But usually the free Companies enrolled themselves under some bastard (Bourg) of a noble house in France or Guyenne. It was a bastard warfare on their side; they stood in the same relation to the regular forces that privateers do to a fleet of the Royal Navy. They paid no regard to treaties. As the Bourg d'Espaign told Froissart: "The treaty of peace being concluded, it was necessary for all men-at-arms and free Companies, according to the treaty, to evacuate the fortresses and castles they held. Great numbers collected together, with many poor companions who had learnt the art of war under different commanders, to hold councils as to what quarters they should march, and they said among themselves that, though the kings had made peace with each other, it was necessary for them to live. They marched into Burgundy, where they had captains of all nations—Germans, Scots, and people from every country—'and they agreed to disregard the treaty and to surprise towns and castles as before.' A notorious Breton captain on his deathbed said: 'Such has been my manner of carrying on war, in truth, I cared not against whom. I did indeed make it under shadow of the King of England's name, in preference to any other; but I always looked for gain and conquest, wherever it was to be had.'"
When they captured a town or castle, nominally for the English, they were quite ready to sell it to the French for a stipulated sum.
Froissart says that the Ribauds were "Germans, Brabantines, Flemings, Gascons, and bad Frenchmen, who had been impoverished by the war" (i. c. 204). He gives in one place the names of twenty of these captains, not one English. [Footnote: Robert King of Puy Guihbem was an Englishman, but an authorised governor and commander under the English crown.] In another place he enumerates ten, all French or Gascons (ii. c. 10). Among those who harassed the Languedoc, Quercy and Perigord, not a single captain was English. The Bastard de Beby, the Bastard d'Albret, Amadeu de Pons, Benezet Daguda, De l'Esparre, Menard de Favas, l'Archipretre, Bertrand de la Salle, Le Non de Mauroux, Jean l'Esclop, Nolibarba, Bertrand de Besserat, Perrot de Savoie, Ramonet del Sort, and a score more, all base French or Gascon names. "These brigands," says Lacoste, "were mainly composed of French soldiers to whom the State had been unable to pay their wages." One whole company was entitled that "des Bretons."
But it was not the captains of the Companies alone who were Gascons, French, and Bretons. The nobles throughout Guyenne were more than half of them on the English side. The famous commander who did so much towards achieving the victory of Poitiers was a Frenchman, the Captal de Buch, Jean de Greuilly, Constable of Aquitaine for the English crown. Amandeu and Raymond de Montaut, the Sire de Duras, Petiton de Courton, Jean de Seignol, the Sire de Mussidan, and many more. "Following their interests or their passions, all these nobles passed from side to side, now that of the English, then that of the French; but they preferred the English side to the other, for war against the French is more pleasant than that against the English,"—that is to say, it was more profitable. TheLivre de Vieof Bergerac under the date 5th April 1381, speaks of Perducat d'Albret as "loyally French." But his loyalty lasted but for a moment. Froissart has a characteristic passage upon the Gascons that deserves quotation. After giving a list of towns and castles on the Garonne and the Dordogne, he says: "Some of these being English, and others French, carried on a war against each other; they would have it so, for the Gascons were never, for thirty years running, steadily attached to any one lord. I once heard the Lord d'Albret use an expression that I noted down. A knight from Brittany inquired after his health, and how he managed to remain steady to the French. He answered, 'Thank God my health is good, but I had more money at command, as well as my people, when I made war for the King of England, than I have now; for, whenever we took any excursions in search of adventures, we never failed meeting some rich merchants from Toulouse, Condom, La Réole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which made us gay and debonair, but now all that is at an end.' On hearing this I concluded that the Lord d'Albret repented having turned to the French in the same manner as the Lord of Mucidens, who swore to the Duke of Anjou he would set out for Paris and become a good Frenchman. He did go to Paris, when the King handsomely received him; but he slunk away and returned to his own country, where he again became an Englishman, and broke all his engagements with the Duke of Anjou. The Lords of Rosem, Duras, Langurant, did the same" (iii. c. 21).
As with the captains of the Companies, so with the knights and seigneurs who fought in the South for the Crown of England—their names are for the most part French and Gascon, and not English. [Footnote: Let it not be forgotten that those who condemned Joan of Arc to be burnt were Frenchmen. The University of Paris denounced her as a heretic. Her judges were the Bishop of Beauvais, a Frenchman by birth, Jean Graveraut, Professor of Theology at the University of Paris, Grand Inquisitor of France, Jean Lemaitre, prior of the Dominicans at Rouen. Her bitterest accuser was the Canon Jean d'Estivet, general procurator, who after the execution drowned himself in a pool. The Bastard of Vendôme sold her to John of Luxembourg, and John of Luxembourg sold her to the English for 10,000 francs. Charles VII. and his friends did not raise a finger in her behalf. They forgot her at once, as a thing that had answered its purpose and was no longer of use.]
The Companies formed their nests in the rocks, which they fortified, or in castles they had captured, or in such as had been abandoned by the French, from inability to garrison them. The Causse was in their possession from the Dordogne to the Lot, and Perigord to the gates of the capital. They overran Auvergne, the Gevaudan, Poitou, the Angoumois, the Rouergue and the Saintonge, to speak only of provinces south of the Loire. The Government exhibited incredible feebleness towards them. In 1379 the Count d'Armagnac, Royal Lieutenant in the south, paid 24,000 francs to one of theroutiersto evacuate the castle of Carlat, and 12,500 to the Bastard of Albret for five others. In 1387 he convened an assembly of the States of Auvergne, Velay, Gevaudan, Rouergue, Quercy, &c., to debate what was to be done to rid the country of these pests. Instead of resolving on an united effort to put them down by force of arms, they agreed to pay them 250,000 francs to quit. They took the money, but remained. Every town, every village was forced to come to terms with the brigands, by means of apatisor convention to pay a certain sum annually, to save it from pillage. Should the covenanted money not be forthcoming to the day, the place was sacked and burnt.
At length the inhabitants, unable to endure the exaction of theroutierson one side and those of the King and the seigneurs on the other, migrated to Spain and never returned. In 1415, as all the inhabitants of Caudon had crossed the frontier, the curé applied to have his cure united to that of Domme. He had no parishioners left. Domme had been reduced from a thousand families to a hundred and twenty, and these would have abandoned their homes unless stopped by the Seneschal of Perigord.
In 1434 the inhabitants of Temniac and Carlux began to pack their goods for leaving, but the citizens of Sarlat stopped them, by promising to feed them till the conclusion of the war. Some of the large towns had lost so many of their citizens that they were glad to receive peasants out of the country and enrol them as burgesses. In 1378, as the Causse of Quercy was almost denuded of its population and nothing remained to be reaped, the Companies abandoned it for the Rouergue, the Gevaudan and the Limousin and Upper Auvergne. Thence the wretched peasants fled to the deserted limestone Causse of Quercy and occupied the abandoned villages and farms. They obtained but a short respite, for in 1407 the Companies returned to their former quarters. Charles VI. imposed a heavy tax on the whole kingdom to enable him to carry on the war against the English. But Quercy was wholly unable to meet the demands, and the King, in a letter dated the last day of February 1415, gives a graphic account of the condition to which the land had been reduced.
