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[Illustration]
LE MORVAN,
[A DISTRICT OF FRANCE,]
ITS
WILD SPORTS, VINEYARDS AND FORESTS;
WITH
Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches.
BY
HENRI DE CRIGNELLE,
ANCIEN OFFICIER DE DRAGONS.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT IN FRENCH,
BY
CAPTAIN JESSE,
AUTHOR OF "NOTES OF A HALFPAY;" "LIFE OF BRUMMELL;"
"MURRAY'S HAND-BOOK FOR RUSSIA," ETC., ETC.
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT-STREET.
1851.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM TYLER,
BOLT-COURT.
PREFACE.
Born in one of the most beautiful provinces of France, in a country of
noble forests and extensive vineyards; brought up in the open air amidst
the blue hills, and ever wandering over the fields and mountains with a
gun on my arm--all the hours of my youth, if I may so say, were spent in
search of partridges and hares in the dewy stubbles, and in the pursuit
of the wild cat and the boar in the shady depths of the woods.
When relating the adventures of these different shooting rambles to a
friend, talking over with him our mode of sporting so different from
that of England, and when in imagination I carried him along with me
into the dells and dark ravines, and described to him the chase and
death-struggle of the ferocious wolf, or the odd characters and
antediluvian customs of the primitive people amongst whom I passed the
days of my happy boyhood, astonished, he could hardly believe that such
sports and such singular personages existed within so short a distance
of his own country.
"Why not scribble all this?" he would say, "your sketches would make
capital light reading."
"But to write is not easy; and, besides, what a poor figure I and my
dogs and wolves, woodcocks and vineyards, would cut after the terrible
Mr. Gordon Cumming. How could any description of mine interest the
public in comparison with those of that famous shot and his three
coffee-coloured Hottentots, with his bands of panthers and giraffes, his
troops of yellow lions dancing sarabands round the fountains, and his
jungles and swamps swarming with elephants and hippopotami?"
"But we might be able to go to Le Morvan," said my friend, "whereas few
indeed, if they wished it, can go to the South of Africa to shoot
elephants through the small ribs; neither is it probable that many of us
would like to pass several years of their valuable lives shut up in a
loose, rolling, sea-bathing-machine-like wagon, with their own beloved
shadow alone for all Christian company. Let us have a narrative of your
exploits?"
"You do not consider what you ask," I replied; "my gossip may have
amused you, but the effusions of my pen would to a certainty make you
yawn like graves."
"Nonsense," whispered the flatterer, "you will open to us a new country,
you will confer a real service upon hundreds of restless Englishmen, who
when summer comes know not for the life of them where to go, or where
not to go;--write your work, and advise them to turn their steps to Le
Morvan at the time of the vintage."
But now another, a huge difficulty, sprung up. Printers do not lend
their types for nothing any more than they give gratis their time and
paper. To publish a book is always an expensive affair; misfortune,
which had touched me with its wing, which has been the sad guest of my
house, deprived me of the power of undertaking it myself: and where to
find a person so generous as to take upon himself the responsibility of
the undertaking? Happily I was in England, in the land of kind hearts
and warm sympathies. A noble lady, the mother of a distinguished English
nobleman, who passes her life in doing good, took an interest in my
forlorn history, and was pleased to honour me with her patronage. With
this mantle of protection thrown around me, and my generous friend
having undertaken to bear the responsibilities of publishing, the
difficulties were soon swept away, and Le Morvan was written.
I had hoped that I should in this Preface be permitted to mention her
name, which would have been less a compliment to her than an honour to
me; but her modesty has refused this public acknowledgment of my
unbounded gratitude,--a veil of respectful reserve shall therefore
remain suspended over her name. As for me and mine, we shall treasure it
in our thankful hearts--every day shall we pray that the Great Giver of
all good may confer upon her His most precious and gracious blessings.
HENRI DE CRIGNELLE.
