For presently they howl;
Upon which signal they do muster Their naked forces in a cluster Led forth by Roger Rowle.”
I extract the following from the _Daily Express_ of May 10, 1910: —
“It was stated at an inquest held on Richard Manford at Market Drayton yesterday, that he was over eighty years of age, and had for the greater part of his life dwelt in a cave near Hawkstone. He was found dying by the roadside.”
Elsewhere [Footnote: “An Old English Home,” Methuen, 1898.] I have given an account of the North Devon savages, to whom Mr. Greenwood first drew attention. Till a very few years ago there lived on the Cornish moors a quarryman–he may be living still for aught I have heard to the contrary—in a solitary hut piled up of granite. He would allow no one to approach, threatening visitors with a gun. His old mother lived with him. By some means the rumour got about that she was dead, but as the man said nothing, it was not till this rumour became persistent that the authorities took cognisance of it, and visited the hovel. They found that the old woman’s bed had been a hole scooped out of the bank that formed part of the wall; that she had been dead some considerable time, and that her face was eaten away by rats. Daniel Gumb was a stone-cutter who lived near the Cheese Wring on the Cornish moors in the eighteenth century. He inhabited a cave composed of masses of granite. It is an artificial cell about twelve feet deep and not quite that breadth. The roof consists of one flat stone of many tons weight. On the right hand of the entrance is cut “D. Gumb,” with a date 1783 (or 5). On the upper part of the covering stone channels are cut to carry off the rain. Here he dwelt for several years with his wife and children, several of whom were born and died there.
How instinctively the man of the present day will revert to primitive usages and to the ground as his natural refuge may be illustrated by a couple of instances. Mr. Hamerton, in “A Painter’s Camp,” says that near Sens on a height is a little pleasure-house and the remnant of a forgotten chapel dedicated to S. Bondus. This belonged of late years to a gentleman of Sens who was passionately attached to the spot. “Near my tent there is a hole in the chalk leading to the very bowels of the earth. A long passage, connecting cells far apart, winds till it arrives under the house, and it is said that the late owner intended to cut other passages and cells, but wherefore no man knows. One thing is certain, he loved the place, and spent money there for the love of it. Night and day he came up here from his little city on the plain, sat in his pleasant octagon room, and descended into his winding subterranean passages, and hermit-like visited the hollow cells.” On his death he bequeathed it to the Archbishop of Sens. [Footnote: “A Painter’s Camp,” Lond. 1862, Bk. iii. c. 1.]
Another instance is from our own country. Mr. L.P. Jacks’ very remarkable book, “Mad Shepherds,” gives an account of one Toller of Clun Downs, who went deranged, took to the moors and lived for a considerable time, stealing sheep and poultry. “Beyond the furthest outpost of the Perryman farm lie extensive wolds rising rapidly into desolate regions where sheep can scarcely find pasture. In this region Toller concealed himself. About two miles beyond the old quarry, on a slaty hillside, he found a deep pit; and here he built himself a hut. He made the walls out of stones of a ruined sheepfold; he roofed them with a sheet of corrugated iron, stolen from the outbuildings of a neighbouring farm, and covered the iron with sods; he built a fireplace with a flue, but no chimney; he caused water from a spring to flow into a hollow beside the door. Then he collected slates, loose stones and casks; and by heaping these against the walls of the hut, he gave the whole structure the appearance of a mound of rubbish. Human eyes rarely came within sight of the spot; but even a keen observer of casual objects would not have suspected that the mound represented any sort of human dwelling. It was a masterpiece of protective imitation…. His implements were all of flint, neatly bound in their handles with strips of hide. There was an axe for slaughter, a dagger for cutting meat, a hammer for breaking bones, a saw and scrapers of various size–the plunder of some barrow on Clun Downs.” There Toller lived for several months, and there he died, his hiding-place being known to one other shepherd, and to him alone; and there after his death he was buried. “My ‘usband dug his grave wi’ his own hands,” said the widow of this shepherd, “close beside the hut, and buried him next day. He put the axe and slings just as he told him, wi’ the stones and all the bits of flint things as he found ’em in the hut.” [Footnote: “Mad Shepherds, and other Human Studies,” Lond. 1910, p. 137 _et seq_.]