"Whereas, this land, at the time when it passed under the obedience of the King of England, was the richest and most populous in all the Duchy of Guyenne, and contained the finest cities, towns, and castles and fortresses in the said duchy, which were free and quit of all taxes and imposts, and with privileges conferred on them and confirmed by the King of France when they shook off the English yoke; and the said land of Quercy, after having returned to its legitimate sovereigns, has testified to them the greatest loyalty; yet have its inhabitants been grievously injured, assailed, beaten, robbed, pillaged, imprisoned, killed, maltreated by the English in divers ways, which enemies have since taken and occupied the greater part of the finest towns and fortresses of the land; on which account the land of Quercy has since continued in a condition of mortal warfare with the said enemies for the space of fifty-five years; and this carried on without aid from us, or from any one:—This unfortunate land has resisted to the utmost of its powers and is doing so still; and it has been surrounded for long by our said enemies, and is as it were destroyed and uninhabitable, and the greater number of its towns, castles, and strongholds have become desert and wild, covered with forest and scrub, inhabited by wild beasts, with the exception of some few small places that are very poor and miserable, and though at one time they were great and rich, they have been to such an extent depopulated—partly through the war and partly through pestilences that have ensued—there are now hardly one hundredth part of the people remaining, and those who do remain are but poor labourers and men of servile class; and these are kept night and day harassed by watching against enemies, and yet are compelled to buy them off withpatisand pensions, so that the greater portion of their substance is consumed in this way;—therefore, &c."
[ILLUSTRATION: LE DÉFILÉ DES ANGLAIS, LOT. A fortress of the English commanding the road to Cahors. Several chambers are excavated out of the rock.]
In 1450 the English were driven out of Guyenne, but a fresh attempt to recover it was made, that ended in the defeat and death of Talbot, in 1453. The Companies had then to dissolve. Out of a thousand churches in Quercy but four hundred were in condition for the celebration of divine service; many had been converted into fortresses. Most of the little towns in Upper Quercy had lost the major portion of their inhabitants; the villages were void of inhabitants. None knew who were the heirs to the deserted houses and untilled fields.
[Footnote: "Agros atque Lares proprios, habitandaque fanaApres reliquit, et rapacibus lupis,Ire, pedes quocunque ferent,"
—HORACE,Epod. Od., 16.]
An emigration from Limousin and the Rouergue was called for to repeople the waste places. Grammat, that had been a thriving town, in 1460 was left with only five inhabitants, Lavergne with but three. Lhern, once a flourishing place, was absolutely desert, the fields covered with briars and thorns, not one house tenanted, and in the church a she-wolf had littered her cubs.
Throughout the country can be distinguished the churches built when the war was over—quadrangular structures, without ornament.
Two of the strongest fortresses held by the English in Perigord were Bigaroque and the Roc de Tayac. The former belonged to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, staunch in his adhesion to the English cause, and he placed a garrison in it. The French did not attempt a siege, but in 1376 they raised a large sum in the neighbourhood and bought the garrison out. Either they culpably neglected to place troops in it, or were too weak to do so, and in 1386 the English reoccupied it without a blow, and made it a centre whence they pillaged the country up to 1408. In 1409 the Constable of France, however, laid siege to it and the garrison capitulated, on condition that all prisoners taken by the French should be set free. The French then demolished the fortifications, but did this so inefficiently that in 1432 the English had again established themselves therein. It was not recovered by the French till 1443; somewhat later the Companies disbanded, and then they so completely destroyed the fortress that of it nothing now remains.
The other stronghold was the Rock of Tayac. The white cliff streaked with black tears rises to the height of 300 feet, and is precipitous. Throughout the whole length it is lined and notched and perforated, showing tokens of having been a combination of cliff caves, and wooden galleries, connecting the caves, as also of structures at the base of the crag. These latter have disappeared, having been torn down when the castle was demolished, but the indications of the roofs remain. There were several storeys in the fortress. In one cave is a stable reached by a ladder, also a well that was driven from an upper cavern through the roof of the stable and through its floor to the level of the river. The oven of these freebooters hanging in mid-cliff remains, guard-rooms are still extant, and the principal upper storey is now turned into a hotel, as already mentioned, but in so doing the stable has been injured and the well filled up. The hotel is reached by a ladder.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DES ANGLAIS, BRENGUES. This castle occupied by the Free Companies, is now wholly inaccessible. The goat-path below was closed, above and below, by gate-houses and guard-rooms.]
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DU DIABLE, CABRERET, LOT. A castle on a narrow ledge of rock above the River Célé, built by the Bastard of Albert, circ. 1380, and held for the English.]
From this vultures' nest the Ribauds devastated the neighbourhood and the Sieur des Eyzies on the opposite side of the river, and who was on the French side, was powerless against them. In company with the garrison of Bigaroque they surprised Temniac near Sarlat, S. Quentin and Campagnac, in 1348, but were shortly after dislodged by the Seneschal of Perigord from these acquisitions.
In 1353 they surprised the church and fortress of Tursac and the castle of Palevez. The men of Sarlat hastened to recover Tursac, bringing with them some machines of war, named La Bride, Le Hop, Le Collard, and l'Asne, that flung stones and bolts and pots of flaming tar and sulphur. They managed to drive the English out of Tursac, but were unable to recover the other castle.
In 1401, at the solicitation of the Baron of Limeuil, they took and utterly destroyed the town and castle of La Roche Christophe, as shall be related in full in the sequel. On 4th December 1409, the Constable of France having ruined Bigaroque, besieged the Rock of Tayac, and it was taken after a gallant defence on 10th January 1410, demolished and reduced to the condition in which we see it now. Then a tax was levied throughout Perigord to pay for the cost of the sieges of Bigaroque and the Rock of Tayac.
We will now pass from Perigord to Quercy. Here the English Companies held the valley of the Lot from below Capdenac to the gates of Cahors, except the impregnable towns of Cajarc and Calvignac.
Flowing into the Lot at Conduché is the river Célé that descends fromFigeac. This river was also in the grip of the English.
Below Figeac the limestone precipices first appear at Corn, and the cliff is full of caves in which there are remains of fortifications. The cliff is not beautiful, but is wondrous strange, white, draped with fallen folds of stalactite, black as ink, as though a tattered funeral pall had been cast over it. Corn was a feof of the family of Beduer, one of the five most powerful in Quercy. In 1379 Perducat, the Bastard of Albret, an English Captain, occupied Corn, but sold it to John, Count of Armagnac, Seneschal of Quercy; after having marched out and pocketed his money, he turned round, marched in again, and set to work to fortify the caves. He made the citizens of Cajarc contribute to the expense of this proceeding, and even required them to send masons to assist him in the work; but as they were loyal subjects of the French King they demurred at this, and he substituted additional money payment for personal service. He then pushed down the Célé valley to Cabrerets near where it debouches into the Lot, and in 1383 he fortified the caves of Espagnac, Brengues, Marcillac, Sauliac, and built the château du Diable at Cabrerets. The Count d'Armagnac sent troops to dislodge him, but failed.
In the rock of Corn, a little higher up the river than the village, is the Grotto du Consulat, reached by a path along a narrow ledge. To this the villagers were wont to gather to elect their magistrates without interference from the Bastard of Albret. Within is a bench cut in the rock, and the roof is encrusted with stalactite formations like cauliflowers. Immediately above the village is a much larger cavern 72 feet high and 36 feet deep. It is vaulted like a dome, and tendrils of ivy and vine hang down draping the entrance. Violets grow in purple masses at the opening, and maiden-hair fern luxuriates within. At the extreme end, high up, to be reached only by a ladder of forty rungs, is another opening into a cave that runs far into the bowels of the Causse, to where the water falls in a cascade that now flows forth beneath the outer cave and supplies the village with drinking water and a place for washing linen. Hard by the great entrance is another cave situated high up, and called the Citadel, much smaller, access to which is obtained by a narrow track in the face of the rock, with notches cut in the limestone to receive the beams and struts that supported a wooden gallery which once provided easy access to the cave. I did not myself climb up and investigate the citadel, not having a steady head on the edge of a precipice, and what information I give was received from the curé, who seemed very much amused at my shirking the scramble, and thought that the Englishman of to-day must be very different from the Englishman of the fourteenth century who crawled about these cliffs like a lizard. According to him, the cave within shows signs of having been occupied, and has in it a squared and smoothed block of stone nine feet long, at which Perducat and his ruffians doubtless caroused, as at a table.
