THE VAL D’AURE
Mauvezin--Escaldieu--Lannemezan--The Neste--The lakes
utilized--Lortet--Fortified caves--Marble quarries--
Sarracolin--Canal--Val d’Arros--The rival lords--Arreau--
Bordères--The Armagnacs--John IV and his sister--His
ingratitude and death--Extinction of the race--Lac de
Caillaouas--Cadéac--The deadly sins--Tramesaïgues--Lac
d’Orredon--Republic.
Before the train reaches the dreary moorland of Lannemezan, on its way
from Tarbes to Toulouse, a glimpse is obtained of a picturesque village
grouped about a castle on a pointed rock. This is Mauvezin, the Bad
Neighbour, _par excellence_. It witnessed many exploits during the
English occupation of Guyenne. It was besieged in 1374 by the Duke of
Anjou, at the head of 8000 men. The strength of the fortress was such
that it would have been impregnable had it not lacked a well within
the walls. The besiegers cut off communication with the water-supply,
and as not a drop of rain fell during the six weeks of the siege, the
garrison was constrained to come to terms. The Duke of Anjou allowed
them to depart, saying: “Get you gone about your business, each one of
you, to your several native lands, without entering any fort that holds
out against me; for if you do, I engage to get hold of you, and deliver
you up to Jocelin (the headsman), who will shave you clean without a
razor.”
Upon the tower, which bears the arms of Béarn, may be seen the
device, “J’ay belle dame.” It was a fancy of the boy Gaston, son of
Gaston Phœbus, when he was affianced to Beatrix d’Armagnac, to whom
Mauvezin was given as a dower by her father, Count John II. But Gaston
was murdered by his father, as already told, before the marriage was
consummated, and Beatrix was afterwards married to a viscount of Milan.
Near Mauvezin are the remains of the once famous Abbey of Escaldieu.
The church was destroyed by the Huguenots, and rebuilt in the
seventeenth century. It is devoid of interest, and is now converted
into a coach-house. Only the chapter-house remains of the original
abbey, a structure of the fourteenth century, the vaulting sustained by
marble pillars.
The great mass of Lannemezan, lying across the threshold of the Val
d’Aure, diverts the Neste from flowing north, and turns it to the east,
just as the heap of the _lande_ of Pontacq acts at the mouth of the
Lavedan, but there deflects the Gave to the west. It falls into the
Garonne at the confines of the department, which also for the same
reason takes an easterly course for some way, then struggles to the
north-east, and only after passing Toulouse turns to take its direction
so as to empty itself into the Atlantic. The Neste is a river of very
great importance. It rises in two main branches under crests clothed
in eternal snows, discharging glaciers into a series of upland lakes.
These natural reservoirs have been artificially raised, and their
waters conducted into a canal that is carried high above the bed of
the river, so as to convey its fertilizing streams over the plateau
of Lannemezan. The lake of Caillaouas, under the Pic de Batchinale,
and the glacier cirque of the Gours Blancs has been captured at the
head of Neste de Luron, and the lakes of Aumar, Aubert, Caplong, and
Orredon, that feed the other Neste of Aure have also been utilized
for the same purpose, at an enormous expense and by remarkably daring
works of engineering. This has had a subsidiary advantage, that the
superb scenery at the sources of these streams is now accessible by
good roads, whereas formerly it could be reached only by difficult and
dangerous mule-paths.
At La Barthe the Neste debouches from the mountains through a deep
valley, the canal passing above it on the left bank; and although
the river has been thus tapped, it still continues to bring down a
considerable amount of water, the overflow from its reservoirs far away
in the laps of the high mountain ridge.
The Val d’Aure constituted a viscounty, and of the viscounts there were
several branches: one that of the Viscounts of Larbouste, another that
of the viscounts of Asté, one of whom, as already mentioned, married
the heiress of Grammont. The whole of Aure was under the overlordship
of the counts of Armagnac.
La Barthe, commanded by a castle of the end of the eleventh century,
will not long detain a visitor. But a short way above it is the village
of Lortet, where are caverns in the face of the limestone cliff that
have been occupied and fortified, it is thought, originally by the
Saracens and the Visigoths; but the structures that remain, notably the
tower, were the work of the Templars, to whom were confided the defence
of most of the passes of the Pyrenees. At Hèches is a picturesque,
ivy-clad tower occupying the summit by a rock. Here are quarries of
marble, rose-coloured, grey, and white, spotted with black; as also of
black marble veined with white. But the principal marble quarries are
farther up, at Sarrancolin on the left bank, others are on the right.
Those on the former are famous. The finest are red, veined with grey,
or flesh tint with yellow veins; other marbles are green, blue, violet.
Versailles was adorned with columns of Sarrancolin. Thence comes the
marble now employed in the Louvre for most of the pedestals.
