OF THE HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF BÉARN
The old Vicomté de Béarn lay snug within the embrace of the Pyrenees
between Foix, Comminges and Basse Navarre. It was further divided into
various small districts whose entities were later swallowed by the
parent state, and still later by the royal domain under the rule of
Henry IV.
There is one of these divisions, which not every traveller through the
smiling valleys of the Pyrenees knows either by name or history. It is
the Pays de Bidache, formerly the principality of Bidache, a tiny
kingdom whose sovereign belonged to the house of Grammont. This little
principality was analogous to that of Liechtenstein, lying between
Switzerland and Austria. Nothing remains but the title, and the
Grammonts, who figure in the noblesse of France to-day, are still by
right Princes de Bidache, the eldest of the family being also Duc de
Guiche. The château of the Grammonts at Bidache, which is a town of
eight or nine hundred inhabitants, sits high on the hill overlooking
the town. It is in ruins, but, nevertheless, there are some very
considerable vestiges remaining of the glories that it possessed in the
times of Henri IV when the house of Grammont was at its greatest height.
In the little village church are the tombs of the Sires de Grammont,
notably that of the Maréchal Antoine III, who died in 1678.
Bidache was made a _duché-pairie_ for the family De Grammont, who, by
virtue of their letters patent, were absolute sovereigns. The Princes de
Bidache, up to the Revolution, exercised all the rights of a chief of
state, a curious latter day survival of feudal powers.
Tradition plays no small part even to-day in the affairs of the De
Grammonts, and the old walls of the family château could tell much that
outsiders would hardly suspect. One fact has leaked out and is on public
record. The sons born in the family are usually named Agenor, and the
daughters Corisande, names illustrious in the golden days of Béarnais
history.
Throughout all this ancient principality of Bidache the spirit of
feudality has been effaced in these later Republican days, a thing the
kings of France and Navarre and the parlément de Pau could not
accomplish. As in other parts of Béarn and the Basque provinces, it is
now entirely swallowed by "_la nationalité française_."
The Duc de Grammont still possesses the Château de Guiche, and the
non-forfeitable titles of his ancestors; but, virtually, he is no more
than any other citizen.
Just north from Bidache, set whimsically on a hillside above the Adour,
is the feudal village of Hastingues. It was an English creation, founded
by John of Hastings towards 1300, for Edward I. It is crowded to the
very walls with curious old houses in which its inhabitants live with
much more tranquillity than in feudal times. The fourteenth-century
fortifications are still much in evidence.
Up the river from Hastingues is Peyrehorade, or in the old Béarnais
tongue Pérorade, literally _roche-percée_. It is the metropolis of the
region, and has a population of twenty-five hundred simple folk who live
tight little lives, and not more than once in a generation get fifty
miles away from their home.
The Vicomtes d'Orthe fortified the city in olden times, and the ruined
château-fort of Aspremont on the hillside overlooking the river valley
and the town tells the story of feudal combat far better than the
restored and made-over edifices of a contemporary period. Its
pentagonal donjon of the sixteenth century is as grim and imposing a
tower of its class as may be conceived.
Below, along the river bank, is the sixteenth-century château of
Montréal, its walls still standing flanked with grim, heavy, uncoiffed
towers. It is all sadly disfigured, like its fellow on the heights; but
the very sadness of it all makes it the more emphatic as a historical
monument of the past.
In the villages round about the dominant industry appears to be
_sabot_-making, as in the Basque country it is the making of
_espadrilles_. Each is a species of shoe-making which knows not
automatic machinery, nor ever will.
Lying between Basse Navarre and Béarn was the Pays de Soule, with
Mauléon and Tardets as its chief centres of population. The district has
a bit of feudal history which is interesting. It was a region of
mediocre extent--not more than thirty leagues square--but with a
political administration more complex than any Gerrymandering
administration has dared to conceive since.
The district was divided into three _Messageries_, Haute Soule, Basse
Soule and Arbailles. Each of these divisions had at its head a
functionary called a _Messager_, and each was in turn divided again
into smaller parcels of territory called _Vics_, each of which had a
sort of beadle as an official head, called a _Degan_.
Popular election put all these officials in power, but the Courts of
Justice were administered by the king of France, as heir to the kings of
Navarre.
Mauléon takes its name from the old château which in the local tongue
was known as Malo-Leone. Mainly it is of the fifteenth century. The
interior court has been made over into a sort of formal garden, quite
out of keeping with its former purpose, and by far the most impressive
suggestions are received from the exterior. There are the usual
underground prisons, or _cachots_, which the guardian takes pleasure in
showing.