[Illustration: CORN, LOT. Caves occupied by the Routiers. That above the large one was formerly reached by a gallery of wood. It contains the stone table at which the Routiers gambled and drank.]
In the village of Corn is the picturesque château of the family of Beduer built after the abandonment of the place by the English. It is now occupied by poor families. A little farther down the valley is the castle of Roquefort, which was also annexed by the Captain. It is near the Church of S. Laurent, where was a village that was destroyed by the Company. The church itself was blown up later by the Huguenots. Roquefort is dominated by a precipice, at the foot of which lies a huge mass of rock that has broken off from the cliff, and on this rock a castle has been erected. It belonged to the family of Lascasas. One of these fell at Résinières in a duel with the Seigneur of Camboulet; but his adversary survived him only a few minutes, and both were buried on the spot with three stones at their heads and two at their feet. When the new road was being made their skeletons were found. The stones remainin situ.
In 1361 Cahors was in possession of the English. The bishop unwilling to recognise the King of England as his sovereign retired to the Castle of Brengues in the Célé valley that pertained to his family, the Cardaillacs, and thence governed his diocese. There he died 3rd February 1367, and his successor also occupied the Castle of Brengues. But in 1377 it was captured by an English Company under Bertrand de la Salle, and in 1380 it was held by Bertrand de Besserat, to whom it was delivered over by Perducat d'Albret.
There are two very remarkable castles at Brengues; both were fortified by Perducat and Besserat. One hangs like a swallow's nest under the eaves of the overhanging rock, and is now wholly inaccessible, so much so that it is in perfect preservation. The river flows far below, and atalusof rubble runs up to the foot of the cliff, along whichtalus, on a narrow terrace, is a path. This path was defended both above and below the castle by gates that were battlemented and to which guard-rooms were attached. The pensile castle is not large. It was entered at one side, and has in its face three roundheaded windows.
The other castle of Brengues is perforated in an angle of rock, at a great elevation, and consists of several chambers. The cave at the angle was walled up and furnished with doorway and windows.
Near where the Célé flows into the Lot is the little town of Cabrerets. Here the precipice of fawn-coloured limestone overhangs like a wave, curling and about to break. On a ledge under it, and above the river and the road and the houses, is the Devil's Castle, built by Perducat d'Albret and Bertrand de Besserat. The latter held it from 1380 to 1390, but then, at the entreaty of the neighbourhood, the Seigneur Hebraud de Saint-Sulpice at the head of levies laid siege to the castle and took it.
The castle has one of its walls of rock; only that towards the river and the two ends are structural, as is also a round tower. A portion of the castle has been pulled down; it has served as a quarry for the houses beneath, but a good deal still remains. The tower is about 20 feet in diameter. The entrance hall, lighted by windows, is 70 feet long and 40 feet wide. A second hall, partly hewn out of the rock, with recesses for cupboards and seats and with fireplace, is 42 feet long. The oven remains in a ruinous condition. The castle is reached by steps cut in the rock.
[ILLUSTRATION: CHÂTEAU DES ANGLAIS, AUTOIRE. Reached by a sharp scramble up a steep, and then by a ledge in a precipice. Some chambers are scooped out of the rock. When the English were besieged, they escaped by a goat-path, to a point whence hung a rope from a tree above, and up this they swarmed.]
Below Conduché, where the Célé enters the Lot, the road runs under tremendous precipices of orange and grey limestone, in which the track has been cut; and the road would be totally blocked by a huge buttress split down the middle had not a tunnel for it been cut. As the Roman road ran this way, the original tunnel was made by the Masters of the World, but it has been widened of late years. Commanding the road and the tunnel, planted in the cleft of the rock, is a castellated structure, that also owes its origin to the captains who fortified the Célé caves.
None could pass up or down the road without being spied and arrested, and made to pay toll by the garrison of this fort. [Footnote: So early as the eleventh or twelfth century there was not a small river, as the Célé and the Aveyron, on which tolls were not levied.]
The Cahors Chronicle says of this period: "Deinde fuit in praesenti patria mala guerra. Anglicis et Gallis hinc inde reprædentibus, unde evenit victualium omnium maxima caristia. Nullus civis Caturci villam exire erat ausus, omnia enim per injustitiam regebatur." If the merchants and provision wains for Cahors were not robbed at the Défilé des Anglais, they were subjected to toll. The interior of the chasm reveals a whole labyrinth of passages and vaults dug out in the heart of the calcareous rock. The chambers had openings as windows looking out upon a river, and the rock was converted into a barrack that could accommodate a large garrison.
The last of the rock fastnesses of theroutiersthat I purpose describing is of a totally different character from the rest. It is at Peyrousse in the Rouergue, in the department of Aveyron. Peyrousse is a village, but was once a fortified town on a height, with its church and church tower standing on the highest point and visible from a great distance. It rises above a deep valley or ravine. The houses are all old, and many of them in ruins. The church, dating from 1680, is not ineffective; there are, however, the ruins of a Gothic church farther down the hill. One of the embattled gates of the town is still standing, as well as a tower erroneously supposed to be the bell tower of the ruined church, actually part of the fortification of the place. Projecting from the side of the hill on which stands Peyrousse, partly attached to it, but for the most part detached, is a ridge of schist starting 300 feet above the stream below, in one sheer precipice, and precipitous on every side. It is perhaps 300 feet long, and rises like a blade of an axe; at each extremity of this ridge is a lofty tower— one, the farthest, open at the side. To erect these towers it must have been necessary to level a portion of the sharp edge on which they rest. Between them one could walk only with a balancing pole like a tight- rope dancer, as there is a sheer fall on each side. The rock is called Les Roches du Tailleur, as having been appropriated by a captain who cut folk's coats according as he wanted the cloth. How the builders climbed to this height, how they managed to carry up their material, and how they achieved the building of these towers, is impossible to conjecture. The tradition is, that when the English quitted Peyrousse they destroyed the means of ascent, and since 1443 no human being has been able to climb the rock and visit the towers, that for nearly five hundred years have had no other denizens than ravens and jackdaws. But that is not all the puzzle of the Tailor's Rock. It is supposed that there was a wooden castle between the towers. There is no indication of there having been a stone structure.
[ILLUSTRATION: COVOLO, FROM A PRINT BY MERIAN, 1640-1648. In the defile of the Brenta; 100 feet above the road. It was capable of containing a garrison of 500 men. It was taken from the Venetians by Maximilian in 1509. It is between Primolano and Cismone.]
[ILLUSTRATION: LA ROCHE DU TAILLEUR. Remains of a castle on a precipitous rock at Reyrousse, Aveyron; it was held by the English Routiers, who, when they abandoned it, destroyed the means of access, since which time it has been inaccessible.]
But if so, how was it balanced, or how secured? A plank cast across the blade would make a see-saw for an ogre and ogress, till cut through. I endeavoured with a glass to see whether notches had been hacked in the schist to receive stays, and others on the ridge to accommodate joists, but could distinguish none.
Peyrousse became a Calvinist stronghold in the Wars of Religion, when the churches were destroyed; but the Huguenots made no attempt to climb the Tailor's Rocks and restore the castle. At the foot of the crags are the remains of the chapel of the garrison. How did they descend to it and mount again? I presume by a knotted rope.
