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day harassed by watching against enemies, and yet are compelled to buy them off with _patis_ and pensions, so that the greater portion of their substance is consumed in this way;–therefore, &c.”

[ILLUSTRATION: LE DEFILE DES ANGLAIS, LOT. A fortress of the English commanding the road to Cahors. Several chambers are excavated out of the rock.]

In 1450 the English were driven out of Guyenne, but a fresh attempt to recover it was made, that ended in the defeat and death of Talbot, in 1453. The Companies had then to dissolve. Out of a thousand churches in Quercy but four hundred were in condition for the celebration of divine service; many had been converted into fortresses. Most of the little towns in Upper Quercy had lost the major portion of their inhabitants; the villages were void of inhabitants. None knew who were the heirs to the deserted houses and untilled fields.

[Footnote: “Agros atque Lares proprios, habitandaque fana Apres reliquit, et rapacibus lupis, Ire, pedes quocunque ferent,”

–HORACE, _Epod. Od._, 16.]

An emigration from Limousin and the Rouergue was called for to repeople the waste places. Grammat, that had been a thriving town, in 1460 was left with only five inhabitants, Lavergne with but three. Lhern, once a flourishing place, was absolutely desert, the fields covered with briars and thorns, not one house tenanted, and in the church a she-wolf had littered her cubs.

Throughout the country can be distinguished the churches built when the war was over–quadrangular structures, without ornament.

Two of the strongest fortresses held by the English in Perigord were Bigaroque and the Roc de Tayac. The former belonged to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, staunch in his adhesion to the English cause, and he placed a garrison in it. The French did not attempt a siege, but in 1376 they raised a large sum in the neighbourhood and bought the garrison out. Either they culpably neglected to place troops in it, or were too weak to do so, and in 1386 the English reoccupied it without a blow, and made it a centre whence they pillaged the country up to 1408. In 1409 the Constable of France, however, laid siege to it and the garrison capitulated, on condition that all prisoners taken by the French should be set free. The French then demolished the fortifications, but did this so inefficiently that in 1432 the English had again established themselves therein. It was not recovered by the French till 1443; somewhat later the Companies disbanded, and then they so completely destroyed the fortress that of it nothing now remains.

The other stronghold was the Rock of Tayac. The white cliff streaked with black tears rises to the height of 300 feet, and is precipitous. Throughout the whole length it is lined and notched and perforated, showing tokens of having been a combination of cliff caves, and wooden galleries, connecting the caves, as also of structures at the base of the crag. These latter have disappeared, having been torn down when the castle was demolished, but the indications of the roofs remain. There were several storeys in the fortress. In one cave is a stable reached by a ladder, also a well that was driven from an upper cavern through the roof of the stable and through its floor to the level of the river. The oven of these freebooters hanging in mid-cliff remains, guard-rooms are still extant, and the principal upper storey is now turned into a hotel, as already mentioned, but in so doing the stable has been injured and the well filled up. The hotel is reached by a ladder.

[Illustration: CHATEAU DES ANGLAIS, BRENGUES. This castle occupied by the Free Companies, is now wholly inaccessible. The goat-path below was closed, above and below, by gate-houses and guard-rooms.]

[Illustration: CHATEAU DU DIABLE, CABRERET, LOT. A castle on a narrow ledge of rock above the River Cele, built by the Bastard of Albert, circ. 1380, and held for the English.]

From this vultures’ nest the Ribauds devastated the neighbourhood and the Sieur des Eyzies on the opposite side of the river, and who was on the French side, was powerless against them. In company with the garrison of Bigaroque they surprised Temniac near Sarlat, S. Quentin and Campagnac, in 1348, but were shortly after dislodged by the Seneschal of Perigord from these acquisitions.

In 1353 they surprised the church and fortress of Tursac and the castle of Palevez. The men of Sarlat hastened to recover Tursac, bringing with them some machines of war, named La Bride, Le Hop, Le Collard, and l’Asne, that flung stones and bolts and pots of flaming tar and sulphur. They managed to drive the English out of Tursac, but were unable to recover the other castle.

In 1401, at the solicitation of the Baron of Limeuil, they took and utterly destroyed the town and castle of La Roche Christophe, as shall be related in full in the sequel. On 4th December 1409, the Constable of France having ruined Bigaroque, besieged the Rock of Tayac, and it was taken after a gallant defence on 10th January 1410, demolished and reduced to the condition in which we see it now. Then a tax was levied throughout Perigord to pay for the cost of the sieges of Bigaroque and the Rock of Tayac.

We will now pass from Perigord to Quercy. Here the English Companies held the valley of the Lot from below Capdenac to the gates of Cahors, except the impregnable towns of Cajarc and Calvignac.

Flowing into the Lot at Conduche is the river Cele that descends from Figeac. This river was also in the grip of the English.

Below Figeac the limestone precipices first appear at Corn, and the cliff is full of caves in which there are remains of fortifications. The cliff is not beautiful, but is wondrous strange, white, draped with fallen folds of stalactite, black as ink, as though a tattered funeral pall had been cast over it. Corn was a feof of the family of Beduer, one of the five most powerful in Quercy. In 1379 Perducat, the Bastard of Albret, an English Captain, occupied Corn, but sold it to John, Count of Armagnac, Seneschal of Quercy; after having marched out and pocketed his money, he turned round, marched in again, and set to work to fortify the caves. He made the citizens of Cajarc contribute to the expense of this proceeding, and even required them to send masons to assist him in the work; but as they were loyal subjects of the French King they demurred at this, and he substituted additional money payment for personal service. He then pushed down the Cele valley to Cabrerets near where it debouches into the Lot, and in 1383 he fortified the caves of Espagnac, Brengues, Marcillac, Sauliac, and built the chateau du Diable at Cabrerets. The Count d’Armagnac sent troops to dislodge him, but failed.

In the rock of Corn, a little higher up the river than the village, is the Grotto du Consulat, reached by a path along a narrow ledge. To this the villagers were wont to gather to elect their magistrates without interference from the Bastard of Albret. Within is a bench cut in the rock, and the roof is encrusted with stalactite formations like cauliflowers. Immediately above the village is a much larger cavern 72 feet high and 36 feet deep. It is vaulted like a dome, and tendrils of ivy and vine hang down draping the entrance. Violets grow in purple masses at the opening, and maiden-hair fern luxuriates within. At the extreme end, high up, to be reached only by a ladder of forty rungs, is another opening into a cave that runs far into the bowels of the Causse, to where the water falls in a cascade that now flows forth beneath the outer cave and supplies the village with drinking water and a place for washing linen. Hard by the great entrance is another cave situated high up, and called the Citadel, much smaller, access to which is obtained by a narrow track in the face of the rock, with notches cut in the limestone to receive the beams and struts that supported a wooden gallery which once provided easy access to the cave. I did not myself climb up and investigate the citadel, not having a steady head on the edge of a precipice, and what information I give was received from the cure, who seemed very much amused at my shirking the scramble, and thought that the Englishman of to-day must be very different from the Englishman of the fourteenth century who crawled about these cliffs like a lizard. According to him, the cave within shows signs of having been occupied, and has in it a squared and smoothed block of stone nine feet long, at which Perducat and his ruffians doubtless caroused, as at a table.

[Illustration: CORN, LOT. Caves occupied by the Routiers. That above the large one was formerly reached by a gallery of wood. It contains the stone table at which the Routiers gambled and drank.]

In the village of Corn is the picturesque chateau of the family of Beduer built after the abandonment of the place by the English. It is now occupied by poor families. A little farther down the valley is the castle of Roquefort, which was also annexed by the Captain. It is near the Church of S. Laurent, where was a village that was destroyed by the Company. The church itself was blown up later by the Huguenots. Roquefort is dominated by a precipice, at the foot of which lies a huge mass of rock that has broken off from the cliff, and on this rock a castle has been erected. It belonged to the family of Lascasas. One of these fell at Resinieres in a duel with the Seigneur of Camboulet; but his adversary survived him only a few minutes, and both were buried on the spot with three stones at their heads and two at their feet. When the new road was being made their skeletons were found. The stones remain _in situ_.

In 1361 Cahors was in possession of the English. The bishop unwilling to recognise the King of England as his sovereign retired to the Castle of Brengues in the Cele valley that pertained to his family, the Cardaillacs, and thence governed his diocese. There he died 3rd February 1367, and his successor also occupied the Castle of Brengues. But in 1377 it was captured by an English Company under Bertrand de la Salle, and in 1380 it was held by Bertrand de Besserat, to whom it was delivered over by Perducat d’Albret.

There are two very remarkable castles at Brengues; both were fortified by Perducat and Besserat. One hangs like a swallow’s nest under the eaves of the overhanging rock, and is now wholly inaccessible, so much so that it is in perfect preservation. The river flows far below, and a _talus_ of rubble runs up to the foot of the cliff, along which _talus_, on a narrow terrace, is a path. This path was defended both above and below the castle by gates that were battlemented and to which guard-rooms were attached. The pensile castle is not large. It was entered at one side, and has in its face three roundheaded windows.

The other castle of Brengues is perforated in an angle of rock, at a great elevation, and consists of several chambers. The cave at the angle was walled up and furnished with doorway and windows.

Near where the Cele flows into the Lot is the little town of Cabrerets. Here the precipice of fawn-coloured limestone overhangs like a wave, curling and about to break. On a ledge under it, and above the river and the road and the houses, is the Devil’s Castle, built by Perducat d’Albret and Bertrand de Besserat. The latter held it from 1380 to 1390, but then, at the entreaty of the neighbourhood, the Seigneur Hebraud de Saint-Sulpice at the head of levies laid siege to the castle and took it.

The castle has one of its walls of rock; only that towards the river and the two ends are structural, as is also a round tower. A portion of the castle has been pulled down; it has served as a quarry for the houses beneath, but a good deal still remains. The tower is about 20 feet in diameter. The entrance hall, lighted by windows, is 70 feet long and 40 feet wide. A second hall, partly hewn out of the rock, with recesses for cupboards and seats and with fireplace, is 42 feet long. The oven remains in a ruinous condition. The castle is reached by steps cut in the rock.

[ILLUSTRATION: CHATEAU DES ANGLAIS, AUTOIRE. Reached by a sharp scramble up a steep, and then by a ledge in a precipice. Some chambers are scooped out of the rock. When the English were besieged, they escaped by a goat-path, to a point whence hung a rope from a tree above, and up this they swarmed.]

Below Conduche, where the Cele enters the Lot, the road runs under tremendous precipices of orange and grey limestone, in which the track has been cut; and the road would be totally blocked by a huge buttress split down the middle had not a tunnel for it been cut. As the Roman road ran this way, the original tunnel was made by the Masters of the World, but it has been widened of late years. Commanding the road and the tunnel, planted in the cleft of the rock, is a castellated structure, that also owes its origin to the captains who fortified the Cele caves.

None could pass up or down the road without being spied and arrested, and made to pay toll by the garrison of this fort. [Footnote: So early as the eleventh or twelfth century there was not a small river, as the Cele and the Aveyron, on which tolls were not levied.]

The Cahors Chronicle says of this period: “Deinde fuit in praesenti patria mala guerra. Anglicis et Gallis hinc inde repraedentibus, unde evenit victualium omnium maxima caristia. Nullus civis Caturci villam exire erat ausus, omnia enim per injustitiam regebatur.” If the merchants and provision wains for Cahors were not robbed at the Defile des Anglais, they were subjected to toll. The interior of the chasm reveals a whole labyrinth of passages and vaults dug out in the heart of the calcareous rock. The chambers had openings as windows looking out upon a river, and the rock was converted into a barrack that could accommodate a large garrison.

