LE VELAY
Haute Loire—Geological structure of the plateau—Trap
dykes—Volcanoes—Crater of Bar—The Lac de Bouchet—Legends—Offerings
made to lakes—Mézenc—Direction of the rivers—Peculiarities
in their course—How the basalt was broken through—The River
Loire—The Borne—The Ceysac—Process of valley formation—The
climate—Lacemaking—La Béate—The peasantry—Costume—History of Le
Velay—The Polignacs—The Mint—The Revolution.
The department of Haute Loire is made up mainly, but not wholly, of the
ancient province of Le Velay. It is situated at the limit of the Langue
d'Oc, on the confines of the region of the Langue d'Oïl. Le Velay forms
a rude triangle of which the bounds are the mountains of the Vivarais
on the east, those of the Velay on the west, and the broad basis of
the triangle is to the north towards Auvergne and Forez, fringed there
by lower heights. It consists of an uplifted plateau with an average
elevation above the sea of 2,700 feet, and is the least rainy portion
of France. The summers there are never oppressively hot; but, on the
other hand, in winter it is a Southern Siberia. Originally composed
of granite, it has been pierced by volcanic cones, and covered with
igneous dejections. As many as a hundred craters have been counted in
it, and through the rents in the granite and schist opened during the
throes of eruption, dykes of trap have been thrust, forming spires
and truncated columns. The heat of the molten matter so altered and
disintegrated the rocks through which it was driven, that in many
places these rocks have crumbled away, and have left the dykes erect in
black nakedness high above the surrounding level. Such is the Aiguilhe
by Le Puy, 210 feet high, to reach the summit of which a flight of
steps has been hewn in the side, and on the top, in 962, Truan, Dean
of Le Puy, erected a church in honour of S. Michael, and called it
Seguret, The Secure Refuge; the church was consecrated in 980. Another
of these obelisks is at Fay le Froid, another basaltic monolith is La
Roche Rouge on the banks of the Gagne.
But sometimes the eruptive dykes are more massive, and form stone
tables with precipitous sides, as at Polignac, the cradle of an
illustrious family, and at Arlempdes on the Loire.
There are few crags of basalt or tufa in the Velay that are not crowned
by a ruined castle, and to enumerate these would be a tedious and
unprofitable task.
The last of all the volcanoes to explode was the Denise, near Le Puy,
and that erupted when man was on the earth, for under the lava, in a
bed of breccia or volcanic ash, was found in 1884 the skeleton of a
man; another was discovered shortly after, and a third is reported to
have been recently disinterred. In the case of the first of these,
the man seems to have been overtaken by the shower of falling ash, to
have sat down, placed his head between his knees, and held his hands
over his skull to protect it, and so perished, and the rain of cinders
finally enveloped and buried him. No weapons or ornaments have been
found with these bodies. The relics of plants and animals in the same
bed belong to species still existing in the neighbourhood.
Of the craters the most perfect is that of Bar, thus described by
Georges Sand:—
"This ancient volcano rises isolated above a vast plateau that
is as bare as it is sad. It stands there as if planted as a
boundary mark between the old Velay and Auvergne. From the summit
of its truncated cone a superb view is obtained extending to the
Cévennes. A vast forest of beech crowns the mountain and clothes
its sides, which are much rifted towards the base. The crater
is a mighty bowl full of verdure, perfectly circular, and with
the bottom covered with a turfy sward in which grow pale birch
trees thinly scattered. Here was at one time a lake, dried up
in the times of Roman occupation. The tradition of the country
is strange. It was said that this tarn bred storms; and the
inhabitants of Forez accordingly came hither, sword in hand, and
forcibly drained it."[3]
The Lac de Bouchet is not a sheet of water filling an ancient crater,
but occupies a hollow produced by the bursting of a great bubble of
air in the molten lava. It is almost circular, and the ground around
it is very slightly raised. Curiously enough, Roman substructures have
been traced in the lake. Probably some Gallo-Roman noble had his summer
villa there, overhanging the water, as at Baiæ.