CHAPTER III
SOUTERRAINS
In the year 1866 the Prussian Army of the Elbe broke into Bohemia, when it was found that the inhabitants of a certain district had vanished along with their cattle and goods, leaving behind empty houses and stables. It had been the same during the Thirty Years’ War, and again in the Seven Years’ War, when the invaders found not a living soul, and contented themselves with destroying the crops and burning the villages and farms. Even the Government officials had disappeared. Whither had they gone? Into the rock labyrinths of Adersbach and Wickelsdorf, each accessible only through a single gap closed by a door. The mountain of what the Germans call Quadersandstein is four miles long by two broad, and was at one time an elevated plateau, but is now torn into gullies, forming a tangled skein of ravines, wherein a visitor without a guide might easily lose himself. The existence of this labyrinth was unknown save to the peasants till the year 1824, when a forest fire revealed it, but for some time it remained unexplored. [Footnote: It had indeed been mentioned by Dr. Kausch in his _Nachrichten ueber Boehmen_, 1794; but he lamented its inaccessibility.]
As Adersbach and Wickelsdorf lie on the frontier of Bohemia and Silesia, the existence of this region of cliffs and natural refuges had been kept secret by the natives, who looked upon it as a secure hiding- place for themselves and their chattels when the storm of war swept over the Riesen Gebirge. But the fatal fire of 1824 betrayed their secret to the world, and after a little hesitation, thinking to make profit out of it as a show-place, paths were cut through it, and it was advertised in 1847. When, in 1866, the Prussians passed by, they incurred neither the risk nor the trouble of hunting out the refugees from their place of concealment.
The rocks run up to 200 feet, the loftiest being 280 feet. They assume the most fantastic shapes. The passage through the fissures is so narrow that in some places it can be threaded by one man alone at a time, the others following in single file. A rivulet, clear as crystal, traverses the network of gullies, and in one place forms a tiny cascade. One nook is called the Southern Siberia, because in it the snow lies unmelted throughout the summer.
At intervals the rocks fall back and form open spaces, and at one describe an amphitheatre upon a vista of rolling forest.
But if this “petrified forest,” as it has been called, served as a refuge for the peasants in troublous times, it has also been employed by brigands as their fastness whence to ravage the country and render the roads perilous. But of their exploits I shall have more to say in the chapter on robber-dens.
Caverns, as well as chasms, have always served this same purpose.
There is something remarkably human and significant in the prophecy of Isaiah relative to the coming of the Judge of all the earth: “They shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty.” And in the Book of Revelation: “And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains.”
As the first men found their refuges and homes in caves and rock shelters, so the last men, with the instinct implanted in them from the first and never eradicated, will fly to the earth as a hiding-place, just as a frightened child flies to the lap of its mother.
When Ahab persecuted the prophets, Obadiah hid them by fifties in a cave. After the battle of Bethhoron the five kings of the Amorites hid themselves in the cave of Makkedah. When the Midianites oppressed Israel, the latter “made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves and strongholds.” From the Philistines “the people did hide themselves in caves and in thickets and in high places, and in pits.” Twice did Elijah take refuge in a cave.
What took place in Palestine, took place in every part of the world wherever there are limestone and chalk and volcanic breccia and sandstone. It would seem as though a merciful Providence had not only provided the first shelters for man against the inclemency of the weather, but had also furnished him with places of secure refuge against the violence of his fellow-man. As sure as the rabbit runs to its hole on the sight of the sportsman, so did the oppressed and timorous when the slayer and the marauder appeared.
