth century saw sad times during a long civil war of more than thirty years duration. War among the members of a household or among one’s own people is really an inexcusable thing. In the Comté the Abbey of Boulbonne was destroyed. At Pamiers all the religious edifices were razed; and the Abbey of St. Volusien at Foix, the special pride of the counts for ages, was destroyed by fire.

Calm came for a period under the reign of Henri IV, at Paris; but, after his death, local troubles and dissensions broke out again, inspired and instigated by the wily Duc de Rohan, which culminated at Pamiers, where the great Condé and Montmorenci appeared at the head of their troops.

The peace of Alais ended this final struggle; and, to assure the security of the country, Richelieu gave the order to dismantle all the walls and ramparts of the fortified places in the Comté, and all the châteaux-forts as well. This was done forthwith, and that is why many a mediæval château in these parts is in ruinsto-day. The Château de Foix, by reason of its dignity, was allowed to keep its towers and battlemented walls.

For a hundred and fifty years, that is up to the Revolution, Foix was comparatively tranquil. Under the reign of Louis XIV, however, the region saw the frequent passage of troops and warlike stores as they came and went to the Spanish wars. This nearly ruined many dwellers in town and country by reason of the tax they had to pay in money and provisions.

Like the Basques and the Béarnais the inhabitants of the Ariège, the descendants of the old adherents of the Comtes de Foix, bear many traces of their former independence and liberty. Civilization and their easy, comfortable manner of living have not made of them a very robust race, but they are possessed of much fairness of face and figure and gentleness of manner.

The smugglers of feudal times, and considerably later times for that matter, were the pest of the region. It was rude, hard work smuggling wines or tobacco over the mountains, in and out of Spain, and its wages were uncertain, but there were large numbers who embarked on it in preference to grazing flocks andherds or engaging in other agricultural pursuits.

It was hard work for the smugglers of Foix to get their burdens up the mountains, but they had a custom of rolling their load up into great balls bound around with wool and thongs and rolling them down the other side. Thus the labour was halved. TheRomany chielor gypsy adopted the contraband business readily; and with the competition of the French and Spanish, there were lively times on the frontier between Foix and Gascogne and Spain and Andorra.

M. Thiers recounts an adventure in an auberge of the Pyrenees with such a crew of bandits, and thought himself lucky to escape with his life.

The chief of the band, as the travellers were all sitting around the great log fire, began cleaning his pipe with a long poignard-like knife which, he volunteered, was ready to do other service than whittling bread or tobacco if need be. The night passed off safely enough by reason of the arrival of a squad of gendarmes, but the next night a whole house full of travellers were murdered on the same spot.

The roads of the old Comté de Foix, a very important thing for many who travel by automobile,are throughout excellent and extensive. There are fourteen Routes Nationales and Départementales crossing in every direction. The highway from Toulouse to Madrid runs via St. Girons and Bayonne into Andorra by way of the valley of the Ariège, and to Barcelona via Perpignan and the Col de Perthus.

The valley of the Ariège, to a large extent included in the Comté de Foix, has a better preserved historical record than its neighbours on the east and west.

In the ninth century the ruling comte was allied with the houses of Barcelona and Carcassonne. His residence was at Foix from this time up to the Revolution; and his rule embraced the valley of the Hers, of which Mirepoix was the principal place, the mountain region taken from Catalogne, and a part of the lowlands which had been under the scrutiny of the Comtes de Toulouse.

FOIX, of all the Préfectures of France of to-day, is the least cosmopolitan. Privas, Mende and Digne are poor, dead, dignified relics of the past; but Foix is the dullest of all, although it is a very gem of a smiling, diffident little wisp of a city, green and flowery and astonishingly picturesque. It has character, whatever it may lack in progressiveness, and the brilliant colouring is a part of all the cities of the South.

Above the swift flowing Ariège in their superb setting of mountain and forest are the towers and parapets of the old château, in itself enough to make the name and fame of any city.