"Nullus in orbe sinus Baiis prælucet amœnis,
Si dixit dives—lacus et mare sentit amorem
Festinantis heri."
This originated a tale told by the peasantry to the effect that a city
lay submerged under the crystal water. The story is this: Our Lord
visited Le Velay to see what way the Gospel was making there. He lodged
with an aged widow, who nourished herself on the milk of a single goat.
The people received Christ badly, and pelted Him with stones. Then He
laid hold of the widow by the hand and drew her away; and she, leading
the goat, followed. They had not proceeded far before she turned and
looked back. And lo! where the town had been was now a lake. Three
stones mark the spot where the widow took up her final residence, and
on one of these she is said to have sat to milk her goat. The same
story is told of another of these lakes, that of Arconne, near Fay le
Froid, and there also are found three blocks ranged in a line.
That these lakes were held sacred admits of no dispute.
Gregory of Tours, in the sixth century, says that in the land of the
Gabali (the adjoining Gévaudan) was a Mount Helanus, where was a lake.
Every year the inhabitants of the country flocked thither and cast
oblations into the water—linen, weaving-materials, cheese, wax, bread,
and coins. They arrived in wagons, bringing their food with them, and
feasted by the lakeside during three days. On the last day a storm of
thunder, lightning, and hail was wont to break over the sheet of water.
This usage lasted till a bishop of Clermont went thither, and preached
to the people; but as he found it impossible to dissuade the natives
from the practice, he built there a chapel to S. Hilary, and exhorted
them to leave their gifts there instead of throwing them into the tarn.
This lake is now called Lac S. Andéol, on the mountains of Aubrac, and
the ruined chapel of S. Hilary remains. The people still reverence the
pool, which they call the Father of Hail Storms, and till last century
continued to cast offerings into the water. The visible result of the
efforts of the good bishop so many centuries ago was no more than the
construction of a chapel now in ruins.
It is probable enough that were the Lac de Bouchet drained, it would
yield a rich spoil of coins. The lake is 2,800 feet across and 98 feet
deep. In the morass occupying the bowl of Bar have been found a great
many early coins, a necklace, and bracelets of bronze.
The loftiest of the Cévennes is Mézenc, on the frontier of Haute Loire.
It is 5,750 feet high, and was at one time the central point of violent
Plutonic eruptions. Several craters poured forth trachyte, phonolith,
and basalt, which overflowed the granite, gneiss, clay deposits, and
limestone to a great distance.
One of the craters, La Croix-des-Boutières, remains very distinct.
"The phonolith of which Mézenc is composed," says Elisée Reclus,
"appears to have issued from the crater in a state of high
fluidity, and to have spread very rapidly over the slopes of the
crystalline plateau. The result is that the volcanic cones have,
relatively to the anterior formations that support them, but
a feeble elevation. The lavas which issued from the crater of
Mézenc, of very unequal texture, have been attacked by storms, so
as to represent a range of distinct cones on which grow forests of
oak and pine."
If the map be studied, it will be seen that there are two features in
the water system of this region that merit notice.
In the first place, we have the Allier on the west, and the Loire in
the midst of this tableland flowing due north to shed their waters
ultimately into the Atlantic. Parallel with them, divided from the
Loire only by the chain just described, distant from it from forty to
fifty miles, is the Rhône, running in a precisely opposite direction,
due south, to discharge into the Mediterranean.
Then, again, going west, we have the Lot, the Tarn, the Jonte, the
Truyère, and the Dordogne, all in their early youth streaming from east
to west, their sources, or those of some of them, twenty miles from
the Allier, which is racing as hard as it can run to the north. The
explanation of this last feature is easy. When the granite was upheaved
it lifted a crust of Dolomite on its back like a huge shell, and in
lifting split the shell in many places.