The last of the rock fastnesses of the _routiers_ that I purpose describing is of a totally different character from the rest. It is at Peyrousse in the Rouergue, in the department of Aveyron. Peyrousse is a village, but was once a fortified town on a height, with its church and church tower standing on the highest point and visible from a great distance. It rises above a deep valley or ravine. The houses are all old, and many of them in ruins. The church, dating from 1680, is not ineffective; there are, however, the ruins of a Gothic church farther down the hill. One of the embattled gates of the town is still standing, as well as a tower erroneously supposed to be the bell tower of the ruined church, actually part of the fortification of the place. Projecting from the side of the hill on which stands Peyrousse, partly attached to it, but for the most part detached, is a ridge of schist starting 300 feet above the stream below, in one sheer precipice, and precipitous on every side. It is perhaps 300 feet long, and rises like a blade of an axe; at each extremity of this ridge is a lofty tower– one, the farthest, open at the side. To erect these towers it must have been necessary to level a portion of the sharp edge on which they rest. Between them one could walk only with a balancing pole like a tight- rope dancer, as there is a sheer fall on each side. The rock is called Les Roches du Tailleur, as having been appropriated by a captain who cut folk’s coats according as he wanted the cloth. How the builders climbed to this height, how they managed to carry up their material, and how they achieved the building of these towers, is impossible to conjecture. The tradition is, that when the English quitted Peyrousse they destroyed the means of ascent, and since 1443 no human being has been able to climb the rock and visit the towers, that for nearly five hundred years have had no other denizens than ravens and jackdaws. But that is not all the puzzle of the Tailor’s Rock. It is supposed that there was a wooden castle between the towers. There is no indication of there having been a stone structure.

[ILLUSTRATION: COVOLO, FROM A PRINT BY MERIAN, 1640-1648. In the defile of the Brenta; 100 feet above the road. It was capable of containing a garrison of 500 men. It was taken from the Venetians by Maximilian in 1509. It is between Primolano and Cismone.]

[ILLUSTRATION: LA ROCHE DU TAILLEUR. Remains of a castle on a precipitous rock at Reyrousse, Aveyron; it was held by the English Routiers, who, when they abandoned it, destroyed the means of access, since which time it has been inaccessible.]

But if so, how was it balanced, or how secured? A plank cast across the blade would make a see-saw for an ogre and ogress, till cut through. I endeavoured with a glass to see whether notches had been hacked in the schist to receive stays, and others on the ridge to accommodate joists, but could distinguish none.

Peyrousse became a Calvinist stronghold in the Wars of Religion, when the churches were destroyed; but the Huguenots made no attempt to climb the Tailor’s Rocks and restore the castle. At the foot of the crags are the remains of the chapel of the garrison. How did they descend to it and mount again? I presume by a knotted rope.

A cliff castle that bears a curious resemblance to Peyrousse is Trosky, in Bohemia, but in this latter case the rocks are of basalt, and between the two towers the connecting rock forms a deep depression. In 1415, Johann von Herzmanmiestetz and Otto Berka of Trosk sacked the monastery of Opatowitz, butchered most of the monks, tortured the abbot so that he died a few days later, and carried off all the plunder they could collect. With the spoil Otto Berka built a castle on the two spires of rock, a tower on each, and connected them with a crescent wall, and a gallery of communication. The walls were six feet thick, and the foundations clamped to the rock with iron. He also contrived a tunnel, cut in the rock to the bottom, to enable himself and his men to ascend and descend. In 1424, however, Otto Berka was there no more. The castle was besieged by the terrible one-eyed Hussite commander, Ziska with the Flail, and he succeeded in capturing the lower tower after great loss of life, but entirely failed to take the upper donjon. After the departure of Ziska the castle was taken as a residence by Margaret, widow of Otto Berka, who secured the lower tower, and her granddaughter Barbara occupied the higher. These women hated each other as poison, and to personal hate was added religious rancour, for Barbara had embraced the party of the Utraquists. The theological quarrel was simply about the use of the chalice at communion. The Roman Church had withdrawn it from the people; the Utraquists asserted their right to it; and about this question the two parties fought and slaughtered each other, and burnt towns and castles. The tradition is that all day long, and part of the night, the two women screamed abuse at each other from their several towers, and desisted only for their meals, their devotions, and necessary sleep. Folk passing along the highway would halt and listen to the yelling and vituperation of the two shrews. Each had her own chapel at the foot of the cliffs, in which each ostentatiously followed the rite of which she approved; and to this day the chapels remain. According to the local story, the cries of the women were so strident and so continuous that all birds were scared away from Trosky. At length Margaret died, and Bertha had become so accustomed to scolding at the top of her voice, that she died soon after from dissatisfaction at having lost the object of her abuse.

In 1468 Trosky was the property of William von Hasenburg, who sided with King Mathias against George Podjebrad. After the defeat of Mathias, Podjebrad captured Trosky, but as the owner came to terms, he was allowed to retain his castle. The towers are all that remain of the castle; the curtain wall has been broken down. The lower tower can be reached by a climber with a steady head, but not without risk of life. The higher tower is quite inaccessible. From the height a magnificent prospect is obtained, with Prague in the distance.

To return once more to the _routiers_.

Near Mont Dore is the Roche de Sanadoire, 3660 feet high, composed of phonolith and basaltic prisms. On the top stood the fortress of the _routiers_, calling themselves English, under a Captain Chennel, from 1378 to 1386, when he was caught, conveyed to Paris, and broken on the wheel. It is not to be wondered at that the memory of the terrible times of the English domination, and its consequence, the reign of the _routiers_, should linger on in the memory of the people; that every cliff castle should be a Chateau des Anglais, or a Chateau du Diable–they mean the same thing. The peasant reads but little–history not at all; but Jean Bonhomme looks up at the cliffs and finds the story of the past graven there; and just as the twinge of a corn is still felt after the foot has been amputated, so–though the English rule has passed away, three hundred and fifty years have intervened–he still winces, and curses the haunts “de ces cochons d’Anglais,” though in fact ces cochons were his own compatriots, doubled-dyed in iniquity, as traitors to their country and their King.

CHAPTER VI

CLIFF CASTLES–_Continued_

I took the third of the classes into which I have divided my subject of cliff castles, first of all; and now I shall take the others in the category.

The Seigneurs were not greatly, if at all, to be distinguished from the Captains of the _routiers_ in their mode of life and in their fortresses, save only this, that the latter were elected by their followers, and the former were on their hereditary estates and could demand the services of their vassals. In the matter of scoundreldom there was not a pin to choose between them. But the _routier_ chiefs were not tied to any one castle as their home; they shifted quarters from one rock to another, from one province to another as suited them, whereas the seigneur had his home that had belonged to his forefathers and which he hoped to transmit to his son.

I will give but an instance.

Archibald V. (1361-1397) was Count of Perigord. He was nominally under the lilies, but he pillaged indiscriminately in his county. Surrounded by adventurers he planted his men in castles about Perigord, and from that of La Rolphie “hung over the city like the sword of Damocles,” menaced Perigueux. One little town after another was pillaged. He intercepted the merchants on the roads. At S. Laurent-du-Manoir his captains added outrage to injury, for they took all the women of the place, and cut off their skirts at the knees; and one who made strenuous resistance they killed.

In 1385, the Seneschal of Perigord, in the name of the King of France, ordered Archibald to desist from his acts of violence. When he refused, his lands were declared confiscated. But who was to bell the cat? He mocked at the sentence, and was roused to fresh incursions and pillages. At last in 1391 the Parliament acted, and summoned the Count to appear along with twenty-three of his accomplices before its bar “to answer for having overrun with his troops the suburbs of Perigueux; for having assaulted the city, and neighbouring places; for having wounded and killed a great many persons; for having incarcerated others to extort a ransom from them; for having, like common highwaymen, seized cattle, fired granges, mills, houses; and for having committed crimes so infamous, so ferocious, that one would feel pain to disclose them.”

Archibald paid not the slightest regard to the summons or to the sentence pronounced against him _in contumaciam_. The law could not enforce its judgment, and six years later in 1397 he died. The King refused to recognise his son Archibald VI. as Count of Perigord, but Archibald disregarded the refusal, and openly sided with the English. He successfully resisted the troops sent against him, and continued in the same courses as his father. At last he was brought to bay in Montignac, where he was constrained to capitulate. He was sent to Charles VI., but effected his escape and fled to London in 1399. Thence he returned in 1404, and captured Auberoche, much about the time of the English victory at Agincourt. He died in undisturbed possession of his county of Perigord in 1430.

Few portions of France so lent itself to the requirements of the feudal tyrants of the Middle Ages, as they did also to those of the _routiers_, as the volcanic district of Auvergne. There the floods of lava that flowed from the volcanoes have formed caps to hills, with precipices on every side, cut through by the streams, that have separated portions from the main current. Every such peak or fragment of plateau was laid hold of by the seigneurs of old, as sites for their fortresses. From the number of these strongholds and the almost impregnable nature of most of them, the feudal tyrants of Auvergne were able to hold their own, long after the rest had been brought to their knees; and it was not until Richelieu with iron hand moved against them that their career of rapine and violence was curbed. Beginning in 1626, Richelieu ordered the demolition of all feudal fortresses that were not necessary for the defence of the frontiers, and which were a permanent menace to the King’s authority, and an object of terror to town and country, and to the nobles afforded reminiscence of past lawlessness. The demolition was entrusted to the communes themselves. And in order to bring the culprits to speedy judgment, he renewed the institution of the _Grand Jours_; that of Poitiers in 1634 condemned over two hundred nobles convicted of exactions and crimes.

But it was impossible in many places, notably in Auvergne, for the communes to get hold of the castles and blow them up. There, for some thirty years longer, the seigneurs defied justice, and it was much the same elsewhere. On the 31st August 1665, the _Grand Jours_ were announced for all the centre of France, but notice that they were to be held had been given so long before that the guilty were allowed plenty of time to escape out of the country, go into hiding or come to terms. Great were the expectations of the people. Right was at length to prevail over Might. The Day of Judgment was coming on the oppressors. The Mighty would be put down from their seat and the humble would be exalted in their room. A peasant wearing his cap before a noble, the latter knocked it off his head “Pick it up,” said the peasant, “or the King will cut off your head.” The seigneur obeyed.

But the result was disappointing. Only one noble had his head cut off. Few executions were carried into effect, many were on paper. One of the latter, a ruffian steeped in blood, defied the sentence and was banished. Flechier in his amusing and instructive book, _Les grands Jours d’Auvergne_, has given us a dramatic account of the trial.

Every description of intrigue was had recourse to, in order to neutralise the effect of justice. The fair ladies of Clermont, _les chats fourres_, as Flechier calls them, did their utmost to reduce the severity of the judges. The Great Days lasted three months, and ended in disappointment. Many of the worst offenders, convicted of atrocious crimes, entered the Royal service and fought in the armies of the King.

But if justice spared the culprits, the opportunity was accorded to destroy their strongholds, and now little remains of these Towers of Iniquity but the foundations, and some fragments of their massive walls, which were generally constructed of basaltic prisms taken from the rock that sustained the castles, laid horizontally. “Puzzolana was mixed with the mortar used in these constructions, and without the binding quality communicated by this ingredient, probably no cement would have taken effect on the smooth a rid iron surfaces of the prisms.” [Footnote: Poulette Scrope, “The Extinct Volcanoes of Central France,” Lond. 1858.]

The King had indeed desired that greater severity should be used. He wrote to the judges: “You must manage to banish oppression and violence out of the provinces. You have begun well, and you must finish well.” At the conclusion he had a medal struck representing a slave rising from the ground, under the protection of the sword of royalty, and with the expressive device, _Salus provinciarum repressa potentorum audacia_.

It was, however, rather the destruction of the nests than the punishment of the Vultures that effected the work.

The Marquis de Canillac, one of the worst, escaped into Spain. He had maintained twelve ruffians, whom he called his Apostles, who catechised with sword and rod all who rebelled against his exactions. He levied taxes on necessary articles of food, and when his vassals abstained from food he fined them for not eating. He allowed none to marry without paying into his hands half the _dot_ of the bride. His kinsman, the Vicomte Lamotte-Canillac, was the one culprit executed.