A cliff castle that bears a curious resemblance to Peyrousse is Trosky, in Bohemia, but in this latter case the rocks are of basalt, and between the two towers the connecting rock forms a deep depression. In 1415, Johann von Herzmanmiestetz and Otto Berka of Trosk sacked the monastery of Opatowitz, butchered most of the monks, tortured the abbot so that he died a few days later, and carried off all the plunder they could collect. With the spoil Otto Berka built a castle on the two spires of rock, a tower on each, and connected them with a crescent wall, and a gallery of communication. The walls were six feet thick, and the foundations clamped to the rock with iron. He also contrived a tunnel, cut in the rock to the bottom, to enable himself and his men to ascend and descend. In 1424, however, Otto Berka was there no more. The castle was besieged by the terrible one-eyed Hussite commander, Ziska with the Flail, and he succeeded in capturing the lower tower after great loss of life, but entirely failed to take the upper donjon. After the departure of Ziska the castle was taken as a residence by Margaret, widow of Otto Berka, who secured the lower tower, and her granddaughter Barbara occupied the higher. These women hated each other as poison, and to personal hate was added religious rancour, for Barbara had embraced the party of the Utraquists. The theological quarrel was simply about the use of the chalice at communion. The Roman Church had withdrawn it from the people; the Utraquists asserted their right to it; and about this question the two parties fought and slaughtered each other, and burnt towns and castles. The tradition is that all day long, and part of the night, the two women screamed abuse at each other from their several towers, and desisted only for their meals, their devotions, and necessary sleep. Folk passing along the highway would halt and listen to the yelling and vituperation of the two shrews. Each had her own chapel at the foot of the cliffs, in which each ostentatiously followed the rite of which she approved; and to this day the chapels remain. According to the local story, the cries of the women were so strident and so continuous that all birds were scared away from Trosky. At length Margaret died, and Bertha had become so accustomed to scolding at the top of her voice, that she died soon after from dissatisfaction at having lost the object of her abuse.
In 1468 Trosky was the property of William von Hasenburg, who sided with King Mathias against George Podjebrad. After the defeat of Mathias, Podjebrad captured Trosky, but as the owner came to terms, he was allowed to retain his castle. The towers are all that remain of the castle; the curtain wall has been broken down. The lower tower can be reached by a climber with a steady head, but not without risk of life. The higher tower is quite inaccessible. From the height a magnificent prospect is obtained, with Prague in the distance.
To return once more to theroutiers.
Near Mont Dore is the Roche de Sanadoire, 3660 feet high, composed of phonolith and basaltic prisms. On the top stood the fortress of theroutiers, calling themselves English, under a Captain Chennel, from 1378 to 1386, when he was caught, conveyed to Paris, and broken on the wheel. It is not to be wondered at that the memory of the terrible times of the English domination, and its consequence, the reign of theroutiers, should linger on in the memory of the people; that every cliff castle should be a Château des Anglais, or a Château du Diable—they mean the same thing. The peasant reads but little—history not at all; but Jean Bonhomme looks up at the cliffs and finds the story of the past graven there; and just as the twinge of a corn is still felt after the foot has been amputated, so—though the English rule has passed away, three hundred and fifty years have intervened—he still winces, and curses the haunts "de ces cochons d'Anglais," though in fact ces cochons were his own compatriots, doubled-dyed in iniquity, as traitors to their country and their King.
CLIFF CASTLES—Continued
I took the third of the classes into which I have divided my subject of cliff castles, first of all; and now I shall take the others in the category.
The Seigneurs were not greatly, if at all, to be distinguished from the Captains of theroutiersin their mode of life and in their fortresses, save only this, that the latter were elected by their followers, and the former were on their hereditary estates and could demand the services of their vassals. In the matter of scoundreldom there was not a pin to choose between them. But theroutierchiefs were not tied to any one castle as their home; they shifted quarters from one rock to another, from one province to another as suited them, whereas the seigneur had his home that had belonged to his forefathers and which he hoped to transmit to his son.
I will give but an instance.
Archibald V. (1361-1397) was Count of Perigord. He was nominally under the lilies, but he pillaged indiscriminately in his county. Surrounded by adventurers he planted his men in castles about Perigord, and from that of La Rolphie "hung over the city like the sword of Damocles," menaced Perigueux. One little town after another was pillaged. He intercepted the merchants on the roads. At S. Laurent-du-Manoir his captains added outrage to injury, for they took all the women of the place, and cut off their skirts at the knees; and one who made strenuous resistance they killed.
In 1385, the Seneschal of Perigord, in the name of the King of France, ordered Archibald to desist from his acts of violence. When he refused, his lands were declared confiscated. But who was to bell the cat? He mocked at the sentence, and was roused to fresh incursions and pillages. At last in 1391 the Parliament acted, and summoned the Count to appear along with twenty-three of his accomplices before its bar "to answer for having overrun with his troops the suburbs of Perigueux; for having assaulted the city, and neighbouring places; for having wounded and killed a great many persons; for having incarcerated others to extort a ransom from them; for having, like common highwaymen, seized cattle, fired granges, mills, houses; and for having committed crimes so infamous, so ferocious, that one would feel pain to disclose them."
Archibald paid not the slightest regard to the summons or to the sentence pronounced against himin contumaciam. The law could not enforce its judgment, and six years later in 1397 he died. The King refused to recognise his son Archibald VI. as Count of Perigord, but Archibald disregarded the refusal, and openly sided with the English. He successfully resisted the troops sent against him, and continued in the same courses as his father. At last he was brought to bay in Montignac, where he was constrained to capitulate. He was sent to Charles VI., but effected his escape and fled to London in 1399. Thence he returned in 1404, and captured Auberoche, much about the time of the English victory at Agincourt. He died in undisturbed possession of his county of Perigord in 1430.
Few portions of France so lent itself to the requirements of the feudal tyrants of the Middle Ages, as they did also to those of theroutiers, as the volcanic district of Auvergne. There the floods of lava that flowed from the volcanoes have formed caps to hills, with precipices on every side, cut through by the streams, that have separated portions from the main current. Every such peak or fragment of plateau was laid hold of by the seigneurs of old, as sites for their fortresses. From the number of these strongholds and the almost impregnable nature of most of them, the feudal tyrants of Auvergne were able to hold their own, long after the rest had been brought to their knees; and it was not until Richelieu with iron hand moved against them that their career of rapine and violence was curbed. Beginning in 1626, Richelieu ordered the demolition of all feudal fortresses that were not necessary for the defence of the frontiers, and which were a permanent menace to the King's authority, and an object of terror to town and country, and to the nobles afforded reminiscence of past lawlessness. The demolition was entrusted to the communes themselves. And in order to bring the culprits to speedy judgment, he renewed the institution of theGrand Jours; that of Poitiers in 1634 condemned over two hundred nobles convicted of exactions and crimes.
But it was impossible in many places, notably in Auvergne, for the communes to get hold of the castles and blow them up. There, for some thirty years longer, the seigneurs defied justice, and it was much the same elsewhere. On the 31st August 1665, theGrand Jourswere announced for all the centre of France, but notice that they were to be held had been given so long before that the guilty were allowed plenty of time to escape out of the country, go into hiding or come to terms. Great were the expectations of the people. Right was at length to prevail over Might. The Day of Judgment was coming on the oppressors. The Mighty would be put down from their seat and the humble would be exalted in their room. A peasant wearing his cap before a noble, the latter knocked it off his head "Pick it up," said the peasant, "or the King will cut off your head." The seigneur obeyed.
But the result was disappointing. Only one noble had his head cut off. Few executions were carried into effect, many were on paper. One of the latter, a ruffian steeped in blood, defied the sentence and was banished. Fléchier in his amusing and instructive book,Les grands Jours d'Auvergne, has given us a dramatic account of the trial.
Every description of intrigue was had recourse to, in order to neutralise the effect of justice. The fair ladies of Clermont,les chats fourrés, as Fléchier calls them, did their utmost to reduce the severity of the judges. The Great Days lasted three months, and ended in disappointment. Many of the worst offenders, convicted of atrocious crimes, entered the Royal service and fought in the armies of the King.
