CLIFF CASTLES. THE ROUTIERS
From a very early period in the Middle Ages--in fact from the
dissolution of the Carlovingian dynasty--we find communities
everywhere grouped about a centre, and that centre the residence of the
feudal chief to whom the members of the community owed allegiance and
paid certain dues, in exchange for which he undertook to protect his
vassals from robbery and outrage. By the Edict of Mersen, in 847, every
freeman was suffered to choose his own lord, whether the King or one of
his vassals, and no vassal of the King was required to follow him in
war, unless against a foreign enemy. Consequently the subjects were
able to make merchandise of their obedience. In civil broils the King
was disarmed, helpless; and as he was incapable of defending the weak
against their oppressors, the feeble banded themselves under any lord
who could assure them of protection. The sole token that the great
nobles showed of vassalage to the Crown was that they dated their
charters by the year of the Sovereign's reign.
As the security of the community depended on the security of the
seigneur, it behoved that his residence should be made inexpugnable. To
this end, where possible, a projecting tongue of land or an isolated
hill was selected and rendered secure by cutting through any neck that
connected it with other high ground, or by carving the sides into
precipices. Like a race of eagles, these lords dwelt on the top of the
rocks, and their vassals crouched at their feet.
But although the dues paid to a seigneur were fixed by custom, it not
infrequently happened that the receipts were inadequate to his wants.
He had to maintain armed men to guard his castle and his tenants, and
these armed men had to be paid and kept in good humour. The lord
accordingly was disposed to increase the burdens laid on his serfs, and
that to such an extent as to drive them into revolt. He on his part was
not unaware of the fact that he held a wolf by the ears, and his
impregnable position was chosen not solely as a defence against foreign
enemies, but also against his rebellious vassals.
The village of Les Eyzies is dominated by the ruins of a castle of the
tenth or eleventh century, that was restored in the fifteenth, when a
graceful turret was added. The keep is planted on a precipitous rock,
and rises to the overhanging roof of chalk that is pierced with rafter-
holes for the reception of roof beams, and with openings only to be
reached by ladders leading to caves that served as storehouses. At the
junction of the Beune with the Vézère, a little further down is a rock
standing by itself, shaped like a gigantic fungus. This is called the
Roche de la Peine, as from the top of it the Sieur de Beynac, who was
also lord of Les Eyzies, precipitated malefactors. But under that
designation he was disposed to reckon all such as in any way offended
him. In 1594 the Sieur, to punish two of his peasant vassals who had
committed a trifling offence, killed one, and dragged the other over
stones, attached to the tail of his horse. This act of barbarity roused
public indignation, and a deputation waited on the seneschal of
Perigord to demand retribution. But having received no satisfaction
from this officer, in 1595, the peasants took the matter into their own
hands, revolted and besieged the castle. As they failed to take it,
they turned on the property of the seigneur, tore up his vines, cut
down his woods, and burnt his granges.
The incessant wars that swept France, its dismemberment into duchies
and counties and seigneuries, practically independent, and above all
the English domination in Guyenne for three hundred years, enabled the
petty nobles to shake off the very semblance of submission to their
liege lords, and to prosecute their private feuds without hindrance.
After Poitiers, 1356, and the captivity of King John, anarchy reigned
in the land; bands of plunderers ranged to and fro, threatening persons
and ravaging lands; and the magistrates could not, or would not,
exercise their authority. Local quarrels among rival landowners, the
turbulent and brutal passions of the castle-holders, filled the land
with violence and spread universal misery, from which there seemed to
be no escape, as against the wrongdoers there was no redress. After the
Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, Aquitaine ceased to be a French fief, and
was exalted in the interests of the King of England into an independent
sovereignty, together with the provinces of Poitou, the Saintonge,
Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois and
Rouergue, greatly to the dissatisfaction of the people, who
remonstrated against being handed over to a foreign lord. Charles V.
and Charles VII. sought on every available occasion to escape from its
obligations, and the towns were in periodic revolt. William de Nangis
says of the condition of the country under Charles V.: "There was not
in Anjou, in Touraine, in Beauce, in Orleans, and up to the very
approaches of Paris, any corner of the country that was free from
plunderers. They were so numerous everywhere, either in little castles
occupied by them, or in villages and the countryside, that peasants and
tradesmen could not travel except at great expense and in mighty peril.
The very guards told off to protect the cultivators of the soil and the
travellers on the highways, most shamefully took part in harassing and
despoiling them. It was the same in Burgundy and the neighbouring
countries. Some knights who called themselves friends of the King,
whose names I am not minded to set down here, kept brigands in their
service, who were every whit as bad. What is more strange is that, when
these ruffians went into the cities, Paris, or anywhere else, everybody
knew them and pointed them out, but none durst lay hands on them."