LONDON, _August_, 1851.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
English propensity to ramble--Where and how--Le
Morvan--Vezelay--Description of the town--Historical associations
connected with it--Charles IX.--Persecutions of the Protestants--View
from Vezelay--Scenery and wild sports--The Author--Object of the
Work _p._ 1
CHAPTER II.
Le Morvan--Forests--Climate--Patriarchs and Damosels--Peasants of the
plain and the mountains--Jovial Curés--Their love of Burgundy--The
Doctor and the Curé 14
CHAPTER III.
Geology--Fossil shells--Antediluvian salmon--The Druids--Chindonax, the
High Priest--Roman antiquities--Julius Cæsar's hunting-box--Lugubrious
village--Carré-les-Tombes--The Inquisitive Andalusian 26
CHAPTER IV.
Le Morvan during the Middle Ages--Legendary horrors--Forest of La
Goulotte--La Croix Chavannes--La Croix Mordienne--Hôtel de
Chanty--Château de Lomervo--A French Bluebeard--Citadel of Lingou 35
CHAPTER V.
Castle of Bazoche--Maréchal de Vauban--Relics of the old
Marshal--Memorials of Philipsburg--Hôtel de Bazarne--Madame de
Pompadour's maître d'hôtel--Proof of the _curés'_ grief--Farm of St.
Hibaut--Youthful recollections--Monsieur de Cheribalde--Navarre the
Four-Pounder--His culverin 43
CHAPTER VI.
Bird's-eye view of the forests--The student's visit to his uncle in the
country--Sallies forth in the early morning--Meets a cuckoo--Follows
him--The cuckoo too much for him--Gives up the pursuit--Finds he has
lost his way--Agreeable vespers--Night in the forest--Wolves--Up a beech
tree--A friend in need--The student bids adieu to Le Morvan 55
CHAPTER VII.
Charms of a forest life to the sportsman--The Poachers--Le Père
Séguin--His knowledge of the woods and of the rivers--The first buck--A
bad shot 65
CHAPTER VIII.
Le Père Séguin's collation--The young sportsman and the hare--The
quarrel--The apology--The reconciliation--The cemetery--Bait for
barbel--Le Père Séguin's deceased friends--The return home 75
CHAPTER IX.
Passage of the woodcock in November--Laziness of that bird--Night
travelling--Mode of snaring them at night--Numbers taken in this
way--This sport adapted rather for the poacher--The _braconnier_ of Le
Morvan--His mode of life--The poacher's dog--The double poacher 88
CHAPTER X.
The woodcock--Its habits in the forests of Le Morvan--Aversion of dogs
to this bird--Timidity of the woodcock--Its cunning--Shooting in
November--The Woodcock mates--The Woodcock fly 100
CHAPTER XI.
Fine names--Gustavus Adolphus and the cabbages--Gustavus Adolphus no
hero!--The Parisian Sportsman--Partridge shooting despicable--Wild
boar-hunting--Rousing the grisly monster--His approach--The post of
honour--Good nerves--The death--The trophy and congratulations 117
CHAPTER XII.
The _Mares_--Manner in which they are formed in the depths of the
forest--_Mare_ No. 1.--Description of it--The appearance of the
spot--Mode of constructing the hunting-lodge--Approach of the
birds--Animals that frequent the _Mares_ in the evening 141
CHAPTER XIII.
Appearance of the _Mare_ in the morning--Forest etiquette--Mode of
obtaining possession of the best _Mare_--Every subterfuge fair--The
jocose sportsman--The quarrel--Reveries in the hut--Comparison between
meeting a lady and watching for a wolf 157
CHAPTER XIV.
_Mare_ No. 2.--Description of it--Not sought after by the sportsman--The
sick banker--The doctor's prescription--The patient's disgust at it--Is
at length obliged to yield--Leaves Paris for Le Morvan--Consequences to
the inmates of the château--The banker convalescent 170
CHAPTER XV.