But if justice spared the culprits, the opportunity was accorded to destroy their strongholds, and now little remains of these Towers of Iniquity but the foundations, and some fragments of their massive walls, which were generally constructed of basaltic prisms taken from the rock that sustained the castles, laid horizontally. "Puzzolana was mixed with the mortar used in these constructions, and without the binding quality communicated by this ingredient, probably no cement would have taken effect on the smooth a rid iron surfaces of the prisms." [Footnote: Poulette Scrope, "The Extinct Volcanoes of Central France," Lond. 1858.]
The King had indeed desired that greater severity should be used. He wrote to the judges: "You must manage to banish oppression and violence out of the provinces. You have begun well, and you must finish well." At the conclusion he had a medal struck representing a slave rising from the ground, under the protection of the sword of royalty, and with the expressive device,Salus provinciarum repressa potentorum audacia.
It was, however, rather the destruction of the nests than the punishment of the Vultures that effected the work.
The Marquis de Canillac, one of the worst, escaped into Spain. He had maintained twelve ruffians, whom he called his Apostles, who catechised with sword and rod all who rebelled against his exactions. He levied taxes on necessary articles of food, and when his vassals abstained from food he fined them for not eating. He allowed none to marry without paying into his hands half thedotof the bride. His kinsman, the Vicomte Lamotte-Canillac, was the one culprit executed.
The river Vézère, opposite to the prehistoric caves of Moustier, makes a sudden bend about a wall of chalk 300 feet high and 1500 feet long. "Of all the rocks that have served for the habitation of man, this is the most striking for its dimensions and for the number of habitations it contained, if one may give that name to the excavations which the hand of man has appropriated to his use. Staircases were carved in the rock, carried half-way up the height, to where the cliff has been excavated, its recesses enlarged and divided into compartments." [Footnote: De Roumejoux,Bulletin de la Soc. Hist. de Perigord.T. xix. 1892.]
This bluff is called La Roche S. Christophe. It arrests attention at once, for half-way up it is furrowed horizontally as though worked by a giant's tool. If the visitor approaches the cliff, he will find that the masses of rock that have fallen from above, as well as others that have formed spurs, have been extensively worked to form town walls, gateways, a church, a monastery, and dwelling-houses.
One gateway, bored through the rock, has a guard-room or sentinel's watch-chamber scooped out of a pinnacle. But not a roof remains, not a living soul is to be seen in the street, not a huxter's stall in the market-place, only tiles strewn about and white rocks blackened with smoke show that man lived there.
By a flight of stairs cut in the rock, the visitor can ascend to the furrow in the face of the cliff, and there he finds that the whole has been elaborately utilised. There are chambers excavated in the chalk that were formerly closed by wood partitions, with recesses for beds, cupboards, seats—clearly the bedrooms of ladies. The grooves into which the planks were fitted can be made out. Doors were fitted into rocky rebates to move on their hinges, the hinges being round prolongations of the door frame turning in holes sunk in floor and roof. The kitchen is there, the bakehouse with its oven; the guard-room with its benches for the troopers, cisterns, store-chambers, closets, cellars, a chapel, and the latrines. All but the last are on a level in one long row, with the cliff descending precipitately from the gallery that precedes the apartments and gave communication between them and which, in part, had been widened by means of a wooden balcony and railing. The chapel, if that be the walled structure in a hole of the rock, is now inaccessible. Its destination is uncertain. The peasants so designate it.
Fragments of earthenware vessels and of tiles lie on the floors. I could find nothing else.
Above the principal gallery are others of less importance that can only be reached from the top of the cliff.
This Roche Saint Christophe has a history. It was first fortified by Frotarius de Gourdon to resist the incursions of the Northmen. He was assassinated at Mourcinez in Coursac in 991. There was a priory in the town below, mention of which is found in a charter of 1187.
The remarkable range of chambers and structures in the face of the precipice formed the castle of the family of Laroque. It was a worthy family, greatly respected in the neighbourhood, and loyal to the crown of France. The seigneur was the protector of the little town that lay below.
On Passion Sunday, 1401, the townsfolk and the occupants of the castle were gathered in the church, when a cry was raised that the enemy had swarmed over the walls and were in the town. Adhémar de Laroque was the seigneur at the time. He hastened from the church, but already the street was full of English, and escape to his castle was cut off, as they had secured the stair.
Adhémar had a personal enemy, one Jean Ducos, a kinsman of the Baron de Limeuil. These men, calculating that the garrison of La Roque would be off its guard on that holy day, arranged with the English garrison of the Rock of Tayac to surprise the town.
They came upon it unobserved, and breaking in, massacred the people and the guards; then ensued a general pillage, and a conflagration. Every house was fired after it had been ransacked, and the English Ribauds running along the platform with torches in their hands, applied the flame to everything combustible—doors, galleries, partitions, rafters —all blazed, and the only portion of the castle and town that was left unconsumed were the latrines, to which they did not consider it worth their pains to apply their torches.
From that day to this the town of La Roche Saint Christophe has been abandoned. No cottager has ventured to repair the ruined habitations for his own use; as the place is esteemed haunted, notably on the night of Passion Sunday, when a ghostly train of the dead is seen flickering in and out of the rocks and ruins by the light of the Easter moon.
But the castle was again tenanted for awhile by a band of Huguenots, who committed such depredations in the neighbourhood that on 30th March 1588, the Viscount of Aubeterre, Governor of Perigord issued orders— "as the enemies of the King occupying this Castle are doing incredible mischief to the poor folk of the neighbourhood," that they should be expelled and the castle be utterly destroyed. [Footnote: La Roche S. Christophe is mentioned in the letters of Petrarch. Labbé. Frag. Bp. Petrarchi.]
[Illustration: KRONMETZ. This cave castle was nominally held by nobles in feof to the Bishop of Trent, but it actually became a den of robbers. It was taken by storm in 1210. Count v. Firmian, to whom it belongs, has built for himself a more convenient residence at the foot of the rock.]
Quite as curious, and with a less tragic history is La Roche Gageac on the Dordogne, below Sarlat. "Ma chère patrie," wrote the old chronicler, Jean Tarde, "une petite ville bien close et très forte dépendant de la temporalité de l'evesque de Sarlet,la quelle ne fut jamais prinse par les Anglais."
The white Jurassic limestone dappled orange, fawn colour, and silver grey, rises 250 feet above the river, the lower portion is in terraces, very narrow, on which are the houses clinging to the rock, cramped between the Dordogne and the cliff which rises 140 to 160 feet above. The old houses are echeloned along the face of the rock, superposed the one on the other, calcined by the sun as they face south, and the rock behind cuts off all northern winds and reflects the glare of the southern sun. This explains the vegetable precocity of the spot, where wallflowers, cactus, roses, luxuriate. It would be too hot were it not for the abundant springs, and the proximity to the Dordogne down which a cool air is wafted.
The habitations are either partly or wholly caves, they do not reach half-way up the rock which overhangs to the west. In the face of the cliff are two castles built into its recesses, one pertained to the Bishop of Sarlat, and the other to the Fénélon family. Both were ideals of a stronghold in the Middle Ages, impossible to escalade or to undermine. In the fifteenth century La Roche Gageac was a walled town containing five châteaux of noble families, juxtaposed and independent of each other, although comprised within the same enclosure. Originally indeed all were under the Bishop of Sarlat, but the Popes had set the example of jobbery for the benefit of their sons and nephews, and the Bishops were not slow to follow the lead. One Bishop made over the principal castle to his brother as a hereditary feof, and others disposed of the rest for money down, so that by the second half of the sixteenth century the town had been dismembered. Although it had held out against the English, when thus broken up among several, it could not defend itself against the Calvinists, who took, burned and sacked it in 1574. They killed three Sarlat priests. It was retaken by the Royal troops in 1575, but it again fell into the hands of the Calvinists in 1588, and the wreckage of its ecclesiastical buildings dates from those two captures.