The rivers, rising in the granite of the Margeride, the Mont d'Aubrac,
the Aigoual, the Monts de Lozère, and slipping off their impervious
sides looking for outlets, found these fissures, took possession of
them, and rushed down them on their way to the plains in the west.
The average depth of these chasms is from 1,300 to 1,500 feet, and
their width at the bottom varies from 160 to 1,500 feet. Their rocky
walls are carved by rain and frost into the most fantastic forms. At
one time I held, with M. Martel, that these cañons were originally
subterranean watercourses, and that the caverns formed by the
underground waters became open valleys by the falling in of their
roofs. But this idea is untenable, as I now see. The rivers descending
from the granitic range must have found a passage, and they found it
in the already cleft masses of the Causses. They rise outside the
limestone area, and cut right through it, separating one Causse from
another.[4]
A second feature in the river system of Haute Loire is that a certain
number of the affluents of the Loire run into it from the direction
in which it is flowing, and their mouths are more or less against the
stream they are about to feed. A river usually affects the form of a
deciduous tree, of which the branches represent the tributaries. The
branches are attached to the trunk at an obtuse angle, as seen from
below. With pines it is different; with them the limbs are attached in
the reverse fashion, at an acute angle as seen from below. Some of the
affluents of the Loire come into it in the way in which a fir branch
grows out of the main trunk. This is notably the case with the Arzon
and the Borne. The reason for this is that the basin of Le Velay has a
rim to the north, and the drainage from the north naturally runs down
to the lowest point in the basin. But on reaching this spot the streams
come on the Loire, which has cut for itself a huge gap through the
northern lip of the bowl, and is able to discharge its waters through
that.
How this was done demands some explanation. The Rhône is the mightiest
of the rivers of France, but its sources are in the Swiss Alps, and
it does not enter France till after it has passed through the Lake of
Geneva. But the Loire is next in size and importance, and it flows
through French soil only. The source is under the Gerbier de Jonc, in
the department of Ardèche, but flows in it for a short course only. It
is still a feeble stream when it enters the department of Haute Loire,
through which it makes its way till it leaves it for Forez. The Loire
rises 4,500 feet above the sea, and when it quits the department it has
fallen to 1,450 feet. When the volcanoes of Le Velay were in eruption
and the tableland was overflowed with molten lava, the Loire must have
been arrested and have mounted to heaven in a column of steam. In time
the lava cooled, and the stream groped for beds of scoria and fallen
dust through which it could nibble its way with ease. But when it
encountered a barrier of basalt the case was altered. This blocked its
course as with rows of iron piles rammed into the ground and running
far back. But the crystallisation of the lava into basaltic prisms
helped the river to break through.
The molten matter, of the consistency of treacle, flowing over the
country followed its undulations, filling hollows here and rounding
obstructions there. When it cooled it began to crystallise, and form
hexagonal columns that are upright. But when the surface of the
original soil would not allow of regular crystallisation, there the
columns shaped themselves in all directions and in great confusion; the
result being that in many places the basalt was fractured, fissured,
and ruinous from the very first. The water speedily detected these weak
points, worked at them, tumbled the columns down, overleaped them,
bored further, and did not rest till it had cut its way completely
through the barrier.
Hercules in his cradle strangled a couple of serpents, and the infant
Loire, a ridiculously small stream for the work it effected, on
entering the department laid hold of and split the bed of Plutonic
deposit, and held on its way between basaltic escarpments. It is,
however, below Le Puy, after the Sumène has entered it, under the
mighty rocks of Peyredeyre that begin its finest achievements. The
eruptions that took place in this part were later than those which had
obstructed it in its infancy. They entirely blocked the exit, and the
Loire was dammed back in the basin of Le Puy, where it spread into an
extensive lake. In time, however, it succeeded in sawing a way through.
