ORTHEZ AND THE GAVE D'OLORON
Orthez is another of those cities of the Pyrenees which does not live up
to its possibilities, at least not in a commercial sense. Nevertheless,
some of us find it all the more delightful for that. It is a city where
the relics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are curiously
intermingled, and if one within its walls so chose he could imagine
himself as living in the past as well as in the present, and this in
spite of the fact that the city has been remodelled and restored in
certain quarters out of all semblance to its former self.
There is little or nothing remaining of that time which Froissart
described with such minuteness when writing of the court at Orthez'
château.
All that remains of this great pile is the Tour de Moncade, but from its
grandeur and commanding site one realizes well enough that in its time
it was hardly overshadowed by the better preserved edifices at Pau and
Foix.
At the northeast of Orthez, on a hill overlooking the city is an
ancient, rectangular tower, its sides mellowed by ages, and its crest in
ruins.
"_Savez-vous ce que sont ces ruines?_" you ask of any one, and they will
tell you that it is all that remains of the fine chateau of Gaston
Phoebus. Fêtes and crimes were curiously intermingled within its
walls, for always little rivulets of blood flowed in mediæval times as
the accompaniment of the laughter of the feast.
Gaston de Foix, after the burning of his château, came to Orthez in the
thirteenth century, and began the citadel of Orthez--the
"_château-noble_" of the chronicles of Froissart. The edifice played an
important rôle in the history of Béarn.
At that time Gaston was a vassal of Edward III of England who was then
making a Crusade in the East. On his return he found this
"_château-noble_" already built, and his surprise was great, for he knew
not what it portended. He concluded that it could only mean the
rebellion of his vassal, and he ordered the Seneschal of Gascony to
demand the surrender of the property. When this was refused Edward
seized it and all the domains of Béarn, and sent Gerard de Laon as envoy
to put the new political machinery in running order. The envoy entered
Orthez without the least obstacle being put in his way, but in an
instant the gates were closed and he was made a prisoner. Irritated by
this outrage, Edward, at the head of an imposing army, marched on
Orthez. Gaston, seized with fear, lost his head, and made up his mind to
surrender before he was attacked. No protestations of future devotion to
his overlord would, however, be accepted, and Edward made him prisoner
on the spot. To regain his liberty, Gaston promised to turn over the
"Fortresse d'Orthez" but, when he was set free, he established himself
with a doubled garrison behind his walls and prepared for resistance.
Edward pleaded for justice and honourable dealing, and a quarrel, long
and animated, followed. The affair took on such proportions that the
Pope sent his legate, as an intermediary, to make peace. Gaston would
hear of no compromise, and called upon the king of France to take his
part. A sort of council was finally arranged, during which Gaston became
so exasperated that he threw his glove in the face of the English king.
He begged the king's pardon afterwards, and an agreement was reached
whereby everything was left as it had been before the quarrel began.
Many imperishable souvenirs are left of the reign at Orthez of the
brilliant Gaston de Foix, when tourneys and fêtes followed in rapid
succession. It was Orthez' most brilliant epoch.
It was here, to the court of Gaston Phoebus, that Messire Jehan
Froissart came, in 1388, and stayed three weeks and some of his most
brilliant pages relate to this visit. Of his host, the chronicler said:
"_De toutes choses il est si parfait_."
Gaston Phoebus was so powerful and magnificent a seigneur in his own
right, and his castle at Orthez was such a landmark of history that
Louis XI--who conceded little enough to others as a usual thing--said to
his followers as he was passing through Béarnais territory on a
pilgrimage: "_Messeigneurs, laissez l'epée de France, nous sortons ici
du royaume_."
Gaston Phoebus was the most accomplished seigneur of his time, and he
had for his motto "_Toquos-y se gaasos_"--"Attack who dares."
One day, in the month of August, 1390, on returning from a bear hunt,
greatly fatigued, he was handed a cup from which to drink. He drank from
the cup and instantly expired. Was he poisoned? That is what no one
knows. It was the custom of the time to make away with one's enemies
thus, and in this connection one recalls that Gaston himself killed
his own son because he would not eat at table.
[Illustration: _The Pont d'Orthez_]
Orthez was deserted by the court for Pau, and in time the natural
destruction of wind and weather, and the hand of man, stripped the
château to what one sees to-day.
The Pont d'Orthez is a far better preserved monument of feudal and
warlike times, and it was a real defence to the city, as can be readily
understood by all who view it. Its four hardy arches span the Gave as
they did in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was from the
summit of one of the sentinel towers of this most remarkable of mediæval
bridges that the soldiers of Montgomery obliged the monks to throw
themselves into the river below. The "Brothers of the Bridge" were a
famous institution in mediæval times, and they should have been better
treated than they usually were, but too frequently indeed they were
massacred without having either the right or the means to defend
themselves.