The condition of Germany was but little superior to that of France. The
central authority, if that can be called central which was always
shifting its position, was unequal to restrain the violent. Its
pretensions were in inverse proportion to its efficiency. The Emperor
was too far off to see to the policing of the Empire, too weak to
enforce order; and his long absences in Italy left the German lords and
lordlings to pursue their own courses unrestrained. When the Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa visited the Baron van Kingen in his castle near
Constance, the freiherr received him seated, because, as he said, he
held his lands in fee of none but the sun. Although he was willing to
receive the Emperor as a guest, he refused to acknowledge him as his
lord. If this was the temper of the petty nobility in a green tree,
what must it have been in the dry. After that the great houses of
Saxony and Swabia had been crushed out by the policy of the Papacy, it
was to the interest of the electors to keep the Emperor weak; and the
fact that the Imperial Crown was elective enabled the electors to sell
their votes for extended privileges. At last, against the raids of the
petty nobles, whom the Emperor could not control, the cities leagued
together, took the matter in hand, attacked the fortresses, levelled
them and gave to the inmates short shrift, a halter and a tree. In
Italy the towns proceeded in a less summary manner. Surrounded as they
were on all sides by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held
undisputed sway over their serfs and controlled the arteries of trade,
the cities were compelled to proceed against them; but instead of
sending them to the gallows, they contented themselves with forcing
them to take up their residence within the town walls. But though the
feudal lordship of these nobles had been destroyed, their opulence,
their lands, the prestige of their names remained untouched, and in
place of disturbing the roads they filled the streets with riot. They
reared in the towns those wonderful towers that we still see at
Bologna, San Gemigniano, Savona, &c. "From the eighth to the thirteenth
century," says Ruskin, "there was little change in the form;--four-
square, rising high and without tapering into the air, storey above
storey, they stood like giants beside the piles of the basilicas and
the Lombardic churches... their ruins still frown along the crests of
every promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far away in the
great Lombard plain, from distances of half a day's journey, dark
against the amber sky of the horizon." [Footnote: Lectures on
Architecture, 1853.]
I propose dividing my subject of cliff castles into four heads:--
1. Those that were seigneural strongholds.
2. Those that with castle and town occupied a rock.
3. The fastnesses of the _routiers_, the Companies in the Hundred
Years' War.
4. Outpost stations guarding fords, roads into a town, and passes into
a country.
And I shall begin with No. 3--The Castles of the _routiers_.
The face of a country is like that of a woman. It tells the story of
its past. The many-windowed English mansion sleeping among turfy lawns
to the plash of a fountain, and the cawing of rooks in the beechwood,
tell of a tranquil past life-record broken only by transient unrest;
whereas the towers on the Continent with their _meurtrières_ and
frowning machicolations, bristling on every hill, frequent as church
spires, now gutted and ruinous, proclaim a protracted reign of
oppression and then a sudden upheaval in resentment and a firebrand
applied to them all. The old English mansion has its cellars, but never
an _oubliette_, its porch-door always open to welcome a neighbour
and to relieve the indigent. It was not insulated by a dyke, and its
doors clenched with a portcullis. The spoils of the chase were not a
drove of "lifted" cattle taken from a peasant left stark upon his
threshold, but foxes' masks and the antlers of deer. The pigeons coo
about the English gables and the peacock dreams in the sun on the
balustrade of the terrace, as in past centuries, but the castle of the
French noble and the burg of the German ritter are given over to the
bats and owls, and are quarries whence the peasants pick out the
heraldic carvings for the construction of their pig-styes.
Nowhere did tears so stain and furrow the face of the land as in that
portion of France that was ceded to England. De Quincey says: "Within
fifty years in three pitched battles that resounded to the ends of the
earth, the chivalry of France had been exterminated. Her oriflamme had
been dragged through the dust. The Eldest Son of Baptism had been
prostrated. The daughter of France had been surrendered on coercion as
a bride to her English conqueror. The child of that marriage, so
ignominious to the land, was King of France by the consent of
Christendom; that child's uncle domineered as regent of France; and
that child's armies were in military possession of the land. But were
they undisputed masters? No!--under a perfect conquest there would have
been repose; whereas the presence of the English armies did but furnish
a plea, making strong in patriotism, for gathering everywhere of
lawless marauders, of soldiers that had deserted their banners, and of
robbers by profession. This was the woe of France more even than the
military dishonour." [Footnote: Essay on Charles Lamb.]
The Hundred Years' War, that has left ineffaceable traces in the south
of France, began in 1336 before the conclusion of the Treaty of
Bretigny, which was in 1360, and it lasted till 1443--over a century,
though not without interruption; and it desolated the fields of
Perigord, Quercy, and to a less degree Rouergue and the Limousin, and
wrought havoc to the gates of Paris.
The close of the fourteenth century saw no hope anywhere, only
gathering storms. In France, to the prudent Charles V. succeeded the
mad fool Charles VI. In England the strong King Edward III. was
followed by the incompetent Richard II. In Germany the Emperor Charles
IV., a statesman, had as his successor the drunken sot Wenceslas. In
England the Wars of the Roses were looming in the future. Agincourt
proved more disastrous to England than to France. There was hopeless
turmoil everywhere. As Luther said when a somewhat similar condition
existed in Germany--"God, tiring of the game, has thrown the cards on
the table." In France the free Companies ran riot unrestrained. About
them one word.
