What gives us the zest to wander until the hour comes when we must fain be
content to sit in the porch, thankful if the evening sun shines warmly, is
the fascination of the unknown. As children, did we not long to get at
the horizon's verge, to touch the painted clouds of the morning or of the
sunset--ay, and to grasp with our outstretched hands that reached such a
little way the blood-red glory of the sun itself? The garden, with its
glowing tulips and its roses haunted by gilded beetles, became too small
to satisfy the mind of infancy fresh from the infinite. Surely, I thought,
when I was again in the open country beyond Beaulieu, I must have carried
something of my childhood on with me, for me to go wandering over these hot
hills exposing myself to sunstroke, weariness, and thirst for the sake of
the unknown.
The road at first led up vine-covered slopes towards the west, where the
waysides were blue with the flowers of the wild chicory. A priest astride
upon a rough old cob passed me, his hitched-up _soutane_ showing his
gaitered legs. The French rural priests are generally rubicund, but this
one was cadaverous. He would have looked like Death on horseback, swathed
in a black mantle, but for the dangling gaitered legs, which spoilt the
solemn effect. A very curious figure did he cut upon his shaggy, ambling
steed. On the top of the hill was a village, in the midst of which stood a
little old Gothic church with a gable-belfry, and hard by was a half-timber
house, its porch aglow with climbing petunias.
Beyond this village was a deep valley, the sides of which were covered with
chestnut-trees. On ascending the opposite hill, I took a by-path through a
steep wood, thinking to cut off a long turn of the hot and dusty road. It
led me into difficulties and bewilderment. The path disappeared, but I went
on. After climbing rocks densely overgrown with brambles, which left their
daggers in my skin, I reached the top of the hill, and saw before me a
desert of disintegrated rock or drift dotted over with low juniper bushes.
Although it was the middle of September, the sun blazed above me with the
ardour of July, and the rays were thrown back by the bare stones, on which
there was not a trace of moss, nor even lichen. These arid rocky places, so
characteristic of Southern France, have a poetry of their own that to me
is ever enticing. I love the stony wastes and their dazzling sun-glitter.
There I find something that approaches companionship in the prickly
juniper, the narcotic hellebore, and the acrid spurge. And these plants
likewise love the places where the world has remained unchanged by man. The
heat, however, was too great for me to linger upon this shadeless hill,
where every stone was warm, and the reflected glare was almost as blinding
as that of the sun itself, which seemed so near.
Having crossed another valley, after much casting about, I found the
highroad again. The altitude was considerable here, so that the view
embraced a wide expanse of the Corrèze and the department of the Lot, which
I was approaching. The scene was everything that an English landscape is
not. No soft verdure, no hedgerows setting memory astir with pictures of
the flowering may and the pink, clambering dog-rose gemmed with dew; no
lustrous meadow crossed by shadows thrown by ancient dreaming elms; no
flash from the briskly-flowing brook: no, nothing of this, but in its place
a parched and rugged land of hills or knolls, stony, wasteful, where for
countless ages the juniper, the broom, the gorse, and the heather have
disputed the sovereignty, the intervening valleys, timidly cultivated,
producing little else but rye and buckwheat, and the deep gorges sombre
with overhanging trees.
This road was so tedious, so hot and dusty, that, after walking a few miles
upon it, I lost patience altogether with what seemed to be its unreasonable
windings, and again made an effort to strike across country by means of
by-paths, in order to reach the spot where, according to the map and
compass, I thought Vayrac ought to be. I came to a seventeenth century
country-house, large enough to be termed a château, but now the dwelling of
some peasant-farmer. It was a dilapidated, apparently owl-haunted building,
with a dovecote tower over grown with ivy, and was half surrounded by a
wall, whose tottering, ornamental pinnacles told a story of comparative
grandeur that had come to grief in this remote spot. The farmer had been
winnowing his corn outside, and the narrow lane was ankle-deep with chaff.
