A Book of the Pyrenees

The recklessness of the villagers in times past had threatened Cauterets with destruction. The forests had been cut down, and free course given to the avalanches to fall into the valley and cover all with stones and mud. If something had not been effected to bridle the torrent above La Raillère, the springs there would have been overwhelmed with rubble, and the thermal establishment utterly wrecked. The ravine down which the avalanches fall is that of Péquère, and it was not snow and small stuff only that was brought down, but huge masses of rock.

Great pains have been taken, by means of replanting the slopes and the erection of barriers, to protect the baths, and these efforts have been happily crowned with success. Since 1897 another avalanche path has been taken in hand, that of the Lizey, which menaced the road to Pierrefite, and had in fact cut all communication during three weeks in 1895.

Even the esplanade of Cauterets was threatened. The winter of 1903–4 tried the place severely; in the month of January the masses of fallen snow reached the town itself. In spite of themselves the inhabitants of the basin have had to yield to the resolution of the Board of Forestry and allow extensive replantation.

The journey up the ravine to Luz by electric tram presents a succession of beautiful peeps of the bottle-green river thundering through the gorge, breaking into masses of foam at every leap; waterfalls descend the mountain sides right and left – everywhere is rich and luxuriant vegetation.

The gorge opens to reveal the green meadows of Viscos, then contracts again, once more to expand into the basin of Luz. High aloft on a terrace stand the villages of Vizos and Esquièze, with their church spires. In the background is seen a superb circle of snow-clad mountains, those of the ridge of the Mont Perdu, nearer the Soum Blanc on one side and the Pic Long on the other.

The whole of the district, from the opening of the gorge at Pierrefite upwards, formed the Pays or Val de Barèges, which formerly enjoyed to a high degree the rights of self-government. It was practically an independent republic till the time of the Revolution, its liberties accorded to it in acknowledgment of services rendered in wars with Spain. Few taxes were imposed; that most severely felt elsewhere, on salt, did not trouble the Barègois. They had entire liberty to chase and to fish, rights so jealously reserved by the princes elsewhere. Even in diplomacy Barèges preserved a sort of autonomy, and treated with delegates from the Spanish valleys without reference to the counts of Bigorre or the kings of France.

What strikes the eye at once on arriving at Luz is the old Castle of Sainte Marie, now reduced to a ruin, perched on a height; and the curious parish church, built and fortified by the Templars, who had a commandery here. The crenellated walls now enclosing the small area in which stands the church were built by the Knights of Malta, who succeeded to the place that had been occupied by the Templars, after the suppression of this latter order.

On each side of the apse is a tower, one of which resembles the keep of a castle. The ramparts surrounding the old cemetery of the Knights are passed through an embattled gateway.

There are two portals into the church, that on the north being the main entrance, and it is Romanesque. The tympanum, surrounded by inscriptions of the twelfth century, contains symbols of the evangelists surrounding a figure of Christ. The bases of the columns of the doorway also bear inscriptions. The interior of the church is dark, dungeon-like, and the decorations and furniture are barbaric. On the south side of the nave is a late chapel dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen. A child’s stone sarcophagus serves as a bénitier at the entrance to the church. Here, as at S. Savin, is a Cagot’s door.

This is perhaps the best preserved Templar church in France. So far it has not undergone restoration, but it is far too small for a growing place, and a new church will have to be built elsewhere.

Above Luz, on a height, is a hermitage, formerly occupied by a Père Ambrose, who died in the odour of sanctity in 1778. He was a Capuchin friar, born in 1708, who had embraced the religious life at the age of sixteen. He wrote some godly works, one on the Joy of the Soul, one on the Peace of the Soul, and a third consisted of letters giving spiritual advice.

The chapel is dedicated to S. Peter. Napoleon III had it rebuilt, and entitled S. Pierre-de-Solférino. Near by is a cairn, under which lie the bones of Ambrose, the last hermit to occupy the place. The ruins of the Castle of S. Marie date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are two keeps. This fortress was formerly the principal stronghold commanding the Valley of Barèges. It was built by the English originally, and held by them, terrorizing the inhabitants of the basin, till the Barègois peasants rose in a body against them in 1404, stormed the castle, and put the garrison to the sword. After that it was rebuilt and strengthened.