The principal castle, that which belonged to the Bishop of Sarlat, occupies one of the profound horizontal furrows in the face of the rock, that are so common in the limestone and chalk formations. It consists of three towers, two of which are square and one round, with curtains uniting them, and a gate-tower, to which a flight of steps cut in the rock gives access for a part of the way. But to reach this flight one has to mount by a series of posts serving as steps driven into sockets in the rock, with only here and there a sustaining iron bar. Below the structure are chambers, possibly prisons, but more probably store rooms dug out of the rock. In this castle one of the Bishops of Sarlat, in stormy times, lived continuously, and there died. How was his body carried down the stair? Probably it was lowered by ropes.
I cannot quit La Roche Gageac without a word on one of its most illustrious natives, Jean Tarde, born there in 1561 the friend of Galileo, and who, the first in France, five years after the great Florentine had begun to search the skies with his telescope, invented one year previously, erected his tube here at one of the openings of this eagle's nest, and during ten consecutive years pursued his astronomic studies. He was a remarkable man in many ways. He was the first to map his native Perigord, and the first to write a chronicle of the diocese of Sarlat, a valuable work for any who would compile a history of the Hundred Years' War, the first also to repudiate the accepted attribution of the dolmens as altars of sacrifice, and to indicate their true character as sepulchres. His account of the ravages committed by the Huguenots is also valuable. The year before his birth, in 1560, at Lalande, the Calvinists got into the town through a hole in the wall, killed the first Consul, the Vicar, and six other priests, and massacred a hundred of the inoffensive citizens. Sixty took refuge in the church. The Calvinists forced such as could to ransom their lives, and slaughtered such as were too poor to do this. He was but six or seven years old when the Huguenot captain, the Sieur d'Assier, took La Roque, "killing the priests and burning the churches." He was aged twelve when Captain Vivant took Sarlat, suppressed the bishopric, and killed three of the canons and several of the citizens. At La Chapelle- Faucher in 1569 the heretics drove 260 peasants into the castle and massacred them all. He was made Vicar-General to the Bishop of Sarlat, and it was after having made a tour of the diocese in 1594 that the idea occurred to him to write the history of his country and repair as far as possible the loss of so many of the archives that had been burnt. In 1599 he was made honorary chaplain to Henry IV., and in 1626 was published hisDescription du pais de Quercy. His history of Sarlat, after remaining in MS. was at length published in 1887, but only 150 copies were printed. Happily one is in the British Museum, and I possess another.
Gluges is on the Dordogne near Martel, where high up in the cliff, difficult of access, is the fortified cave-castle of Guillaume Taillefer, son of Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse, who was created Lord of Quercy in 972. Nearly on the level of the river is a cave half walled up, with traces of fresco on the walls, of course much later than the time of Taillefer. A modern house has been built on the platform that has been levelled, and much of the wall demolished; the upper fortified cave has an opening in the wall, pointed, of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In much the same condition is another cliff castle in the rocks of the valley of the Alzou, between Grammat and Rocamadour, a little above the cascade of the mill Du Saut.
I have elsewhere [Footnote: "A Book of the Cevennes," Lond., J. Long.] given an account of the curious castle of La Roche Lambert at Borne in Haute Loire, built in a basaltic cleft through which roars the river. It is the theatre of George Sand's novel, Jean de la Roche. "I may say without exaggeration that I was reared in a rock. The castle of my fathers is strangely incrusted into an excavation in a wall of basalt 500 feet high. The base of this wall, with that face to face with it, identically the same rock, forms a narrow and sinuous valley, through which winds and leaps an inoffensive torrent in impetuous cascades. The Château de la Roche is a nest of troglodytes, inasmuch as the whole flank of the rock we occupy is riddled with holes and irregular chambers which tradition points out as the residence of ancient savages, and which antiquaries do not hesitate to attribute to a prehistoric people.
"The castle of my fathers is planted high up on a ledge of rock, but so that the conical roofs of the tower just reach above the level of the plain. My mother having poor health, and having no other place to walk save one tiny platform before the castle on the edge of the abyss, took it into her head to create for herself a garden at the summit of the crag on which we were perched midway."
In Cantal at Roqueville are the remains of a castle excavated out of the rocks. Between Jung-Bunzlau and Böhm-Leipa in Bohemia is the rock- castle of Habichstein. Two lakes lie in a basin of the hills that are well-wooded up their sides, but have bare turfy crowns. The upper lake is studded with islands. Between this and the lower lake stands an extraordinary hump of sandstone, on a slopingtalus. This hump has much resemblance to a Noah's Ark stranded on a diminutive Ararat. The rock is perforated in all directions with galleries and chambers, and contains a stable for horses and for cattle, which, however, is no longer accessible. On the summit of the rock rises a keep very much resembling a Pictish broch. Habichstein belongs to the Wallenstein family that possesses a stately schloss at the head of the upper lake. It has been abandoned for, probably, two hundred years, as it can never have been a comfortable residence; moreover, the sandstone is continually breaking away. Below the hill and castle is the village. In 1811 there was a fall of the rock, and again in 1815, when it crushed three of the houses beneath.
[ILLUSTRATION: THE PUXER LOCH, STYRIA. Supposed to have been occupied by a shadowless man. It was still inhabited last century by an old mason.]
Another and still more curious cliff castle in Bohemia is that of Burgstein. There are several on the frontier of the Wargau and the Hardt in North Bohemia, where the German and Czech languages meet, but it is not possible here to describe them all. Burgstein is the most curious. It consists of an isolated mass of sandstone springing out of level land, an outlying block of the Schwoik chain. Formerly it rose out of a lake or marsh, but this is now drained. The entrance is through a narrow gap in the rock by a flight of steps that lead into a court on all sides surrounded by sheer precipices except towards the North-west, where a gap was closed by a wall. Out of this court open caves, one was formerly the smithy, another the guard-room, a third the stable, and in a recess is the well. From the court access to the main structure is obtained by a rift in the sandstone commanded by the guard-room, and up which ascends a stair of 15 steps that leads to a second rift at right angles, up which leads a further stair of 76 steps, and from the landing 37 descend to a lower portion of the rock, a platform with a breastwork of wall, important for defence of the entrance.
The steps lead to various chambers, and to an open court that looks out over the precipice, and has on one side scooped out of the rock a watchman's chamber, and on the other an armoury, where pilasters on each side supported shelves on which helmets and breastplates were laid; and beyond this is a guard-room. The summit of the rock has on it a lantern that lights an underground chapel, and formerly contained a bell, also a modern summer-house. As the rock was commanded from the south by a spur of the Schwoik range, when cannon were introduced, a new mode of access was devised on the north side, a passage in loops was constructed leading to the upper court. The castle called in Czech, Stolpna, or the pillar, is first mentioned in the fourteenth century. The great highroad to and from Böhmisch-Leipa passed near it, and it became the stronghold of a Raubritter, Mikisch Passzer of Smoyn, who became such a terror to the neighbourhood that the Sixtowns league of Lausitz in 1444 attacked it with 9000 men, broke down the dam that held back the water, and made of the rock an islet in a lake and constrained Mikisch to surrender. Soon after, however, he recommenced his lawless proceedings, and was again attacked in 1445, and after a siege that lasted five weeks, forced to quit his fortress. At the end of the seventeenth century Burgstein was converted into a hermitage and Brother Constantine, the first hermit, either enlarged or dug out the present chapel and built the lantern above, through which it obtains light. He did more, he carved a figure of himself looking through a telescope, life size, and planted on the summit of the rock. On the occasion of the Prussian invasion of Bohemia the image was assumed to be a spy, and the Germans fired at it and greatly damaged the figure, and were much puzzled at being unable to prostrate the dauntless spy. The present possessor of the rock castle has had the figure restored. Burgstein remained the abode of a hermit till 1785, when the reforming Joseph II. abolished all hermitages, and turned out every hermit in his dominions. And now, back to the Jura limestone again. A few words must be given to Kronmetz in Tirol, at the mouth of the Val di Non, opening into the Etschthal.