In the South of France, where caves abound, the unhappy Gauls fled from Caesar and concealed themselves in them. He bade his lieutenant Crassus wall up the entrances. When the Armenians fled before Corbulo–“fuere qui se speluncis et carissima secum abderent”–he filled the mouths of the caverns with faggots and burned them out. [Footnote: Tacit., “Annals,” xvi. 23.]
When Civilis rose in insurrection against Vespasian, he was joined by a young native, Julius Sabinus from Langres, who boasted that, in the great war with the Gauls, his great-grandmother had taken the fancy of Julius Caesar, and that to him he owed his name.
After the death of Nero, the Druids had come forth from the retreats where they had remained concealed since their proscription by Claudius, and proclaimed that “the Roman Empire was at an end, and that the Gallic Empire was come to its birth.” Insurgents rose on every side, and Julius Sabinus assumed the title of Caesar. War broke out; confusion, hesitation, and actual desertion extended through the Colonies, and reached the legions. Several towns submitted to the insurgents. Some legions yielding to persuasion, bribery, or discontent, killed their officers and went over to the rebels. The gravity of the situation was perceived in Rome, and Petilius Cerealis was despatched to crush the revolt. The struggle that ensued was fierce but brief, and Civilis was constrained to surrender. Vespasian being disinclined to drive men or matters to an extremity, pardoned him; but no mercy was to be extended to Julius Sabinus. After the ruin of his cause, Sabinus took refuge underground in one of those retreats excavated in the chalk beneath his villa, and two of his freedmen were alone privy to the secret. The further to conceal him, they set fire to his house, and gave out that he had poisoned himself and that his dead body had been consumed in the flames. His young wife, named Eponia, was in frantic despair at the news; but one of the freedmen informed her of the place of his retreat, and advised her to assume the habit and exhibit the desolation of widowhood, so as to confirm the report they had disseminated. “Well did she play her part,” says Plutarch, “in this tragedy of woe.” She visited her husband in his cave at night, and left him at daybreak, but at last refused to leave him at all. At the end of seven months, hearing talk of the clemency of Vespasian, she set out for Rome taking her husband with her, disguised as a slave, with shaven head and a dress that rendered him unrecognisable. But friends who were in her confidence dissuaded her from prosecuting the journey. The imperial clemency was not a quality to be calculated upon with confidence. They accordingly returned to their subterranean abode. There they lived for nine years, during which, “as a lioness in her den,” says Plutarch, “Eponia gave birth to two young whelps, and suckled them at her own breast.” At length they were discovered, and Sabinus and his wife were brought before Vespasian.
“Caesar,” said Eponia, showing him her children, “I conceived and suckled them in a tomb, that there might be more of us to entreat thy mercy.” But the Emperor was not disposed to be clement to one who pretended to inherit the sacred Julian blood, and he ordered Sabinus to be led to the block. Eponia asked that she might die with her husband, saying: “Caesar, do me this grace, for I have lived more happily underground and in darkness than thou hast done in the splendour of thy palace.”
Vespasian fulfilled her desire by sending her also to execution; and Plutarch, their contemporary, expressed the general feeling in Rome, when he adds: “In all the long reign of this Emperor there was no deed done so cruel, and so piteous to look upon; and he was afterwards punished for it, for in a brief time all his posterity was cut off.”
In 731 the Saracens, masters of the peninsula, poured over the Pyrenees, and entered the Septimania. They had come not to conquer and pillage, but to conquer and occupy. They had brought with them accordingly their wives and children. They took Narbonne, Carcassone and Nimes, besieged Toulouse, and almost totally destroyed Bordeaux. Thrusting up further, they reached Burgundy on one side and Poitou on the other. Autun was sacked, and the church of S. Hilary in Poitiers given to the flames. The Christians, wherever met with, were hewn down with their curved scimitars; they passed on like a swarm of locusts leaving desolation in their wake. Those of the natives who escaped did so by taking advantage of the subterranean refuges either natural or artificial that abounded. And that they did so is shown by the relics of Merovingian times that have been found in them.