Architecturally the remains of the Château de Foix do not, perhaps, rank very high, though they are undeniably imposing; and it will take a review of Froissart, and the other old chroniclers of the life and times of the magnificent Gaston Phœbus, to revive it in all its glory. A great state residence something more than amere feudal château, it does not at all partake of the aspect of a château-fort. It was this last fact that caused the Comtes de Foix, when, by marriage, they had also become seigneurs of Béarn, to abandon it for Mazères, or their establishments at Pau or Orthez.

Foix nevertheless remained a proud capital, first independent, then as part of the province of Navarre, then as a province of the Royaume de France; and, finally, as the Préfecture of the Département of Ariège. The population in later times has grown steadily, but never has the city approached the bishopric of Pamiers, just to the northward, in importance.

Many towns in this region have a decreasing population. The great cities like Toulouse and Bordeaux draw upon the youth of the country for domestic employment; and, lately, as chauffeurs and manicurists, and in comparison to these inducements their native towns can offer very little.

If one is to believe the tradition of antiquity the “Rocher de Foix,” the tiny rock plateau upon which the château sits, served as an outpost when the Phoceans built the primitive château upon the same site. Says a Renaissance historian: “On the peak of one of nature’s wonders, on a rock, steep and inaccessibleon all sides, was situated one of the most ancient fortresses of our land.”

In Roman times the site still held its own as one of importance and impregnability. A representation of the château as it then was is to be seen on certain coins of the period. This establishes its existence as previous to the coming of the Visigoths in the beginning of the sixth century. The first written records of the Château de Foix date from the chronicles of 1002, when Roger-le-Vieux, Comte de Carcassonne, left to his heir, Bernard-Roger, “La Terre et le Château de Foix.”

The Château de Foix owes its reputation to its astonishingly theatrical site as much as to the historic memories which it evokes, though it is with good right that it claims a legendary renown among the feudal monuments of the Pyrenees. All roads leading to Foix give a long vista of its towered and crenelated château sitting proudly on its own littlemonticuleof rock beside the Ariège. Its history begins with that of the first Comtes de Foix, the first charter making mention thereof being the last will and testament of Roger-Bernard, the first count, who died in 1002.

During the wars against the Albigeois the château was attacked by Simon de Montfortthree times, in 1210, 1212, 1213, but always in vain. Though the surrounding faubourgs were pillaged and burned the château itself did not succumb. It did not even take fire, for its rocky base gave no hold to the flames which burned so fiercely around it.

The most important event of the château’s history happened in 1272 when the Comte Roger-Bernard III rebelled against the authority of the Seneschal-Royal of Toulouse. To punish so rebellious a vassal, Philippe-le-Hardi came forthwith to Foix at the head of an army, and himself undertook the siege of the château. At the end of three days the count succumbed, with the saying on his lips that it was useless to cut great stones and build them up into fortresses only to have them razed by the first besiegers that came along. Whatever the qualifications of the third Roger-Bernard were, consistent perseverance was not one of them.

Just previous to 1215, after a series of intrigues with the church authorities, the château became a dependence of the Pope of Rome; but at a council of the Lateran the Comte Raymond-Roger demanded the justice that was his, and the new Pope Honorius III made over the edifice to its rightful proprietor.

During the wars of religion the château wasthe storm-centre of great military operations, of which the town itself became the unwilling victim. In 1561 the Huguenots became masters of the city.

Under Louis XIII it was proposed to raze the château, as was being done with others in the Midi, but the intervening appeal of the governor saved its romantic walls to posterity. In the reign of Louis XIV the towers of the château were used as archives, a prison and a military barracks, and since the Revolution—for a part of the time at least—it has served as a house of detention. When the tragic events of the Reformation set all the Midi ablaze, and Richelieu and his followers demolished most of the châteaux and fortresses of the region, Foix was exempted by special orders of the Cardinal-Minister himself.

Another war cloud sprang up on the horizon in 1814, by reason of the fear of a Spanish invasion; and it was not a bogey either, for in 1811 and 1812 the Spaniards had already penetrated, by a quickly planned raid, into the high valley of the Ariège.