[Illustration: HABICHSTEIN BOHEMIA. A castle belonging to Count Wallenstein now abandoned owing to the falling away of portions of the rock. It contains stable for horses and cattle, now inaccessible without ladders.]
This castle belonged to the Bishops of Trient, and was intended by them to serve as a place of "ward and custody" against invading or marauding bands.
Butquis custodiet custodies? It was granted in fief to two brothers Von Leo, who turned it into a robbers' nest, so that the neighbourhood rose in arms in 1210 and stormed it. Then the bishops confided it to the Herren von Metz, and they carried on a feud with their overlord, the bishop.
At last it came to the Counts von Firmian, who, in 1480, built a more convenient mansion at the foot of the cliff, and turned the old castle into a hermitage.
The castle, that is in a fair condition, occupies a broad cleft in the rock, only accessible by a narrow path cut in the rocks on the west side. It consists of an outer court and an inner court, protected on the side of the precipice by a stout wall, behind which were originally chambers, as windows in the wall and beamholes show to have been the case. There is a donjon that reaches to the overhanging rock and a ruinous chapel with apsidal east end. The cleft runs further east, but is blocked with a wall.
Another cliff castle, of which Merian, in his Topographia, 1640-88, gave a picture to arouse interest and wonder, is that of Covolo, at one time in Tirol, now over the Italian border. His description of it is as little accurate as his illustration. As a matter of fact, although it is certainly a cliff castle, constructed in a cave, it is accessible on foot, and it is by no means necessary to be conveyed to it by a windlass. Indeed it would not be easy to erect a crane on the platform of the castle that could haul up men and provisions from below.
A more famous fortress in a cave is that of Schallaun in the Puxerloch. Here is a grotto in the face of the precipice, 75 feet above the valley. The cliff itself is 4500 feet high. The castle consists of two stages, the outer court is at a lower level than the face of the cliff, and the opening of the grotto. Entrance was obtained through this outer court that was reached by a path cut in the rock, and from it by a stair also rock-hewn. A second court was reached, above this was again a third within the cave. On the right hand the cave branches out into a long inner cleft that was closed at one time by a door, and was probably used as a cellar. The main cavern also runs by a narrow passage deep into the heart of the rock to a pool of crystal clear water, never failing. The main building—hardly a donjon, was occupied till late in last century by an old mason who patched it up and made it habitable. At a little distance to the east is a smaller cave also with a wall in front of it, and this is said by the peasants to have been the kitchen of the castle, and to have been reached by a wooden gallery from the main building. According to tradition, Schallaun derives its name from Chalons. In the time of Charlemagne a knight of Chalons named Charlot eloped with a Saxon princess, and took refuge in this cave. It became a den of thieves, and Margaret Maultasch (Pouchmouth) took and dismantled it. According to another story the castle served as the haunt of a shadowless man. Unlike Camizzo's hero, he had not sold his shade to the devil, but by a lapse of nature had been born without one. This proved to him so distressing, and so completely interfered with his matrimonial prospects that he took refuge in the Puxerloch, where he was in shadow all day, and his peculiarity could not be noticed; he issued from it only on moonless nights, on one of which he carried off a peasant maid—and she never knew that he was shadowless, for he never allowed her to see his deficiency. Historically very little is known of the Schallaun castle, which is to its advantage, as when these castles are mentioned in chronicles, it is to record some deed of violence done by the occupants. In 1472 it belonged to the knightly family of Sauran, but they sold it. It is now the possession of the Ritter von Franckh. [Footnote: In "Unser Vaterland, Steiermark," Stuttgart, n.d., p. 47, is a representation of the Puxerloch, but it resembles much more Kronmetz. It gives towers and walls and gates that do not exist in the Puxerloch.]
Perhaps the nearest approach to the Puxerloch castle in France is the Roc de Cuze near Neussargues in Cantal. In the face of the cliff is a cave that has been converted into a castle, a wall closes the mouth, and there is a tower. Another fortress completely carved out of the rock is at Roqueville.
I will now deal with the third class, rock towns and castles combined. And I can afford space to treat of but one out of the many that would enter more or less into the category.
Although Nottingham town does not occupy the top of a rock, its castle that does cannot be passed by without notice, because that rock is perforated with galleries and has in it a subterranean chapel.
The castle, now bereft of its ancient splendour, of its coronet of towers, was built by William the Conqueror on the summit of a precipitous height rising above the river Leen. It was dismantled by Cromwell, and what remained was pulled down by the Duke of Newcastle, who erected on its site the uninteresting and unpicturesque mansion that now exists.
The castle was long considered impregnable; and to it Queen Isabel fled with Sir Roger Mortimer, whom she had created Earl of March, and she held it with a guard of one hundred and eighty knights. King Edward III with a small retinue occupied the town. Every night the gates of the fortress were locked and the keys delivered to the Queen, who slept with them under her pillow. Sir William Montacute, with the sanction of the young king, summoned to his aid several nobles on whose fidelity he could depend, and obtained Edward's warrant for the apprehension of the Earl of March. The plot was now ripe for execution. For a time, however, the inaccessible nature of the castle rock, and the vigilance with which the gates were guarded, appeared to present an insuperable obstacle to the accomplishment of their designs. However, Sir William Eland, Constable of the Castle, was won over, and he agreed to admit the conspirators. In the words of an old chronicler, the Constable said to Montacute, "Sir, woll ye unterstande that the yats (gates) of the castell both loken with lokys, and Queen Isabell sent hidder by night for the kayes thereof, and they be layde under the chemsell of her beddis-hede unto the morrow … but yet I know another weye by an aley that stretchith out of the ward, under the earthe into the castell, which aley Queen Isabell ne none of her meayne, ne the Mortimer, ne none of his companye knoweth it not, and so I shall lede you through the aley, and so ye shall come into the castell without spyes of any man that bith your enemies." On the night of October 19, 1340, Edward and his loyal associates before midnight were guided through the subterranean passage by Eland, and burst into the room where the Earl of March was engaged in council with the Bishop of Lincoln and others of his friends. Sir Hugh Trumpington, Steward of the Household, a creature of Mortimer, attempting to oppose their entrance, was slain. The Earl himself was seized, in spite of the entreaties of Isabel, who, hearing the tumult, rushed from her chamber, crying "Fair son, spare my gentle Mortimer!" Both were secured. The next day, Edward announced that he had assumed the government, and summoned a Parliament to meet at Westminster on the 26th November. No sooner had this Parliament met than a bill of impeachment was presented against Mortimer. The peers found all the charges brought against him to be "notorously true, known to them, and all the people." And he was sentenced to be drawn and hanged as a traitor. Mortimer was executed at Tyburn, and the Queen Mother was sent under ward to the manor of Rising. The passage by which the conspirators entered, and by which the Earl was conveyed away, goes by the name of Mortimer's Hole to the present day.
[Illustration: A PORTION OF THE ROCK MONASTERY, NOTTINGHAM PARK]. If I were to attempt to deal with castles and towns on rocky heights I would have to fill pages with descriptions of Capdenac, Najarc, Minerve, Les Baux, San Marino, San Leo, and many another, but inasmuch as they areonrocks instead of beinginrocks, I must pass them over.
