of revenue to the people of Figeac, as well as to those in the
neighbouring valley of the Lot. Middle-aged people here can recollect
the days when wine was so cheap that the inn-keepers did not take the
trouble to measure it out to their customers, but charged them a
uniform price of two sous for stopping and drinking as much as they
pleased. But all this has been changed by the phylloxera. From being
exceptionally prosperous, the people of the district have become poor.
Very few have now any money to lay out in replanting their vineyards.
Land has so fallen in value that it can be bought at a price that
seems scarcely credible. With £100 one might become the proprietor of
a large vineyard. Higher up the hills, where the chestnut and juniper
thrive, half the money would buy quite a considerable estate. Here and
elsewhere in France thousands of acres lie uncultivated and
unproductive, except as regards that which nature unaided renders to
man. Not all, but a very large portion, of this waste-land would well
repay cultivation if the capital needed for clearing and working it
were obtainable. That the lands suitable for wine-growing could be
rendered remunerative is absolutely certain if those who undertook the
task had the money necessary for the first outlay of planting and
could afford to wait for the return.
The valley of the Celé between Figeac and the junction of the little
river with the Lot contains some of the most picturesque scenery to be
found in the Quercy. About ten miles below Figeac it becomes a gorge,
which until past the middle of the present century was almost cut off
from communication with neighbouring towns. All the carrying was done
on the backs of mules and donkeys; but since the road was made along
the right bank of the Célé, these animals have been used less and
less. It is no uncommon thing, however, to see now a heavily-laden
pack-mule coming up the valley to the Figeac fair. It was in their
rock-fortresses by the Celé that the English companies in Guyenne are
said to have made their final resistance. The long and sustained
efforts which were needed to dislodge them from their almost
inaccessible fastnesses will be understood by anyone who may go
wayfaring like myself along the banks of this tributary of the Lot.
For the first two hours the walk was unexciting, for the valley was
too wide and too cultivated to give much pleasure to the eye that
looks for character in nature. At the village of Corn there was a
decided change. Here lofty honeycombed rocks rose behind the houses
that were built not very far above the stream, whose swiftness is
supposed to have been the origin of its name. Not one of the several
caverns extends far into the cliff. Their chief interest lies in the
traditions with which they are associated. In one of them the
inhabitants of the little burg are said to have assembled in the
Middle Ages to elect their consuls freely, and to escape possible
annoyance from their lord, whose castle was on the opposite hill.
Another, still called the Citadel, was that in which they took refuge
from the enemy, especially from the roving bands of armed men who made
common cause with England. In 1380 Bertrand de Bassoran, captain of an
English company, captured Corn, and using this place as his _point
d'appui_, he placed garrisons in the neighbouring burgs of Brengues,
Sauliac, and Cabrerets. He also compelled the consuls of Cajarc to
treat with him.
After a hasty meal in a little inn where I had to be satisfied mainly
with good intentions, I called upon the schoolmaster. The poor man was
spending most of his dinner-hour on the threshold of his small
school-house amidst the rocks because some unruly or idle urchins were
'kept in.' How much pleasanter, I thought, it would have been for him
to have produced in their case a wholesome cutaneous irritation, and
set himself, as well as the young reprobates, free! But the French law
does not tolerate the corporal punishment of children nowadays,
although the exasperated pedagogue cannot always resist the temptation
of applying his ruler upon a bunch of grimy little knuckles. This
schoolmaster, although he was past the age of fifty and had grown
corpulent, was still tied fast to the village schoolroom that was much
too small to hold thirty children comfortably. By the aid of reading,
writing, and arithmetic, he had got into a little creek where he was
safe from the stormy seas of life, and he had never allowed his
ambition to draw him out into the ocean. Nevertheless, he nursed and
rocked his little vanity like the rest of mortals. He had written what
he termed a 'Monograph of Corn.' He brought out from his desk a
copybook wherein he had set it all down with the utmost attention to
upstrokes and downstrokes and punctuation. It was a pleasure to him to
find somebody to whom he could read what he had written, and he had in
me an attentive listener.