Summer months in the Forest--_Mare_ No. 3.--Description of it--The
Woodcock fly--The Banker has a day's sport--Arrives at the
_Mare_--Difficult to please in his choice of a hut--Proceeds to a larger
_Mare_--His friends retire--The Banker on the alert for a Wolf or a
Boar--Fires at some animal--The unfortunate discovery--Rage of the
Parisian--Pays for his blunder, and recovers his temper 188
CHAPTER XVI.
The _Curé_ of the Mountain--Toby Gold Button--Hospitality--The _Curé's_
pig--His hard fate and reflections--The _Curé_ of the plain--His worth
and influence--The agent of the Government--Landed Proprietors--Their
influence--The Orator--Dialogue with a Peasant 207
CHAPTER XVII.
The wolf--His aspect and extreme ferocity--His cunning in hunting his
prey--His unsocial nature--Antiquity of the race--Where found, and their
varieties--Annihilated in England by the perseverance of the kings and
people--Decrees and rewards to encourage their destruction by
Athelstane, John, and Edward I.--Death of the last wolf in
England--Death of the last in Ireland 221
CHAPTER XVIII.
The _battues_ of May and December--The gathering of
sportsmen--Preparations in the forest--The _charivari_--The fatal
rush--Excitement of the moment--The volley--The day's triumph, and the
reward--The peasants returning--Hunting the wolf with
dogs--Cub-hunting--The drunken wolf 236
CHAPTER XIX.
Wolf-hunting, an expensive amusement--The _Traquenard_--Mode of setting
this trap--A night in the forest with Navarre--The young lover--Dreadful
accident that befell him--His courage and efforts to escape--The fatal
catastrophe--The poor mad mother 248
CHAPTER XX.
Shooting wolves in the summer--The most approved baits to attract
them--Fatal error--Hut-shooting--Silent joviality--The approach of the
wolves--The first volley--The retreat--The final slaughter--The
sportsman's reward--The farm-yard near St. Hibaut--The dead colt--The
onset--Scene in the morning--Horrible accident--The gallant
farmer--Death of the wolves, the dogs, and the peasant--The wolf-skin
drum--Anathema of the naturalists 261
CHAPTER XXI.
Fishing in Le Morvan--The naturalist--The _Gour_ of Akin--The English
lady--The mountain streams--Château de Chatelux--Sermiselle--New mode of
killing pike--Pierre Pertuis--The rocks and whirlpool there--The syrens
of the grotto--Château des Panolas--The Cousin--The ponds of Marot and
lakes of Lomervo--Mode of taking fish with live trimmers--The Scotch
farmer 280
CHAPTER XXII.
Village _fêtes_--The first of May--The religious festivals--The _Fête
Dieu_--Appearance of the streets--The altars erected in them--Procession
from the church--Country fairs--The book-stalls at them--Pictures of the
Roman Catholic Church--Before the _Vendange_--Proprietor's hopes and
fears--Shooting in the vineyards--The first day of the
_Vendange_--Appearance of the country--Influx of visitors at this
season--The consequences--Herminie--Her sad history--Le
Morvan--Recommended to the English traveller--Lord Brougham and
Cannes--Contrast between it and Le Morvan 297
LE MORVAN.
CHAPTER I.
English propensity to ramble--Where and how--Le
Morvan--Vezelay--Description of the town--Historical associations
connected with it--Charles IX.--Persecutions of the
Protestants--View from Vezelay--Scenery and wild sports--The
Author--Object of the Work.
Every nation has its characteristics, and amongst those which are
peculiar to the genius of the English people, is their ardent and
insatiable love of wandering.
To locomote is absolutely necessary to every Englishman; in his heart is
profoundly rooted a passion for long journeys; each and all of them, old
and young, healthy and sickly, would if they could take not merely the
grand tour, but circulate round the two hemispheres with all the
pleasure imaginable. At a certain period of the year, when the
weathercock points the right way, the sun burns in the sign of the
Lion, and the husbandman bends his weary form to gather in the golden
corn, the legs of the rich Englishman begin to be nervously agitated, he
feels a sense of suffocation, and pants for change--of air, of place, of
everything; he girds up his loins, and without throwing a glance behind
him, it is Hey, Presto! begone! and he is off. Where?