The river Vezere, opposite to the prehistoric caves of Moustier, makes a sudden bend about a wall of chalk 300 feet high and 1500 feet long. “Of all the rocks that have served for the habitation of man, this is the most striking for its dimensions and for the number of habitations it contained, if one may give that name to the excavations which the hand of man has appropriated to his use. Staircases were carved in the rock, carried half-way up the height, to where the cliff has been excavated, its recesses enlarged and divided into compartments.” [Footnote: De Roumejoux, _Bulletin de la Soc. Hist. de Perigord._ T. xix. 1892.]

This bluff is called La Roche S. Christophe. It arrests attention at once, for half-way up it is furrowed horizontally as though worked by a giant’s tool. If the visitor approaches the cliff, he will find that the masses of rock that have fallen from above, as well as others that have formed spurs, have been extensively worked to form town walls, gateways, a church, a monastery, and dwelling-houses.

One gateway, bored through the rock, has a guard-room or sentinel’s watch-chamber scooped out of a pinnacle. But not a roof remains, not a living soul is to be seen in the street, not a huxter’s stall in the market-place, only tiles strewn about and white rocks blackened with smoke show that man lived there.

By a flight of stairs cut in the rock, the visitor can ascend to the furrow in the face of the cliff, and there he finds that the whole has been elaborately utilised. There are chambers excavated in the chalk that were formerly closed by wood partitions, with recesses for beds, cupboards, seats–clearly the bedrooms of ladies. The grooves into which the planks were fitted can be made out. Doors were fitted into rocky rebates to move on their hinges, the hinges being round prolongations of the door frame turning in holes sunk in floor and roof. The kitchen is there, the bakehouse with its oven; the guard-room with its benches for the troopers, cisterns, store-chambers, closets, cellars, a chapel, and the latrines. All but the last are on a level in one long row, with the cliff descending precipitately from the gallery that precedes the apartments and gave communication between them and which, in part, had been widened by means of a wooden balcony and railing. The chapel, if that be the walled structure in a hole of the rock, is now inaccessible. Its destination is uncertain. The peasants so designate it.

Fragments of earthenware vessels and of tiles lie on the floors. I could find nothing else.

Above the principal gallery are others of less importance that can only be reached from the top of the cliff.

This Roche Saint Christophe has a history. It was first fortified by Frotarius de Gourdon to resist the incursions of the Northmen. He was assassinated at Mourcinez in Coursac in 991. There was a priory in the town below, mention of which is found in a charter of 1187.

The remarkable range of chambers and structures in the face of the precipice formed the castle of the family of Laroque. It was a worthy family, greatly respected in the neighbourhood, and loyal to the crown of France. The seigneur was the protector of the little town that lay below.

On Passion Sunday, 1401, the townsfolk and the occupants of the castle were gathered in the church, when a cry was raised that the enemy had swarmed over the walls and were in the town. Adhemar de Laroque was the seigneur at the time. He hastened from the church, but already the street was full of English, and escape to his castle was cut off, as they had secured the stair.

Adhemar had a personal enemy, one Jean Ducos, a kinsman of the Baron de Limeuil. These men, calculating that the garrison of La Roque would be off its guard on that holy day, arranged with the English garrison of the Rock of Tayac to surprise the town.

They came upon it unobserved, and breaking in, massacred the people and the guards; then ensued a general pillage, and a conflagration. Every house was fired after it had been ransacked, and the English Ribauds running along the platform with torches in their hands, applied the flame to everything combustible–doors, galleries, partitions, rafters –all blazed, and the only portion of the castle and town that was left unconsumed were the latrines, to which they did not consider it worth their pains to apply their torches.

From that day to this the town of La Roche Saint Christophe has been abandoned. No cottager has ventured to repair the ruined habitations for his own use; as the place is esteemed haunted, notably on the night of Passion Sunday, when a ghostly train of the dead is seen flickering in and out of the rocks and ruins by the light of the Easter moon.

But the castle was again tenanted for awhile by a band of Huguenots, who committed such depredations in the neighbourhood that on 30th March 1588, the Viscount of Aubeterre, Governor of Perigord issued orders– “as the enemies of the King occupying this Castle are doing incredible mischief to the poor folk of the neighbourhood,” that they should be expelled and the castle be utterly destroyed. [Footnote: La Roche S. Christophe is mentioned in the letters of Petrarch. Labbe. Frag. Bp. Petrarchi.]

[Illustration: KRONMETZ. This cave castle was nominally held by nobles in feof to the Bishop of Trent, but it actually became a den of robbers. It was taken by storm in 1210. Count v. Firmian, to whom it belongs, has built for himself a more convenient residence at the foot of the rock.]

Quite as curious, and with a less tragic history is La Roche Gageac on the Dordogne, below Sarlat. “Ma chere patrie,” wrote the old chronicler, Jean Tarde, “une petite ville bien close et tres forte dependant de la temporalite de l’evesque de Sarlet, _la quelle ne fut jamais prinse par les Anglais_.”

The white Jurassic limestone dappled orange, fawn colour, and silver grey, rises 250 feet above the river, the lower portion is in terraces, very narrow, on which are the houses clinging to the rock, cramped between the Dordogne and the cliff which rises 140 to 160 feet above. The old houses are echeloned along the face of the rock, superposed the one on the other, calcined by the sun as they face south, and the rock behind cuts off all northern winds and reflects the glare of the southern sun. This explains the vegetable precocity of the spot, where wallflowers, cactus, roses, luxuriate. It would be too hot were it not for the abundant springs, and the proximity to the Dordogne down which a cool air is wafted.

The habitations are either partly or wholly caves, they do not reach half-way up the rock which overhangs to the west. In the face of the cliff are two castles built into its recesses, one pertained to the Bishop of Sarlat, and the other to the Fenelon family. Both were ideals of a stronghold in the Middle Ages, impossible to escalade or to undermine. In the fifteenth century La Roche Gageac was a walled town containing five chateaux of noble families, juxtaposed and independent of each other, although comprised within the same enclosure. Originally indeed all were under the Bishop of Sarlat, but the Popes had set the example of jobbery for the benefit of their sons and nephews, and the Bishops were not slow to follow the lead. One Bishop made over the principal castle to his brother as a hereditary feof, and others disposed of the rest for money down, so that by the second half of the sixteenth century the town had been dismembered. Although it had held out against the English, when thus broken up among several, it could not defend itself against the Calvinists, who took, burned and sacked it in 1574. They killed three Sarlat priests. It was retaken by the Royal troops in 1575, but it again fell into the hands of the Calvinists in 1588, and the wreckage of its ecclesiastical buildings dates from those two captures.

The principal castle, that which belonged to the Bishop of Sarlat, occupies one of the profound horizontal furrows in the face of the rock, that are so common in the limestone and chalk formations. It consists of three towers, two of which are square and one round, with curtains uniting them, and a gate-tower, to which a flight of steps cut in the rock gives access for a part of the way. But to reach this flight one has to mount by a series of posts serving as steps driven into sockets in the rock, with only here and there a sustaining iron bar. Below the structure are chambers, possibly prisons, but more probably store rooms dug out of the rock. In this castle one of the Bishops of Sarlat, in stormy times, lived continuously, and there died. How was his body carried down the stair? Probably it was lowered by ropes.

I cannot quit La Roche Gageac without a word on one of its most illustrious natives, Jean Tarde, born there in 1561 the friend of Galileo, and who, the first in France, five years after the great Florentine had begun to search the skies with his telescope, invented one year previously, erected his tube here at one of the openings of this eagle’s nest, and during ten consecutive years pursued his astronomic studies. He was a remarkable man in many ways. He was the first to map his native Perigord, and the first to write a chronicle of the diocese of Sarlat, a valuable work for any who would compile a history of the Hundred Years’ War, the first also to repudiate the accepted attribution of the dolmens as altars of sacrifice, and to indicate their true character as sepulchres. His account of the ravages committed by the Huguenots is also valuable. The year before his birth, in 1560, at Lalande, the Calvinists got into the town through a hole in the wall, killed the first Consul, the Vicar, and six other priests, and massacred a hundred of the inoffensive citizens. Sixty took refuge in the church. The Calvinists forced such as could to ransom their lives, and slaughtered such as were too poor to do this. He was but six or seven years old when the Huguenot captain, the Sieur d’Assier, took La Roque, “killing the priests and burning the churches.” He was aged twelve when Captain Vivant took Sarlat, suppressed the bishopric, and killed three of the canons and several of the citizens. At La Chapelle- Faucher in 1569 the heretics drove 260 peasants into the castle and massacred them all. He was made Vicar-General to the Bishop of Sarlat, and it was after having made a tour of the diocese in 1594 that the idea occurred to him to write the history of his country and repair as far as possible the loss of so many of the archives that had been burnt. In 1599 he was made honorary chaplain to Henry IV., and in 1626 was published his _Description du pais de Quercy_. His history of Sarlat, after remaining in MS. was at length published in 1887, but only 150 copies were printed. Happily one is in the British Museum, and I possess another.

Gluges is on the Dordogne near Martel, where high up in the cliff, difficult of access, is the fortified cave-castle of Guillaume Taillefer, son of Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse, who was created Lord of Quercy in 972. Nearly on the level of the river is a cave half walled up, with traces of fresco on the walls, of course much later than the time of Taillefer. A modern house has been built on the platform that has been levelled, and much of the wall demolished; the upper fortified cave has an opening in the wall, pointed, of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In much the same condition is another cliff castle in the rocks of the valley of the Alzou, between Grammat and Rocamadour, a little above the cascade of the mill Du Saut.

I have elsewhere [Footnote: “A Book of the Cevennes,” Lond., J. Long.] given an account of the curious castle of La Roche Lambert at Borne in Haute Loire, built in a basaltic cleft through which roars the river. It is the theatre of George Sand’s novel, Jean de la Roche. “I may say without exaggeration that I was reared in a rock. The castle of my fathers is strangely incrusted into an excavation in a wall of basalt 500 feet high. The base of this wall, with that face to face with it, identically the same rock, forms a narrow and sinuous valley, through which winds and leaps an inoffensive torrent in impetuous cascades. The Chateau de la Roche is a nest of troglodytes, inasmuch as the whole flank of the rock we occupy is riddled with holes and irregular chambers which tradition points out as the residence of ancient savages, and which antiquaries do not hesitate to attribute to a prehistoric people.

“The castle of my fathers is planted high up on a ledge of rock, but so that the conical roofs of the tower just reach above the level of the plain. My mother having poor health, and having no other place to walk save one tiny platform before the castle on the edge of the abyss, took it into her head to create for herself a garden at the summit of the crag on which we were perched midway.”

In Cantal at Roqueville are the remains of a castle excavated out of the rocks. Between Jung-Bunzlau and Boehm-Leipa in Bohemia is the rock- castle of Habichstein. Two lakes lie in a basin of the hills that are well-wooded up their sides, but have bare turfy crowns. The upper lake is studded with islands. Between this and the lower lake stands an extraordinary hump of sandstone, on a sloping _talus_. This hump has much resemblance to a Noah’s Ark stranded on a diminutive Ararat. The rock is perforated in all directions with galleries and chambers, and contains a stable for horses and for cattle, which, however, is no longer accessible. On the summit of the rock rises a keep very much resembling a Pictish broch. Habichstein belongs to the Wallenstein family that possesses a stately schloss at the head of the upper lake. It has been abandoned for, probably, two hundred years, as it can never have been a comfortable residence; moreover, the sandstone is continually breaking away. Below the hill and castle is the village. In 1811 there was a fall of the rock, and again in 1815, when it crushed three of the houses beneath.

[ILLUSTRATION: THE PUXER LOCH, STYRIA. Supposed to have been occupied by a shadowless man. It was still inhabited last century by an old mason.]