The railway from Le Puy to St. Etienne runs through the furrow that it
formed. The barrier had been thrown up from both sides by the meeting
and overlapping of lava floods from the volcanoes of Velay in the west,
and those of the Vivarais in the east, and the beds were piled one upon
another. It is marvellous to see the passage which the river forced for
itself through these superincumbent beds, from Peyredeyre to La Voute.
The rock at this latter place sustains a restored castle belonging to
the Duke of Polignac.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF LA VOUTE-SUR-LOIRE]
[Illustration: CASCADE DES ESTREYS]
Below this point the gorge ceases for a while, till another barricade
was reached below Vorey, where the Arzon enters the Loire.
There the river struggles between the Miaune and the Gerbizon, in the
defiles of Chambon and Chamalières. The beds of phonolith of these
mountains, which formerly corresponded unbrokenly, are now separated by
a gash 1,500 feet deep, which the waters of the Loire have achieved,
cutting through the lava to the granite beneath.
The Borne, on which is Le Puy, also traverses gorges, notably that of
Estreys, and passes the well-preserved castle of the Leaguer Baron
de S. Vidal. Then it sweeps under the pillared rocks of Espaly and
slides beneath l'Aiguilhe. Perhaps as interesting an example as any
of the way in which an insignificant stream has overmastered all
difficulties may be seen in the Valley of Ceyssac. The rill flows
into the Borne at an acute angle against the current. The valley was
choked with a mass of tufa ejected from La Denise, and the current
was arrested in its downward course. The stream then formed a lake
that rose till it overflowed the dam in two places, leaving between
them a prong of somewhat harder rock. When the water had poured for a
considerable time over the left-hand lip, and it had worn this down to
the depth of about seventy feet, it all at once abandoned this mode
of outlet and concentrated its efforts on the right-hand portion of
the barrier, where it found that the tufa was less compact, and it
sawed this down till it reached its present level, leaving the prong
of rock in the middle rising precipitously out of the valley with the
water flowing below it, but attached to the mountain-side by the neck
it had abandoned. The Polignacs seized on the fang of tufa and built
a castle on the top, only to be reached by steps cut in the face of
the rock; and the villagers covered the neck with their houses. They
then proceeded to scoop out a great vault in the body of the living
rock, blocked the entrance with a wall in which is inserted a pretty
Romanesque doorway, and so provided themselves with a parish church at
very little expense. On a saddle overhead they constructed a belfry for
three bells.
In no part of Europe can be studied with greater facility the process
of valley formation, for here that process is comparatively recent.
That which has been accomplished elsewhere in hundreds of thousands of
years, has here been achieved in thousands only. The great elevation of
the valley, and the fact that it lies open to the north cause it to be
a cold country. The high tableland is swept by the winds, of which
the most dreaded is that of the south, _le vent blanc_, bringing with
it tempest that devastates the harvest.
"In these quasi-Alpine regions," says M. Malegue, "snow, scourged
by the blasts, flies in clouds, heaps itself up in drifts,
encumbers the roads that have to be marked out with poles to guide
the traveller, buries the cottages of the poor mountaineers,
holding them prisoners for months at a time in their dwellings,
and by its long stay, as by the intensity of the cold, makes
administrative and commercial relations often impossible and
sometimes perilous."
To this fact is due the creation of the great industry of the
land—lacemaking.
[Illustration: A LACEMAKER, LE PUY]
In feudal times Le Velay was a small province inaccessible for half
the year, obliged accordingly to depend on itself for its existence.
Auvergne, Forez, the Vivarais circumscribed it; these were rich
provinces. Moreover, the Velaviens had to pay tax and tithe and toll to
the barons, the clergy, the king. Such burdens might be borne elsewhere
with a grumble, but here they ate into the sinews of life, unless the
culture of the soil were supplemented from some other source. And it
was precisely this that created the industry of Le Velay—lacemaking.