The history of Montgomery's connection with Orthez, or more particularly
the Pont d'Orthez, reads almost as if it were legend, though indeed it
is truth. The story is called by the French historians "La Chronique de
la Tour des Caperas."
Jeanne d'Albret, the mainstay of Protestantism in her day, wished to
make Orthez the religious capital, and accordingly she built here a
splendid church in which to expound the theories of Calvin and brought
"professors" from Scotland and England to preach the new dogma. Orthez
became at once the point of attack for those of the opposite faith, and
as horrible a massacre as was ever known took place in the streets of
Orthez and gave perhaps the first use of the simile that the river
flowed as a river of blood. Priests and monks were the special prey of
the Protestants, while they themselves were being attacked from without.
One by one as they were hunted out from their hiding-places the priests
and lay brothers were pushed from the parapet of the bridge into the
Gave below. If any gained the banks by swimming they were prodded and
stabbed by still other soldiery with lances, and from this great
_noyade_ the great Tour des Caperas became known as the Tour des
Prêtres.
To-day Montauban and Orthez have relatively the largest Protestant
populations of any of the cities of France.
The old Route Royale between Bayonne and the capital of Béarn and
Navarre passed through Orthez, and the same narrow streets, irregular,
badly paved, and badly kept up, are those which one traverses to-day on
entering and leaving the city. One great improvement has been made in
the ancient quarter of the town--though of course one does not know what
historical souvenirs it may have supplanted--and that is the laying out
of a _mail_ or mall, planted on either side with great elms, and running
from the banks of the Gave to the fine fifteenth-century--but still
Gothic--church, well at the centre of the town.
The "_jambons de Bayonne_" are mostly cured at Orthez, and it is indeed
the leading industry of the city. The porkers of Orthez may not be corn
fed, but they are well and cleanly nourished, which is more than can be
said of many "domesticated pigs" in New and Old England, which are eaten
with a great relish by those who have brought them up.
In the religious wars Orthez played a grand rôle, and in 1814 it was the
scene of one of the great struggles of France against alien invasion of
her territory. Just north of the city, on the height of a flanking hill,
Wellington--at the head of a force very much superior, let no one
forget--inflicted a bloody defeat on Maréchal Soult. The Duc de Dalmatie
lost, it is recorded, nearly four thousand men, but he wounded or
killed six thousand in the same engagement. General Foy here received
his fourth wound on the field of battle.
Orthez is one of the really great feudal cities of the south of France.
In the ninth century it was known as Orthesium, and belonged to the
Vicomtes de Dax, who, only when they were conquered by Gaston III,
Prince of Béarn, ceded the city to the crown of Béarn and Navarre.
It was in the château of Orthez that the unfortunate Blanche of
Castille, daughter of the king of Aragon, was poisoned by her sister,
the wife of Gaston IV, Comte de Foix. This was one of the celebrated
crimes of history, though for that matter the builder of the château,
the magnificent (_sic_) Gaston Phoebus, committed one worthy to rank
with it when he killed his brother and "propre fils" on the mere
suspicion that they might some day be led to take sides against him.
Orthez flourished greatly under its Protestant princes, but it waned and
all but dwindled away in the unpeaceful times immediately following upon
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The cessation of the practice of
the arts of industry, and very nearly those of commerce, left the city
poor and impoverished, and it is only within recent generations that it
has arisen again to importance.
The donjon of Moncade is all that remains of the once proud château
where Gaston Phoebus held more than one brilliant court on his
excursions beyond the limits of his beloved Foix. It dominates the whole
region, however, and adds an accentuated note of grimness to the
otherwise gay melody of the Gave as it flows down to join the Adour from
the high valleys of the Pyrenees.
On the opposite hillside is a memorial in honour of the brave General
Foy, which will recall to some the victory of Wellington over Soult, and
to others, who have not forgotten their Dumas, the fact that it was
General Foy who first gave the elder Dumas his start as writer of
romances.
Salies de Béarn is a near neighbour of Orthez, and can be omitted from
no Pyrenean itinerary. The bustling little market-town and
watering-place combined dates, as to the foundation of its great
industry, back to the tenth century, when the Duc de Gascogne gave to
the monks of the Monastery of Saint Pé an establishment ready fitted
that they might commence the industry of recovering salt from the
neighbouring salt springs. All through mediæval times, and down as late
as 1840, the industry was carried on under the old concession.
All the distractions of a first-class watering-place may be had here
to-day, and the "season" is on from May to September. The city is the
birthplace of Colonel Dambourges, who became famous for his defence of
Quebec against the English in 1775.
At Salies is still the house which sheltered Jeanne d'Albret when she
took the waters here, and not far away is the spot where died Gaston
Phoebus, as he was returning from a bear hunt. These two facts taken
together make of Salies hallowed historic ground.