Another and still more curious cliff castle in Bohemia is that of Burgstein. There are several on the frontier of the Wargau and the Hardt in North Bohemia, where the German and Czech languages meet, but it is not possible here to describe them all. Burgstein is the most curious. It consists of an isolated mass of sandstone springing out of level land, an outlying block of the Schwoik chain. Formerly it rose out of a lake or marsh, but this is now drained. The entrance is through a narrow gap in the rock by a flight of steps that lead into a court on all sides surrounded by sheer precipices except towards the North-west, where a gap was closed by a wall. Out of this court open caves, one was formerly the smithy, another the guard-room, a third the stable, and in a recess is the well. From the court access to the main structure is obtained by a rift in the sandstone commanded by the guard-room, and up which ascends a stair of 15 steps that leads to a second rift at right angles, up which leads a further stair of 76 steps, and from the landing 37 descend to a lower portion of the rock, a platform with a breastwork of wall, important for defence of the entrance.

The steps lead to various chambers, and to an open court that looks out over the precipice, and has on one side scooped out of the rock a watchman’s chamber, and on the other an armoury, where pilasters on each side supported shelves on which helmets and breastplates were laid; and beyond this is a guard-room. The summit of the rock has on it a lantern that lights an underground chapel, and formerly contained a bell, also a modern summer-house. As the rock was commanded from the south by a spur of the Schwoik range, when cannon were introduced, a new mode of access was devised on the north side, a passage in loops was constructed leading to the upper court. The castle called in Czech, Stolpna, or the pillar, is first mentioned in the fourteenth century. The great highroad to and from Boehmisch-Leipa passed near it, and it became the stronghold of a Raubritter, Mikisch Passzer of Smoyn, who became such a terror to the neighbourhood that the Sixtowns league of Lausitz in 1444 attacked it with 9000 men, broke down the dam that held back the water, and made of the rock an islet in a lake and constrained Mikisch to surrender. Soon after, however, he recommenced his lawless proceedings, and was again attacked in 1445, and after a siege that lasted five weeks, forced to quit his fortress. At the end of the seventeenth century Burgstein was converted into a hermitage and Brother Constantine, the first hermit, either enlarged or dug out the present chapel and built the lantern above, through which it obtains light. He did more, he carved a figure of himself looking through a telescope, life size, and planted on the summit of the rock. On the occasion of the Prussian invasion of Bohemia the image was assumed to be a spy, and the Germans fired at it and greatly damaged the figure, and were much puzzled at being unable to prostrate the dauntless spy. The present possessor of the rock castle has had the figure restored. Burgstein remained the abode of a hermit till 1785, when the reforming Joseph II. abolished all hermitages, and turned out every hermit in his dominions. And now, back to the Jura limestone again. A few words must be given to Kronmetz in Tirol, at the mouth of the Val di Non, opening into the Etschthal.

[Illustration: HABICHSTEIN BOHEMIA. A castle belonging to Count Wallenstein now abandoned owing to the falling away of portions of the rock. It contains stable for horses and cattle, now inaccessible without ladders.]

This castle belonged to the Bishops of Trient, and was intended by them to serve as a place of “ward and custody” against invading or marauding bands.

But _quis custodiet custodies_? It was granted in fief to two brothers Von Leo, who turned it into a robbers’ nest, so that the neighbourhood rose in arms in 1210 and stormed it. Then the bishops confided it to the Herren von Metz, and they carried on a feud with their overlord, the bishop.

At last it came to the Counts von Firmian, who, in 1480, built a more convenient mansion at the foot of the cliff, and turned the old castle into a hermitage.

The castle, that is in a fair condition, occupies a broad cleft in the rock, only accessible by a narrow path cut in the rocks on the west side. It consists of an outer court and an inner court, protected on the side of the precipice by a stout wall, behind which were originally chambers, as windows in the wall and beamholes show to have been the case. There is a donjon that reaches to the overhanging rock and a ruinous chapel with apsidal east end. The cleft runs further east, but is blocked with a wall.

Another cliff castle, of which Merian, in his Topographia, 1640-88, gave a picture to arouse interest and wonder, is that of Covolo, at one time in Tirol, now over the Italian border. His description of it is as little accurate as his illustration. As a matter of fact, although it is certainly a cliff castle, constructed in a cave, it is accessible on foot, and it is by no means necessary to be conveyed to it by a windlass. Indeed it would not be easy to erect a crane on the platform of the castle that could haul up men and provisions from below.

A more famous fortress in a cave is that of Schallaun in the Puxerloch. Here is a grotto in the face of the precipice, 75 feet above the valley. The cliff itself is 4500 feet high. The castle consists of two stages, the outer court is at a lower level than the face of the cliff, and the opening of the grotto. Entrance was obtained through this outer court that was reached by a path cut in the rock, and from it by a stair also rock-hewn. A second court was reached, above this was again a third within the cave. On the right hand the cave branches out into a long inner cleft that was closed at one time by a door, and was probably used as a cellar. The main cavern also runs by a narrow passage deep into the heart of the rock to a pool of crystal clear water, never failing. The main building–hardly a donjon, was occupied till late in last century by an old mason who patched it up and made it habitable. At a little distance to the east is a smaller cave also with a wall in front of it, and this is said by the peasants to have been the kitchen of the castle, and to have been reached by a wooden gallery from the main building. According to tradition, Schallaun derives its name from Chalons. In the time of Charlemagne a knight of Chalons named Charlot eloped with a Saxon princess, and took refuge in this cave. It became a den of thieves, and Margaret Maultasch (Pouchmouth) took and dismantled it. According to another story the castle served as the haunt of a shadowless man. Unlike Camizzo’s hero, he had not sold his shade to the devil, but by a lapse of nature had been born without one. This proved to him so distressing, and so completely interfered with his matrimonial prospects that he took refuge in the Puxerloch, where he was in shadow all day, and his peculiarity could not be noticed; he issued from it only on moonless nights, on one of which he carried off a peasant maid–and she never knew that he was shadowless, for he never allowed her to see his deficiency. Historically very little is known of the Schallaun castle, which is to its advantage, as when these castles are mentioned in chronicles, it is to record some deed of violence done by the occupants. In 1472 it belonged to the knightly family of Sauran, but they sold it. It is now the possession of the Ritter von Franckh. [Footnote: In “Unser Vaterland, Steiermark,” Stuttgart, n.d., p. 47, is a representation of the Puxerloch, but it resembles much more Kronmetz. It gives towers and walls and gates that do not exist in the Puxerloch.]

Perhaps the nearest approach to the Puxerloch castle in France is the Roc de Cuze near Neussargues in Cantal. In the face of the cliff is a cave that has been converted into a castle, a wall closes the mouth, and there is a tower. Another fortress completely carved out of the rock is at Roqueville.

I will now deal with the third class, rock towns and castles combined. And I can afford space to treat of but one out of the many that would enter more or less into the category.

Although Nottingham town does not occupy the top of a rock, its castle that does cannot be passed by without notice, because that rock is perforated with galleries and has in it a subterranean chapel.

The castle, now bereft of its ancient splendour, of its coronet of towers, was built by William the Conqueror on the summit of a precipitous height rising above the river Leen. It was dismantled by Cromwell, and what remained was pulled down by the Duke of Newcastle, who erected on its site the uninteresting and unpicturesque mansion that now exists.

The castle was long considered impregnable; and to it Queen Isabel fled with Sir Roger Mortimer, whom she had created Earl of March, and she held it with a guard of one hundred and eighty knights. King Edward III with a small retinue occupied the town. Every night the gates of the fortress were locked and the keys delivered to the Queen, who slept with them under her pillow. Sir William Montacute, with the sanction of the young king, summoned to his aid several nobles on whose fidelity he could depend, and obtained Edward’s warrant for the apprehension of the Earl of March. The plot was now ripe for execution. For a time, however, the inaccessible nature of the castle rock, and the vigilance with which the gates were guarded, appeared to present an insuperable obstacle to the accomplishment of their designs. However, Sir William Eland, Constable of the Castle, was won over, and he agreed to admit the conspirators. In the words of an old chronicler, the Constable said to Montacute, “Sir, woll ye unterstande that the yats (gates) of the castell both loken with lokys, and Queen Isabell sent hidder by night for the kayes thereof, and they be layde under the chemsell of her beddis-hede unto the morrow … but yet I know another weye by an aley that stretchith out of the ward, under the earthe into the castell, which aley Queen Isabell ne none of her meayne, ne the Mortimer, ne none of his companye knoweth it not, and so I shall lede you through the aley, and so ye shall come into the castell without spyes of any man that bith your enemies.” On the night of October 19, 1340, Edward and his loyal associates before midnight were guided through the subterranean passage by Eland, and burst into the room where the Earl of March was engaged in council with the Bishop of Lincoln and others of his friends. Sir Hugh Trumpington, Steward of the Household, a creature of Mortimer, attempting to oppose their entrance, was slain. The Earl himself was seized, in spite of the entreaties of Isabel, who, hearing the tumult, rushed from her chamber, crying “Fair son, spare my gentle Mortimer!” Both were secured. The next day, Edward announced that he had assumed the government, and summoned a Parliament to meet at Westminster on the 26th November. No sooner had this Parliament met than a bill of impeachment was presented against Mortimer. The peers found all the charges brought against him to be “notorously true, known to them, and all the people.” And he was sentenced to be drawn and hanged as a traitor. Mortimer was executed at Tyburn, and the Queen Mother was sent under ward to the manor of Rising. The passage by which the conspirators entered, and by which the Earl was conveyed away, goes by the name of Mortimer’s Hole to the present day.

[Illustration: A PORTION OF THE ROCK MONASTERY, NOTTINGHAM PARK]. If I were to attempt to deal with castles and towns on rocky heights I would have to fill pages with descriptions of Capdenac, Najarc, Minerve, Les Baux, San Marino, San Leo, and many another, but inasmuch as they are _on_ rocks instead of being _in_ rocks, I must pass them over.

A fourth class of cliff castle, neither the habitation of a _routier_ nor the residence of a feudal seigneur, is that which commands an important ford, or the road or waterway to a town, and which was, in point of fact, an outpost of the garrison.

I can describe but a few.

The Emperor Honorius had conceded to the Visigoths all that portion of Gaul that lay between the Loire and the Pyrenees. The Visigoths were Arians. Far from imitating the Romans, who respected the religion of the vanquished, and cared only that the peoples annexed to the Empire should submit to their administrative and military organisation, the Visigoths sought to impose Arianism on the nations over whom they exercised dominion. The bishops and priests protested energetically against this tyranny, and the Visigoths sought to break their resistance by persecution and exile, but gained nothing thereby save bitter hostility. In the year 511 an event took place that gave to the Aquitanians their religious liberty. The Franks were their deliverers.

Clovis, who coveted the rich provinces of the South, profited by the religious antagonism existing between the Aquitanians and the Goths to gain the confidence of the bishops to whom he promised the destruction of Arian supremacy. And as he had obtained the strongest and most numerous adhesions in Poitou he resolved there to strike a decisive blow.

He prepared his expedition with such secrecy and moved with such celerity that Alaric II., King of the Visigoths, did not become aware of his peril till the army of Clovis was on the confines of his realm. He threw himself into Poitiers, and assembled all the forces he was able to call together. Clovis crossed the Loire at Tours, and directed his march towards Poitiers; he passed over the Creusse at Port de Pilles, and reached the Vienne. The season was the end of September, and there had been so much and such continuous rain that the river was swollen, and he could not cross. Accordingly he and his army ascended it on the right bank seeking for a ford.

He reached Chauvigny, where was a ford, but this was now found impracticable. On the left hand of the present road to Lussac-le- Chateau is a stony, narrow, waterless valley, up which formerly ran the old Roman highway. At the 21/2 kilometre stone is a dense thicket of oak coppice, clothing the steep side of the valley. By scrambling down this, clinging to the oak-branches, one reaches a bluff of chalk rock, hollowed out by Nature at the foot to the depth of 10 feet, and running horizontally to the length of from 32 to 34 feet, and terminating in a natural barrier of rock. It contracts in one place so as to form two chambers. Now this gallery is closed towards the valley by a screen of six huge slabs 8 and 9 feet long, 8 and 9 feet high, and 4 feet thick. They have apparently been slung down from above, and caught and planted so as to wall up the open side of the recess. And at the north end another block, now broken, was set at right angles so as to half close the gallery at the end, leaving a doorway for access to the interior. The attempt to plant these huge slabs on a steep slope was not in every case successful, for a couple slid down the incline, but these served to form a heel-catch to those who did remain erect. Local antiquaries pronounce this to be a fortified cave, unique of its kind, devised to protect the road to Lussac, at the strategical point where it could best be defended. I have myself no manner of doubt that it was a so- called demi-dolmen, a tribal ossuary of neolithic man. Not only is it quite in character with his megalithic remains scattered over the country, but treasure-seekers who in digging displaced and brought down one of the side slabs found two diorite axes, one of which I was fortunate enough to secure. Persons in Gaulish or post-Roman times would not have dreamed of going to the enormous labour and attempting the difficult task of forming the sides with stone slabs, but would have closed the recess with a wall. The cave goes by the name of La Grotte de Jioux (of Jove) which in itself hints its remote antiquity.