The Mussulmans were routed at Poitiers by Charles Martel. Three hundred thousand Saracens, say the old chroniclers, with their usual exaggeration, fell before the swords of the Christians. The rest fled under the walls of Narbonne.
Between 752 and 759 Pepin the Short resolved on the conquest of Septimania, _i.e._ Lower Languedoc. The Goths there had risen against the Arabs and appealed for his aid. Nimes, Agde, Beziers, Carcassonne opened their gates, but Narbonne resisted for seven years. When it surrendered in 759, the Empire of the Franks for the first time touched the Eastern Pyrenees. Pepin now picked a quarrel with Waifre, Duke of Aquitaine, and crossing the Loire made of the unhappy country a hunting-ground for the Franks. He delivered the land over to a systematic devastation. From the Loire to the Garonne the houses were burnt, and the trees cut down. “The churches, the monasteries, and secular buildings were reduced to ashes. Vineyards and fields were ravaged, and the inhabitants put to the edge of the sword. Only a few strong places escaped the fury of the soldiers…. The city of Cahors fell into the power of the conqueror and was reduced to the same pitiable condition into which it had been brought by the Saracens. The inhabitants of Quercy who survived owed this to the subterranean retreats which they had made and to the caverns in the rocks that had served them as refuges during the incursion of the infidels. The principal caves are situated on the Banks of the Lot at Cami, Luzech, Vers, Bouzier, S. Cirq, La Toulsanie, Larnagol, Calvignac, S. Jean de Laur, Cajarc and Laroque-Toirac, to above Capdenac; on the banks of the Cele, at Roquefort, Espagnac, Brengues, S. Sulpice, Marcillac, Liauzun, Sauliac, Cabrerets; on the banks of the Dordogne at Belcastel, La Cave, Le Bon Sairon, Mayronne, Blansaguet, Montvalent, Gluges, Saint Denis, &c., and between the rivers, Autoire, Gramat, S. Cirq d’Alzou, Rocamadour, S. Martin de Vers, Crass Guillot, to Vers among the high cliffs athwart which runs the Roman aqueduct, which in certain places, behind its high walls, could shelter a great number of the inhabitants. These caverns are still called Gouffios, Gouffieros, or Waiffers, from the name of Duke Waifre. [Footnote: Lacoste’s derivation is absurd; Gouffieros comes from Gouffre, a chasm.] They were closed by a wall, of which there are remains at Canis, at Brengues, and at S. Jean de Laur, on the rock that commands the abyss of Lantoui. This last cavern is the most remarkable of all, as it is at but a little distance from the castle of Cenevieres, which was one of the principal strongholds of the Duke of Aquitaine in Quercy.” [Footnote: Lacoste, _Histoire de Quercy_, Cahors, 1883, i. pp. 267-8.]
The wretched country had to suffer next from the expedition of the Northmen, who pushed up every river, destroying, pillaging, and showing no mercy to man or beast. The most redoutable of these pirates was Hastings, who ravaged the banks of the Loire between 843 and 850, sacked Bordeaux and Saintes and menaced Tarbes. In 866 he was again in the Loire, and penetrated as far as Clermont Ferrand. There seemed to be no other means of appeasing him than by granting him the country of Chartres. But this did not content his turbulent spirit, and at the age of nearly seventy he abandoned his county to resume his piracies.
An Icelandic Saga relating the adventures of a Viking, Orvar Odd in Aquitaine, describes how he saw some of the natives taking refuge in an underground retreat, and how he pursued and killed them all. [Footnote: _Fornmanna Soegwr_, Copenhagen, 1829, ii. p. 229.]
