TARBES
Tarbes an uninteresting place--A large village--Inglis on the
view--Jardin Massey--Cloister of S. Sever--Horses--The Haras--
Counts of Bigorre--Petronilla and her five husbands--Her will--
Numerous claimants--A long contest--Tarbes fortified--Sack by
the Huguenots--Massacre--The Leaguers--Battle of Tarbes--Retreat
of Soult--Barrère--Macaulay on his character.
From Tarbes it is possible to escape in four directions, for from it
radiate lines to Paris, to Pau, to Bagnières, and to Toulouse, and
another is in prospect to Rustan and Mayonac.
No one presumably would stay in Tarbes for two days unless he were
an official tied to duties in it and enjoying a salary, or were
possessed with a passion for horses. For, indeed, in Tarbes itself
there is nothing to be seen save the Haras and the depot for remounts
to the cavalry. The cathedral is the most cumbrous, ungainly minster
in all France. The public buildings lack interest. One thing Tarbes
does possess, that it shares with the meanest village in the same
arrondisement--the view of the Pyrenees.
Inglis, who trudged the Pyrenees in 1830, thus describes the prospect:--
“I have read in some book that the most beautiful part of
every country is where the mountains sink down into the
plains, and of this assertion the situation of Tarbes offers
an excellent illustration. If I had never gone further into
the Pyrenees than Tarbes I might have said that nothing can
exceed the beauty of its neighbourhood. The charming plain that
environs it--yet not altogether a plain--stretches to the foot
of the mountains, rich in every production of the southern
latitude, beautifully diversified with wood, and watered by
the meanderings of the Adour and of several lesser streams.
The celebrated Valley of Bagnères opens to the left, that of
Lourdes to the right; while in the south, apparently at but a
few leagues distant, the Pic du Midi towers above the range of
mountains that extend to the right and to the left, as far as
the eye can reach.
“After the long continuation of carriage-travelling from
Avignon to Tarbes--oh, how I enjoyed this morning! It was a
glorious morning, and the magnificent range of the Pyrenees,
rising sharply from the plain, was bathed in sunbeams, which
gilded the eminences, reposed on the slopes, and gleamed in
among the valleys. If this book should chance to be read by
anyone who knows the scenery of Scotland, let him recollect the
road from Stirling along the foot of the Ochill Hills, and he
will have a better conception of the country through which I am
now conveying him, than could be conveyed by a thousand minute
descriptions. It is true his imagination must assist me; he
must imagine the Ochills seven to eight thousand feet high in
place of two thousand; he must substitute Indian corn of the
most luxuriant growth, for oats and barley; and, in place of
whin-blossoms covering the knolls, he must fancy them clothed
with vine; he must add the charm of a southern sky, and the
balminess of a southern clime.”
Tarbes is a huge, straddling city, a great village giving itself the
airs of a capital. On entering it from the station the town has an
unattractive aspect. An avenue has been driven from the Gave to the
Place Maubourguet, which is the centre of the town; but it has few
houses along it, and none of consequence, and these throughout Tarbes
have the appearance of villas in a suburb, surrounded with gardens.
Some effort has been made to retrieve the ugliness of the town by the
erection of fountains and statues, and by planting handsome promenades.
But it is a lifeless place, only acquiring animation on the occasion
of its fairs. The river strays in its vast bed, broken into several
streams by rubble banks. It has been drawn off above the town by
numerous channels of irrigation, so that when it reaches Tarbes it
is out of proportion to its bed, as might be an infant in the vast
fourposter of Ware.
But the Jardin Massey is the pride of Tarbes; it is a park extending
over thirty acres--space is no object in Tarbes--and is really
interesting. It was the gift to his native town by the man whose name
it bears. Massey left Tarbes as a journeyman gardener, and visited
Holland, where he obtained a situation as director of the gardens
of the king. Louis Philippe summoned him to France, and made him
manager of the gardens of Versailles. As he had amassed a good deal
of money, he resolved on spending it for the adornment of his native
town. He bought the land where now is the park, dug a lake, formed
water-courses, planted rare trees, laid out flower-beds and lawns,
and built a museum of natural history commanded by a lofty tower. In
fifty years the trees have grown to a considerable size; and later
benefactors have enriched the gardens with statues, busts, and the
museum with sculptures and paintings. In the park has been erected
the beautiful cloister of the fifteenth century removed from S.