The only human being that I could find here was a wild-looking girl, with a
bush of hair on her head, who made me understand, half in French, half in
patois, that I should never reach Vayrac by the way I was going. She sent
me off in another direction. I walked on, I know not how many miles,
without coming to any village or wayside auberge, over a shadeless plain in
the department of the Lot. There was no water; consequently not a bird was
to be seen or heard. But there were myriads of flies, and too many hornets
for my comfort, for some of them followed me with impertinent curiosity.
I confess that I do not like hornets. When I see them, they remind me of
the story of a donkey told me by a man in these parts. He in his youth
saw an unlucky ass that, quietly browsing, unconscious of indiscretion,
disturbed a hornets' nest. Suddenly the animal showed symptoms of unusual
excitement, which became rapidly more violent, until, after some amazing
antics, first on his front-legs and then on his hind-legs, he rolled over
on his back, and kicked violently at the sky. His master knew what had
happened, but stood lamenting afar off, not daring to go to the rescue. In
a short time the poor donkey ceased kicking, and swelled up in a manner
horrible to behold.
All nature now appeared to be baking. Even the blackberries, which I ate
by the handful to slake my raging thirst, were warm. A long, straight road
that I thought would never end brought me at length to Vayrac, where there
was a good inn. Oh, the luxury of rest at last in a shaded room, with the
companionship of a jug of frothing beer just brought up from the cool
cellar!
* * * * *
Months passed before I continued from this point my journey on foot. The
spring had come, and the face of nature was wondrously changed. Over the
valley that I had seen before so parched had spread the soft verdure of
young grass; hedges of quince were all abloom, and at their roots the
stitchwort mingled its white starry flowers with the matchless blue of the
Germander speedwell, so dear to English eyes. The roadsides were bright
with daisies and the gold of the ill-appreciated dandelion.
A lane from Vayrac led up to the escarped sides of the Puy d'Issolu--the
Uxellodunum of the Cadurci, according to Napoleon III. and others who have
made Caesar's battlefields in Gaul their study. It was April, and from near
and afar came the warbling of nightingales. They moved amongst the new
leaves of almost every shrub and tree. A very abrupt ascent through
thickets brought me to the tableland, where the turf was flashed with
splendid flowers of the purple orchids. From the waste land the sombre
junipers rose like scattered cypresses in a cemetery.
If this was not the site of Uxellodunum, we may pretty safely believe it to
have been that of some important _oppidum_ of the Gauls. A circumvallation
there could never have been in a strict sense, for where the plateau rests
upon high calcareous walls there was no need of a fortification. But
elsewhere, where the position was accessible from the valley, it was
protected by a strong wall. On the northern side this rampart can be
followed for a considerable distance without a break. In one spot the soil
which has collected about it has been dug away, leaving the masonry bare.
It is not composed of loose stones of various sizes, like that of the
Celtic city at Murcens, but of small flat stones neatly laid together, with
layers of mortar between; a circumstance that sets one conjecturing and
doubting. The wall appears to have been six or eight feet thick. The line
of it now only rises very slightly above the edge of the plateau.
I met a peasant who owned the highest part of the tableland, and who
managed to grow crops upon it. Near his cottage he pointed out the remains
of an ancient structure, which he called the fort. The masonry was of the
same character as that of the wall. Near to it were fragments of ancient
pottery and tiles, which he had dug out of the ground. The tiles were
very heavy and flat, with turned-up edges, so that they could hang one to
another. There were holes, too, for the nails which held them to the roof.
Thrown on one side were human bones, which had from time to time been
turned up by the plough. The peasant told me that his father, while digging
rather deeply, had found a skeleton wearing a bracelet and part of a
helmet. A visitor to the Puy d'Issolu, many years ago, was allowed to take
these remains away, together with a quantity of iron arrow-heads, on his
promise to come back and pay 600 francs for them. He never came back.
The view from the Puy takes in an immense expanse of the solemn Limousin
country. To the south is the stone-strewn Quercy, while to the north and
east is the still wilder Corrèze. On the west lie the forests of Black
Périgord. Looking to the east, I saw the mountains of Auvergne, the
Mont-Dore range rising beyond the Corrèze against the blue sky, as white as
the sugar towers and pinnacles upon a bride-cake. Here it was warm, like
June weather in England; there winter still reigned upon the snowy hills.