Wandering on by the winding Célé, the charm of the little river made
me sit down upon a bank to look at the pictures that were painted on
the water by the sunshine, the clouds, and the poplars. Then,
continuing my journey, I saw on the opposite side of the stream a
cluster of houses with an ancient church in their midst, and almost
detached from this church, and yet a part of it, a tower like a
campanile capped by a wooden belfry with pointed roof and far-reaching
eaves. A bridge led across the water. I found the village to be Sainte
Eulalie d'Espagnac. Here there existed from the early Middle Ages a
celebrated convent for women of the order of St. Augustine. The
founder, Aymeric d'Hébrard, was the Bishop of a see in Spain, and he
brought thence Moorish slaves to cultivate the land with which he had
endowed his community of a hundred nuns. Down to the Revolution most
of the daughters of the nobility in the Quercy were educated here.
Little is now left of the conventual building; but the church contains
architectural details of much interest, and the tombs of those
irreconcilable enemies of the English, Bertrand de Cardaillac, Bishop
of Cahors, and the Marquis de Cardaillac--the most famous warrior of
this bellicose and illustrious family.
Having reached the village of Brengues, I went immediately in search
of the English rock-fortress of which I had already heard. A path led
me up the steep hillside to the foot of a long line of high rocks of
yellowish limestone, so escarped and so forbidding to vegetable life
that I did not see even a wild fig-tree hanging from a crevice. A path
ran along at the base of this prodigious wall, from the top of which
stretched the arid _causse_. I had only gone a little way when I saw
before me a fortified Gothic gateway jutting out from the rock to
which it was attached, and extending across the path to where the hill
became so steep as to sufficiently protect from assault on that side
those who had a motive for defending the ledge under the high cliff. I
examined this old piece of masonry with much curiosity.
The pointed form of the arch disposes of the hypothesis which has been
put forward without much reflection, that this legacy of the old wars
in Guyenne is part of the defences raised in the country by the
unfortunate Waifré, Duke of Aquitaine, when he was being chased from
rock to rock by his relentless enemy. Here we have work that is
evidently not anterior to the English occupation, and which in all
probability belongs to the fourteenth or the early part of the
fifteenth century. Now, as Brengues was undoubtedly one of those
places where the English companies firmly established themselves, and
to which they clung with great tenacity, there is very small risk of
error is coming to the conclusion that it was they who built this
fortified gateway. The masonry, composed of carefully-shaped stones,
and laid together with an excellent mortar that has become as durable
as the rock itself, has been wonderfully preserved. Had it been placed
in the valley it would have been pulled down long ago, and the
materials would have been used for building houses or pigsties. The
upper part of the wall is dilapidated, so that it is impossible to say
whether it was originally embattled or not. There is no staircase, but
the defenders had doubtless a suspended plank or beam on which they
stood when they wished to shoot arrows or bolts over the top of the
wall. On the side nearest the rock is a splayed opening ending
outwardly in a crosslet large enough for three or four men to use at
the same time.
This gateway was only an outwork to defend the ledge of rock. About
two hundred yards farther is a cavern some twenty or thirty feet above
the path, and only accessible by means of a ladder. It has been walled
up, openings being left here and there for loopholes. Near the top is
a row of three windows without arches, and at the base an opening that
served for a door, and which could easily be closed up. Although the
stones were shaped for building, they were laid together without
mortar; but the wall is so thick, and so protected by its position,
that this rough fortification has remained almost unchanged from the
date of its construction. It is a much less finished piece of work
than the gateway, but there are other rock-fortresses in the district,
attributed by general consent to the English, so similar to it in
character that there is no reason for doubting that the companies
built this one also. It is probable, however, that the gateway already
mentioned, and the one that corresponded to it on the other side of
the cavern, but of which few vestiges can now be seen, were
constructed subsequently, when the science of fortification was better
understood by the _routiers_. Such a fortress could never have been
used in a military sense by a large number of men, but to a band of
brigands and cut-throats it was a stronghold of the first order. As
they doubtless laid up in their cavern a large store of the provisions
which they obtained by their continual forays in the surrounding
region, they were capable of withstanding a long siege even against an
enemy many times as numerous as themselves, for the reason that only a
few men could attack them at the same time, and the defenders had an
enormous advantage in the struggle. It is a very general belief in the
district that there was formerly a passage by which this cavern
communicated with the _causse_; no trace of it, however, has been
discovered.