In 1825 civil administration robbed this fine old example of mediæval architecture of many of those features usually exploited by antiquarians. To increase its capacity for shelteringcriminal prisoners, barracks and additions—mere shacks many of them—were built; and the original outlines were lost in a maze of meaningless roof-tops. Finally, a quarter of a century later, the rubbish was cleared away; and, before the end of the century, restoration of the true and faithful kind had made of this noble mediæval monument a vivid reminder of its past feudal glory quite in keeping with its history.

Ground Plan of the Château de FoixGround Plan of the Château de Foix

Ground Plan of the Château de Foix

The actual age of the monument covers many epochs. The two square towers and the main edifice, as seen to-day, are anterior to the thirteenth century, as is proved by the design in the seals of the Comtes de Foix of 1215 and 1241 now in theBibliothèque Nationalein Paris.In the fourteenth century these towers were strengthened and enlarged with the idea of making them more effective for defence and habitation.

CHÂTEAU DE FOIXCHÂTEAU DE FOIX

CHÂTEAU DE FOIX

The escutcheons of Foix, Béarn and Comminges, to be seen in the great central tower, indicate that it, too, goes back at least to the end of the fourteenth century, when Eleanore de Comminges, the mother of Gaston Phœbus, ruled the Comté.

Key of the Vaulting, Château de Foix. Showing the Arms of the Comtes de FoixKey of the Vaulting, Château de Foix.Showing the Arms of the Comtes de Foix

Key of the Vaulting, Château de Foix.Showing the Arms of the Comtes de Foix

The donjon orTour Rondearises on the west to a height of forty-two metres; and will be remarked by all familiar with these sermons in stone scattered all over France as one of the most graceful. Legend attributes it to Gaston Phœbus; but all authorities do not agree as to this. The window and door openings, the mouldings, the accolade over the entrance doorway and the machicoulis all denote that they belong to the latter half of the fifteenth century. These, however, may be later interpolations.

Originally one entered the château from exactly the opposite side from that used to-day. The slope leading up to the rock and swinging around in front of the town is an addition of recent years. Formerly the plateau was gained by a rugged path which finally entered the precincts of the fortress through a rectangular barbican.

Finally, to sum it up, the pleasant, smiling, trim little city of Foix, and its château rising romantically above it, form a delightful prospect. Well preserved, well protected, and for ever free from further desecration, the Château de Foix is as nobly impressive and glorious a monument of the Middle Ages as may be foundin France, as well as chief record of the gallant days of the Comtes de Foix.

Foix’ Palais de Justice, built back to back with the rock foundations of the château, is itself a singular piece of architecture containing a small collection of local antiquities. This old Maison des Gouverneurs, now the Palais de Justice, is a banal, unlovely thing, regardless of its high-sounding titles.

In the Bibliothèque, in the Hôtel de Ville, there are eight manuscripts in folio, dating from the fifteenth century, and coming from the Cathedral of Mirepoix. They are exquisitely illuminated with miniatures and initials after the manner of the best work of the time.

It was that great hunter and warrior, Gaston Phœbus who gave the Château de Foix its greatest lustre.

It was here that this most brilliant and most celebrated of the counts passed his youth; and it was from here that he set out on his famous expedition to aid his brother knights of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. At Gaston’s orders the Comte d’Armagnac was imprisoned here, to be released after the payment of a heavy ransom. As to the motive for this particular act authorities differ as to whether it was the fortunes of war or mere brigandage.

They lived high, the nobles of the old days, and Froissart recounts a banquet at which he had assisted at Foix, in the sixteenth century, as follows:—

“And this was what I saw in the Comté de Foix: The Count left his chamber to sup at midnight, the way to the great salle being led by twelve varlets, bearing twelve illumined torches. The great hall was crowded with knights and equerries, and those who would supped, saying nothing meanwhile. Mostly game seemed to be the favourite viand, and the legs and wings only of fowl were eaten. Music and chants were the invariable accompaniment, and the company remained at table until after two in the morning. Little or nothing was drunk.”