Standing against the north-western horizon were the high towers of the vast
feudal fortress of the Viscounts of Turenne. It was there that Madame de
Condé, escaping from Mazarin, planned the rising of Guyenne in 1648. I
could only distinguish the towers, but I knew that a little below them was
the small mediaeval town of Turenne, which grew up under the protection of
the Viscounts, who for centuries were virtually the sovereign princes of
this region. No lover of the picturesque would waste his time by going
there.
Descending from the tableland on the southern side, where the rocks form a
steep little gorge, I came to the stream from which the besieged Cadurci
are supposed to have drawn their water-supply, until it was cut off by
Caesar. Looking at the spot, it is easy to understand how it all happened.
The natural fortress, selected with so much judgment by the Cadurci, was
almost unassailable. To help them, they had the cover of the wood that
still fills the gorge, but which was probably much denser then than it is
now. From his tower of ten stages, which commanded the fountain, Caesar
continually harassed with darts, thrown by the _tormenta_, those who came
to the spring; and he, moreover, tells us that he caused a gallery to be
tunnelled to the fountainhead, and thus drew off the water, to the utter
astonishment and despair of the Cadurci, who perceived in this disaster the
intervention of the gods. A tunnel such as he describes exists, and the
stream flows through it. At a point some distance higher, the sound of
gurgling water can be distinctly heard beneath the stones; and it was here
probably where the stream originally broke out, and where the inhabitants
of the _oppidum_ came with their vessels. Napoleon III. had the
subterranean gallery cleared, and its artificial character was proved by
the discovery that massive beams of wood, of which there were some remains,
had been used to prevent the soil from falling in upon the workers. It has
now been nearly filled up again by the calcareous deposit of the water.
The river mentioned by Caesar as the one that flowed in the valley beneath
Uxellodunum [Footnote: 'Flumen infimam vallam lividebat quae totum
poene montem cingebat, in quo positum erat praeruptum undique oppidum
Uxellodunum.'--'De Bello Gallico,' Lib. VIII.] is a small tributary of the
Dordogne, called the Tourmente. This is assuming the Puy d'Issolu to have
been Uxellodunum. The most convincing material proof that the two places
are the same was furnished by the discovery of the tunnel; but some strong
corroborative evidence is to be found in local names. The word _puy_
affords no clue; for it simply means a high place. In the dialect of the
Viscounty of Turenne the Puy d'Issolu is pronounced _Lo Pê dê Cholu_. In
the word Issolu or Cholu, we may have something of the Celtic word, which
was Latinized by Caesar after his custom; but this verbal similarity would
not in itself go far to prove the identity of the height near Vayrac with
the position defended by Drappes and Lucterius. Lying in the Corrèze at
no great distance from the Dordogne is the town of Ussel--a name that
approaches much more nearly the sound of Uxellodunum. But an educated
native of Vayrac, whom I chanced to meet months after my visit to the Puy
d'Issolu, furnished me with some local testimony which appears to be
of value in connection with a subject that has given rise to so much
controversy. The stream where it issues near the base of the rocky height
has been known in the neighbourhood from time immemorial as 'Lo foun
Conino'--Conino's Fountain. Conino is a natural Romance corruption of
Caninius, the name of Caesar's lieutenant who in the first instance
directed the siege of Uxellodunum. The French name for the stream at the
bottom of the valley already mentioned is derived from the Romance one, Lo
Tourmento. Now, as Caesar made so much use of _tormenta_ as engines of war,
to prevent the besieged Cadurci from drawing water, something may easily
have occurred to associate the stream with one of these machines. It is to
be observed, however, that there are other streams in France to which the
name Tourmente has been given, and of which the explanation is much more
simple.
[Illustration: A PEASANT OF THE CAUSSE.]
How solemnly still seemed this spectre-haunted spot in the quiet evening!