The engagement of mercenaries in the war between England and France had
begun early. As Michelet says: "The population of the North saw appear
among them mercenary soldiers, the _routiers_, for the most part
in the service of England. Some came from Brabant, some from Aquitaine;
the Basque Marcader was one of the principal lieutenants of Richard
Coeur-de-Lion. The mountaineers of the South, who to-day descend into
France and Spain to gain a little money by huxtering, did so in the
Middle Ages, but then, their sole industry was war. They maltreated
priests as they did peasants, dressed their wives in consecrated
vestments, beat the clergy, and made them sing mass in mockery. It was
also one of their amusements to defile and break the images of Christ,
to smash the legs and arms, treating Him worse than did the Jews. These
_routiers_ were dear to the princes precisely on account of their
impiety, which rendered them insensible to ecclesiastical censures."
[Footnote: _Histoire de France_, ii. p. 362. The first to
introduce them was Henry Courtmantel when he rebelled against his
father. On his death in 1163 they disbanded, and then reunited under
elected captains, and pillaged the country.]
From 1204 to 1222 was the period of the Crusade against the Albigenses.
Pope Innocent III. poured over that beautiful land in the south of
France--beautiful as the Garden of God--a horde of ruffians, made up of
the riffraff of Europe, summoned to murder, pillage and outrage, with
the promise of Heaven as their reward. After committing atrocities such
as people Hell, these scoundrels, despising the religion they had been
summoned to defend, with every spark of humanity extinguished in their
breasts, looked about for fresh mischief, and found it, by enrolling
themselves under the banner of England; their tiger cubs grew up with
the lust of blood and rapine that had possessed their fathers.
Generation after generation of these fiends in human form ranged over
the soil of France committing intolerable havoc. A carpenter of Le Puy
formed an association for the extermination of these bands. Philip
Augustus encouraged him, furnished troops, and in one day slaughtered
ten thousand of them. But so long as the English claim on so large a
portion of the soil of France was maintained, the bands were
incessantly recruited. The French King hired them as well as the King
of England. So, later, did the Popes, when they quitted Avignon, and by
their aid recovered the patrimony of S. Peter.
The barons and seigneurs in the South were no better than the
_routiers_. They transferred their allegiance from the Leopards to
the Lilies, or _vice versâ_, as suited their caprices. The Sieur
de Pons went over to the side of France because he quarrelled with his
wife, who was ardent on the English side. The local nobility helped the
_routiers_, and the _routiers_ assisted them in their private
feuds.
The knights of the fourteenth century were no longer the protectors of
the weak, the redressers of wrongs, loyal to their liege lords,
observers of their oaths. They had reversed the laws of chivalry. Their
main function was the oppression of the weak. They forswore themselves
without scruple. The Sire d'Aubrecicourt plundered and slaughtered at
random _pour meriter de sa dame_, Isabella de Juliers, niece of
the Queen of England, "for he was young and outrageously in love." The
brother of the King of Navarre plundered like the rest. When the nobles
sold safe-conducts to the merchants who victualled the towns, they
excepted such articles as might suit themselves--silks, harness, plate.
A prince of the blood sent as hostage to England returned to France in
defiance of treaties, and if King John surrendered himself, it was
because of the ease and pleasures he enjoyed in London, and to be rid
of cares. The name given to the Companies in the South was Raobadous
(Ribauds)--the very name has come to us under the form of
_ribald_, as indicative of all that is brutal, profane, and
unseemly.
Among the commanders very few were English. There was the Welshman
Griffith, whom Froissart calls Ruffin, who ravaged the country between
the Seine and the Loire. Sir Robert Knollys, or Knolles, led a band of
English and Navarrese, "conquering every town and castle he came to. He
had followed this trade for some time, and by it gained upwards of
100,000 crowns. He kept a great many soldiers in his pay; and being
very liberal, was cheerfully obeyed." So says Froissart. Sir Robert
Cheney was another; so was Sir John Amery. Sir John Hawkwood was taken
into the service of Pope Gregory XI., and sent to ravage in Italy.
Bacon, a notorious brigand, may or may not have been English. The name
is common in lower Brittany. "This robber," says Froissart, "was always
mounted on handsome horses of a deep roan colour, apparelled like an
earl, and very richly armed."
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. The _Livre de Vie_ of 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 the _routiers_ to 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 a
_patis_ or 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 the
_routiers_ on 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 with _patis_ and 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 fana
Apres 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 from
Figeac. 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
remain _in 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 a
_talus_ of rubble runs up to the foot of the cliff, along which
_talus_, 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 the _routiers_ that 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 the _routiers_.
Near Mont Dore is the Roche de Sanadoire, 3660 feet high, composed of
phonolith and basaltic prisms. On the top stood the fortress of the
_routiers_, 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 the
_routiers_, 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.