Sever-de-Rustan, a monastery wrecked by the Calvinists, under Lizier,
who massacred all the inhabitants of the town, with the exception of
seven persons. The monks would have been also put to death but that
Queen Jeanne had already suppressed the abbey, and they had been
dispersed. Next to the Jardin Massey the Haras should be inspected.
In ancient days the horses of the county of Bigorre, the viscounty
of Béarn, and of Lower Navarre were highly esteemed; the race was
called Navarrine, and it owed its merits to the fact that it was a
cross between the Arab and the native Pyrenean stock. The Saracens had
crossed the mountains, overflowed Aquitaine, and threatened Northern
France, they were met at Poitiers and routed by Charles Martel in 731.
Three hundred thousand Saracens, say the old chroniclers, with their
usual exaggeration, fell on the field; the rest fled, the main body to
Narbonne, others to such passes as they knew that led to Saragossa. A
battle was fought near Tarbes, in which the flying remnant was utterly
routed and exterminated. A great number of their stallions and mares
remained in the hands of the victors, and it was from this capture that
sprang the so much coveted and esteemed race of the Navarrine horse.
By degrees the quality declined and degenerated, reverting to the
type of the Basque horse. This was due partly to lack of importation
of fresh Arab blood, and partly to the mountaineers neglecting the
breeding of horses for that of mules, specially serviceable to them
among the mountain passes where were tracks, but no roads. The evil
became so great that the Estates of Bigorre voted two thousand livres
annually for the maintenance of stallions. During the Revolution, when
there was great demand for mounts for the cavalry, the scarcity of good
horses attracted the attention of the Council of Five Hundred. Napoleon
took the matter in hand with his characteristic energy. In 1806 he
founded the Haras at Tarbes, and the introduction of English blood was
the basis of the transformation attempted. Later, during the campaigns
in Algeria, the finest stallions taken from the Arabs were sent to
Tarbes; and the result has been the production of a horse admirably
adapted to the use of light cavalry, that goes now by the name of the
Tarbes horse. Mm. Simonoff and Mörder, of the Russian haras, thus speak
of it:--
“The three bloods of which the Tarbes horse derives--the Arab,
the English, and the old Navarrin--are so near to each other,
being all of Oriental origin, that the fusion took place easily
and quickly; and although as yet the Tarbes horses are not of
perfect homogeneity, it is quite possible to speak of them as
forming a race which by its qualities, is rather full blood;
than half blood.”
The stallions are in the Haras at Tarbes, but the mares are dispersed
within a radius of twenty kilometres around Tarbes; and the rearing of
colts is the industry, and makes the fortune of the department, at all
events of the plain and fertile valleys. Within the district where they
are reared there is not a village, not a farm, that has not its mares
for breeding. Even _curés_ supplement their scanty incomes by keeping
them, and rearing from them. One, the Abbé Turon, sold to the State his
stallion Mousquetaire for 20,000 francs. This roused a great outcry
among the Radicals, who denounced the Government for having bought
from a priest. Tarbes is the old capital of Bigorre, and here resided
the Count. I have already mentioned Centule I of Béarn, assassinated
in 1088, who put away his wife with the approval of Pope Gregory VII,
so as to marry the heiress of Bigorre. By this union Bigorre and Béarn
were not united, for his son Gaston by the repudiated Gisela became
Viscount of Béarn, and his son Bernard III inherited Bigorre. This
Bernard left issue, a daughter only, named Beatrice, who married Peter,
Viscount de Marsan, by whom she had Centule III, and he also left an
heiress, Stephanie, married to Bertrand, Count of Cominges, by whom
she had one child, a daughter Petronilla.
The story of the annexation of Bigorre to Foix and Béarn is complicated
through the matrimonial vagaries of this same Petronilla. And this was
further complicated by the action of a pious ancestor, Count Bernard
II, who in a fit of maudlin devotion placed his territory and family
under the protection of the black doll, Notre Dame du Puy, promising in
return for this protection that the county should annually pay tribute
to the church of Le Puy. Certainly Our Lady of Puy treated Bigorre
scurvily in return, allowing the inheritance to slip through heiresses,
five in all, and, moreover, to involve it in a lawsuit that lasted a
hundred and thirty-nine years.