There was the groaning murmur of the stream flowing down its subterranean
passage, and there was the low and fitful warble of a nightingale; but this
was all. Who, passing by here without foreknowledge, would suppose that on
this bit of desert the great struggle between Rome and Gaul was brought
to a close? What a wonderful thing is a book, that it should preserve age
after age, with undiminished reality, all the torment, anguish, and passion
of a siege, and give a human interest to rocks and streams, which without
such aid would tell us nothing of the horrid tumult that raged over and
around them! Now I can see the half-naked Gauls rolling down their barrels
of flaming pitch upon the Roman engineers, and hear that great clamour
of the besiegers and the besieged of which Caesar speaks. Above were the
Celtic heroes defending their last rock with the obstinacy of despair, and
ready to accept death in any form but that of thirst; and here were the
veteran legionaries exposing themselves day after day to the burning pitch,
the stones, and the arrows of the defenders, with that disciplined courage
and unwavering resolve to conquer which made Rome the mistress of the
world. But the most terrible scene must have been that in which the Gaulish
warriors, after their surrender, had their hands cut off. What frightful
business was that, and what a heap of hands must have been buried
somewhere, either upon the table-land or in the valley! A deep-ploughing
peasant may long since have come upon an extraordinary collection of little
bones, and been much puzzled by them. And poor Drappes, who, after his
capture, refused to eat, and died from starvation; he must have been buried
somewhere near. But Nature says nothing about all these things; she covers
up the traces of human ferocity with her new leaves and moss, and smiles
there as tenderly as upon children's graves.
I passed the night at St. Denis, a modern place brought into existence by
the line to Toulouse. At the auberge the evening was enlivened by dancing.
Two maids of the inn found partners in a couple of rustic youths, and a
young soldier _en congé_ provided the music by whistling, or imitating the
hurdy-gurdy with his mouth. For it was the _bourrée_ that was danced.
The next morning I was on the road to Martel, with nightingales and
blackcaps singing all around from blossoming quince and hawthorn and copses
filled with a gold-green glimmer, until I reached the bare upland country.
Upon the barren _causse_, besides the short turf, the gray ribs of rock,
and scattered stones, little was to be seen but dark little junipers, tall
broom, not yet in flower, hellebore, with bright tufts of new leaves and
evil-looking green blossoms edged with dull purple, and the numberless
gilded umbels of the spurge, which in springtime lend such beauty to the
Southern desert. In the dips and little dingles there were stunted oaks
with the brown foliage, that had been beaten by the winter winds in vain,
still clinging to them, but which every breath of western breeze now
scattered, because the buds were swelling and the unborn leaves were asking
to come forth. At wide distances above the undulating, sterile land a
farmhouse would appear, with high-pitched tiled roof, and a pigeon-house
rising like a tower at one end. The stranger marvels to see such
substantially-built houses in the midst of such sterility; but he finds
the explanation when he has time to consider that there are so many stones
lying about that, where it is possible to plough, the peasant heaps them up
in his field, or makes walls that are little wanted. Having reached the top
of a knoll, I saw beneath me many old tiled roofs whose lines ran at all
angles, and above these rose the massive walls of a half-fortified church,
and various towers or fragments of towers. I was looking at Martel.
According to legend and local history, Charles Martel, after defeating the
Saracens near this spot, caused a church to be built on a piece of fertile
land a few miles from the battlefield, and dedicated it to St. Maur. A town
grew around church and monastery, and was named Martel in honour of the
founder. In the early days of the Crusades, when princes and barons
rivalled one another in virtuous zeal, a Viscount of Turenne decreed that
inhabitants of Martel who were convicted of sinning against the marriage
tie should be dragged naked through the town. The charter that contains
this enactment treats of villeinage also, and orders that whoever has a man
for sale within the limits of the viscounty shall fix the price, and shall
not change it afterwards.