Saint Sauveur consists of a long street of hotels, and is occupied in the summer alone. In winter and spring every door and window is barred. It is reached from Luz over a bridge, erected in 1860 by order of Napoleon III. The keystone of the arch is 198 feet above the torrent.

Another bridge, farther up, is that of Scia; like the former, constructed of white marble, and thrown at an amazing height above the Gave, where huge blocks of granite intercept its course, and it roars and tumbles savagely over the obstruction. A French guide-book asserts that at the spot an English lady, the Lady Clara, standing on the bridge, recited the celebrated soliloquy of Hamlet, in this fashion: “To die, to slip!” and then flung herself into the abyss. No such an incident ever occurred there.

The Brêche de Roland, a gash in the high ridge of snow and rock above Gavarnie, now becomes visible, as Pragnères is reached, but it is invisible from Gavarnie itself.

The story goes that Roland hacked this opening in the rock with his sword Durandal in the hopes of breaking the blade, so that the Saracens might not get possession of it at his death. But the tale has been transferred hither from Roncevaux. It is certainly curious to note how that legends of Roland have attached themselves to numerous places in the Pyrenees from west to east. He occupies there the place that King Arthur does in England, Scotland, and Wales. We have seen how that at S. Savin he was said to have fought with giants. Now it is a curious fact that according to tradition Vizos, near Luz, was occupied by a race of giants called Empresous, les Preux, and that representatives of them remained on there till the end of the eighteenth century. The Revolution seems to have cut them down, for we hear of no others since then. In the Archives of Luz is a record of the death of an Empresou named Barèque, in 1771, at the age of a hundred and ten. These giants had a cemetery of their own, and a baptistery of their own. They seem to have been regarded with something like the repulsion with which the Cagots were considered. In the churchyard have been turned up human bones of extraordinary size.

The valley or gorge of the Gave has been much belauded and often described. This naturally has produced a revulsion. M. Ardouin-Dumazet has led the way. He says: —

“The road is fine, without exactly deserving all the hyperbolical praises lavished upon it. That which is the spoiling of this country is the extravagance of the admiration expressed for it. Since the time of Ramond no one who speaks of the Pyrenees can describe a site without declaring it to be incomparable. If they have judged it incomparable, it is because they have seen nothing with which to compare it. The panorama from Pau, truly marvellous, I admit, is not superior to that of the Alps, the Jura, and the Cevennes, seen from the hills above Lyons on a clear day. It is so with this country. I do not venture to use the expression Gasconading with reference to these descriptions, but I cannot pitch my note at the diapason of the Pyrenean infatuists.”

This may be true enough of the way to Gavarnie, but I do venture to believe that the Cirque of Gavarnie – the end of this expedition up the Gave – is, pace Ardouin-Dumazet, incomparable.

Gèdre was a wretched hamlet some years ago, when I first knew it, but now it has its hotels, and is a very convenient tarrying place whence to explore the valley of the Héas, and visit the two cirques of Estaubé and Troumousse; as also the valley of the Aspé, descending from the glacier of Mallerouge.

The Héas issues from a narrow fissure, foaming over cascades. Higher up in the ravine is the chapel of Notre Dame de Héas, planted on a huge block fallen from the mountain above. It is held that the Virgin once appeared to a shepherd at this spot.

This mass is but one portion of a landslip that took place in 1650, which dammed up the river and formed a lake, which in its turn was destroyed by a flood in 1788. Among the fallen rocks may be found the beautiful Saxifraga pyramidalis or longifolia, and the Ramondia pyrenaica. Pilgrimages are made to the chapel on 15 August and 8 September.

The Cirque de Troumousse is above Héas. It is less remarkable than that of Gavarnie, though more extensive. It lacks the series of bold escarpments capped with glacier that form the distinguishing feature of the latter.