The church of Sarrancolin was originally strongly fortified, and served
as the key to the valley; it is early of the twelfth century, with
Romanesque windows. There are no aisles, it is a cross church. The
choir grating is of the fifteenth century. In the church is the shrine
of a Spanish bishop, S. Ebbo, and is the sole specimen in the district
of Limoges work, and is of the thirteenth century. To the north of
the church is the chapter-house in ruins. Fragments of the town walls
remain, as does a gateway and tower of the fifteenth century. The
houses are all built of the marble of which the hill is formed on
which the place stands, and they are crowded about the church, in the
constrained area within the old walls. The place recommends itself to
the painter and to the archæologist.
The canal takes its waters from the Neste above the little town, and
the river accordingly has in the upper portion of the valley a freer
and fuller flow.
But before we have mounted so far up the Neste, a diversion may well be
made to the valley of the Arros, which rises in the mountains between
the Val de Campan and that of Aure. We might have supposed that it
would speedily throw itself into the Adour or the Neste. But not so.
It holds on its independent course far away to the north, and does not
condescend to unite with the Adour till it enters the department of
Gers.
In this narrow valley, high up in the mountains, stand near each other
the two castles of Lomné and Espêche, concerning which the following
legend is told. I will give it in the words of Mr. Inglis:--
“The lords of these two castles were enemies, and constantly
disputed with one another the possession of the valley that
lay between their castles; but along with the enmity each
was enamoured of the wife of the other, though the ladies
themselves loved their own lords, and gave no encouragement to
the enemies of their husbands. At this time the Crusades were
published, and both of the nobles resolved to forget private
animosities for a time, and join the standard of the cross. It
so happened, however, that after travelling during several days
the devil entered into their hearts, and they both reasoned
after this manner: ‘My enemy has gone to the Holy Wars, and
has left both his lands and his wife. What hinders me from
returning and making the most of his absence?’ And so both the
Lord of Espêche and the Lord of Lomné returned and took the
road not to their own castle, but to the castles of each other.
“But it so happened that on the very night upon which these
nobles left their own castles their ladies had a vision. Each
was warned in a dream of the intention of her husband to return
and go to the castle of his enemy. Accordingly the ladies left
their own castles to cross the valley, and met each other by
the way; and having communicated the mutual vision, resolved
upon a method of avoiding the danger. They determined to change
castles, and that very day they put their resolution into
effect.
“Meanwhile their lords arrived under cover of the night, each
at the castle of his enemy, and were greatly surprised to find
that no wonder was expressed at their return, for the ladies
had forewarned their household of what was to be expected; but
still greater was their surprise when, upon being ushered into
the castle hall, each beheld his own spouse. The explanation
that followed wrought a miraculous change. Touched with the
affection of their wives, they abjured their mutual enmity,
swore unutterable fidelity to their own wives, and set out in
company together for the Holy Land.”
Arreau stands at the junction of the two rivers called Neste, and also
where the Lastie enters the stream. It has a cheerful appearance. The
church of Notre Dame is of the fifteenth century, castellated, with
additions a century later, built on the foundations of a church of
the twelfth century, of which a good doorway remains. The chapel of
S. Exuperius is of the eleventh century, and has a Romanesque portal.
It stands above the Neste of Aure. The mairie is over the wooden
market-hall. The entrance to the valley of the Neste de Luron is
through a ravine with precipitous sides. Presently it opens out and
reveals the little bourg of Bordères, commanded by the ruined castle
of the Armagnacs. For now we are in Armagnac territory, and with this
castle is connected the story of the last of that evil and ill-omened
race. Michelet says of them:--
“Frenchmen and princes as they were become, their diabolical
nature broke out on every occasion. One of them married his
brother’s wife, so as to be able to retain the dower, another
married his own sister, by means of a false dispensation.
Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac, who was almost king, and ended
so ill, had begun by despoiling his kinsman, the Viscount of
Frézenzaguet, flinging him into a cistern, along with his sons,
his eyes plucked out. This same Bernard, pretending to be a
servant of the Duke of Orléans, made war against the English,
but only worked for his own ends, for when the Duke came into
Guyenne he made no attempt to assist him. But no sooner was
that prince dead than he posed as his avenger, brought up all
the South to ravage the North, made the young Duke of Orléans
marry his daughter, and gave her as dower his bands of robbers,
and the malediction of France.
“What made these Armagnacs specially execrable was their
impious levity allied to their innate ferocity.”
The Armagnac territory extended as a strip from the Garonne to the
Pyrenees. It was a fertile and well-peopled land; its principal towns
were Auche, Mirande, Vic, and Lectoure.
The Armagnac family derived from a Garcias Sanchez, Duke of Gascony in
the early part of the tenth century. He was nicknamed the Hunchback,
and he seems to have bequeathed a moral distortion to his descendants.