At Salies de Béarn one recalls a scrap of literary history that is
interesting; Dumas père certainly got inspiration for the names of his
three _mousquetaire_ heroes from hereabouts. Not far away is
Athos--which he gave to the Comte de la Fère, while Aramits and Artagnan
are also near-by. In any historical light further than this they are all
unimportant however.
Six kilometres to the northward is the Château de Bellocq, a fine
mediæval country house (fourteenth century), though unroofed to-day, the
residence of Jeanne d'Albret when she sojourned in the neighbourhood.
The walls, flanked with four great round towers, are admirably
preserved, and the vaulting and its ribs, two square towers and a great
entrance gate show the manner of building of the time with great detail.
Five leagues from Orthez, on a little valley plain, watered by the Gave
d'Oloron, is the tiny little city of Navarreux. Its population is scarce
above a thousand, but it is the centre of affairs for twenty-five
communes, containing perhaps twelve thousand souls. It is a typical,
bustling, little Pyrenean metropolis, and the comings and goings on
market-day at the little Hôtel de France are as good an illustration of
the life and manners of a people of small affairs as one will find in a
year of travel.
Henri d'Albret of Navarre picked out the site of the city in the midst
of this fertile plain, and planned that it should increase and multiply,
if not in population, at least in prosperity, though it was at first a
"private enterprise," like Richelieu's garden-city in Touraine.
The preëminence of Navarreux was short lived. Henri d'Albret had built
it on the squared-off, straight-street, Chicago plan, had surrounded it
with walls, and even had a fortress built by Vauban, in the expectation
of making it the commercial capital of the Pyrenees, but man proposes,
and the lines of communication or trade disposes, and many a
thought-to-be-prosperous town has finally dwindled into impotency. There
was a good deal in the favour of Navarreux; its situation was central,
and it was surrounded by a numerous population, but its dream was over
in a couple of hundred years and the same year (1790) saw both its
grandeur and its decadence.
To-day it remains still a small town, tied to the end of an omnibus line
which runs out from Orthez a dozen or fifteen kilometres away. The
fortifications of Vauban are still there and a remarkable old city gate,
called the Porte St. Antoine, a veritable gem of feudal architecture.
The very dulness and disappointment of the place appeal to one hugely.
One might do worse than doze away a little while here after a giddy
round at Pau or Biarritz. Navarreux is of the past and lives in the
past; it will never advance. As a fortress it has been unclassed, but
its walls one day guarded--as a sort of last line of defence--the route
from Spain via Ronçevaux and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. In those days it
certainly occupied a proud position in intent and in reality, as its
citadel sat high on a little terrace-plateau, dominated in turn by
the red dome of its church still higher up. The effect is still much the
same, impotent though the city walls and ramparts have become.
[Illustration: The Walls of Navarreux]
The route into Navarreux from the south is almost a tree-shaded
boulevard, and crosses the Gave on an old five-arched bridge, so narrow
that one vehicle can scarcely pass,--to say nothing of two. This
picturesque bridge was also the work of Henri d'Albret, the founder of
the primitive city. This first foundation was a short distance from the
present village. Its founder in a short time came to believe he had made
a mistake, and that the bourg as it was placed would be too difficult to
defend, so he tore it down in real northwest Dakota fashion, and built
the present city. Louis XIV and Vauban had great plans for it, and would
have done much, but Oloron in time relieved it of all pretensions to a
distinction, as, in turn, Pau robbed Oloron.
Between Navarreux and Sauveterre, along the Gave d'Oloron, is a whole
string of little villages and hamlets whose names are scarcely ever
mentioned except by the local postman. It is a winsome valley, and the
signs of civilization, pale though they be, throw no ugly shadows on the
landscape. Midway between these two little centres is Audaux, which
possesses a vast seventeenth-century château, flanked with a series of
high coiffed pavilions and great domes, like that of Valençay in
Touraine.
Its history is unimportant, and is rather vague, but a mere glance at
its pompous ornateness is a suggestion of the great contrast between the
châteaux of the north and centre of France and those of the Midi. In the
north the great residential châteaux, as contrasted with the
fortress-châteaux, were the more numerous; here the reverse was the
case, and the feudal château, which was more or less of a fortress,
predominated. The Château d'Audaux, sitting high on its own little
plateau, and surrounded by great chestnut trees, is almost the peer of
its class in these parts--from a grandiose architectural view point at
any rate.
Sauveterre, twenty kilometres from Navarreux, is one of those old-time
bourgs which puts its best side forward when viewed from a distance.