[Illustration: THE RUINED MONASTERY IN THE ROCKS, NOTTINGHAM PARK. The monastery commonly called Papists’ Holes, abandoned at the Dissolution, was finally wrecked by the Roundheads in the Civil Wars.]

But, although I do not believe that this cave was constructed as a military vidette and guard-house, I have no doubt whatever that it may have been so used, and it is very probable that at this point took place the first brush of Clovis and his Franks with the enemy, for the valley bears the name of Le Vallon des Goths. Alaric knew, what Clovis did not, that there was a ford at Lussac, and if he had any military foresight, he would plant a body of men across the road in the throat of the valley to intercept the Franks on their way. As it was, the Franks pushed on, and seeing a deer wade across the river at Lussac, raised exultant shouts, plunged into the Vienne, and crossed. The result was the battle of Voulon, in which the Arian Goths were defeated, and their empire broken down. [Footnote: This decisive battle is located at Vouille to the north-west of Poitiers; but local historians are convinced that the site was Voulon to the south of Poitiers. See Thibaudeau, _Abrege de l’Histoire de Poitou_, Niort, 1889.] The Grotto of Jioux was but an accidental outpost, but those I am about to describe were artificially contrived for that purpose.

In the broad valley of Le Loir below Vendome, the great elevated chalk plateau of Beauce has been cut through, leaving precipitous white sides. At one point a buttress of rock has been thrown forward that dominates the road and also the ford over the river. Its importance was so obvious that it was seized upon in the Middle Ages and converted into a fortress. The place is called Le Gue du Loir. Not far off is the Chateau of Bonnaventure, where Antoine de Bourbon idled away his time drinking Surene wine, and carrying on an intrigue with a wench at le Gue, whilst his wife, Jeanne d’Albret, was sending gangs of bandits throughout her own and his territories to plunder, burn, and murder in the name of religion. But Antoine cared for none of these things. At Bonnaventure he composed the song:–

Si le roi m’avait donne
Paris, sa grande ville,
Et qu’il me fallait quiter
L’amour de ma mie,
Je dirai au roi Henri (III.) Reprenez votre Paris,
J’aime mieux ma mie
Au Gue,
J’aime mieux ma mie.

Moliere introduced a couplet of this lay into his Alceste.

[ILLUSTRATION: LA ROCHE CORAIL. A cave fortress commanding the river Charante. The large opening is formed by breaking away a doorway and windows; the doorway communicated with a wooden balcony leading to other chambers in the rock.]

[ILLUSTRATION: THE FIRST HALL, LA ROCHE CORAIL. Windows and slots for discharging missiles, and for spearing those attempting to attack the garrison in its stronghold.]

The rock has been excavated throughout, and in places built into, and on to. Two flights of steps cut in the cliff give access to the main portion of the castle. That on the right leads first of all to the Governor’s room, hewn out of a projecting portion of the rock floored with tiles, with a good fireplace and a broad window, commanding the Loir and allowing the sun to flood the room. The opening for the window formerly contained a casement. There is a recess for a bed, and there are in the sides numerous cupboards and other excavations for various purposes. This chamber is entered through that of the sentinel, which was also furnished with a fireplace. The stair leads further up to a large hall artificially carved out of the chalk, but not wholly, for there had been originally a natural cavern of small dimensions, which had a gaping opening. This opening had been walled up with battlements and loopholes, but the old woman to whom the rock or this portion of the rock belongs, and who is a cave-dweller at its foot, has demolished the wall to breast-height, so as to let the sun and air pour in, for she uses the cave as a drying place for her wash. From this hall or guard-room two staircases cut in the rock lead to other chambers also rock-hewn higher up.

The second main stair outside gives access to a second series of chambers.

Unfortunately, some rather lofty modern buildings have been erected in front of this cliff castle, so as to render it impossible to make of it an effective sketch or to take a satisfactory photograph.

Still more interesting is La Roche Corail below Angouleme on the river Charente, opposite Nersac and the confluence of the Boeme with the Charente. Where is now a bridge was formerly a ford. The castle of Nersac commanded one side of the valley, and La Roche Corail the other. This cliff castle was at one time very extensive. The rock rises from a terrace partly natural and partly artificial, on which a comparatively modern chateau has been erected that masks the rock-face. But on entering the court behind the chateau the bare cliff is seen with a yawning opening halfway up, and indentations in the wall of rock show that at one time there were hanging barbacans and chambers suspended before the rock as well as others hewn out of it.

To reach the interior it is necessary to enter a grange that has been built at right angles to the rock, and in it to mount a ladder to another granary that occupies a floor of solid rock. Thence a second ladder leads into the caves. Formerly, however, the ascent was made by steps cut in the side of the cliff, and openings from within enabled the garrison with pikes to precipitate below any who were daring enough to venture up the steps uninvited.

The ladder gives admission through a broken door cut in the rock into a long vaulted hall, that was formerly floored across so as to convert it into two storeys. [Footnote: Actually the doorway and three lower openings look into the dark granary. In the illustration I have shown them as letting light in, as intended originally.] The lower storey or basement opens on the left-hand side into a second cave, and the upper by a passage cut in the rock communicated with another range of chambers looking out of the face of the crag by artificial windows. Immediately in front of one entering the hall is the portal of admission to another very large hall that had originally well-shaped windows, and a door leading on to the wooden balcony, but this has all been broken away forming the ragged opening seen from below.

In 1534 Calvin was staying in the adjoining parish of S. Saturnin with a canon of the cathedral of Angouleme, who had a good library, and was disposed to favour him. The house is pointed out, but it has been rebuilt or altered. A cavern there is also shown to which Calvin retired to meditate on his Reform. It is now a cellar full of casks, wheelbarrows, and rubbish. It was never a very pleasing resort, and he preferred to come to La Roche Corail where, in the cavern just described, he had more space, and less likelihood of being disturbed. And here it was that he wrote his “Institute of the Christian Religion.” One is disposed to rest here for awhile and muse, and consider what a manufactory of explosives this cavern was. From this vaulted chamber was launched that doctrine which was to wreck nearly every church in France and drench the soil in blood. I do not in the least suppose that Calvin saw any beauty in the view through the gap in the rock–not in the island below with its poplars and willows whose branches trail in the bottle-green waters of the Charente–not in the lush meadows with the yellow flags fluttering by the waterside–not in the grey towers of Nersac castle and church rising above dark woods, flushed orange in the setting sun against a purple sky. I do not suppose that he noticed the scent of the wallflowers growing out of every fissure wafted in on the summer air. There was logic thought in his head, but no poetry in his heart, no sweetness in his soul. He looked across in the direction of Angouleme, and wished he had a ladder and a hammer that he might smash the serene face of the Saviour looking down on the city from the western gable of the cathedral. Five and twenty years must elapse before that wondrous domed pile was to be wrecked by the Huguenots, his disciples. But here it was, in this cavern, that he elaborated his system of reform, treating Christianity as a French peasant treats an oak tree, pollarding it, and lopping off every lateral, natural outgrowth. Assuredly, many a volatile superstition had lodged in its branches, and many a gross abuse couched under its shadow. But these might have been scared away without mutilating the tree till it was reduced to a stump. He desired, doubtless, to bring back the Church to the condition in which he supposed it had been when born. But one cannot reduce an adult to the simplicity and innocence of childhood by stripping off all his clothes, and denying him the conventional figleaf.

[Illustration: LES ROCHES. Houses built into and against the rocks.]

[Illustration: GUE DU LOIR. Remains of a cliff-fortress commanding the approach to Vendome. But a small portion of this castle is visible in this plate.]

Having shattered the Catholic faith by the crowbar of his logic, he sought to build up a grotto out of its fragments, and call it a church. His “Institute of the Christian Religion” was published the following year. It produced the desired effect at once. There were many reasons why it should. Earnest and devout souls were troubled at the sight of a Christianity that was so in name but had little Christianity in its practice. They felt that the Church had drifted far out of its way and had grounded on quicksands, and they thought that the sole way of saving the hulk was to cast all its precious lading into the sea. Christ’s Church had been founded on a rock, it had withstood the rain and the flood, but was crumbling down with dry rot. Calvin would have neither the rock nor the sand. Into the mud he drove the piles by the strokes of his genius, on which to erect the platform that was to uphold the conventicle of his followers, and if that did not stand, it would at least mark its site by their dejections. And dejections there are everywhere, where the Calvinists were, wrecked churches, mutilated monuments, broken glass, and shattered sculpture. Ruskin, remarking on some delicate carving at Lyons, under a pedestal, observes that the mediaeval sculptors exhibited absolute confidence in the public, in placing their tenderest work within reach of a schoolboy’s hand. Such, however, was the love of the beautiful generally diffused, that objects of art were safe from destruction or defacement. But with the outburst of Calvinism all those affected were inflamed with a positive hatred of the beautiful in art. If this had been confined to the destruction of images to which idolatrous worship was offered, it would be explicable and justifiable, but it extended to the most innocuous objects. Delicate tracery such as adorns the west front of the church of Vendome, a lace-work of beautiful sculpture representing trailing roses and vines, birds and reptiles, was ruthlessly hacked. Churches, cathedrals, were blown up with gunpowder–such was the fate of the cathedrals of Montauban, Perigueux, and Orleans. Beza himself rolled the barrels of gunpowder to explode under the great piers that sustained the central tower of Orleans. [Footnote: In 1769 Montgomery was preparing to blow up the beautiful Cathedral of Condon, only consecrated thirty-eight years before, but accepted as its ransom from the inhabitants the sum of 30,000 livres.]

The cry for reform was loud, and rang from every quarter of Europe except from the Vatican, where the Pope, like Dame Partington with her mop, thought to stay its progress. The grandsons of the old _routiers_ cried fie on this quiet life, and snuffed the air for rapine. The nobility were out of pocket and out at elbows, and looked with avaricious eyes on the fair and broad lands of the Church, and their fingers itched to be groping in her treasury, and they hoped to patch their jerkins with her costly vestments. Court favourites were abbots _in commendam_, held prebendaries, without being in holy orders, sixfold pluralists abounded, ecclesiastical hippopotami, that might fairly be hunted. All kinds of interests were enlisted against the Church, good and bad, sincere and hypocritical, only a spokesman was needed, a trumpet sound to call to the battle, and Calvin proved the spokesman, and his “Institute” was the trumpet note.

An outpost station that is curious and puzzling is La Rochebrune on the Dronne, below Brantome. The road to Bourdeilles and Perigueux runs immediately below a chain of very fine chalk cliffs, and there is but just space for it between the steep slope below them and the river. At one point about a mile and a half below Brantome, the cliff is broken through, where a lateral valley opens on that of the Dronne: here there is a _talus_ overgrown with box and juniper leading up to a rock, of inconsiderable height, with some holes in it, overhanging, and capped with brushwood that at one time also covered the slope below the rock.

By the roadside, immediately under this rock, is the opening into a cave that admits into another much larger, and lighted from above, and in which at the extremity is a passage leading upwards, now choked with earth and stone.

The original entrance to the cave has been destroyed through the widening of the highroad, so that it is now impossible to tell whether it was effectually concealed or whether precautions had been taken for its defence.