It is autumn, blessed autumn, the season of harvest and sunny days; the
English are everywhere--they fly from their own dear island like clouds
of chilly swallows, light upon Europe as thick as thrushes in an
orchard, and are soon mingled with every nation of the earth, like the
blue corn flowers in the ripe barley fields. Yes, from north to south,
from east to west, go where you will, you cannot proceed ten miles
without meeting a smiling rosy English girl coquettishly concealed under
her large green veil, and a grave British gentleman, whistling to the
wide world in the sheer enjoyment of having nothing to do but to look at
it.
I have seen green veils climbing the Pyramids; I have seen green veils
diving down into the dark mines of the Oural; I have seen an English
gentleman perched like a chamois on the top of St. Bernard, hat in hand,
roaring "God save the Queen." I have seen some sipping Syracusan wine,
puffing a comfortable cloud from obese cigars, most irreverently seated
in the big nose of St. Carlo Borromeo. One-half of England is gone to
China, the other half to Africa; these will speak to you of Kamschatka,
those of the mountains of the Moon, just as a London cockney or a
Parisian _badaud_ would speak to you of Greenwich or of Bagnolet. Some
have boxed with the bears of the Pyrenees; others have killed lions and
tigers by dozens; one has crossed the Nile on a crocodile, another vows
he waltzed with a dying hippopotamus, and several have bagged
camelopards and elephants by scores. In short, they have trodden with a
bold disdainful step all the high-roads and by-roads of our wondrous
planet, displaying, in every quarter of the compass, the daring and
devil-may-care spirit of their youth and the spleen of their mature age,
as well as the yellow guineas from their long and well-filled purses.
Well, then, ask of all this wandering tribe, who boast of having been
everywhere, and seen everything; ask those travelling birds who have
flown through France and Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Palestine;
who have sledged in Russia and fished in Norway; who have lost
themselves in the prairies of the far West, or in the Pampas, the
gorges of the Andes, or the Alleghanies; who have bronzed their
epidermis in the fierce heat of the tropics, or moistened their fair
_chevelure_ in the diamond spray of Niagara; who have, in fine,
journeyed through calm and hurricane, snow-storms, sirocco, and simoom;
who have rubbed noses--male noses--of the tattooed savage; mounted
donkeys, ostriches, camelopards, lamas, and dromedaries; mules, wild
asses, negroes, and elephants; ask them all if once in their lives--one
single once--they have seen or even heard of LE MORVAN?
Not one of these thousands will answer yes. Le Morvan, where is it? what
is Le Morvan? Is it a mountain, a church, a river, a star, a flower, a
bird? Le Morvan, who knows anything about Le Morvan? Echo answers, "Who
knows?" Paddy Blake's replies, "Nobody." And yet all of you roving
English, who delight in athletic sports and rural scenes--the forest
glade and murmuring streams, a view halloo and the gallant hound; who
love the bleak and healthy moors, the cool retreats, the flowery paths,
and mountain solitudes, how happy would you be in Le Morvan. Where,
then, is Le Morvan?
Le Morvan is a district of France, in which are included portions of the
departments of the Nièvre and the Yonne, having on the west the
vineyards of Burgundy, and on the east the mountains of the Nivernois.
Its ancient and picturesque capital, Vezelay, crowns a hill 2,000 feet
in height, and commands a panoramic view of the country for thirty miles
round. It has all the characteristics of a town of the feudal times,
with high embattled and loopholed walls, numerous towers, and deep and
strong gateways, under which are still to be seen the grooves of the
portcullis, the warder's guard-room, and the hooks that supported the
heavy drawbridge.