The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry Plantagenet brought the
English to Martel in the twelfth century; but it does not appear that they
obtained or cared to keep anything like a permanent grip on the place until
the fourteenth century. Inasmuch, however, as Henry Short-Mantle, the
rebellious son of Henry II., met with no resistance at Martel when he came
thither, after pillaging the sanctuary of Roc-Amadour in 1183, it may be
concluded that English influence was already established there. In the
market place is a house a portion of which was once included in a building
that has now nearly disappeared, but which is known to every inhabitant as
the 'palace of Henry II.' On the first floor, communicating with a spiral
staircase, is a room paved with small pebbles. On one side is a broad
chimney-place, just such as we see now all through Guyenne, even in the
towns. According to the tradition preserved by the family to whom the house
belongs, it was in one of the chimney-corners of this room that Prince
Henry sat on the evening of the day that he left Roc-Amadour. It is
uncertain, however, whether the Prince went to Martel immediately after the
sacrilege, or after a pilgrimage that he made to the sanctuary to atone for
his crime, when he was suffering from the disease that killed him. There
is a local legend that he was followed by two monks, who contrived to put
poison into his goblet; but whether he was poisoned or died of dysentery at
Martel, as the chroniclers maintain, is a detail of small importance. That
he did die here, and very repentantly, on a bed of ashes, and held up by
the Bishop of Cahors, is a historical fact.
An indubitable testimony of the English occupation of Martel is the
heraldic leopard of the Plantagenets. I found it carved in stone among
the ruins of King Henry's palace, and hard by I saw it again upon a rusty
fireplate that had been thrown into a corner. There is not a native of
Martel who is not ready to talk of _le leopard anglais_.
The English were never loved by the Martellois. The people of this district
are strong in their attachments, and perhaps even stronger in their
animosities and prejudices. Without doubt the English did not treat them
with marked tenderness; but there was very little human kindness in the
Middle Ages, and the French, or the races which now compose France, left
nothing to be invented in the arts of cruelty and oppression in the wars
that they waged among themselves before they learnt, or were forced to
learn, that it was to their interest to hold together and form one
nation. Moreover, the greater number of the so-called English who kept a
considerable part of Aquitaine in continual terror for three centuries were
natives of the soil.
All the men of Martel who could carry arms joined the forces of King John,
who was defeated by the Black Prince at Poitiers. The consuls of Martel had
to pay heavy ransoms for their fellow-townsmen who fell into the hands
of the English. Notwithstanding the disaster at Poitiers, the Martellois
closed their gates and prepared for a siege, after having obtained from
the Viscount a company of crossbow-men to help them in the defence. But an
English garrison was soon established at Montvallent, only a few miles off,
and this fact seems to have demoralized the Martellois, who, after enduring
a few assaults, surrendered the town. The longest period of unbroken
English possession of Martel appears to have occurred after this surrender.
It is probable that the Sénéchaussée, which now exists under the name of
the Hôtel de Ville, was commenced about this time, although the King of
England must have been represented in the town by his seneschal long
before. By the treaty passed between Henry III. and Reymond VI. of Turenne
in 1223, it was stipulated that the Viscount should pay homage to Henry,
but that the English officers should exercise no jurisdiction in the
viscounty, except in the town of Martel, where the King could hold his
assizes with the consent of the Viscount. It was, moreover, provided that
in the event of resistance on the part of his fiefs, the Viscount could
apply to the English seneschal at Martel for armed assistance. The burghers
were in the enjoyment of their political franchises from the year 1256.
They had town councillors, who elected four consuls every four years, who
represented the borough in the États Vicomtains--an assembly composed of
the principal landholders and dignitaries of the viscounty. The more they
tasted freedom the more the burghers felt disposed to quarrel with the
Viscount. In 1355 they sent a deputation to the Pope at Avignon begging
him to ask their lord if it was his wish that the town should retain its
privileges. The minutes of the municipal meeting, at which this decision
was come to, are in existence, and they show how the Romance language was
written at Martel in those days:
'Item fo ordenat que Moss. Aymar de Bessa et P. Karti ano a
Vinho far reverensa al papa per nom de la vila eque Phi recomendo
la vila. E quelh fasso supplicacio quelh plassa far am los vescomte
se bot que nos garde nostres previleges.'
This ancient town has suffered grievously from that spirit of demolition
which was so active during the first half of the present century, but
which in France has been somewhat checked by the Commission of Historic
Monuments. There are people who can remember when the town was surrounded
by two walls; now only a few remnants of the fortifications remain. The
church is exceedingly interesting. There are details indicating a very
early origin--they may possibly have come down from the foundation; but the
structure in the main belongs to the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The
east end--the oldest portion--has more the character of a stronghold than
of a church. It has no apse, and the terminating wall, which is carried far
above the roof, has a row of machicolations, and the massive buttresses by
which it is flanked are really towers pierced with loopholes. At the foot
of the wall is a deep pool of water, which serves as the horse-pond for the
town; but it may originally have been part of a moat.