John IV, Count of Armagnac, was especially associated with the castle
at Bordères; and his story must now be told.
This headstrong man fell in love with his own sister, Isabella, and
failing in his application to Rome for a dispensation to allow him
to marry her, he forged one, and presented it to the chaplain of
the castle, and demanded that he should unite them. When the priest
demurred, Count John threatened to throw him headlong from the window
into the river unless he obeyed. When others remonstrated, he drew
his dagger on them. The cowed chaplain submitted to celebrate the
incestuous nuptials.
The Pope now excommunicated the Count, and King Charles VII vainly
endeavoured to recall him to a better mind; but Armagnac resisted kind
instances, and defied force. Soon after he associated himself with the
insurrection of the Dauphin. The Duke of Clermont was sent against
him. His guilty passion had enfeebled the mind of John, and in place
of resisting the invasion, he abandoned his dominions, and fled with
Isabella to the protection of his relative, the King of Aragon. He was
summoned by the Parliament, and having been rash enough to appear, was
arrested and imprisoned. Soon after he managed to escape. The sentence
of perpetual banishment was passed upon him, and his dominions were
forfeited. The Valley of Aure was, however, exempted so far that it was
granted as a dowry to his sister.
Then, as his last place of refuge, he retired to the Castle of
Bordères, in the depths of the mountains. The once powerful and haughty
Count of Armagnac was reduced to the deepest destitution, shunned
by all, shrunk from even by his own subjects in the valley of the
Neste, as though he were a leper or a Cagot. At last, impelled by his
necessities rather than moved by remorse, he begged his way to Rome to
obtain absolution for himself and for his sister. This was granted, but
on hard conditions for himself, and that Isabella should retire into a
convent at Barcelona.
At this time Louis XI ascended the throne of France, and by him the
Count of Armagnac was restored to his former rank and possessions. He
now married Jeanne, daughter of the Count of Foix, and the past was
forgotten, or at least forgiven.
But this restless man, incapable of feeling gratitude for favours,
allied himself with the enemies of the King, Charles the Bold, the Duke
of Guyenne, and the King of England.
Louis XI took occasion of the first moment of tranquillity allowed him
by the ambitious projects of the Duke of Burgundy, to chastise John
of Armagnac. In 1473 he confided the task to the Cardinal of Albi,
who besieged him in Lectoure. The town, which was strongly fortified,
defended itself bravely. Proposals of surrender were made to the Count,
but whilst negotiations were in progress, one of the gates was forced,
and John’s son, of the same name as his father, was killed fighting
in the streets. John IV of Armagnac was stabbed in the presence of
his wife, who was pregnant at the time. By order of Louis XI, who had
no desire to see the line of Armagnac continued, she was thrown into
prison and poisoned.
The title and claim to the county now devolved on Charles, another son
of John IV; but Louis XI had him cast into prison, and retained there
till he died of chagrin. There existed at the time another branch of
the family, that had likewise received favours from King Louis, and
had repaid them with treachery. Jacques d’Armagnac had been given
by Louis XI vast estates in Meaux, Châlons, Langres, and Sens. The
king had married Jacques to Louise of Anjou, and had created him Duke
of Nemours. But Jacques was false to his benefactor, and joined in
the League of Public Good against him. At the Treaty of Conflans he
returned to his allegiance, swore fidelity on the relics in the Sainte
Chapelle, and had the governorship of Paris conferred upon him. The
very next year, 1469, he went over to the enemies of the King, and
sided with his cousin, John IV, entering with him into negotiations
with the English. But alarmed at the fate that befell John, he
solicited pardon, and took an oath of fidelity, the most solemn and
binding that could be devised.
Two years later, when Louis XI was in embarrassment, the Duke refused
the King the succour he demanded, and prepared to lay his hands on
Languedoc. No sooner was Louis delivered from his anxieties than he
besieged and took Nemours, in his Castle of Carlat, and confined him in
an iron cage in the Bastille. His wife, feeling confident that he would
experience no mercy at the hands of the justly incensed King, died
during her confinement at Carlat.
Jacques d’Armagnac’s hair turned white within a few days. He was not
mistaken about the gravity of his position. Louis was alarmed at these
incessant conspiracies, and indignant at the ingratitude of the Duke,
whom no oaths could bind. In vain did Nemours implore permission to
speak with the King face to face; Louis refused to see him, and gave
orders that he should be tortured. One day, hearing that the prisoner
had been treated with some consideration, he wrote sharply to the
gaoler, “Give him Hell (the extremity of torture); let him suffer Hell
in his own chamber. Take care not to let him out of the cage except to
be tortured.” Jacques d’Armagnac was executed on 10 July, 1477. The
assertion often made, that by the order of the King his children were
placed under the scaffold so that their father’s blood might fall over
them, is asserted by no contemporary writers. His sons died without
issue, and so ended this wicked family.