From the _chemin de ronde_, encircling the central tower, one has a
wide-spread panorama of the Gave de Mauléon as it rushes down from its
cradle near the crest of the Pyrenees. Mauléon is the centre for the
manufacture of the local Pyrenean variety of footwear called
_espadrilles_, a sort of a cross between a sandal and a moccasin, with a
rope sole. The population who work at this trade are mostly Spaniards
from Ronça, Pamplona and in fact all Aragon. This accounts largely for
Mauléon's recent increase in population, whilst most other neighbouring
small towns have reduced their ranks. For this reason Mauléon is a
phenomenon. Paris and the great provincial capitals, like Marseilles,
Bordeaux and Rouen, constantly increase in numbers, but most of the
small towns of France either stand still, or more likely fall off in
numbers. Here at this little Pyrenean centre the population has doubled
since the Franco-Prussian war.
The historical monuments of Mauléon are not many, but the whole ensemble
is warm in its unassuming appeal to the lover of new sensations. The
lower town is simply laid out, has the conventional tree-bordered
promenade of a small French town, its _fronton de pelote_ (the national
game of these parts), a fine old Renaissance house called the Hôtel
d'Andurrian, and a cross-surmounted column which looks ancient, and is
certainly picturesque.
Dumas laid the scene of one of his celebrated sword and cloak romances
here at Mauléon, but as the critics say, he so often distorted facts,
and built châteaux that never existed, the scene might as well have been
somewhere else. This is not saying that they were not romances which
have been seldom, if ever, equalled. They were indeed the peers of
their class. Let travellers in France read and re-read such romances as
the D'Artagnan series, or even Monte Cristo, and they will fall far more
readily into the spirit of things in feudal times than they will by
attempting to digest Carlylean rant and guide-book literature made in
the British Museum. Dumas, at any rate, had the genuine spirit of the
French, and with it well-seasoned everything he wrote. The story of
Agenor de Mauléon, a real chevalier of romance and fable, is very nearly
as good as his best.
Leaving Tardets by the Route d'Oloron, one makes his way by a veritable
mountain road. Its rises and falls are not sharp, but they are frequent,
and on each side rear small, rocky peaks and great _mamelons_ of stone,
as in the Val d'Enfer of Dante.
Montory is the first considerable village en route, and if French is
to-day the national language, one would not think it from anything heard
here offhand, for the inhabitants speak mostly Basque. In spite of this,
the inhabitants, by reason of being under the domination of Oloron,
consider themselves Béarnais.
Montory, and the Barétous near-by, have intimate relations with Spain.
All Aragon and Navarre, at least all those who trade horses and mules,
come through here to the markets of Gascogne and Poitou. Frequently they
don't get any farther than Oloron, having sold their stock to the
Béarnais traders at this point. The Béarnais horse-dealers are the
worthy rivals of the Maquignons of Brittany.
The next village of the Barétous is Lanne, huddled close beneath the
flanks of a thousand-metre peak, called the Basse-Blanc. Lanne possesses
a diminutive château--called a _gentilhommière_ in olden times, a name
which explains itself. The edifice is not a very grand or imposing
structure, and one takes it to be more of a country-house than a
stronghold, much the same sort of a habitation as one imagines the
paternal roof of D'Artagnan, comrade of the Mousquetaires, to have been.
Aramits, near by, furnished, with but little evolution, one of the
heroic names of the D'Artagnan romances, it may be remarked. If one
cares to linger in a historic, romantic literary shrine, he could do
worse than stay at Aramits' Hôtel Loubeu. As for the inner man, nothing
more excellent and simple can be found than the fare of this little
country inn of a practically unknown corner of the Pyrenees. A diligence
runs out from Oloron, fourteen kilometres, so the place is not wholly
inaccessible. Lanne's humble château, nothing more than a residence of
a poor, but proud seigneur of Gascogne, is an attractive enough monument
to awaken vivid memories of what may have gone on within its walls in
the past, and in connection with the neighbouring venerable church and
cemetery suggests a romance as well as any dumb thing can.
Aramits is bereft of historical monuments save the Mairie of to-day,
which was formerly the chamber of the syndics who exercised judiciary
functions here (and in the five neighbouring villages) under the orders
of the États de Béarn.
Another delightful and but little known corner of Béarn is the valley of
the Aspe, leading directly south from Oloron into the high valley of the
Pyrenees. The Pas d'Aspe is at an elevation of seventeen hundred metres.