So soon as the first snows appeared, the men abandoned their farms
and cottages, and went, some to Le Puy, where they occupied an entire
quarter, and gained their livelihood as tapsters, farriers, weavers,
carpenters, pin-makers, etc., or else departed for Lyons, Nîmes,
Montpellier, and Toulouse, to work as masons. All the women of the
country pressed into Le Puy. There they formed congregations under the
name and patronage of some saint. Each of these congregations had its
hall, and in this gathered the wives and daughters of the absent men,
and spent their days and evenings in making pillow-lace, in singing,
telling tales, and in gossip. There they remained working at their
little squares with flying bobbins, till the spring sun brought back
fathers and husbands and brothers, when the women put aside their
bobbins and returned to their several farms.
Lacemaking was a flourishing business till the year 1547, when a
sumptuary law was promulgated by the Parliament of Toulouse and
sanctioned by the King, forbidding the wearing of lace by any save
nobles, for the odd reason that there was no means of obtaining
domestic servants in Le Velay, as every girl was a lacemaker.
Great consternation was caused by this edict. That same year a late
frost smote the vines, corn was dear, and a pestilence broke out. In
the midst of this discontent, Huguenot preachers appeared in the land,
and they did their utmost to direct the disaffection of the people
against the Church. Happily, S. Francis Regis arrived in Le Velay on
a preaching mission, and speedily saw that the limitations imposed
on the production of lace was the real grievance angering the people
and inducing them to hit out blindly at all authority. He hurried to
Toulouse and obtained the withdrawal of the law. He did more: his
brethren of the Jesuit Order, incited by him, spread abroad the passion
for lace in the New World, became in fact _commis voyageurs_ for the
industry, and thus opened out fresh fields for the produce. It is due
to this that the memory of S. Francis Regis is still fragrant in the
land, and that his figure so often adorns the pillows on which the
lace is made, and that his tomb at Lalouvesc, where he died on December
31st, 1640, receives such streams of pilgrims.
[Illustration: LA BÉATE]
The paralysis of the industry had hit more than the women of Le Velay.
It had affected the colporteurs who brought to the market of Le Puy the
linen thread out of which the lace was made. It is remarkable that at a
time when roads were execrable, and means of communication faulty, the
lacemakers were dependent on Holland for the material with which they
worked. The linen of the district was too coarse to serve, and all that
was used by them was derived from the Low Countries.
Lacemaking continues to be the main industry of the country. In fact,
Haute Loire is the most important centre in the world. In the report
on the lace at the Exhibition at Chicago, it is stated that the number
of women there engaged on this dainty and beautiful art was 92,000,
whereas in Belgium but 65,000 are thus employed.
In the most remote hamlets, in the most solitary cottages among the
mountains, the societies of lace workers still gather, in summer before
their doors, in winter in the cottage of _la béate_. The house of this
woman is surmounted by a little bell-cott. One such is to be found in
the smallest cluster of cottages. The house consists uniformly, on the
ground floor, of one large room that serves as chapel, refuge, school,
and place of assembly. In the upper story lives la Béate. This woman,
whose official title is _Dame de l'Instruction_, fulfils many duties.
In a land where the children are occupied in the fields throughout
the summer, they can attend school only in winter, precisely when
communications are difficult and are often impossible. It is then
that they flock to the house of the Béate, who gives them the first
elements of instruction. She also teaches the young girls how to use
the bobbins. During the summer she has a crêche, and attends to the
infants whilst their mothers are in the fields; she nurses the sick,
lays out the dead, and exerts her influence, which is second only to
that of the curé, to counsel those who are in perplexity, to console
the sorrowful, and to reconcile those who have quarrelled. She is the
peace-maker in every little agglomeration of cottages. As a return for
her services she obtains her lodging gratis, corn and wood sufficient
for her needs. Every well-to-do peasant also contributes fifty centimes
per month for her maintenance. In her house in the winter evenings the
women gather to work together, and each meeting is begun and concluded
with prayer. How valuable are the services of these women may be judged
by the fact that in Haute Loire there are 265 parishes, but made up of
3,300 widely-scattered hamlets.