Really it is nothing but a grim old ruin, so far as its appeal for the
pilgrim goes. Close acquaintance develops a squalor and lackadaisical
air which is not in the least in keeping with that of its neighbours. It
is the ensemble of its rooftops and its delightful site which gives
Sauveterre almost its only charm. In the Middle Ages it was a fortified
town which played a considerable part in olden history. To-day the sole
evidence that it was a place of any importance is found in a single
remaining arch of its old bridge, surmounted by a defending tower
similar to those which guard the bridges at Orthez and Cahors, but much
smaller.
There is another relic still standing of Sauveterre's one-time
greatness, but it is outside the town itself. The grim, square donjon of
the old Château de Montréal rises on a hilltop opposite the town, and
strikes the loudest note of all the superb panorama of picturesque
surroundings. It was the guardian of the fate of Sauveterre in feudal
times, and it is the guardian, or beacon, for travellers by road to-day
as they come up or down the valley.
Within the town there is, it should be mentioned, a really curious
ecclesiastical monument, the thirteenth-century church, with a
combination of Romanesque and Gothic construction which is remarkable;
so remarkable is it that in spite of its lack of real beauty the French
Government has classed it as a "_Monument Historique_." The sublime
panorama of the Pyrenees frames the whole with such a gracious splendour
that one is well-minded to take the picture for the sake of the frame.
This may be said of Tarbes as well, which is a really banal great town,
but which has perhaps the most delightful Pyrenean background that
exists.
Sauveterre is another centre for the manufacture of rope-soled
_espadrilles_, which in Anglo-Saxon communities are used solely by
bathers at the seaside, but which are really the most comfortable and
long-enduring footwear ever invented, and are here, and in many other
parts of France, worn by a majority of the population.
Up out of the valley of the Oloron and down again into that of the
Bidouze, a matter of eighteen or twenty kilometres, and one comes to
Saint-Palais which formerly disputed the title of capital of French
Navarre with Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. This was because Henri d'Albret,
king of Navarre, established his _chancellerie_ here after the loss of
Pamplona to Spain.
Saint-Palais is what the French call a "_ville mignonne_." Nothing else
describes it. It sits jauntily perched on a tongue of mother earth, at
the juncture of the Joyeuse and the Bidouze, and its whitewashed houses,
its tiled roofs and its washed-down dooryards and pavements suggest
that some of its inhabitants must one day have been in Holland, a place
where they pay more attention to this sort of house-cleaning than
anywhere else.
Saint-Palais has no historical monuments; all is as new and shining as
Monte Carlo or the Digue at Ostend, but its history of long ago is
important. Before 1620 it was the seat of the sovereign court of French
Navarre and possessed a mint where the money of the little state was
coined.
The most distinctive architectural monument of Saint-Palais, the modern
church and the hybrid Palais de Justice being strictly ineligible, is
the _fronton_ for the game of _pelote_, Saint-Palais being one of the
head centres for the sport.
Arthur Young, a great traveller, an agriculturist, and a writer of
repute, passed this way in 1787. He made a good many true and just
observations, more or less at hazard, of things French, and some others
that were not so just. The following can hardly be literally true, and
if true by no means proves that Jacques Bonhomme is not as good a man as
his cousin John Bull, nor even that he is not as well nourished.
"_Chacun à son gout!_" He said, writing of the operation of getting
dinner at his inn: "I saw them preparing the soup, the colour of which
was not inviting; ample provision of cabbage, grease and water, and
about as much meat, for a score of people, as half a dozen Suffolk
farmers would have eaten, and grumbled at their host for short commons."
What a condemnation to be sure, and what an unmerited one! The receipt
is all right, as far as it goes, but he should have added a few leeks, a
couple of carrots and an onion or two, and then he would have composed a
_bouilli_ as fragrant and nourishing as the Englishman's chunks of
blood-red beef he is for ever talking about. Our "agriculturist" only
learned half his lesson, and could not recite it very well at that.
In the midst of a great plain lying between Saint-Palais,
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and Bayonne, perhaps fifty kilometres south of
the left bank of the Adour, are the neighbouring little towns of Iholdy
and Armendarits. The former is the market town of a vast, but little
populated, canton, and a village as purely rustic and simple as one
could possibly imagine. Iholdy and its few unpretentious little shops
and its quaint unworldly little hotel caters only to a thin population
of sheep and pig growers, and their wants are small, save when they go
afield to Peyrehorade, St. Jean or Bayonne. One eats of the products of
the country here, and enjoys them, too, even if mutton, lamb and little
pig predominate. The latter may or may not be thought a delicacy, but
certainly it was better here than was ever met with before by the writer
of these lines; and no prejudice prevented a second helping.
Armendarits, Iholdy's twin community, saw the birth of Renaud
d'Elissagory, who built what was practically the first gunboat. The
birthplace of "_Petit Renaud_," as he was, and is still, affectionately
called, the inventor of _galiotes à bombes_, is still inhabited and
reckoned as one of the sights of these parts.