Above Gèdre, on the route to Gavarnie is a chaos, an agglomeration of fallen gneiss rocks from above; it is as if half a mountain had been precipitated into the valley from the Coumélie. Farther up may be seen a cleft rock, between the jaws of which hangs a mass, arrested there on its way down. The scenery becomes grander, but at the same time more dreary; the cirque opens before one, and we reach the village of Gavarnie.

The Cirque of Gavarnie has been already briefly described in my first chapter. To see it to advantage it should be visited in spring or early summer, when, from the melting of the snows, the great fall is full of water. It resembles the Staubbach only in the long drop of the stream and its resolution into fine spray. The setting of it is immeasurably superior to that of the famous Swiss fall. The height is 1385 feet, and is the highest in Europe, except one or two in Norway. If there be plenty of water it shoots down in one single column; but in summer it descends in two leaps. This is not the only cascade in the cirque; down every part of the huge curve threads of water drop into the basin. Towards the end of a hot summer many of these fail, and the great cascade is much reduced.

The first sight of the cirque is disappointing. There is nothing by which to scale it, and the appearance is only one of size, gloom, and cold. The bottom of the great bowl is heaped with rubble brought down from above. But at Gavarnie we are four miles from the foot of the cirque, and it looks as if not more than a quarter of an hour’s stroll was required to reach it. A thousand feet seems to be no more than a hundred, and the huge rocks hurled down from above are reduced in appearance to mere pebbles.

A stone dropped from the top of the Pic du Marboré, 10,600 feet, will fall 5500 feet into the cirque. In the church of Gavarnie are to be seen twelve skulls, held to have belonged to the Templars of Luz, who fled hither, and were here executed. A story is current that on the last night of the year, just before the clock strikes midnight, a Templar clothed in white, and with a red cross on his breast, enters the church at Gavarnie and cries, “Ho! who are there that will stand up and fight for the temple?” Whereupon one skull after another replies, “None; the temple is destroyed.” This white-robed Templar is Du Molay, the Grand Master, burned alive at Paris, with four other great dignitaries of the Order. King Philip the Fair coveted the great possessions of the Knights, and Pope Clement V had obtained the tiara by the help of the King; the price he paid for it was the dissolution of the Order, and the sacrifice of the Knights to torture and death. In the midst of the fire Du Molay cried out, “Clement, iniquitous and cruel judge, I summon thee within forty days to meet me before the throne of God.” According to some accounts he cited the King as well. Du Molay was burnt on 18 March, 1314; on 30 April, Clement was dead; and Philip the Fair on 29 November, in the same year.

The road over the pass of the Tourmalet branches off below Luz and ascends the desolate Valley of Bastan, ravaged by avalanches, to Barèges, a long street of hotels and lodging-houses closed during the winter. The baths here have been famous for long. The waters impregnated with sulphate of soda are the most powerful in the Pyrenees, and are charged with a peculiar nitrogenous substance called glairine that renders them oily to the touch. Their great use is for the healing of wounds and ulcers, and for scrofula. They have been employed for a military hospital since 1760. Barèges stands over 5000 feet above the sea, yet it is more bleak and inhospitable in appearance than many a town such as Briançon, little short of it in altitude. A covered tank for bathers was erected here in 1550; and hither, to take advantage of the waters, came Mme. de Maintenon, in 1677 with the young Duke of Maine.

The scourge of the place has been the avalanches, mainly those that shoot down by four great paths from the Labas Blancs, the mountain to the north, and which bring the town or village, call it which you will, under 100,000 cubic feet of snow. Extensive works have been undertaken to prevent the complete destruction of the houses, baths, and hospitals. Huge barriers of masonry 40 feet high and 46 feet long by 18 feet wide have been drawn across the ravine of Le Theil, and extensive replanting of the sides with pines has reduced the danger; but it will take many years of growth before the trees attain a sufficient height to be able to completely screen the place. The ravine of Le Theil may be said to have been already rendered innocuous; but that of Midaou caused disaster in July, 1897, when an avalanche carried away a portion of the baths, and choked the valley as far as to Luz. Since 1900, however, this trough of the avalanche has been blocked.