The peasant of the uplands of Le Velay and Le Vivarais is of medium
height, is strongly built, and of a vigorous constitution. Accustomed
from childhood to follow his sheep and oxen in their leisurely
movements, he also becomes a being of slow habit of body and even
slower of mind. He is shy, timorous, and cautious of compromising
himself in any way with his neighbours, above all with the officials.
A writer in 1829 says:—
"His broad-brimmed hat shades a face that when calm seems to be
incapable of expression. Chestnut hair flows over his shoulders.
His eye is calm and assured. In speech he is curt, to the point;
but he is often figurative in his expressions. He makes no
distinction in his address to any one to whatever rank he may
belong, and however wealthy he may be. Communicative when on
terms of familiarity with him, an expression of goodwill steals
out on and overspreads his usually rugged and harsh features,
like the flowers that open on the face of a rock. But should one
inadvertently offend his pride, at once wrath, prompt and fierce,
flames forth, an oath breaks from his lips, and in a moment the
weapon, hidden but never quitted, is drawn and raised, and often
blood flows to efface a quite trivial offence."
[Illustration: CEVENOL PEASANT]
Descriptions of character of a people are never satisfactory. I shall
give in a subsequent chapter the story of the Tavern of Peyrabeille,
that shows what the character of this people is in a way unmistakable.
Robert Louis Stevenson's account of the people of Le Velay is
peculiarly unpleasant. He speaks of their discourtesy, and accentuates
their brutality of manner and speech. I venture, with all due
deference, to differ from him. The peasant in Languedoc is much towards
you as you are to him. If you meet him with courtesy and kindliness it
is cordially reciprocated, and my experience is altogether the reverse
of his. I do not think that R. L. Stevenson treated the French peasant
quite as he expects to be treated. Here is one instance:—
"At the bridge of Langogne a lassie of some seven or eight
addressed me in the sacramental phrase, 'D'où 'st que vous venez?'
She did it with so high an air that she set me laughing; and
this cut her to the quick. She was evidently one who reckoned on
respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon as I crossed
the bridge."
But I will quote again, and this time from Georges Sand:—
"I find here a race very marked in its characteristics, altogether
in harmony with the soil that supports it; meagre, gloomy, rough,
and angular in its forms and in its instincts. At the tavern every
one has his knife in his belt, and he drives the point into the
lower face of the table, between his legs; after that they talk,
they drink, they contradict one another, they become excited,
and they fight. The houses are of an incredible dirtiness. The
ceiling, made up of a number of strips of wood, serves as a
receptacle for all their food and for all their rags. Alongside
with their faults I cannot but recognise some great qualities.
They are honest and proud. There is nothing servile in the manner
in which they receive you, with an air of frankness and genuine
hospitality. In their innermost soul they partake of the beauties
and the asperities of their climate and their soil. The women have
all an air of cordiality and daring. I hold them to be good at
heart, but violent in character. They do not lack beauty so much
as charm. Their heads capped with a little hat of black felt,
decked out with jet and feathers, give to them, when young, a
certain fascination, and in old age a look of dignified austerity.
But it is all too masculine, and the lack of cleanliness makes
their toilette disagreeable. It is an exhibition of discoloured
rags above legs long and stained with mud, that makes one totally
disregard their jewellery of gold and even the rock crystals about
their necks."
The elder women alone preserve a distinctive costume, and that is
confined to the head-dress. Its main feature consists in a white
frilled cap with a highly coloured broad ribbon forming a bow in front;
the ends are carried back over the ears, and a little peculiarly shaped
black felt hat, fit only for a child, is perched on the front of the
head. It is not becoming, therefore the young women will have none of
it. But in flying the smoke they fall into the smother, for in place of
this they adopt the most tawdry modern hats, a congeries of feathers
and cheap sham flowers.