In the persecution of the Albigenses at the instigation of Pope Innocent III. the unfortunate heretics fled to the caves, but were hunted, or smoked out and massacred by the Papal emissaries. Nevertheless, a good many escaped, and in 1325, when John XXII. was reigning in Avignon, he ordered a fresh _battu_ of heretics. A great number fled to the cave of Lombrive near Ussat in Ariege. It consists of an immense hall, and runs to the length of nearly four miles. In 1328 the papal troops, to save themselves the trouble or risk of penetrating into these recesses after their prey, built up the entrance, and left from four to five hundred Albigenses along with their bishops to perish therein of starvation. Of late years the bones have been collected, removed, and buried. From 1152, the Bordelois, Saintonge, Agenois, Perigord, and the Limousin were nominally under the English crown. But the people did not bear their subjection with patience, and often rose in revolt, and their revolts were put down with ferocity. As to the Barons and Seigneurs of Guyenne, they took which side suited their momentary convenience, and shifted their allegiance as seemed most profitable to them. But the worst season was after the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, when a vast part of France, from the Loire to the Pyrenees was made over to the English. The Hundred Years’ War was the consequence, of which more shall be said in the fifth chapter. Froissart describes the condition of the country: “Matters were so woven together there and the lords and knights were so divided, that the strong trampled down the weak, and neither law nor reason was measured out to any man. Towns and castles were intermixed inextricably; some were English, others French, and they attacked one another and ransomed and pillaged one another incessantly.”
Under these circumstances it may well be understood that if Nature herself had not of her own accord furnished the miserable, harassed people with refuges, they would themselves have contrived some. As we shall see they did this, as well as make use of the natural provision supplied for their safety.
Of refuges there are two kinds, those patiently and laboriously excavated under the surface of the soil, and those either natural or contrived high up in the face of inaccessible cliffs.
Each shall be dealt with; they are different in character. The town of Saint Macaire on the Garonne is walled about. But the walls did not give to the citizens all the security they desired; the ramparts might be battered down, escaladed, or the gates burst open. Accordingly they excavated, beneath the town, a complete labyrinth of passages, chambers, halls, and store-rooms into which they might either retreat themselves or where they might secure their valuables in the event of the town being sacked.
At Alban in Tarn there are retreats of like nature under the houses, refuges at one time of the persecuted Albigenses, at another of the inhabitants secreting themselves and their goods from the Routiers. At Molieres in Lot they are beneath the church, and the approximate date can be fixed when these were excavated, as Molieres was founded in 1260.
Bourg-sur-Garonne is likewise honeycombed with such retreats, so is Aubeterre, of which more hereafter. The network of underground galleries and chambers is now closed, because the soft chalk rock has fallen in in several places. At Ingrandes-sur-Vienne there are three groups of these refuges, extending to a considerable distance. At Chateau Robin in the Touraine is a chalk cliff that rises above the road to the height of sixty feet and is crowned by a tumulus. In its face are two sets of caves, one superposed over the other. This upper cave or shelter is the most ancient, and dates from prehistoric times, but has been utilised much later. The lower cave is exposed by the widening of the road which has obliterated the original face of the cliff and the original entrance, having made three openings by cutting into a chamber to which formerly there was but a single entrance. The plan of the excavation was made by M. Antoine and communicated to the “Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique de Touraine,” in 1858, but I will give a description from the pen of a later visitor.
“The upper rock-shelter has been dug out or enlarged with a pick. The stone is a tender tufa, containing a quantity of little cores of black silex, giving it a spotty appearance. It was quite impossible to cut the stone so as to give a smooth surface.
“The most mysterious portion, however, of the whole is certainly the lower range of vaults, a subject of terror to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who believe them to be the abode of the devil. Some persons have visited them, but very few have explored them. Having calculated on the assistance of a poacher of some repute as a fearless fellow, he pointblank refused to accompany me when I proposed an expedition into the cave. I applied to a man of more resolution, a landowner at Arzay-le-Rideau, who readily volunteered his assistance; but when we arrived on the spot, contented himself with showing me the entrance, but declined to adventure himself within, though he assured me he had visited the interior some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago.