On the left bank also the work has been energetically pursued to arrest the fall of torrents of snow from the Pic d’Ayré, where the avalanche path is formed of glacial clay, hard as cement when dry, but in time of rain forming a flood of mud falling 1200 feet. Here replanting has proved efficacious, and barriers of masonry have been erected, that have served the purpose intended. This work was begun in 1862, and since 1869 no lava-like flood of mud has reached the Valley of Bastan. The inspector Dellon says: —

“The regulation of the system of the torrents of Rieulet and Bayet, the fixing of the glacial mud which constitutes to a large extent the banks of these torrents, and the foot of the slope of the mountains facing Barèges, the attenuation of the avalanches, so dangerous to this thermal station, all prove the efficacy of the means adopted. The contrast is most striking between the districts within the range of these torrents acquired by the State, and such others as have not, and still belong to the communes. In these latter the devastation increases every year, annually exposing the route nationale and the Bastan to ever magnifying dangers of obstruction.”

All the valley might be saved and reclaimed, but everywhere, here as elsewhere, the Board of Forestation meets with sullen and stubborn opposition from the peasantry.

CHAPTER XII

TARBES

Tarbes an uninteresting place – A large village – Inglis on the view – Jardin Massey – Cloister of S. Sever – Horses – The Haras – Counts of Bigorre – Petronilla and her five husbands – Her will – Numerous claimants – A long contest – Tarbes fortified – Sack by the Huguenots – Massacre – The Leaguers – Battle of Tarbes – Retreat of Soult – Barrère – Macaulay on his character.

From Tarbes it is possible to escape in four directions, for from it radiate lines to Paris, to Pau, to Bagnières, and to Toulouse, and another is in prospect to Rustan and Mayonac.

No one presumably would stay in Tarbes for two days unless he were an official tied to duties in it and enjoying a salary, or were possessed with a passion for horses. For, indeed, in Tarbes itself there is nothing to be seen save the Haras and the depot for remounts to the cavalry. The cathedral is the most cumbrous, ungainly minster in all France. The public buildings lack interest. One thing Tarbes does possess, that it shares with the meanest village in the same arrondisement – the view of the Pyrenees.

Inglis, who trudged the Pyrenees in 1830, thus describes the prospect: —

“I have read in some book that the most beautiful part of every country is where the mountains sink down into the plains, and of this assertion the situation of Tarbes offers an excellent illustration. If I had never gone further into the Pyrenees than Tarbes I might have said that nothing can exceed the beauty of its neighbourhood. The charming plain that environs it – yet not altogether a plain – stretches to the foot of the mountains, rich in every production of the southern latitude, beautifully diversified with wood, and watered by the meanderings of the Adour and of several lesser streams. The celebrated Valley of Bagnères opens to the left, that of Lourdes to the right; while in the south, apparently at but a few leagues distant, the Pic du Midi towers above the range of mountains that extend to the right and to the left, as far as the eye can reach.

“After the long continuation of carriage-travelling from Avignon to Tarbes – oh, how I enjoyed this morning! It was a glorious morning, and the magnificent range of the Pyrenees, rising sharply from the plain, was bathed in sunbeams, which gilded the eminences, reposed on the slopes, and gleamed in among the valleys. If this book should chance to be read by anyone who knows the scenery of Scotland, let him recollect the road from Stirling along the foot of the Ochill Hills, and he will have a better conception of the country through which I am now conveying him, than could be conveyed by a thousand minute descriptions. It is true his imagination must assist me; he must imagine the Ochills seven to eight thousand feet high in place of two thousand; he must substitute Indian corn of the most luxuriant growth, for oats and barley; and, in place of whin-blossoms covering the knolls, he must fancy them clothed with vine; he must add the charm of a southern sky, and the balminess of a southern clime.”