At one spot only in the rocks above is there a gap, and through that gap, probably once walled up, access is obtained into a sort of circular courtyard, where there are traces of a fireplace, and where is a stone bench. From this court a spiral staircase, rock-hewn, leads to the platform on top of the rocks. In the wall on the right of the court is a doorway neatly cut in the chalk, square-headed and adapted for a framed door that could be strongly barricaded. Immediately within is a quadrangular pit sunk in the floor, now choked with stones. This, in such a position, could not be a silo, it probably was the opening through which those who entered the cave from below, by the road, made their way into the interior of the fortress. Stepping over this pit one enters a hall with six large round holes cut in the roof communicating with an upper chamber, and receiving a borrowed light through them. A spiral staircase at the side furnished with _meurtrieres_ through which the besieged could stab at their enemies, leads to the upper hall or chamber, which is lighted by two rude windows, one high up, the other low down, and with a bench recess opposite them. But the strange and perplexing feature of this room is that it has in the floor eight round holes, each large enough to let a man fall through. Six communicate with the chamber below, but the other two open under the overhanging cornice, outside the castle. One of the holes–opening into the nether chamber, is precisely where would rest the feet of men seated on the bench. There is no trace of a groove to receive covers to these holes.

It has been conjectured that this strange construction was a granary, in which the peasants concealed their corn; but there are difficulties in accepting this theory. The Rochebrune commands the road, and a hiding place would assuredly be located in the depths of a wood, away from a highroad, in some secluded valley. It has been conjectured that the holes served for discharging the corn into the lower chamber. But why carry it by a narrow winding stair aloft to pour it down into a nether cave, when the latter, the supposed granary, itself was at once accessible through the doorway? Moreover, two of the holes open outwards, and not into the supposed store-chamber. It may be said that these were for hauling up the sacks of corn, but the incline on which they open is so steep, that it would be a prodigious waste of labour to drag the corn up under the cornice in which they are, whereas the other ascent is easy. The precautions taken to provide means of stabbing at an assailant point to this having been a fortress. My interpretation of the puzzle is this: first, that the left hand stair leading to the summit of the crag enabled one of the defenders to light a beacon, so as to warn the people of Brantome when danger threatened; that next, the garrison, which could not have comprised more than five or six men, as Rochebrune is very small, retired within the rock. If this courtyard were invaded, they escaped into the lower chamber and barred the door, and were able to thrust at assailants through the slots. But if the door yielded they would scramble up the rock stair into the upper apartment, and as the enemy broke into the lower cavern, they stabbed and thrust at them through the six holes in the floor. Should their position be rendered untenable, they could slip through the two holes that opened outwards, into the brushwood and so effect their escape; for these holes would not be perceived, or their purpose understood by besiegers unfamiliar with the castle.

Usually, over the floor, riddled like a colander, planks were laid, that on emergency could be turned up on their sides. I may add that the windows opening outwards are purposely so inartificially made that no one passing along the road underneath would suspect that there was a fortress above his head. He would certainly suppose that these holes were natural, such as are commonly found in the chalk cliffs. In fact the first time I visited Brantome, and walked down the river to Bourdeilles, I passed this rock and entertained no suspicion that it contained anything remarkable, that it was as a matter of fact, a mere shell, with all the artificial work within.

Why was it that every city–nay, every little town–had to be not only walled about but to have its outposts? Because France was not a nation, only a congeries of individualities. As Michelet says of the fourteenth century: “The kingdom was powerless, dying, losing self-consciousness, prostrate as a corpse. Gangrene had set in, maggots swarmed, I mean the brigands, English and Navarese. All this rottenness isolated, detached the members of the poor body from one another. One talks of the Kingdom, but there were no States General, nothing at all general, no intercommunication, the roads were in the power of cut-throats. The fields were all battlefields, war was everywhere, and none could distinguish friend from foe.”

How needful these outposts were may be judged from what Froissart says: “Rogues took advantage of such times (of truce), and robbed both towns and castles; so that some of them, becoming rich, constituted themselves captains of bands of thieves; there were among them those worth forty thousand crowns. Their method was to mark out particular towns or castles, a day or two’s journey from each other; then they collected twenty or thirty robbers, and travelling through by-roads in the night-time, about daybreak entered the town or castle they had fixed upon, and set one of the houses on fire. When the inhabitants perceived it they thought it had been a body of soldiers sent to destroy them, and took to their heels as fast as they could” (Bk. i., c. 147).

Passing on from the outposts to towns, or defences to highways, we must glance at such as guard the approaches to countries, or such as Gibraltar that commands the great waterway between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Gibraltar is certainly the most complete and marvellous of all cliff castles. This is too well known to English travellers to need description here.

The French Gibraltar, Urdos, commands one of the passes through the Pyrenees. It is hewn out of the mountain in a buttress of rock, and rises in stages from the road to the height of 500 feet. Externally the mountain looks harmless enough. A cave opens here, and a rift there, and a few streaks of masonry may be noticed, but actually the mountain is riddled with galleries, batteries, and long flights of stairs, and hollowed out for ammunition and other stores; and it is capable of containing a garrison of three thousand men.

Faron also, 1660 feet high, with its magnificent precipices of salmon- coloured limestone, commanding both the harbour of Toulon and the Bay of Hyeres, is capped with fortifications and pierced with batteries, casemates, and chambers for military stores, a position made by Nature and utilised with supreme skill. Nor must the chain of rock-forts of Campi delle Alte and of Mont Agel above Monaco, dominating the Corniche road be forgotten, ready to drop bombs amidst an army from Italy venturing along that splendid road, nor must Besancon be forgotten, occupying its inaccessible rock–inaccessible that is, to an enemy.

“Oppidum maximum Sequanorum,” as Caesar described it in his day; “natura loci sic muniebatur ut magnam ad ducendum bellum daret facultatem.”

Ehrenbreitstein faces the opening of the Moselle into the Rhine; and Frankenfeste holds the key of the Brennerpass; and Dover Castle commands the strait at its narrowest. Koenigstein crowning a precipitous rock 748 feet above the Elbe, though in Saxony is garrisoned by Prussians, guards the pass down the river from Bohemia; and Peterwardein is a rock-built fortress, that has been called the Ehrenbreitstein and Gibraltar of the Danube. What are these frontier fortresses but the same on an extensive scale as the Gue du Loir, the Roche Corail, and the Rochebrune? In the Middle Ages every city, every little town had to have its outposts and watch-tower on the look-out for the enemy, and to break the first impetus of an attack. But now it is not the town but the nation that has to gird itself about with frontier fortresses.

CHAPTER VII

SUBTERRANEAN CHURCHES

When the periods of persecution of the early Christians had come to an end, and they were able in security to assemble for worship, two distinct types of Church contested for the supremacy–the Basilican and the Catacumbal.

Even during the times before Constantine, when persecution was in abeyance, Christians had been accustomed to gather together for the Divine mysteries in private houses. But after that Christianity was recognised and favoured, the wealthy and noble citizens of Rome, Italy, and Africa, who had become Christians, made over their stately reception halls, or basilicas, to be converted into churches. These basilicas, attached to most palaces, were halls comprising usually a nave with side aisles separated from the nave by ranges of columns, and an apse at the extremity of the nave in which the master of the house was wont to sit to receive his clients and his guests. This is the type upon which cathedral and parish churches in east and west are modelled. But the early Christians had become accustomed in times of danger to resort to the subterranean chapels in the Catacombs. The poorer members doubtless preferred these dingy meeting-places to the lordly halls of the nobles, and the slaves could not feel their equality with their masters under the same roof where they had served, and been whipped, as in the Catacombs, where all were one in fear of their lives and in the darkness that, buried distinction. Moreover, the cult of the martyrs had grown to a passion, and it had become customary to commemorate their nativities as it was called, _i.e._ the anniversaries of their deaths, at their tombs in the Catacombs. It was there that the faithful habitually prayed, it was near the bones of the Saints that it was believed special sanctity dwelt, and that prayers were most effectually answered through their intercession; and it was there, _ad martyres_, that they themselves purposed to be laid in expectation of the Resurrection.

In Rome, the tombs of the martyrs continued to enjoy popular favour, and to attract crowds, till the incursion of the Lombards, when, to save the relics of the Saints from profanation, they were transferred to the basilicas within the walls, whereupon the Catacombs ceased to interest the faithful, that were neglected and allowed to fall into oblivion. Gaul rejoiced in having had its soil watered with the blood of many witnesses to the Faith, consequently it had numerous hypogee chapels, and when, to the Martyrs were added hermits, abbots, bishops, devout women, and confessors of all descriptions, their underground tombs became extraordinarily numerous, and were resorted to with great devotion. Such was the origin of the crypts found in profusion in France, not under cathedrals only, but under parish and monastic churches as well. The whole population having become Christian, the resort to these subterranean chapels became so great as to cause inconvenience, and the bishops proceeded to “elevate” “illate” and “translate” the bones of the saints from their original resting-places to the basilicas above ground. Thereupon the crypts lost most of their attraction, and the worshippers gathered about the altars in the upper churches to which the bones had been transferred.

In Britain, where there were no early martyrs save Alban at Verulam, and Julius and Aaron at Caerleon, the type of church from the beginning was basilican, as we may see by that unearthed at Silchester, and that of S. Martin at Canterbury.

It was the same in Germany and throughout Northern Europe.

John and Paul were chamberlains to the Princess Constantia. They had in some way incurred the anger of the Emperor Julian, and he sent orders for their despatch in their own house on the Coelian hill. They were accordingly executed in their bath, and were buried in the cellar under their mansion. At once a rush of the devout of Rome took place to the Coelian to invoke the aid of these new martyrs. The visitors picked off the plaster, scribbled their names on the walls, applied kerchiefs to the tomb, and collected the dust, stained with the blood of the chamberlains. Pope Hadrian IV., 1158, built a basilica on top of the house, driving the foundations through it, and transferred to this upper church the bones of SS. John and Paul. At once the stream of devotion was deflected from the substructure to the superstructure, and the former was filled up with earth and totally abandoned.

Herbert Spencer has established in his “Principles of Sociology” that the mausoleum was the egg out of which the temple was evolved. The first cave-dwellers buried their dead in the grottoes in which they had lived, and themselves moved into others. They periodically revisited the sepulchres to bring offerings to the dead. In time the deceased ancestor became invested by the imagination of his descendants with supernatural powers, and ascended from stage to stage till he was exalted into a deity. Thenceforth his cave became a temple. Ferguson, writing of the Chaldaean temples, and indicating their resemblance to tombs says, “The most celebrated example of this form is as often called (by ancient writers) the tomb or the temple of Belus, and among a Turanian people the tomb and the temple may be considered as one and the same thing.” [Footnote: Clement of Alexandria (Exhort. to the Heathen) had already said, “Temples were originally Tombs.” _Cf_. also Eusebius (Praep. Evangelica ii. 6) heads the chapter, “The Temples of the Gods that are none other than Tombs.”]

In the primitive Church there were, as we have seen, churches which had no connection whatever with sepulchres, and chapels underground that contained tombs. The current of popular feeling set so strongly towards the latter that the Popes yielded to it, as did also the Bishops, and converted every basilica into a mausoleum by the transfer to it of the bones of a saint.

But that was not all. The Holy Mysteries had been celebrated in private houses and basilicas on wooden tables, sometimes square, but often round, and with three legs. An illustration is in the cemetery of S. Calixtus, of the latter half of the second century, where a priest is represented celebrating at what looks like a modern tea-table. According to William of Malmesbury, S. Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester (1062-1095), destroyed the wooden altars in his diocese, which had been universal in England, _altarea lignea jam inde a priscis diebus in Anglia_. But with the transformation of the basilica into a mausoleum, the altar was also transformed into a sepulchre. If it did not contain the entire body of a saint, it had a hole cut in it to receive a box containing relics; and the Roman pontifical and liturgy were altered in accordance with this. The Bishop on consecrating an altar was to exact that it should contain relics, and the priest on approaching it was required to invoke the saints whose bones were stored in it. [Footnote: Pontifex accepta mitra, intigit policem dextrae manus in sanctum Chrisma et cum eo signat confessionem, id est sepulchrum altaris, in quo reliquiae deponendae. _Pont. Roman._ The priest on ascending to the altar kisses it, and refers to the relics contained in it. “Oramus te, Domine, per merita sanctorum tuorum quorum reliquiae hic sunt–ut indulgere digneris omnia peccata mea.”] The cavity in the slab to contain the relics was liturgically entitled _sepulchrum_. The change from a table to a tomb involved a change of material from wood to stone.