“These excavations have now several openings upon the road; the two principal are accessible enough, if one is suitably dressed, for beyond the entrance one has to crawl on hands and knees, and this is but the initiation of other discomforts.
“The entrances are, so to speak, in the ditch of the road to Azay. The most practicable of them, and that by which M. Antoine and I penetrated, is the easternmost of the three, and is marked A on the plan, and it gives access to a small triangular chamber C; but the entrance is so low that one can only enter on one’s knees or in a doubled position. Further on it is loftier. On advancing to the end one leaves on the right a sort of staircase B cut in the rock, but very worn, which formerly ascended spirally to the upper cave, but is now without issue.
[Illustration: Plan of the Refuge of Chateau Robin (Indre et Loire).]
“At the bottom of the chamber C a very narrow passage turns at a right angle and gives access to a large hall E that is sustained by a pillar F. This pillar is three feet square and the vaulted chamber may be 15 to 18 feet square and 5 feet high. On the left a great pier G allows of two passages I I which lead to the other openings that gape upon the road, and turning to the right give access to the further depths of the underground retreat. A passage H is, however, the most direct means of communication between the cavern E and the larger hall J to which also access is obtained through the openings I I separated by the pillar S.
“The cavern J, the largest of all, is 25 feet long by 15 feet wide at the one end and 24 feet at the other. It is supported by the pillar K, shaped to suit the widening of the hall. At the bottom of this chamber is a staircase L descending from the floor and without any breastwork to protect it, and therefore dangerous, as it goes down 6 feet, and is but about a foot and a half wide. This staircase is 12 feet long, and the passage M that is a continuation of it is hardly more than 4 feet high at the entrance, and is nearly 20 feet long, so that one has to creep along it, bent double, assisted by one’s hands.
“In this position it is absolutely impossible for one to turn round, so narrow is the passage. At this point a difficulty that is not anticipated arrests many a visitor. Water rises through the stones that form the floor and contributes to reduce the height of the gallery. If one elects to continue, there is no choice but to take a bath that reaches to one’s middle. At a distance of nearly 7 feet comes a right angle, and the passage goes on for 6 feet, then turns to the left by an obtuse angle and pursues its course for 12 feet, then again turns to the right by another obtuse angle, and for 15 feet more one is still half under water, till N is reached, after which the level of the floor rises, as does also the ceiling; one is able to stand erect alongside of another person. In face of one, the wall is cut perpendicularly and seems abruptly to close the passage. However, at a few inches above the soil is a little opening D, formed like the mouth of an oven, and giving indications of a space beyond. In diameter it is about 1 foot 6 inches; by crawling through this hole, an achievement difficult to accomplish, as one cannot even use the elbows to work one’s way forward, the explorer descends into a semicircular hall P whose vault is arched and is supported by two oval pillars, 7 feet high. The hall is 24 feet deep and 18 feet wide at the entrance, and is rounded at the further extremity. The soil in this chamber is encumbered with stones and rubbish thrown in from an opening at R, which seems to communicate with other subterranean excavations.” Nothing was found in these chambers and passages that could give an approximate date, but in the upper “abris” was some Gaulish pottery. The water that had half filled the lower passage is due to the river having been dammed up for a mill, and so having raised the level considerably. Originally the passage was certainly dry.
Although this _souterrain refuge_ is curious, yet it does not present some of the peculiarities noticeable in others–that is to say, elaborate preparations for defence, by contriving pitfalls for the enemy and means of assailing him in flank and rear.
The usual artifice for protection was this. The entrance from without led by a gallery or vestibule to an inner doorway that opened into the actual refuge. The passage to this interior doorway was made to descend at a rapid incline, and as it descended it became lower, so that an enemy entering would probably advance at a run, and doubled, and would pitch head foremost into a well, from 20 to 30 feet deep, bottle- shaped, sunk in the floor immediately before the closed and barred door, and which was gaping to receive him. Such a well-mouth would usually have a plank crossing it, but in time of danger this plank would be removed. To make doubly sure of precipitating the assailant into it, a side-chamber was contrived with slots commanding the doorway, through which slots pikes, spears and swords could be thrust.