M. Delpon, author of a work published in 1831, and entitled
'Statistique du Département du Lot,' mentions these fortified caverns
of the Quercy in the following passage, which gives a vivid picture of
the kind of life that the English companies led and made others lead
in the fourteenth century:
'They (the English) possessed in the Quercy the forts of Roc-Amadour,
Castelnau, Verdale, Vayrac, Lagarennie, Sabadel, Anglars, Frayssinet,
Boussac and Assier, and some other castles on escarped hills from
which it was difficult to expel them. They also seized upon caverns
formed by nature in the flanks of precipitous rocks, and fortified
them with walls in which all the character of English structures can
still be recognised. The garrisons that occupied these places
represented six thousand lances distributed over the Quercy, the
Rouergue, and High Auvergne. When they sallied forth, the earth, to
use an expression of one or their chiefs, Emérigot, surnamed Black
Head, trembled under their feet.[*] They robbed travellers, made
citizens prisoners--especially ecclesiastics--in order to extort
exorbitant ransoms, they took from the peasants their beasts and their
crops, and forced them to work in strengthening the dens of their
spoliators with new fortifications. In fine, the Quercy was
continually devastated, and the inhabitants only tilled the earth to
satisfy the avidity of the English companies. The population could
shield themselves from their violence only by concealing themselves in
subterranean retreats, where traces of their sojourn are still
observable. The English were continually recruited by all the depraved
men of the provinces which they laid under contribution.'
[*] The entire passage from which these words are taken is to be
found in Froissart's chronicles, and it runs as follows, the
spelling being modernized: 'Que nous étions rejouis quand nous
chevaussions à l'aventure et que nous pouvions trouver sur le
champ un riche prieur ou marchand ou des mulets de Montpellier,
de Narbonne, de Carcassone, de Limoux, de Béziers, de Toulouse,
chargés de draps, de brunelles, de pelleterie, venant de la foire
de Landit, d'épiceries venant de Bruges, de draps de soie, de
Damas ou d'Alexandrie. Les vilains nous pourvoyaient et
apportaient dans nos châteaux le blé, la farine, le pain tout
cuit, l'avoine pour les chevaux, le bon vin, les boeufs, les
brébis, les moutons tous gras, la poulaille et la volataille.
Nous étions servis, gouvernés et étoffés comme rois et princes,
et quand nous chevaussions le pays tremblait devant nous.'
This last remark is only too well justified by the evidence which
those centuries have handed down. Indeed, to such an extent were these
companies composed of Aquitanians, that one may well ask if some of
them contained a single genuine Englishman. I have found no record in
the Quercy of the captain of a company of _routiers_ having borne an
Anglo-Saxon name. Two English captains who took Figeac by surprise (a
document relating to this event, written in Latin of the fourteenth
century, is to be found in the municipal archives) were named Bertrand
de Lebret and Bertrand de Lasale. Those who captured Martel had names
equally French. There is, of course, the hypothesis that these leaders
were Anglicised Normans, but the stronger probability is that they
were native adventurers of Aquitaine who found it to their interest to
place themselves under the protection of the King of England.