Petronilla married Gaston, Viscount of Béarn, and when he died without
issue, in 1215, took as number two Nûnez de Cerdagne, but tired of
him speedily, got the marriage annulled, on the convenient plea of
consanguinity, and married in 1216 Guy, son of Simon de Montfort.
This was sharp work--three husbands in a twelvemonth. By Guy she had
two daughters, Alix and Perette. In 1228 she took a fourth husband,
Aimart de Rançon, and on his death, in the same year, she espoused her
fifth, Boso de Mastas, to whom she bore a daughter, Martha. By her will
Petronilla constituted Esquirat, eldest son of her daughter Alix, heir
to her estates and titles; but in default of male issue the succession
was to go to Jordan, the second son of Alix. Should he fail to have a
son, then the second substitution was in favour of Martha, her daughter
by Boso, who was married to Gaston VII of Béarn. Esquirat did have a
son, also named Esquirat, but this second Esquirat died childless,
and bequeathed the county of Bigorre to his sister Lore, as his uncle
Jordan had died without issue. Now Petronilla and her third husband
Guy de Montfort had left a second daughter, Perette, married to Raoul
de Teisson, and had by him a son William de Teisson, who conceived that
he had a right to the inheritance. Martha, wife of Gaston de Béarn, had
a daughter Constance, and she also put in a claim. In fact, these were
the claimants: Lore, Viscountess de Turenne; Constance, Viscountess de
Béarn; William de Teisson; and Mahut, daughter of Alix and Raoul de
Courtenay. But that was not all. The younger Esquirat had made over his
inheritance to Simon de Montfort by a first will, and then, offended at
the grasping nature of Simon, had revoked his will and constituted Lore
his heiress. But Simon refused to recognize the legality of this second
will, sold the viscounty to Thibalt II, King of Navarre, whose son
Henry gave his claim to it to Jeanne, his daughter, married to Philip
the Fair, King of France, and he was but too ready to acquire this rich
district of Gascony on any plea, bad or good. The church of Le Puy also
put in a claim, so did the King of England as overlord. Consequently
there were from eight to nine claimants.
By decree of Parliament, in 1290, the rights of the church of Le Puy to
the charge on the viscounty were confirmed.
Constance, Viscountess of Béarn, occupied Bigorre with her troops, and
assumed the title of Countess of Bigorre. Jeanne of France, however,
expelled her, adopted the title, and Philip the Fair asserted his right
to the territory, and was prepared to maintain it by force of arms.
Philip had already bought off the rights of the church of Le Puy.
Bigorre remained under the crown of France till Charles VIII in 1425
granted it to John, Count of Foix, in return for his services against
the English, and in consideration of his descent from Petronilla.
From 1425 to 1566 the county of Bigorre was wisely administered by the
viscounts of Béarn, who had become titular Kings of Navarre.
Tarbes was fortified in the tenth century by Raymond I. It suffered
destruction at the hands of the English in 1350 and 1406. But its
greatest disasters took place during the Wars of Religion. Jeanne
d’Albret was resolved on forcing the Reform on the Bigorriens, but
they ejected the Huguenot pastors as fast as they were sent to them,
and appealed to the King of France, who sent troops in 1569 to their
aid. Jeanne enlisted the services of Montgomery. He swept through the
country, ravaging it with fire and sword. He sent his lieutenant,
Montamat, to take Tarbes, and Montamat appeared under its walls on
20 January, 1570. The besieged, finding it impossible to hold out,
evacuated the city during the night. When the Huguenots entered they
found no one in the place, and they pillaged the houses and set them on
fire.
When he was gone the inhabitants returned and began to restore their
wrecked and gutted houses and to repair the walls. Montamat reappeared,
bringing cannons with him. François de Bennasse, commandant of the
garrison at Lourdes, had hastened to the defence of the capital at the
head of 800 men. Montamat attempted an assault, and was repulsed. But a
traitor in the town opened the gates to the Calvinists, and the captain
entered. Bennasse, all his soldiers, and many of the citizens were put
to the sword. The number massacred was so great that it took eight days
to bury them.
“This took place,” says a contemporary writer, “about the feast
of Easter, in the year 1570. After that the city of Tarbes
remained without inhabitants, and the grass grew in the streets
as in a field, a piteous sight to behold. And three whole years
elapsed without there being a garrison in it; but indeed the
town was incapable of defence on account of the ruins made by
the cannon.”