Froissart’s description of the table is simple enough, but he develops into melodrama when he describes how the count killed his own son on the same night—a tragic ending indeed to a brilliant banquet. “‘Ha! traitor,’ the Comte said in thepatois, as he entered his sleeping son’s chamber; ‘why do you not sup with us? He is surely a traitor who will not join at table.’ And with a swift, but gentle drawing of hiscoutel(knife) across his successor’s throat he calmly went back to supper.” Truly, there were high doings when knights were bold and barons held their sway. They could combat successfully everything but treachery; but the mere suspicion of that prompted them to take time by the forelock and become traitors themselves.

Foix has a fête on the eighth and ninth of September each year, which is the delight of all the people of the country round about. Its chief centre is the Allées de Vilote, a great tree-shaded promenade at the base of the château. It is brilliantly lively in the daytime, and fairy-like at night, with its trees all hung with great globes of light.

A grand ball is the chief event, and the “Quadrille Officiel” is opened with the maire and the préfet at the head. After this comesla fête générale, when the happy southrons know no limit to their gaieties. There are three great shaded promenades, and in each is a ball with its attendant music. It is a pandemonium; and one has to be habituated to distinguish the notes of one blaring band from the others. The central park is reserved for the country folk, that on the left for the town folk, and that on the right for the nobility. This, at any rate, was the disposition in times past, and some sort of distinction is still made.

In suburban Foix, out on the road to Pamiers, is the little village of St. Jean-de-Vergues. It has a history, of course, but not much else. It is a mere spot on the map, a mere cluster of houses on theGrande Routeand nothing more. In the days of the Comte Roger-Bernard, however, when he would treat with the king of France, and showed his willingness to become a vassal, its inhabitants held out beyond all others for an “indépendance comtale.” They didn’t get it, to be sure, but with the arrival of Henri Quatre on the throne of France, the vassalage became more friendly than enforced.

THEentire valley of the Ariège, from the Val d’Andorre until it empties into the Garonne at Toulouse, contains as many historic and romantic reminders as that of any river of the same length in France.

Saverdun and Mazères, between Toulouse and Pamiers, and perhaps fifty kilometres north of Foix, must be omitted from no historical trip in these parts. Saverdun sits close beside one of the few remaining columns which formerly marked the boundary between Languedoc and Gascogne, a veritable historical guide-post. It was one of the former fortified towns of the Comté de Foix. It is an unimportant and unattractive enough place to-day, if a little country town of France can ever be called unattractive, but it is the head centre of innumerable châteaux and country houses of other days hidden away on the banks of the Ariège. Mostly they are without a traceable history, but everything points to the fact thatthey played an important part in the golden days of chivalry, and such names as l’Avocat-Vieux, Frayras, Larlenque, Madron, Pauliac and Le Vigne—the oldtime manor of the family of Mauvasin—will suggest much to any who know well their mediæval history.

A diligence runs to-day from Saverdun to Mazères, the birthplace of the gorgeous and gallant Gaston of Foix, the hero of Ravenna. Mazères is a most ancient little town, built on the banks of a small river, the Hers, and in the thirteenth century was surrounded by important fortifications, now mostly gone to build up modern garden walls. Around the old ramparts has been laid out a series of encircling boulevards, which, as an expression of civic improvement, is far and away ahead of the squares and circles of new western towns in America. The encircling boulevard is one, if not the chief, charm of very many French towns.

The ruins of the ancient château where was born the celebrated Gaston are still seen, but nothing habitable is left to suggest the luxury amid which the youth was brought up. Near by are the châteaux of Nogarède and Nassaure, each of them reminiscent of family names writ large in the history of Foix.

Another dozen kilometres southward towards Foix is Pamiers. It is extremely probable that provincial France has changed its manners considerably since the Revolution, but one can hardly believe of Pamiers, to-day a delightful little valley town, all green and red and brown, that a traveller with a jaundiced eye once called it “an ugly, stinking, ill-built hole with an inn—of sorts,” This is not the aspect of the city, nor does it describe the Hôtel Catala.