Towards the close of the fourteenth century, all those who wished to
drive the English out of Guyenne rallied round the chiefs of the house
of Armagnac. This great family of the Rouergue, which was ultimately
absorbed by the Royal House of France and became extinct, at one time
espoused the British cause; but it contributed more than any other to
the final dispersion of the English companies in Guyenne. In 1381 the
people of the Gévaudan, the Quercy, and High Auvergne, solicited the
help of the Count of Armagnac against the companies, and he accepted
the leadership of the coalition. He convened a meeting of delegates at
Rodez, to which the English chiefs were invited, and the decision that
was then come to did not say much for the sagacity or the valour of
those who represented the majority. It was agreed that the sum of
250,000 francs--equivalent to about £200,000 to-day--should be paid to
the English on condition of their surrendering the fortresses which
they occupied. This fact goes far to prove that the companies were
virtually independent, and that although all their outrages were
ostensibly committed in the British name, they were freebooters in the
fullest sense of the word. Of the sum that was to be paid to them, the
clergy were to contribute 25,000 francs, the nobles 16,660. The
inhabitants of the Quercy agreed to pay 50,833 francs. The captains of
the companies took oath that on receiving the money they would quit
Guyenne for ever. They may have kept their oath, but their followers
were not to be induced to change their habits so easily. The
_routiers_, still going by the name of the English companies,
continued to hold the least accessible places in Guyenne, fortified in
the main by nature, until long after the British sovereigns had
abandoned their ambitious designs in France.
In the fifteenth century so many of the inhabitants of the Quercy had
been killed or ruined by the companies that some districts were almost
depopulated. In the town of Gramat there were only seven inhabitants
left at the close of the Hundred Years' War. In order that the lands
should not remain uncultivated, the nobles enfeoffed them to strangers
from the Rouergue and other neighbouring provinces. This circumstance
is supposed to account in a large measure for the differences in
dialect which are to be observed in adjoining communes. There is no
evidence to-day, so far as I have been able to ascertain, of English
words having been introduced into the Languedocian of Guyenne. The
striking resemblance of many _patois_ words to those of the English
language bearing the same meaning--a resemblance that is helped by the
Southern pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs--must be referred to
linguistic influences far more remote and obscure than the political
fact that Guyenne was intimately connected with English history for
three hundred years. For example, that familiar animal the cat is
called in Guyenne _lou catou_ and even _lou cat_; but the word belongs
to the Romance language, and is the same all through Languedoc and
Provence. The fact that the English left no mark upon the language in
Guyenne is almost a conclusive proof that such of the Anglo-Saxon
stock as followed the Norman leaders into Aquitaine, and who remained
in the country any length of time, were not sufficiently numerous to
impose their idiom upon others. They probably did not preserve it long
themselves; but, like the English grooms who find occupation in France
today, they quickly adopted the language that was generally spoken
around them. Patient investigation might, nevertheless, show that the
English did leave some of their words, as well as their blood, in the
country. It would, indeed, be astonishing if this were not so. Even
the Greek colony at Marseilles and Aries, although far removed, must
have influenced the dialect of Guyenne; for the peasants of the Quercy
use the word _hermal_ to describe a piece of waste land bordering a
cultivated field, the origin of which expression was, doubtless,
Hermes, the god of boundaries. This is not the only Greek word that
has been corrupted, but nevertheless preserved, in the Quercy
_patois_.
Wherever the English were long established in their fastnesses amidst
the rocks which form the rugged sides of the deep-cut gorges of the
Quercy, many of the inhabitants have clung, century after century, to
the belief that the terrible freebooters buried a prodigious amount of
treasure with the intention of returning and fetching it on the first
opportunity. So persistently was this tradition handed down at
Brengues that many years ago a cavern, the entrance of which had been
covered over with stones and earth, having been accidentally
discovered on the plateau just above the Château des Anglais, it was
eagerly explored, as well as a similar cavern close by. The excitement
was increased by the circumstance that the discovery of these openings
appeared to coincide with the indications of a local witch. It was
evident that the caverns had at one time been used by men, for they
contained masonry put together with mortar. By dint of excavating,
hidden galleries were revealed; but although a human skeleton was
discovered, no treasure was found. The explorers, however, came upon a
vast collection of bones of extinct animals, and of others which,
although they are now to be found both in the Arctic and in the
tropical regions, have not existed in a state of nature in France
during the historic period. The bones of the reindeer, for instance,
were found lying with those of the hyena and the rhinoceros, many of
them embedded in the calcareous breccia so frequently seen in the
valley of the Célé. Here was evidence of a glacial and a torrid
period, separated by an aeonic gulf; but how the remains came to be
piled one upon another in this way is a secret of the ancient earth.