The capital of Le Morvan partially owed its rise to a celebrated
nunnery, founded by Gerard de Roussillon, a great hero of romance and
chivalry, who lived, loved, and fought under Pepin, the father of the
grand Charlemagne. This nunnery, which was sacked and burnt to the
ground by the Saracens, those terrible warriors of the East, was
restored in the ninth century, and fortified; and as the sainted inmates
were believed to have amongst their relics a tress of the golden hair of
the beautiful and repentant Magdalen, troops of the faithful--and people
were ready to believe a great deal in those days--flocked to Vezelay,
when it soon became a large and flourishing town.
In the tenth century, when the people, in their endeavour to shake off
a few links of their fetters, refused to bend their bodies in the dust
before their lords and their minds before their priests--when the seeds
of liberty, till then lying in unprofitable ground, though watered for
centuries by the tears of tyranny and oppression, first germinated and
rose above the earth, who gave the signal of resistance in France?--the
inhabitants of Vezelay. Yes; it is to her citizens that the honour
belongs of having first refused to submit to the power, the domineering
power, of political and ecclesiastical rule; it was her brave
inhabitants who, assembling in secret, thought not of the peril, but,
having promised help and protection one to the other, flew to arms. A
short and desperate struggle ensued, but the victory remained in the
hands of the abbot of Vezelay. Hundreds of brave men were put, without
mercy, to the sword, and many, with less mercy, burnt alive or died by
the torture in the dark dungeons of the abbatical palace. Vezelay still
preserves in its archives the names of twelve of these martyrs.
Again in the twelfth century, when the cry to the rescue of the Holy
Sepulchre shook all Europe, and every nation poured forth her tens of
thousands to drive the infidel from that land in which their Redeemer
had lived and died an ignominious and cruel death, it was at Vezelay
that Pope Eugenius III. assembled a great council of the princes of the
church, the great barons, and chivalry of those times. It was in her
immense cathedral, one of the oldest and largest in the kingdom, amidst
the clang of arms, war cries, and religious chaunts, and in the presence
of Louis le Jeune, King of France, that St. Bernard preached, in 1146,
the Second Crusade.
Vezelay is celebrated as having been the birth-place of Beza, the great
Protestant Reformer (1519), who succeeded not only to the place but to
the influence of Calvin, and was, after that eminent man's death,
regarded as the head and leader of the Genevese church.
It was to Vezelay, the only town that dared to offer them the protection
of its walls, that the unfortunate Protestants fled after the horrible
massacre of St. Bartholomew's--the base political cruelty of the brutal
homicide, Charles IX. Tracked and hunted down like wild beasts, and a
price set upon their heads, they found staunch and noble hearts in the
inhabitants of Vezelay; but, ere long, an army of their insatiable foes
arrived and besieged the town, and treachery at a postern one stormy
night made them masters of it, when scenes of horror followed under the
mask of religion that even at this distance of time make one recoil with
terror and disgust at the dogmas of the corrupt faith which dictated
them.
Roasting men alive, and boiling women, dashing out the brains of many a
cherub boy and prattling girl, was the pleasing and satisfactory pastime
with which Pope Gregory, Catherine de Medicis, and her congenial son
gladdened their Christian hearts. The blood of their victims still cries
to us from the ground of their Golgotha; for on the south side of the
town there is a large green field, called _Le Champ des Huguenots_. The
damning fact, from which this spot received its name, has been handed
down to us by the historian. It is as follows:
The Catholics, having instituted a strict search in the woods and
caverns of the environs, made so many prisoners that they were puzzled
what to do with them--nay, in what manner they should take their lives.
Among many ingenious experiments, it was suggested that they should bury
them alive up to their necks in the field to which we have alluded; and
this was accordingly done with nine of them, whose heads were bowled at
with cannon-balls taken from the adjoining rampart, as if they had been
blocks of wood instead of live human heads. The shrieks of the
miserable beings excited no compassion; on the contrary, it afforded
amusement to their executioners: so that games of skittles upon the same
principle were played the whole length of this meadow.