In the tympanum of the twelfth-century portal is one of those bas-reliefs
representing the Last Judgment upon which the artistic ambition of the
early Gothic period appears to have been chiefly directed in this region.
The fourteenth-century Sénéchaussée, with its embattled belfry, its little
turrets or bartizans hanging high at the angles of the wall, its dim old
court, with a deep well in the centre, speaks with a ghostly voice of
ancient Martel. This building, after the English left, was the residence of
the seneschals of the Viscounts of Turenne down to the Revolution. In two
of the rooms are chimney-pieces very artistically carved in oak.
Notwithstanding all the demolition that has gone on, bits of picturesque
antiquity meet the eye everywhere in the old English town. Now it is a
half-ruinous watch-tower, now the Gothic doorway of a thirteenth-century
house, now a gateway that has lost its tower, but whose wounds are covered
with yellow wallflowers in spring; now a turret running up an entire front,
with little windows looking out upon the quiet street, or some high-pitched
roof curving inward under the weight of years and tiles.
The inn where I put up was like a hostelry of romance. Entering by a broad
archway, I passed along a passage vaulted and groined, where corbel-heads
grimaced from dim corners; climbed a staircase broad enough for a palace,
and, having reached the landing, saw a great room with hearth and chimney
to match, massive old furniture, pots and pans of highly-polished copper,
and a hostess stout and cheery, who welcomed me as though I were an old
friend, and not a wanderer to whom food and shelter were to be exchanged
for money. This good woman had evidently no faith in new fashions; she
dressed as she did thirty years ago, and every dish that she cooked for me
was kept warm by a pewter brazier filled with embers from the hearth.
One of these dishes was a goose's liver half roasted, half stewed, and
sprinkled with capers.
While at Martel I was arrested as a spy by an old _garde champêtre_, who,
seeing me taking notes of the church, wished to know who gave me permission
to 'make a plan of the town.' I did not reply to him with the politeness
that he evidently considered himself entitled to. It is probable that I
should have chosen my words with more circumspection had I guessed what an
important person he was; but as he wore a blouse, and was squatting upon
a heap of stones which he had been pulling about, I underestimated his
dignity. That he united the functions of _cantonnier_ and _garde_ did not
occur to me. He sprang to his feet, put on his official badge, and, seizing
me by the arm, shouted: 'I arrest you!' Then, when I took the liberty of
removing his hand, he called out: '_Au secours!_'
But those to whom he appealed were women, who preferred to let him manage
his own business, and who, moreover, were too much amused to interfere.
When he had calmed down a little I walked with him to the deputy-mayor,
whose office was over a little shop. After hearing me and examining my
papers, this gentleman was satisfied that I was not a very dangerous
person, and he told me that I had better forget the incident.
The fierce old man could not understand why I was released. He even
protested: '_Il dit qu'il est un anglais; mais il le dit!_'
The deputy-mayor tried to calm him by observing that I had a right to be an
Englishman. The _garde_ then walked out, looking very hot and puzzled. From
his childhood he had heard of the English as the worst tyrants that
the region had known. Was not the country strewn with the ruins of the
fortresses they had built? To his mind they were more dangerous enemies
than the Germans, who never came near Martel. I bear no grudge against the
old man. He believed that he was doing his duty in arresting me, and if I
had made more allowance for his age and prejudices the unpleasantness might
have been avoided. To him the old struggle with the English was almost as
fresh as if it had taken place in his father's time.
People who remain in the same place all their days, and who never read,
live much more in the past than others, and remember injuries done to their
remote ancestors as if they, the latest descendants, were still suffering
from them, I remember asking a woman in an inn not far from Martel how an
old gateway and other mediaeval buildings close by had been brought to such
a sad state of ruin.
'It was you,' she exclaimed, 'who did that--_vous autres anglais!_'
And she looked so resentful for a few moments that I wished I had let the
sleeping dog lie.