[Illustration:
Bernard VII
_d._ 1418
|
+-------------------+-------------+
| |
John IV Bernard, Count of
_d._ 1473 Pardiac
| _d._ after 1462
+---+-----+ |
| | |
John Charles Jacques d’Armagnac
_d._ 1473 _d._ 1497 created Duc de Nemours
_d._ 1477
|
+----+-----+
| |
John Louis
_d._ 1500 _d._ 1503]
For some way above Bordères the Neste of Luron traverses a gloomy
ravine; but then all at once it opens out and we come on a basin well
cultivated, fringed with woods, and studded with twelve villages, about
their church spires. The road ascends steeply past slate quarries that
send down their avalanches of grey refuse over the base of the hill
surmounted by the donjon of Gélos. It is still a long way on to the Lac
de Caillaouas, that lies at the height of 3500 feet, and covers 120
acres; its blue waters are fed by some small tarns higher up under
the glaciers of the Gourgs Blancs. This is one of the scenes of most
savage grandeur in the Pyrenees. The lake is of great depth, and swarms
with trout. A tunnel has been driven fifty-five feet below the surface
through the rock that retains the lake, and through this the water can
be drawn off to supply the deficiencies in the Neste and the canal that
leads from it in time of drought. The work was completed in 1848.
The other Neste, that of Aure, is of even more economic importance.
It rises under the Pic de Campbieil, 9550 feet; but receives a large
influx of water from the Neste de Couplan that is supplied from a whole
series of lakes, the largest of which is Orredon.
Above Arreau is Cadéac, one of the most ancient sites in the valley.
Hither came the representatives of the various communes of the valley
of the Neste to discuss their affairs, and decide their policy; for
here, as in Lavedan, the people enjoyed great liberties, of which
the Armagnacs did not care to deprive them. Cadéac occupies a hill
surmounted by a feudal tower of the twelfth century. The church has an
early north doorway, and sculptures let into the walls. The road passes
up the valley under the porch of a chapel, Notre Dame de Penetaillade,
that has a curious fresco representing the death of the Virgin on the
façade. Vielle Aure is a village lying on both sides of the river,
with a church of the twelfth century, and is an excellent centre for
excursions. The road then crosses the river and reaches Bourespe, with
a church of the fifteenth century, but a much earlier tower. In the
porch are curious paintings of the date 1592, with representations of
the deadly sins as ladies (why as ladies, and not as men?), in the
costume of the period, mounted on strange beasts, and carrying behind
them demons with hideous faces on their stomachs and breasts. Pride
is riding on a lion, Avarice on a wolf, Gluttony on a pig, Luxury on a
goat, Anger on a horse, and Idleness on an ass.
Surely Gluttony, Avarice, Anger are traits of man’s intemperate
passions rather than of woman’s humours. _Vitium_ is neuter, it will
serve for either or none. But it is the old story of the sculptor and
the lion. He showed the King of the Beasts a group finely carved that
represented a man slaying a lion. “Ah,” said the royal beast, “if a
lion had been the sculptor, the figures in the group would have been in
reversed positions.”
It was men, not women, who wrought these representations of the
cardinal vices.
Tramesaïgues (between the waters) occupies a rock, the road passes
below it.
The cluster of lakes in the Néouville basin of mountains have been
taken in hand as well as the Lac de Caillaouas. The undertaking was
difficult, as work was possible there for only three months in the
summer; all the rest of the year the basin in which they lie is buried
in snow, and some of the tarns remain hard frozen. The largest of the
lakes is Orredon, lying 5600 feet above the sea; it is the lowest of
all, and receives the waters of the Lac d’Aubert and the Lac Aumar,
lying in one valley, separated by a gravelly ridge of glacial rubbish;
the Lac de Cap-de-Long reposes in another. The works were begun in 1901
and terminated in 1905.
The Four Valleys--Magonac, Neste, Aure, and La Baronne--formed another
of those confederate republics of which there existed so many in the
Pyrenees. Of these Magonac, with its chief town Castelnau, lay to the
north of Lannemezan, and was not properly a valley at all.
After the extinction of the Armagnacs, the overlordship passed to the
kings of France, and each and all from Louis XII to Louis XVI had to
recognize and allow their very extended privileges. From the year 1300
no seigneur could withdraw an inhabitant of the Four Valleys from the
jurisdiction of their own judges; every citizen could own land, marry,
create an industry, or carry on any trade without authorization. The
right to bear arms belonged to every one; and up to the eve of the
Revolution the Four Valleys were exempt from all war-tax and from the
obligation to have troops quartered on them.
La Fayette had no occasion to have gone to America to have seen what
republican self-government was. It existed at his doors.