Tarbes is a huge, straddling city, a great village giving itself the airs of a capital. On entering it from the station the town has an unattractive aspect. An avenue has been driven from the Gave to the Place Maubourguet, which is the centre of the town; but it has few houses along it, and none of consequence, and these throughout Tarbes have the appearance of villas in a suburb, surrounded with gardens. Some effort has been made to retrieve the ugliness of the town by the erection of fountains and statues, and by planting handsome promenades. But it is a lifeless place, only acquiring animation on the occasion of its fairs. The river strays in its vast bed, broken into several streams by rubble banks. It has been drawn off above the town by numerous channels of irrigation, so that when it reaches Tarbes it is out of proportion to its bed, as might be an infant in the vast fourposter of Ware.

But the Jardin Massey is the pride of Tarbes; it is a park extending over thirty acres – space is no object in Tarbes – and is really interesting. It was the gift to his native town by the man whose name it bears. Massey left Tarbes as a journeyman gardener, and visited Holland, where he obtained a situation as director of the gardens of the king. Louis Philippe summoned him to France, and made him manager of the gardens of Versailles. As he had amassed a good deal of money, he resolved on spending it for the adornment of his native town. He bought the land where now is the park, dug a lake, formed water-courses, planted rare trees, laid out flower-beds and lawns, and built a museum of natural history commanded by a lofty tower. In fifty years the trees have grown to a considerable size; and later benefactors have enriched the gardens with statues, busts, and the museum with sculptures and paintings. In the park has been erected the beautiful cloister of the fifteenth century removed from S. Sever-de-Rustan, a monastery wrecked by the Calvinists, under Lizier, who massacred all the inhabitants of the town, with the exception of seven persons. The monks would have been also put to death but that Queen Jeanne had already suppressed the abbey, and they had been dispersed. Next to the Jardin Massey the Haras should be inspected.

In ancient days the horses of the county of Bigorre, the viscounty of Béarn, and of Lower Navarre were highly esteemed; the race was called Navarrine, and it owed its merits to the fact that it was a cross between the Arab and the native Pyrenean stock. The Saracens had crossed the mountains, overflowed Aquitaine, and threatened Northern France, they were met at Poitiers and routed by Charles Martel in 731. Three hundred thousand Saracens, say the old chroniclers, with their usual exaggeration, fell on the field; the rest fled, the main body to Narbonne, others to such passes as they knew that led to Saragossa. A battle was fought near Tarbes, in which the flying remnant was utterly routed and exterminated. A great number of their stallions and mares remained in the hands of the victors, and it was from this capture that sprang the so much coveted and esteemed race of the Navarrine horse.

By degrees the quality declined and degenerated, reverting to the type of the Basque horse. This was due partly to lack of importation of fresh Arab blood, and partly to the mountaineers neglecting the breeding of horses for that of mules, specially serviceable to them among the mountain passes where were tracks, but no roads. The evil became so great that the Estates of Bigorre voted two thousand livres annually for the maintenance of stallions. During the Revolution, when there was great demand for mounts for the cavalry, the scarcity of good horses attracted the attention of the Council of Five Hundred. Napoleon took the matter in hand with his characteristic energy. In 1806 he founded the Haras at Tarbes, and the introduction of English blood was the basis of the transformation attempted. Later, during the campaigns in Algeria, the finest stallions taken from the Arabs were sent to Tarbes; and the result has been the production of a horse admirably adapted to the use of light cavalry, that goes now by the name of the Tarbes horse. Mm. Simonoff and Mörder, of the Russian haras, thus speak of it: —

“The three bloods of which the Tarbes horse derives – the Arab, the English, and the old Navarrin – are so near to each other, being all of Oriental origin, that the fusion took place easily and quickly; and although as yet the Tarbes horses are not of perfect homogeneity, it is quite possible to speak of them as forming a race which by its qualities, is rather full blood; than half blood.”