Pamiers owes its origin to the erection of a feudal château by Comte Roger II on his return from the Holy Land, and which he calledApameaorApamia, in memory of his visit toApaméein Syria. Evolution has readily transformed the name into Pamiers. Virtually, so far as its lands went, the place belonged to a neighbouring abbey, but as the monks were forced to call upon the Comtes de Foix to aid them in protecting their property from the Comtes de Carcassonne, the title rights soon passed to the ruling house of Foix. In 1628 Condé pillaged and sacked the city, and not a vestige now remains of its once proud château, save such portions as may have been built into and hidden in other structures. The site of the old château is preserved in the memory only by the name of Castellat, which has been givento a singularly beautiful little park and promenade.

It was in the thirteenth century that a Bishop of Pamiers, the legate of Pope Boniface VIII, insulted Philippe-le-Bel in full audience of his parlément. The king, resentful, drove him from the council, and a Bull of Pope Boniface delivered the bishop to an ecclesiastical tribunal. So far, so good, but Boniface issued another Bull demanding that the king of France submit to papal power in matters temporal as well as in matters spiritual. Thus a pretty quarrel ensued, beginning with the famous letter from the king, which opened thus: “Philippe, by the grace of God, King of the French, to Boniface, the pretended Pope, has little or no reason for homage....”

Pamiers itself is a dull little provincial cathedral town, lying low in a circle of surrounding hills. Its churches are historically famous, and architecturally varied and beautiful, and the octagonal belfry of its cathedral (1512), in the style known as “Gothic-Toulousain,” is particularly admirable.

Mirepoix, a dozen kilometres east of Pamiers, is interesting. The Seigneurie of Mirepoix became an appanage of Guy de Levis, maréchal in the army of Simon de Montfortin the thirteenth century, but the legislators of Revolutionary times, disregarding the usage of five centuries, coupled the control of the affairs of the region with those of Foix, from which it had indeed been separated long ages before.

Mirepoix has, nevertheless, an individuality and a history quite its own. In 1317 it was made a bishopric, and was under the immediate control of the Seneschalship of Carcassonne. It had, by parent right, a certain attachment for Foix, but by the popular consent of its people none at all; thus it lay practically under the sheltering wing of Languedoc.

The descendants of Guy de Levis were distinguished in the army, in diplomacy and held many public offices of trust at Paris. Under Louis XV the last representative of the family was made a “Duc, Maréchal de France et Gouverneur de Languedoc.” It was his cousin, François de Levis-Ajac (from whom Levis opposite Quebec got its name), who became also Maréchal de France, and illustrious by reason of his defence of Canada.

The Château de Montségur, in the valley of the Hers, was the scene of the last stand of the Albigeois tracked to their death by the inquisitors.

Just westward of Foix is La Bastide-de-Serou, founded in 1254, another of those ancient bastides with which this part of the Midi was covered in mediæval times. To-day it is a mere nothing on the map, and not much more in reality, a dull, sad town, whose only liveliness comes from the exploitations of a company whose business it is to dig phosphate and bauxite from the hillsides round about.

Below La Bastide is the Château de Bourdette, charmingly set about with vines in a genuine pastoral fashion. For a neighbour, not far away, there is also the Château de Rodes, set in the midst of a forest of mountain ash and quite isolated. Either, if they are ever put on the market (for they are inhabitable to-day), would make a good retiring spot for one who wanted to escape the strenuous cares and hurly-burly of city life.

South of Foix is Tarascon-sur-Ariège, a name which has a familiar sound to lovers of fiction and readers of Daudet. It was not at Tarascon-sur-Ariège where lived Daudet’s estimable bachelor, Tartarin, but Tarascon-sur-Rhône in Provence. Daudet pulled the latter smug little town from obscurity and oblivion—even though the inhabitants said that he had slandered them—but nothing has happenedthat gives distinction to the Tarascon of the Pyrenees since the days when its seigneurs inhabited its château.

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