The dedication of a church to a saint in the Latin Church implies the presence in the sepulchre of the altar of the relics of that saint. From the Roman point of view, a dedication without the relic is unmeaning. Among the Celts this was unknown, with them a church took its name after its founder, and the founder of a church dedicated it by a partial fast of forty days, and prayer and vigil on the spot. The early basilicas of Rome also took their titles from the families that surrendered their halls for Christian worship. The introduction of dedication to deceased saints marks unmistakably the transformation of a church from a basilica to a mausoleum.

It is certainly remarkable that whereas in Paganism the identification of the tomb with the temple passed away, and the temple acquired independence of such association, in the Latin Church the reverse took place; there the church unassociated with a tomb–a basilica in fact– was converted into a sepulchral monument.

The reverence of the early pontiffs shrank from dismembering the bodies of the saints. To Queen Theodelinda Pope Gregory I. would accord only oil that had burnt in the lamps at their tombs, or ribbons that had touched them. Gregory V., in 594, wrote to Constantia Augusta, who had built a church in honour of S. Paul, and craved a portion of his body: “Dear lady, know that the Romans when they give relics of the saints are not accustomed to parcel up their bodies, they send no more than a veil that has touched them.” [Footnote: Baronius, _Hierothonie de J. C._, Paris, 1630, p. 173.]

But when the Latin Church was constrained by the force of popular prejudice to transform all her sacred temples into sepulchral churches, there was no help for it; the bodies of the saints had to be torn in pieces for distribution. A toe, a finger was taken off, legs and arms were amputated, the vertebrae of the spine were dispersed over Christendom, the teeth were wrenched out of the jaws, the hair plucked from head and chin, moisture exuding from the body was carefully cherished, and bones were rasped to furnish a little sacred phosphate of lime to some church clamorous to be consecrated.

A plateau to the south of Poitiers had long borne the name of Chiron Martyrs. Chiron means a heap of stones, but why the epithet of Martyrs attached to the heaps of stones there nobody knew. The old Roman road leading to and athwart it was named La Route des Martyrs, also for no known reason. But in October 1878 the plateau was being levelled by the military authorities, when it was discovered that the stones were actually broken tombs, and that they were clearing a pagan Necropolis. Soon they came on a portion where were sarcophagi orientated and crowded thickly about a subterranean building. The distinguished antiquary, Le Pere de la Croix, now undertook the investigation, and discovered that these latter were the tombs of Christians, and that they surrounded a hypogee Martyrium. This was excavated and proved to be a chapel erected over the bodies of certain martyrs of Poitiers, of whom no records had been preserved, or at all events remained, whose very existence was unknown; also, that it had been constructed by an abbot Mellebaudes at the end of the sixth or beginning of the seventh century. It contained an altar built up of stone, plastered over and painted, measuring at the base 2 feet 8-1/2 inches by 2 feet 2 inches and 3 feet 7 inches high. Also sarcophagi for the bodies of the martyrs there found, also one that Mellebaudes had prepared for himself. In the floor were many graves, possibly of his kinsfolk. Numerous inscriptions in barbarous Latin, some paintings and carvings, were also found. Among the latter a rude sculpture represented two of the martyrs, Hilarius and Sosthenes, who had been crucified. A bracelet of amber and coloured glass beads, amber ear-rings, and bronze ornaments were also discovered.

[Illustration: Plan of the Martyrium.

1-4. Stone sarcophagi.
5, 6, 9, 10, 14. Graves sunk in the rock, covered with flat slabs, containing bones.
8. Pit covered with a carved slab.
11, 13. Children’s graves covered with carved slabs brought from elsewhere.
12. Pit containing no bones.

A. Altar.
B. Arcosolium containing the sarcophagus with the bones of the martyrs.
C. The sculpture of the crucified saints. D. Doorway.
F.F. Pilasters.
O.O. Broken pilasters.
G.G. Benches.
H. Sarcophagus of Mellebaudes.
E. East window.]

Mellebaudes certainly built his mausoleum where there had been one earlier, that had become completely ruinous, for he complains that he had not been able to recover all the bones of the martyrs that had been laid in it. This destruction had probably been effected by the Visigoths, and the building by Mellebaudes took place some time after the defeat and expulsion of these Arians in 507. The final ruin of the Martyrium he raised may have been the work of the Saracens in 732. [Footnote: For full account with plates see P. Camille de la Croix, _S. J. Hypogee Martyrium de Poitiers, Paris, 1883._]

The hypogee was sunk nine feet in the rock, but the roof must have shown above ground. A window was to the east. S. Avitus in the sixth century speaks of the wondrous skill of architects in his day, who contrived to introduce daylight into the crypts. It is evident that no glass was inserted in the window, although the use of glass for windows was becoming general in the sixth century; and Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, died 609, and Gregory, Bishop of Tours, died 595, both speak in terms of admiration of the glazing of windows for churches. It may well be understood that in the mind of the people long after the stream of public devotion had been directed to the churches above ground, a liking for those that are excavated underground should remain. Indeed, it is not extinct yet, as any one may see who visits the church of Ste. Croix at Poitiers, or S. Eutrope at Saintes, or S. Martin at Tours, to mention but three out of many. In all these are mere empty tombs, yet they are the resort of numerous devotees. The darkness, the mystery of these subterranean sanctuaries, impressed the imagination. Accordingly we find, especially in France, many cave-churches. Indeed they are so numerous that I can afford space to describe but a couple of the largest. Many are small, mere chapels, and shall be dealt with under the heading of hermitages.

[ILLUSTRATION: INTERIOR OF THE MONOLITHIC CHURCH OF S. EMILION, DORDOGNE. Height from the floor, sixty feet. It is no longer used for divine worship.]

Few scenes of quiet landscape can surpass that of the valley of the Dordogne from the road between Sauveterre and Libourne. It broke on me upon a breezy spring morning. The Dordogne, broad and blue, swept through the wide valley between banks dense with poplar and osier. The whole country wore a smiling aspect; the houses, built of freestone, looked fresh and comfortable, and were surrounded by their gardens. The maize-fields were as a rippling green sea. The flax-fields in bloom were sheets of the tenderest blue, and those of the _Trifolium incarnatum_ red as blood, and the road was like a white ribbon binding together a variegated wreath. To the north of the Dordogne rose a grey cluster of buildings, the old town of S. Emilion, famous for its wine. It occupies the edge of a plateau. The only business pursued therein is the making of wine and of macaroons.

The entrance to S. Emilion is not striking. None of its buildings, except the keep of its castle are visible. The road dives into a grove of acacias, and then enters the town by a narrow street. The acacias were a mass of pink and white blossom, exhaling a sweet fragrance.

In the middle of the eighth century lived a hermit named Emilian, born of obscure parents at Vannes in Brittany. He became known to the Count of that place, who took him into his service, where he showed himself profusely charitable to the poor with his master’s substance. This led to his ignominious dismissal, and he wandered into the Saintonge, entered the Benedictine Order, and became baker to the monastery. But he proved so objectionable there that he was turned out. So he wandered further south, and finding a rock in the forest above the Dordogne, wherein was a small cave, out of which flowed a spring, he took up his abode therein. His fame soon brought disciples to him, and gathered admirers about him; and after his death in 767, a monastery of Benedictine monks was settled there, and a town sprang up about it.

The cave of S. Emilion still remains. In face of it rises a mass of rock with abrupt scarp towards the west and the market-place. Thence a street slopes up to the platform on the top of the rock. The front of the rock has an ambulatory before it pierced with windows and doors, and through these latter access is obtained to the interior of the rock, which is hollowed out into a stately church, dedicated to the three kings, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar.

This monolithic church has for its base a parallelogram measuring 120 feet by 60 feet. It is composed of two portions of unequal height. The anterior portion is a vestibule, narthex, or ambulatory to the church, and is only 21 feet high. The windows in this are of the flamboyant order, and the principal doorway is richly sculptured. The body of the church into which this vestibule opens is 95 feet long and 60 feet high. The body consists of a nave and side aisles, all excavated out of the living rock. Six windows light the interior, the three in the flamboyant style already mentioned, and above, set back the whole length of the narthex under circular-headed arches, are three plain, round-headed windows, like a clerestory, opening into the nave and aisles, one window in each.

Looking from the market-place at the church the spectators would suppose that the nave ran parallel with the vestibule, but this is not the case, it is at right angles to it.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MONOLITHIC CHURCH, AUBETERRE, CHARENTE. Showing the gallery of communication to the Seigneural pew, seen in face. The supports of the gallery vault have crumbled away within forty years, through neglect.]

The small upper windows cast but a chill and feeble light into the vast cavern, so that the choir and chapels are buried in perpetual twilight. The windows in the vestibule do very little towards the illumination of the interior. At the extremity of the nave, which is raised on steps to form a choir, anciently stood the high altar, but this has been removed. Above, where it was can be discerned faintly through the obscurity, a bas-relief rudely sculptured, but very curious. It occupies the entire width of the choir; on the right is an angel playing upon a stringed instrument, with outspread wings, as if in the attitude of soaring, and on the left, perched on a rock, is a monstrous animal with gaping jaws, bristling mane, and raised paws. In the midst of the group is a little old man armed with a stick, apparently repelling this monster. It has been conjectured that this is intended as a representation of the saint himself ready to deliver his votaries from the jaws of Hell. But it is more probable that the whole subject is allegorical of Death, armed with his scythe between the powers of Light and of Darkness. The choir arch is one of the boldest and most original conceptions in this marvellous temple. It consists of two gigantic angels carved out of the sandstone, with their feet upon the piers on each side, and their heads nearly meeting at the crown of the vault. Each has four wings, the two smaller wings are raised about their heads, forming a nimbus to each. The other two wings are depressed. These mighty angels were formerly whitened and partially gilt, and the effect of the great figures looming out of the dark vault is most impressive.

On the right side of the nave, at the spring of the arches, between two of the piers, is a centaur armed with a bow, cut in the stone, and on the opposite spandril are two goats, disposed back to back, also cut in the rock. On one of the piers is an inscription graven regarding the dedication of the church, but unfortunately the date is illegible. The exterior of the church is adorned with a noble portal, richly sculptured, of much later date than the church within.

On entering the church through this rich portal a feeling of astonishment comes over one. The exterior in no way corresponds with the interior, which is void of ornament. The piers are massive parallelograms without mouldings, the arches between them semicircular, stilted, perfectly plain; a string alone marks the rise of the arch from the pier.

In the floor of one of the aisles is a hole through which a descent was anciently made into the crypt below the church; this crypt also is hewn in the solid rock, and has a funnel-shaped dome, a spiral flight of steps was cut in the rock round it descending from the church into the crypt. The descent must have been hazardous in the extreme unless the stairs were provided with a balustrade, of which at present no trace remains.

Admittance into the crypt is also obtained through a door cut in the face of the rock, but this was made in 1793 when the soil and the bones of the old canons of the Church of the Three Kings were required for saltpetre to make gunpowder for the armies of the Republic. Over the door is a mask carved in the stone and a little window; above the monolithic church, standing on the platform of rock, is the exquisite flamboyant spire, not communicating with the church beneath, also a modern _salle de danse_.

Another subterranean church as interesting but not as well preserved is that of Aubeterre in Charente, on the Dronne. By the valley of the Dronne all movement of troops from the Limousin and Perigord into the Saintonge took place, and the rock of Aubeterre was considered of so great military importance that a strong castle was constructed on the summit, and its possession was contested repeatedly during the Hundred Years’ War and the wars of religion. Its position was peculiar in this also, that it was in the seneschaute of the Angoumois, in the diocese of Perigueux, and for the purpose of taxation in the Limousin.