The stallions are in the Haras at Tarbes, but the mares are dispersed within a radius of twenty kilometres around Tarbes; and the rearing of colts is the industry, and makes the fortune of the department, at all events of the plain and fertile valleys. Within the district where they are reared there is not a village, not a farm, that has not its mares for breeding. Even curés supplement their scanty incomes by keeping them, and rearing from them. One, the Abbé Turon, sold to the State his stallion Mousquetaire for 20,000 francs. This roused a great outcry among the Radicals, who denounced the Government for having bought from a priest. Tarbes is the old capital of Bigorre, and here resided the Count. I have already mentioned Centule I of Béarn, assassinated in 1088, who put away his wife with the approval of Pope Gregory VII, so as to marry the heiress of Bigorre. By this union Bigorre and Béarn were not united, for his son Gaston by the repudiated Gisela became Viscount of Béarn, and his son Bernard III inherited Bigorre. This Bernard left issue, a daughter only, named Beatrice, who married Peter, Viscount de Marsan, by whom she had Centule III, and he also left an heiress, Stephanie, married to Bertrand, Count of Cominges, by whom she had one child, a daughter Petronilla.

The story of the annexation of Bigorre to Foix and Béarn is complicated through the matrimonial vagaries of this same Petronilla. And this was further complicated by the action of a pious ancestor, Count Bernard II, who in a fit of maudlin devotion placed his territory and family under the protection of the black doll, Notre Dame du Puy, promising in return for this protection that the county should annually pay tribute to the church of Le Puy. Certainly Our Lady of Puy treated Bigorre scurvily in return, allowing the inheritance to slip through heiresses, five in all, and, moreover, to involve it in a lawsuit that lasted a hundred and thirty-nine years.

Petronilla married Gaston, Viscount of Béarn, and when he died without issue, in 1215, took as number two Nûnez de Cerdagne, but tired of him speedily, got the marriage annulled, on the convenient plea of consanguinity, and married in 1216 Guy, son of Simon de Montfort. This was sharp work – three husbands in a twelvemonth. By Guy she had two daughters, Alix and Perette. In 1228 she took a fourth husband, Aimart de Rançon, and on his death, in the same year, she espoused her fifth, Boso de Mastas, to whom she bore a daughter, Martha. By her will Petronilla constituted Esquirat, eldest son of her daughter Alix, heir to her estates and titles; but in default of male issue the succession was to go to Jordan, the second son of Alix. Should he fail to have a son, then the second substitution was in favour of Martha, her daughter by Boso, who was married to Gaston VII of Béarn. Esquirat did have a son, also named Esquirat, but this second Esquirat died childless, and bequeathed the county of Bigorre to his sister Lore, as his uncle Jordan had died without issue. Now Petronilla and her third husband Guy de Montfort had left a second daughter, Perette, married to Raoul de Teisson, and had by him a son William de Teisson, who conceived that he had a right to the inheritance. Martha, wife of Gaston de Béarn, had a daughter Constance, and she also put in a claim. In fact, these were the claimants: Lore, Viscountess de Turenne; Constance, Viscountess de Béarn; William de Teisson; and Mahut, daughter of Alix and Raoul de Courtenay. But that was not all. The younger Esquirat had made over his inheritance to Simon de Montfort by a first will, and then, offended at the grasping nature of Simon, had revoked his will and constituted Lore his heiress. But Simon refused to recognize the legality of this second will, sold the viscounty to Thibalt II, King of Navarre, whose son Henry gave his claim to it to Jeanne, his daughter, married to Philip the Fair, King of France, and he was but too ready to acquire this rich district of Gascony on any plea, bad or good. The church of Le Puy also put in a claim, so did the King of England as overlord. Consequently there were from eight to nine claimants.

By decree of Parliament, in 1290, the rights of the church of Le Puy to the charge on the viscounty were confirmed.

Constance, Viscountess of Béarn, occupied Bigorre with her troops, and assumed the title of Countess of Bigorre. Jeanne of France, however, expelled her, adopted the title, and Philip the Fair asserted his right to the territory, and was prepared to maintain it by force of arms. Philip had already bought off the rights of the church of Le Puy. Bigorre remained under the crown of France till Charles VIII in 1425 granted it to John, Count of Foix, in return for his services against the English, and in consideration of his descent from Petronilla.