There are prodigious layers of these bones lying at a great depth in
the rock, where there is no cavern to suggest that the animals entered
by it, or that they were taken there by man. The beds of phosphate
which English enterprise has turned to so good an account in this part
of France, and which are followed in the earth just like a seam of
coal or a vein of metal, are merely layers of bones. While I was at
Brengues, the skeleton of a young rhinoceros was discovered in the
phosphate mine at Cajarc.
On the hill above the Célé, on the side opposite to that where the
Château des Anglais is to be seen, are the remains of an entrenched
camp, upon the origin of which it is almost idle to speculate. In the
same neighbourhood is a cavern situated high up in the face of a
perpendicular rock. It is inaccessible by ordinary means; but a beam
fixed at the entrance, and worn into a deep groove by a rope, shows
that it was used as a refuge. A tradition says that Waifré hid himself
there.
I passed the night at Brengues, and was awakened in the early morning
by the jingle of bells just beneath my window, and a man's voice
repeating, 'Tè, Tè, Tè!' A couple of bullocks were being yoked, and
presently they followed the man towards the fields of tobacco and
maize by the little river, already shining in the sun. Very soon
afterwards I, too, had begun my day's work.
In a little more than an hour I was at the next village--St. Sulpice.
Here above the houses, huddled together like sheep on the lower steep
of the right-hand hill, were the ruins of a castle, hanging to the
rock that dwarfed it even in the days of its pride. I climbed to it,
and found that it was built on terraces one above the other, formed by
the rocky shelves. A considerable portion of the strong wall at the
base of the structure remains, and on each terrace there is something
left of the feudal fortress. Ivy, with gnarled and fantastic stocks,
has so overspread the masonry in places that hardly a gray stone shows
through the dense matting of sombre leaves and hoary, wrinkled stems.
Multitudes of bats cling to the ruinous vaulting where the light is
very dim, and lurk in the hollows of the rock. A stone thrown up will
bring them fluttering down and whirling about the head of the
intruder, noiselessly as if they were the ghosts that haunt the spot,
but dare not reveal to the eye of man the human shape that they once
wore. This castle belonged, and still belongs, to the D'Hébrard
family, which was connected by marriage with the Cardaillacs and most
of the ancient aristocracy of the Quercy.
Leaving St. Sulpice, another hour's walk down the valley brought me to
Marcillac, which, after Figeac, was the most important place on the
Célé in the Middle Ages. It is now, however, a mere village. According
to local historians, it was here that Palladius, Bishop of Bourges,
retired in the fifth century to escape from the persecution of the
Arians. Nothing, however, that has been written of its history, prior
to the ninth or tenth century, can be accepted with any confidence.
What can be safely affirmed is, that here, between the rocky cliffs
that border the Célé, arose one of the earliest of the Benedictine
abbeys in France. The ruined cloisters of the monastery have all the
severe charm of the simple Romanesque style of the early period, but
there is no means of knowing whether they date from the tenth,
eleventh, or twelfth century. There are several beautiful capitals
elaborately embellished with intersecting line ornament still
preserved, although no value whatever is placed upon them by the
inhabitants. The cloisters are used for stables, and other common farm
purposes.
The abbey church must have fallen into complete ruin, when a portion
of it was restored and rebuilt in the fifteenth century. Then about
half the nave--the western end--was cut off, and left open to the
weather. It is roofless, and the visitor walking, now in deep shadow,
now in brilliant light, as the fragments of masonry may hide or reveal
the sun, sees the blue sky through the arches and over the tops of the
ivy-covered walls. This part of the old church shows the transition
between the Romanesque and the Gothic styles.
It would have been a slight upon Marcillac had I left the place
without seeing the most famous of its caverns, which goes by the name
of the Grotte de Robinet. I might have looked for it in vain all day
had I not taken a guide.