[ILLUSTRATION: ROCAMADOUR. A cluster of chapels, some excavated in the rock. Zacchaeus is erroneously supposed to have lived and died in one of them. A famous place of pilgrimage.]

The town is built in the form of an amphitheatre on a chalk hill that commands the Dronne. The hill is precipitous in parts, and is everywhere so steep that the roofs of the houses are below the gardens of those above them, and the saying there is, “Mind that your cattle be not found in your neighbour’s stable by tumbling through the roof.” The castle occupied a height cut off from the town by a deep cleft, that has its sides pierced with caverns, and its store chambers and cellars are dug out of the rock. But the most curious feature of Aubeterre is the monolithic church of S. John beneath the castle. The doorway admitting into it is on the level of the street, and gives access to a charnel-house with what would be termed _arcosolia_ in the catacombs, on each side, and the floor is humpy with graves. This is 70 feet long by 16 feet wide. On the right hand it gives admission through a doorway cut in the rock to the church itself, consisting of a nave and side aisle divided from it by massive monolithic piers, very much decayed at the top. It is lighted by three round-headed windows like a clerestory without glass. At the further end is an arch admitting to an apse, in the midst of which is an octagonal monolithic tomb of Renaissance style, with columns at the angles, and surmounted by the statue of Francois d’Esparbes de Lussac, Marshal of Aubeterre, and the much mutilated figure of his wife in Carrara marble.

A gallery excavated in the rock above the arch into the apse is continued the whole length of the aisle, and turns to admit into the seigneural gallery or pew high up over the entrance whence he and his family could hear Divine Service.

On the right-hand side of the nave opens a second charnel-house, called by the people “the Old Church,” also with its _arcosolia_; there is also a door by which exit is obtained into a small cemetery overgrown with briars and thorns, and with the head-crosses reeling in all directions, and utterly neglected. For centuries not this yard only, nor the two charnel-houses but also the floor of the church, have served as the burial-place of the citizens of Aubeterre, and the floor is raised four feet above that of the apse though frequent interments. The last head cross I noted within the church bore the date 1860.

The height of the church is said to be fifty feet. The castle above was sold about sixty years ago to a small tradesman of the town, who straightway pulled it down and disposed of the stones for building purposes, and out of the lead of the gutters, conduits, and windows made sufficient to pay the purchase-money.

Then he converted the site into a cabbage garden and vineyard. Not content with this he brought a stream of water in to nourish his cabbages. This leaks through and is rapidly disintegrating and ruining the church beneath, that was protected so long as the castle stood above it. Seven years ago the arched gallery in the aisle was perfect, now it has crumbled away. The piers were also intact, now they are corroded at the top. A stream pours down through the vault continuously by the monument of the Marshal. The church is classed as a _monument historique_, nevertheless nothing was done to prevent the damage effected by the destruction of the covering castle, and nothing is done now to preserve it from utter disintegration.

In my opinion the apse was excavated to receive the monument, which consists of a mass of chalk in position, with a hole on one side to receive the coffins let down into the seigneural vault; and this could not have been there with a high altar behind it. In a lateral chapel is a hole in the vault, through which the ropes passed to pull the bells that were hung in a tower above, but which has been destroyed.

[ILLUSTRATION: AUBETERRE, CHARENTE. Mausoleum of Francois Espartes in the choir of the Subterranean Church.]

In 1450 Aubeterre was in the possession of the English, and they sold it to the Count of Perigord. When the Huguenot troubles began, the Lord of Aubeterre threw himself into the movement and appropriated the lands and revenues of the ecclesiastical foundations in the town. Francois d’Aubeterre was involved in the conspiracy of Amboise, and was sentenced to death, but pardoned. He deemed it expedient, however, to go to Geneva, where, as Brantome informs us, he turned button-maker. In 1561 he was back again in Aubeterre, and converted the monolithic church into a preaching “temple,” sweeping away all Catholic symbols, and it remains bare of them to this day. His brother, Guy Bonchard, Bishop of Perigueux, was also an ardent Calvinist, and used his position for introducing preachers of the sect into the churches. Although disbelieving in Episcopacy, he did not see his way to surrendering the emoluments of his see. He was deposed in 1561, and Peter Fournier elected, whom the Huguenots murdered in his bed 14th July 1575.

In 1568 Jeanne d’Albret issued orders to the gangs of men she sent through the country to lay hold of the royal revenues, to sequestrate and appropriate all ecclesiastical property, to raise taxes to pay themselves, and to require all municipalities to furnish from four to five soldiers apiece to replenish their corps.

Jeanne’s power extended over Lower Navarre, Bearn, the land of Albret, Foix, Armagnac, and other great seigneuries. Through her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, she could rule and torture Perigord, the Bourbonais, and the Vendomois. She had good cause to be offended with the Pope, for in 1563, with incredible folly, he threatened her with deposition from her throne, a threat he could not possibly execute. By enrolling and sending forth over the south to ravage and confiscate, she was a second Pandora letting loose the hurricane, slaughter, fire, famine, and pestilence, leaving Hope locked up behind.

Aubeterre played a conspicuous part in the wars of religion, and the Catholics in vain essayed to take it. The seigneur could always draw from the bands of Calvinist soldiery to hold it, and it remained in their power till the peace of La Rochelle.

I might include Rocamadour in the Department of Lot among the interesting rock churches. It consists of a cluster of chapels clinging to the rock or dug out of it, and looking like a range of swallows’ nests plastered against the face of the cliff. The people of the place fondly hold that Zaccheus, who climbed up a sycamore tree to see Our Lord pass by, came into Quercy, and having a natural propensity for climbing, scrambled up the face of the precipice to a hole he perceived in it, and there spent the remainder of his days, and changed his name to Amator. No trace of such an identification occurs before 1427, when Pope Martin V. affirmed it in a bull, although in the local breviary there was no such identification. It is extremely doubtful whether any saint of the name of Amator settled here, the story concerning him is an appropriation from Lucca. [Footnote: _Analecta Bollandiana_, T. xxviii., pp. 57 _et seq_.]

But I will not describe this, one of the most remarkable sites in Europe, as I have done so already in my “Deserts of Southern France,” and as of late years it has been visited by a good many English tourists, and the French railway stations exhibit highly coloured views of it, turning Rocamadour into a national show place.

At Lirac, in Gard, is La Sainte Baume, a small church or chapel, excavated out of the rock, 60 feet long, 45 feet wide, and 30 feet high. It is lighted by an aperture in the vault. Three other caves behind the choir are almost as large.

At Mimet, in Bouches-du-Rhone, is the church of Our Lady of the Angels, hewn out of limestone rock, with stalactites depending from the roof.

At Peyre, near Millau, in Tarn, is the church of S. Christophe, scooped out of the living rock, with above it an old crenellated bell tower.

[Illustration: SUBTERRANEAN CHURCH, AUBETERRE. Looking east. In the choir is the mausoleum. The floor of the church is raised four feet by it having been made the parish cemetery. The process of degradation of the pillars is noticeable at their heads.]

At Caudon, on the Dordogne, now in the parish of Domme, the old parish church is monolithic, entirely excavated in the rock, but with a structural bell-cot above it. As already mentioned, Caudon was a parish, but as owing to the devastations of the Companies, all the inhabitants had deserted it and fled to Spain, it was annexed to Domme. What is curious is that before it had been carved out of the limestone as a church there had been cave-dwellers in or about it, that have left their traces in the sides of the church. The Marquis de Maleville, who has his chateau near, has put the church in thorough repair, and it is still occasionally used.

Natural caves have been employed as churches or places of worship. Thus the Grotte des Fees, near Nimes, was used by the Calvinists for their religious assemblies before 1567, when they obtained the mastery of the town, sacked the bishop’s palace, and filled up the well with the Catholics, whom they precipitated into it, some dead and others half alive.

The Grotte de Jouclas, near Rocamadour, served the villagers of La Cave till the parish church was rebuilt. At Gurat, in Charente, the church of S. George is hollowed out of the rock; it dates from the tenth century, it is believed, and preceded the present parish church, which was erected in the eleventh century, and is Romanesque. In the valley of the Borreze, near Souillac (Lot), is a cave in which bones of the _ursus speloeus_ have been found. It is used as a chapel to Notre Dame de Ste. Esperance.

At Lanmeur, in Brittany, is the very early crypt of S. Melor, a Breton prince put to death about the year 544. The legend concerning him is rich in mythical particulars. His uncle, so as to incapacitate him from attaining the crown of Leon, cut off his right hand and left foot. The boy was then provided with a silver hand and a brazen foot. One day he was seen to use his silver hand in plucking filberts off a tree, whereupon his uncle had him murdered. The crypt is the most ancient monument of Christian architecture in Brittany. It measures 25 feet by 15 feet 6 inches, and is divided into a nave and side aisles by two ranges of columns hardly 4 feet high, sustaining depressed arches not rising above 3 feet 6 inches, and decorated with rudely sculptured trailing branches.

[Illustration: Section of the Dolmen Chapel of the Seven Sleepers near Plouaret.]

A still more curious subterranean chapel is near Plouaret, in Cotes-du- Nord. It is, in fact, a prehistoric dolmen under a tumulus, on top of which a chapel was erected in 1702-4. The descent into the crypt is by a flight of steps. The primitive monument consisted of two huge capstones of granite supported by four or five vertically planted uprights, but one, if not two of the latter have been removed. At the east end is an altar to the Seven Sleepers, and the comical dolls representing them stand in a niche above the altar.

In the north-west of Spain, at Cangas-de-Ones, near Oviedo, is a little church of probably the tenth or eleventh century, built on top of a cairn that covers a dolmen. This latter consists of a circular chamber into which leads a gallery composed of fifteen upright slabs, covered by four others. The dolmen served as a crypt to the church, and from it have been recovered objects in stone and copper of a prehistoric period. A writer in the seventeenth century says that in his time devotees regarded the dolmen as the tomb of a saint, and scrabbled up the soil, and carried it away as a remedy against sundry maladies. [Footnote: _Revue mensuelle de l’ecole d’Anthropologie_, Paris, 1897.]

[Illustration: Plan of the Dolmen Chapel near Plouaret.]

The Bretons have a ballad, _Gwerz_, concerning the former monument. It is a miraculous structure dating from the Creation of the World: “Who will doubt that it was built by the hand of the Almighty? You ask me when and how it was constructed. I reply that I believe that when the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all were created, then was this also made.”

Although the dolmen is no longer underground, I must refer to that of Confolens near S. Germain-sur-Vienne, because it was originally under a tumulus. It is a dolmen, of which only the cover, a huge mass of granite remains intact, in an island of the Vienne. Underneath the slab are sculptured a stone axe with handle, and one without, also a cross. The capstone rests on four pillars of the twelfth century. Mr. Ferguson erroneously claimed the dolmen as evidence that rude stone monuments continued to be erected till late in the Middle Ages. But, in fact, the pillars are not of equal length, their capitals are not in line, nor are their bases. What is obvious is that the rude stone supports were removed one by one, and the Gothic pillars inserted in their place were cut exactly to the length required. Thus altered, the dolmen served as a baldachin or canopy over the stone Christian altar that is still in place beneath it. About this monument a chapel had been erected with apse to the east, measuring 36 feet by 15 feet. This has been destroyed, but the foundations remained till recently. The cross on the capstone was cut when the prehistoric monument was converted to use by Christians. To descend to the floor of the chapel a flight of steps had been constructed. The chapel was dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen.

In Egypt, in the Levant, cave-churches are common. The chapel of Agios Niketos, in Crete, is now merely a smoke begrimed grotto beneath a huge mass of rock on the mountain side. The roof is elaborately ornamented with paintings representing incidents in the Gospel story, and the legend of S. Nicolas. Though it is no longer employed as a church, an event that is said to have happened some centuries ago invests it with special regard by the natives. The church was crowded with worshippers on the eve of the feast of the patron, when the fires which the