Peace was concluded at S. Germain-en-Laye on 15 May, 1570, and it was
hoped that tranquillity would ensue. But this was not to be. Passions
had been wrought to frenzy, and the thirst for revenge was consuming.
The death of Jeanne d’Albret in 1579 did not allay the troubles. In
1592 the town became the prey of the Leaguers of Cominges, and from
it they issued to devastate the surrounding country, till expelled in
1594. Almost the whole population of Cominges had embraced the cause of
the League. “There was never before seen such disorder, such pillage,
from the beginning of these wars. Captains, soldiers, valets, and
volunteers were so laden with furniture that they were carrying off
that they complained it was a trouble to them to be encumbered with so
much spoil. Moreover, in despair, the peasants of Bigorre abandoned the
cultivation of the land, and many migrated into Spain.”
In 1594 the people themselves rose, and, assisted by Caumont de la
Force, delivered themselves from both Leaguers and Protestants, and
peace was celebrated at Tarbes.
On 12 March, 1814, a combat took place between the English and
Portuguese under Wellington, and the French under Soult. After the
defeat of Orthez Soult had withdrawn his dispirited soldiers along both
banks of the Adour, steadily pursued by Wellington.
“A light division,” says Allison, “and hussars were on the
right bank of the Adour; but when they approached the town, a
simultaneous movement was made by Hill with the right wing,
and Clinton on the left, to envelope and cut off Harispe and
Villatte’s divisions, which formed the French rearguard in
occupation of it.
“The combat began at twelve o’clock by a violent fire from
Hill’s artillery on the right, which was immediately re-echoed
in still louder tones by Clinton on the left; while Alton, with
the light division, assailed the centre. The French fought
stoutly, and, mistaking the British rifle battalions, from
their dark uniforms, to be Portuguese, let them come up to the
very muzzles of their guns. But the rifles were hardy veterans,
inured to victory; and at length Harispe’s men, unable to stand
their deadly point-blank fire, broke and fled. If Clinton’s
men on the left had been up at this moment, the French would
have been totally destroyed; for Hill had, at the same moment,
driven back Villate on the right, and the plain beyond Tarbes
was covered with a confused mass of fugitives, closely followed
by the shouting of victorious British. But Clinton’s troops,
notwithstanding the utmost efforts, had not been able to get
up; the numerous ditches and hedges which intersected the plain
rendered all pursuit impossible; and thus the French, though
utterly broken, succeeded with very little loss in reaching
a ridge, three miles distant, when Clauzel, who, with four
divisions, was drawn up to receive them, immediately opened
fire from all his batteries upon the allies.”
During the night Soult retired in two columns, and such was the
rapidity of his retreat that he reached Toulouse in four days.
A native of Tarbes, of whom the town has no occasion to boast, was
Bertrand Barrère, born 10 September, 1755. He was educated for the Bar
at Toulouse, and became a scrivener at Toul. As his father owned a
pretty estate at Vieuzac, in the Valley of Argelez, he called himself
Barrère de Vieuzac, flattering himself that by this feudal addition
to his name he might pass for a gentleman. He was sent as deputy for
Bigorre to the States-General. Being totally devoid of principle,
when the result of a parliamentary struggle could not be foreseen he
took the precaution of having in his pocket two speeches, written
in opposed senses, so that he could always jump in the direction
taken by the cat. Barrère had affected the moderate principles of the
Girondists, till he saw that the extremists were the strongest, and
then he threw in his lot with the Mountain, and voted for the execution
of the King. Then seeing that the current ran strong against the
Girondists, he took the foremost place in procuring the condemnation to
the scaffold of those with whom he had previously acted in concert. He
it was who was set up in the convention to call for the blood of the
Queen. On the day on which Marie Antoinette was dragged to execution
Barrère regaled Robespierre and other Jacobins at a tavern.
“In the intervals between the Beaume and the Champagne, between
the ragout of thrushes and the partridges with truffles, he
fervently preached his new political creed. ‘The vessel of the
Revolution,’ he said, ‘can float into port only on waves of
blood. We must begin with the members of the National Assembly
and of the Legislative Assembly. That rubbish must be swept
away.’”