The history of Le Velay is involved in that of the bishops of Le Puy,
who were counts under the sovereignty of the King of France. They were
either under the domination of the Polignacs, or were fighting with
them over the rights to coin money. This right had been conceded to
the bishops in 924. But the viscounts of Polignac also had their mint,
and neither could debase his coinage lest his rival should obtain a
predominant circulation for his currency. In the twelfth century Pons
de Polignac fought the bishop on this question. Louis VII. had to
intervene. He carried off the viscount and his son Heracleus prisoners
to Paris, and the strife was only concluded four years later, in 1173,
by a compact, by virtue of which the bishop and the viscount were to
share equally the profits of a mint held in common.
The Polignacs were a thorn in the side of the Bishop and Chapter of Le
Puy. Sometimes by menace with the sword they determined the elections
to the see, and when it suited them they appointed one of the family to
the throne. At the close of the eleventh century, one of these Polignac
prelates, Stephen Taillefer, surnamed "The Ravager," brought down
on his head the anathema of Pope Gregory VII. He had been Bishop of
Clermont, but in 1073, when the see of Le Puy was vacant, transferred
himself to it as the wealthier of the two. Another Stephen had been
elected by the Chapter, and there was fighting in the streets.
Taillefer summoned his kinsman of Polignac to his aid, and drove the
rival candidate out of the city. But as the canonicity of his election
was disputed, he deemed it advisable to visit Rome with a valise
stuffed with gold, and establish his claim by the most cogent of all
arguments. He persuaded the Pope to consent to his retaining the see,
but the case was so gross, and his hands were so steeped in blood, that
Gregory imposed the condition that he should not exercise episcopal
functions, which were to be delegated to a suffragan, and that he
should revisit Rome with another load of gold somewhat later. This was
in 1074, but in 1076 the Pope excommunicated him because he had not
fulfilled his promise of again visiting Rome. Gregory was in the midst
of his strife with the Emperor Henry IV., whom he deposed in that year,
and he was sorely in need of money wherewith to support William of
Utrecht, whom he had set up in opposition.
It is remarkable how sensitive Rome was to simony when practised
anywhere else save in Rome itself.
At a council held at Clermont in 1077, Stephen was deposed by order of
Gregory. Nevertheless, he managed to retain the see till 1078.
After a while open oppression of the Church by the Polignacs came to
an end; cadets of the family quietly appropriated to themselves the
canonries and best benefices; and the last bishop of the name, William
de Chalençon, has left a memory that was even savoury.
But if the Polignacs were meddlesome neighbours of the see, they lent
lustre to Le Velay. These masters of the rock were brave nobles.
They fought in the Crusades; they fought the English. They espoused
the faith, the passions, the fervour of their native land. In every
generation illustrious marriages added to the splendour of their
escutcheon. As the feudal towers of Polignac dominated, and dominate
still, the green and flowery land that lies spread below it, so does
the name of Polignac dominate the history of Velay. The race was one
that abounded in energy, was robust and patriotic.
Velay was ravaged by the Free Companies, and summoned Du Guesclin to
its aid against them. Of its troubles in the Wars of Religion I shall
have to speak in the next chapter. Le Puy was occupied by the Leaguers,
who made themselves masters of nearly every stronghold in Velay, and it
was not till some years after Henry IV. had come to the throne that it
submitted to his authority.
The Revolution brought the same results in Velay as elsewhere; the
cathedral of Le Puy was pillaged, the monasteries destroyed, and a
certain amount of blood was shed; sixty priests were hung or shot,
and many nobles guillotined. Since then it has enjoyed tranquillity,
only recently ruffled by the taking of the Inventories, leading to the
breaking open of the church doors.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] _Jean de la Roche_, Paris, Calmann-Lévy.
[4] See "The Cañons of Southern France," by A. T. Jukes-Browne, in
_Natural Science_, vol. vi., 1895.