A fourth class of cliff castle, neither the habitation of aroutiernor the residence of a feudal seigneur, is that which commands an important ford, or the road or waterway to a town, and which was, in point of fact, an outpost of the garrison.
I can describe but a few.
The Emperor Honorius had conceded to the Visigoths all that portion of Gaul that lay between the Loire and the Pyrenees. The Visigoths were Arians. Far from imitating the Romans, who respected the religion of the vanquished, and cared only that the peoples annexed to the Empire should submit to their administrative and military organisation, the Visigoths sought to impose Arianism on the nations over whom they exercised dominion. The bishops and priests protested energetically against this tyranny, and the Visigoths sought to break their resistance by persecution and exile, but gained nothing thereby save bitter hostility. In the year 511 an event took place that gave to the Aquitanians their religious liberty. The Franks were their deliverers.
Clovis, who coveted the rich provinces of the South, profited by the religious antagonism existing between the Aquitanians and the Goths to gain the confidence of the bishops to whom he promised the destruction of Arian supremacy. And as he had obtained the strongest and most numerous adhesions in Poitou he resolved there to strike a decisive blow.
He prepared his expedition with such secrecy and moved with such celerity that Alaric II., King of the Visigoths, did not become aware of his peril till the army of Clovis was on the confines of his realm. He threw himself into Poitiers, and assembled all the forces he was able to call together. Clovis crossed the Loire at Tours, and directed his march towards Poitiers; he passed over the Creusse at Port de Pilles, and reached the Vienne. The season was the end of September, and there had been so much and such continuous rain that the river was swollen, and he could not cross. Accordingly he and his army ascended it on the right bank seeking for a ford.
He reached Chauvigny, where was a ford, but this was now found impracticable. On the left hand of the present road to Lussac-le- Chateau is a stony, narrow, waterless valley, up which formerly ran the old Roman highway. At the 21/2 kilometre stone is a dense thicket of oak coppice, clothing the steep side of the valley. By scrambling down this, clinging to the oak-branches, one reaches a bluff of chalk rock, hollowed out by Nature at the foot to the depth of 10 feet, and running horizontally to the length of from 32 to 34 feet, and terminating in a natural barrier of rock. It contracts in one place so as to form two chambers. Now this gallery is closed towards the valley by a screen of six huge slabs 8 and 9 feet long, 8 and 9 feet high, and 4 feet thick. They have apparently been slung down from above, and caught and planted so as to wall up the open side of the recess. And at the north end another block, now broken, was set at right angles so as to half close the gallery at the end, leaving a doorway for access to the interior. The attempt to plant these huge slabs on a steep slope was not in every case successful, for a couple slid down the incline, but these served to form a heel-catch to those who did remain erect. Local antiquaries pronounce this to be a fortified cave, unique of its kind, devised to protect the road to Lussac, at the strategical point where it could best be defended. I have myself no manner of doubt that it was a so- called demi-dolmen, a tribal ossuary of neolithic man. Not only is it quite in character with his megalithic remains scattered over the country, but treasure-seekers who in digging displaced and brought down one of the side slabs found two diorite axes, one of which I was fortunate enough to secure. Persons in Gaulish or post-Roman times would not have dreamed of going to the enormous labour and attempting the difficult task of forming the sides with stone slabs, but would have closed the recess with a wall. The cave goes by the name of La Grotte de Jioux (of Jove) which in itself hints its remote antiquity.
[Illustration: THE RUINED MONASTERY IN THE ROCKS, NOTTINGHAM PARK. The monastery commonly called Papists' Holes, abandoned at the Dissolution, was finally wrecked by the Roundheads in the Civil Wars.]
But, although I do not believe that this cave was constructed as a military vidette and guard-house, I have no doubt whatever that it may have been so used, and it is very probable that at this point took place the first brush of Clovis and his Franks with the enemy, for the valley bears the name of Le Vallon des Goths. Alaric knew, what Clovis did not, that there was a ford at Lussac, and if he had any military foresight, he would plant a body of men across the road in the throat of the valley to intercept the Franks on their way. As it was, the Franks pushed on, and seeing a deer wade across the river at Lussac, raised exultant shouts, plunged into the Vienne, and crossed. The result was the battle of Voulon, in which the Arian Goths were defeated, and their empire broken down. [Footnote: This decisive battle is located at Vouillé to the north-west of Poitiers; but local historians are convinced that the site was Voulon to the south of Poitiers. See Thibaudeau,Abrégé de l'Histoire de Poitou, Niort, 1889.] The Grotto of Jioux was but an accidental outpost, but those I am about to describe were artificially contrived for that purpose.
In the broad valley of Le Loir below Vendôme, the great elevated chalk plateau of Beauce has been cut through, leaving precipitous white sides. At one point a buttress of rock has been thrown forward that dominates the road and also the ford over the river. Its importance was so obvious that it was seized upon in the Middle Ages and converted into a fortress. The place is called Le Gué du Loir. Not far off is the Château of Bonnaventure, where Antoine de Bourbon idled away his time drinking Surène wine, and carrying on an intrigue with a wench at le Gué, whilst his wife, Jeanne d'Albret, was sending gangs of bandits throughout her own and his territories to plunder, burn, and murder in the name of religion. But Antoine cared for none of these things. At Bonnaventure he composed the song:—
Si le roi m'avait donnéParis, sa grande ville,Et qu'il me fallait quiterL'amour de ma mie,Je dirai au roi Henri (III.)Reprenez votre Paris,J'aime mieux ma mieAu Gué,J'aime mieux ma mie.
Molière introduced a couplet of this lay into his Alceste.
[ILLUSTRATION: LA ROCHE CORAIL. A cave fortress commanding the river Charante. The large opening is formed by breaking away a doorway and windows; the doorway communicated with a wooden balcony leading to other chambers in the rock.]
[ILLUSTRATION: THE FIRST HALL, LA ROCHE CORAIL. Windows and slots for discharging missiles, and for spearing those attempting to attack the garrison in its stronghold.]
The rock has been excavated throughout, and in places built into, and on to. Two flights of steps cut in the cliff give access to the main portion of the castle. That on the right leads first of all to the Governor's room, hewn out of a projecting portion of the rock floored with tiles, with a good fireplace and a broad window, commanding the Loir and allowing the sun to flood the room. The opening for the window formerly contained a casement. There is a recess for a bed, and there are in the sides numerous cupboards and other excavations for various purposes. This chamber is entered through that of the sentinel, which was also furnished with a fireplace. The stair leads further up to a large hall artificially carved out of the chalk, but not wholly, for there had been originally a natural cavern of small dimensions, which had a gaping opening. This opening had been walled up with battlements and loopholes, but the old woman to whom the rock or this portion of the rock belongs, and who is a cave-dweller at its foot, has demolished the wall to breast-height, so as to let the sun and air pour in, for she uses the cave as a drying place for her wash. From this hall or guard-room two staircases cut in the rock lead to other chambers also rock-hewn higher up.
The second main stair outside gives access to a second series of chambers.
Unfortunately, some rather lofty modern buildings have been erected in front of this cliff castle, so as to render it impossible to make of it an effective sketch or to take a satisfactory photograph.
Still more interesting is La Roche Corail below Angoulême on the river Charente, opposite Nersac and the confluence of the Boeme with the Charente. Where is now a bridge was formerly a ford. The castle of Nersac commanded one side of the valley, and La Roche Corail the other. This cliff castle was at one time very extensive. The rock rises from a terrace partly natural and partly artificial, on which a comparatively modern château has been erected that masks the rock-face. But on entering the court behind the château the bare cliff is seen with a yawning opening halfway up, and indentations in the wall of rock show that at one time there were hanging barbacans and chambers suspended before the rock as well as others hewn out of it.