Majestic peaks close in the valley and its half a dozen curious little
towns; and, if one asks a native of anything so far away as Pau or
Mauléon, perhaps fifty miles as the crow flies, he says simply: "_Je ne
sais pas! Je ne peux pas savoir, moi, je passe tous mes jours dans la
vallée d'Aspe._" Even when you ask the route over the mountain, that you
may make your way back again by the Val d'Ossau, it is the same thing;
they have never been that way themselves and are honest enough, luckily,
not to give you directions that might put you off the road.
Directly before one is the Pic d'Anie, the king mountain of the chain of
the Pyrenees between the Aspe and the sea to the westward.
Urdos is the last settlement of size as one mounts the valley. Above,
the carriage road continues fairly good to the frontier, but the side
roads are mere mule paths and trails. One of these zigzags its way
craftily up to the Fort d'Urdos or Portalet. Here the grim walls, with
their machicolations and bastions and redoubts cut out from the rock
itself, give one an uncanny feeling as if some danger portended; but
every one assures you that nothing of the sort will ever take place
between France and Spain. This fortification is a very recent work, and
formidable for its mere size, if not for the thickness of its walls. It
was built in 1838-1848, at the time when Lyons, Paris and other
important French cities were fortified anew.
War may not be imminent or even probable, but the best safeguard against
it is protection, and so the Spaniards themselves have taken pattern of
the French and erected an equally imposing fortress just over the border
at the Col de Lladrones, in the valley of the Aragon, and still other
batteries at Canfranc.
One of the topographic and scenic wonders of the world which belongs to
Béarn is the Cirque de Gavarnie, that rock-surrounded amphitheatre of
waterfalls, icy pools and caverns.
Of the Cirque de Gavarnie, Victor Hugo wrote:--
"Quel cyclope savant de l'âge évanoui,
Quel être monstrueux, plus grand que les idées,
A pris un compas haut de cent mille coudées
Et, le tournant d'un doigt prodigieux et sûr,
A tracé ce grand cercle au niveau de l'azur?"
Just below the "Cirque" is the little village of Gavarnie, which before
the Revolution was a property of the Maltese Order, it having previously
belonged to the Templars. Vestiges of their former _presbytère_ and of
their lodgings may be seen. A gruesome relic was formerly kept in the
church, but it has fortunately been removed to-day. It was no less than
a dozen bleached skulls of a band of unfortunate chevaliers who had been
decapitated on the spot in some classic encounter the record of which
has been lost to history.
Above Gavarnie, on the frontier crest of the Pyrenees, is the famous
Brèche de Roland. One remembers here, if ever, his schoolboy days, and
the "Song of Roland" rings ever in his ears.
"High are the hills and huge and dim with cloud;
Down in the deeps and living streams are loud."
The Brèche de Roland, with the Col de Roncevaux, shares the fame of
being the most celebrated pass of the Pyrenees. It is a vast rock
fissure, at least three hundred feet in height. As a strategic point of
defence against an invading army or a band of smugglers ten men could
hold it against a hundred and a hundred against a thousand. At each side
rises an unscalable rock wall with a height of from three to six hundred
feet.
The legend of this famous Brèche is this: Roland mounted on his charger
would have passed the Pyrenees, so giving a swift clean cut of his
famous sword he clave the granite wall fair in halves, and for this
reason the mountaineers have ever called it the Brèche de Roland. The
Tours de Marboré were built in the old days to further defend the
passage, a sort of a trap, or barbican, being a further defence on
French soil.
The aspect roundabout is as of a desert, except that it is mountainous,
and the gray sterile juts of rock and the snows of winter--here at least
five months of the year--might well lead one to imagine it were a pass
in the Himalayas.
Bordering upon Béarn on the north is the ancient Comté d'Armagnac, a
detached corner of the Duché de Gascogne, which dates its history from
the tenth century. It passed to Henri d'Albret, king of Navarre, in
1525, and by reason of belonging to the crown of Navarre came to France
in due course.
The ancient family of Armagnac had many famous names on its roll: the
first Comte Bernard, the founder; Bernard II, who founded the Abbey of
Saint Pé; Gerard II, successor of the preceding and a warrior as well;
Bernard III, canon of Sainte-Marie d'Auch; Gerard III, who united the
Comté de Fezensac with Armagnac; Bernard V, who, in league with the
Comtes de Toulouse, went up against Saint Louis; Gerard V, who became an
ally of the English king; Bernard VI, who warred all his life with
Roger-Bernard, Comte de Foix, on the subject of the succession of the
Vicomté de Béarn, to which he pretended; Jean II, who terminated the
quarrel with the house of Foix; Bernard VI, the most famous warrior of
his race, whose name is written in letters of blood in the chronicles
of the wars of the Armagnacs and Jean IV, who was called "Comte par la
grace de Dieu."