The Reign of Terror began. The Jacobins had prevailed all along the
line. The Convention was reduced to silence. The sovereignty had passed
to the Committee of Public Safety. Six persons held the chief power
in the small cabinet which domineered over France: Robespierre, Saint
Just, Couthon, Collot, Billaud, and Barrère who had hastily divested
himself of his territorial appendix of De Vieuzac. Of the horrors of
those days it is unnecessary to speak. As guilty as Robespierre or
Couthon was the bland, timorous, unscrupulous Barrère. He it was who
proposed the burning of the towns and villages of the Vendéeans, the
total destruction of Lyons, the violation of the royal graves at S.
Denys, the deportation of all such as could not bring irrecusable
proof of patriotism since 1792. He became the declared adversary
of Danton when he found it safe to take that part, and proposed
his arrest on the 9th Thermidor. He contributed powerfully to the
fall of Robespierre; but he had made so many enemies, was so little
trusted, that instead of rising higher by the fall of Robespierre,
he found himself unable to maintain his balance. He was denounced
before the revolutionary tribunal, along with Collot d’Herbois and
Billaud-Varennes, and was sentenced to be deported to the pestilential
swamps of Cayenne, but obtained the change of his destination to
the Isle of Oléron. After having sacrificed his old allies, the
Hébertistes, the Dantonistes, and the Robespierristes, he himself
had fallen. When moved later from Oléron to Saintes, he succeeded in
escaping from prison. The _coup d’état_ of the eighteenth Brumaire
restored him to liberty. We need not follow in detail his further
adventures. When Louis XVIII gained the throne of his ancestors by the
aid of foreign bayonets, Barrère fled to Brussels. The revolution of
July put an end to his exile, and he returned to the south of France,
and settled at Argelez, where he died 14 January, 1841.
His memoirs in four volumes were published under the editorship of
Hippolyte Carnot and David d’Angers, in 1843. They are replete with
disingenuousness in the representation of the part he played, as also
of falsehoods, that can be proved to be such by reference to the
contemporary files of the _Moniteur_.
Macaulay, at the opening of his long and brilliant essay on Barrère,
says:--
“Our opinion is this: that Barrère approached nearer than any
person mentioned in history or fiction, whether man or devil,
to the idea of consummate and universal depravity. In him
the qualities which are the proper objects of hatred, and the
qualities which are the proper objects of contempt, preserve
an exquisite and absolute harmony. In almost every particular
sort of wickedness he has had rivals. His sensuality was
immoderate; but this was a failing common to him with many
great and amiable men. There have been many men as cowardly as
he, some as cruel, a few as mean, a few as impudent. There may
also have been as great liars, though we never met with them or
read of them. But when we put everything together--sensuality,
paltroonery, baseness, effrontery, mendacity, barbarity--the
result is something which in a novel we would condemn as a
caricature, and to which, we venture to say, no parallel can be
found in history.”
At the close of the article Macaulay says in reference to Hippolyte
Carnot, who states that Barrère was at no time a sceptic, that he was
the author of a pious treatise, entitled, _Of Christianity and its
Influence_, as also of a book of meditations on the Psalms:--
“This makes the character complete. Whatsoever things are
false, whatsoever things are dishonest, whatsoever things are
unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things are
hateful, whatsoever things are of evil report; if there be any
vice, and if there be any infamy, all these things, we knew,
were blended in Barrère. But one thing was still wanting,
and that M. Hippolyte Carnot has supplied. When to such an
assemblage of qualities a high profession of piety is added,
the effect is overpowering.
“We have no pleasure in seeing human nature thus degraded.
We turn with disgust from the filthy and spiteful Yahoos of
the fiction; and the filthiest and most spiteful Yahoo of the
fiction was a noble creature when compared with the Barrère of
history. But what is no pleasure M. Carnot has made a duty.
It is no light thing that a man in high and honourable public
trust should come forward to demand approbation for a life
black with every sort of wickedness, and unredeemed by a single
virtue. This M. Hippolyte Carnot has done. By attempting to
enshrine this Jacobin carrion, he has forced us to gibbet it;
and we may venture to say that, from the eminence of infamy on
which we have placed it, he will not easily take it down.”
Strange irony of fate. In Barrère’s native town, his victim, Danton,
only less detestable than himself, is glorified with a monument, a
statue in bronze. After Danton, perhaps Tarbes will erect one to
Barrère.