Turning aside from these execrable deeds of man to the works of Nature
and of Nature's God, which have always been and always must be lovely
and worthy of our deepest admiration, let us dwell for a moment upon the
splendid view from the castle-terrace, which forms the principal
promenade of Vezelay. Shaded by large and venerable trees, through the
lofty branches of which many a storm has howled for nearly four hundred
years, the sight from hence is one of the finest panoramic views in
France.
All around, whether on the slope of the hills by the river-side, in the
middle distance, or near the mountains which form the horizon, are seen
hundreds of little villages, and many a white villa scattered among the
green vines as daisies on the turf. To the left and right are St. Père
and Akin, two hamlets, which seem like faithful dogs sleeping at the
foot of the mountain crowned by Vezelay. The province in which this
cloud-capped fortress-town is situated is a retired spot out of the
beaten track of the tourist, the man of business, or the man of
pleasure--lost, as it were, in the very heart of beautiful France, like
a wild strawberry in the depth of the forest--encircled by woods, and
unknown to the foreigner, who, in his rapid journey to Geneva or to
Lyons, almost elbows it without dreaming of its existence.
Le Morvan rears in its sylvan depths a population of hardy and honest
men and lovely women, fresh as roses, and gay as butterflies. There the
soft evening breezes are charged with the songs of ten thousand birds,
the odours of the eglantine, the lily of the valley, and the violet,
which, shaking off its winter slumbers, opens its dark blue eye and
combines its perfume with that of its snowy companion.
Le Morvan is a country that would delight an Englishman, for it is full
of game; here the sportsman may vary his pleasures as fancy dictates.
The forest abounds with deer; the plain with rabbits and the timid hare;
and in the vineyards, during the merry season of the vintage, the fat
red-stockinged and gray-clad partridges are bagged by bushels. Here the
sportsman may watch in the open glades the treacherous wild cat and the
bounding roebuck; and, should these sports appear too tame, he may, if
foot and heart are sound, plunge into the dark recesses of the forest
in pursuit of the savage and grisly boar, or the fierce and prowling
wolf.
When evening comes, bringing with it peace and rest to the industrious
peasant, when the moon shall light her bright lamp in the star-spangled
heavens, and shed her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead
forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to
the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never
cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows
of the ancient oaks and tall acacias.
Happiness, says Solomon, consists not in the possession of that gold for
which men toil so unremittingly and grave deep wrinkles on the heart and
brow. Happiness lights not her torch at the crystal lustres in the halls
of royalty; she rarely chooses for her home the marble palaces of the
wealthy, nor is she often the companion of the great, robed in costly
apparel; rarely does she braid her hair with pearls, or wear the rosy
lightning of the ruby on her fair bosom.
Happiness is known only to him who, free and contented, lives unknown in
his little corner, deaf to the turmoil and insensible to the excitements
of the selfish crowd, and ignorant of the sorrows and sufferings of
great cities. She is found in the enjoyment of the sunshine and the open
air, in the shady groves and flowery fields, by the side of the
murmuring brooks, and in the society of the gay, frank, and
simple-minded peasant of my own dear country. Oh! my white and pretty
_pavillon_, whose walls are clad with fragrant creepers and the luscious
vine, whose porch is scented with the woodbine and the rose--oh! lovely
valleys, dark forests, deep blue lakes which sleep unruffled in the
bosom of the hills, beautiful vine-clad hills, where in the morning of
my youth I chased those flying flowers, the bright and painted
butterflies--oh! when, when shall I see you all again--like the bird of
passage, which, when the winter is over, returns to his sunny home? When
shall I see thee again? Oh! my sweet Le Morvan! Oh! my native land!
Happy, thrice happy they who cherish in their hearts the love of nature,
who prefer her sublime and incomparable beauties to the false and
artificial works of man, accumulated with so much cost and care within
the walls of her great cities. Happy, too, are those who have not been
carried away by the fatal flood of misfortune from the paternal hearth,
who have always lived in sight of that home which sheltered their merry
childhood, and whose lives, pure and peaceful as the noiseless stream of
the valley, close in calmness and serenity like the twilight of a bright
summer's day.