Beside these contrivances there were also lateral recesses in which the defenders might lurk in ambush, to rush forth to hew at the enemy, or at least to extinguish his torch. Almost invariably these hypogees have two exits or entrances, so that those within could escape by one should the enemy force the other, or endeavour to smoke them out. Moreover, to keep up a circulation of air, and to obviate the contingency of being smoked out, these underground retreats are almost invariably supplied with ventilating shafts. The marks made by the implements employed in hewing the rock are always distinctly recognisable. Moreover within, sunk in the floor, are silos for the storage of grain, the soil often somewhat higher about their orifices than elsewhere, and sometimes provided with covers. Niches for lamps may be seen, also cupboards for provisions, in which have been found collections of acorns, walnuts, hazel-nuts and chestnuts carbonized by age.
[Illustration: Sections.
Chateau of Fayrolle (Dordogne).
A. Entrance.
B. Continuation, unexplored.
C. Shaft.
DD. Doorways.
E. Modern entrance.
FF. Store chambers.
G. Large chamber.
H. Slot for stabbing assailants.
K. Ventilating shaft.]
A typical _souterrain refuge_ is that of the Chateau de Fayrolle, not far from Riberac on the Dordogne.
It was accidentally discovered when the proprietor was levelling for terraces and gardens. A glance at the plan will save a description.
A refuge at S. Gauderic has been explored. The region is one of lacustrine deposits called the Sandstone of Carcassonne; it is friable, argilaceous marl. The opening into the hypogee is in the middle of a field, and there are no indications around of the deposition of the material extracted in the formation of the retreat, so as to betray its presence. The visitor descends by a dozen steps into a long corridor, sinuous, and inclining downwards, about 1 foot 8 inches wide, and 4 feet 6 inches high. The passage exhibits rebates in several places, into which door-frames had been fitted, as well as square holes into which the beams were run that fastened the doors. It leads past several side-chambers into which the defenders might retire, so as to burst forth suddenly and unexpectedly on the foe, smite him and extinguish any torch he bore. The corridor leads to a rectangular hall 22 feet long and 7 feet high, vaulted and ventilated by three circular airholes, 6 inches in diameter. There are numerous silos in the floor, and fragments of coarse grey pottery turned on the wheel have been found there. [Footnote: _Revue de l’Art Chretienne_, Paris, 1868, p. 498 _et seq_.]
M. L. Druyn, in his _La Guyenne Militaire_, Bordeaux, 1865, gives the following account of a refuge he explored. “Ascending the valley that separates the castle of Roquefort from the church of Lugasson, after having passed the village of Fauroux, one reaches, on the left side of the road, a splendid quarry of hard stone, but a few paces further on, upon the same side, the stone becomes soft. Here on the right, in a little coppice beside the road, is found a place of refuge of which I give the plan as accurately as it was possible for me to take it where one had to crawl on hands and knees, and sometimes wriggle forward lying on one’s stomach, over earth that was damp and rubble fallen from above, and in corridors completely filled by one human body.
“The entrance is at A on a level with the soil outside against the rock, but this cannot have been the original place of admission. It is a round hole and very narrow. The real entrance was at K, where one can distinguish a circular opening like the orifice of a silo, but which is now in the open and is choked with stones; or else at the end of the gallery H B. The chamber Y containing silos for preservation of grain must have been the furthest extremity. It is 6 feet 3 inches high, and the floor is higher above the mouth of the silos than elsewhere. The cavern is hewn out of the rock. All the chambers are circular. They are vaulted for the most part in the form of low cupolas. The domes of some are so low that one cannot stand upright in them. The corridors are still lower than the chambers, and one can only get along them by creeping. The extremities of the corridors and the entrances to the chambers had doors originally. One can see the notches for the reception of the closing beams. I saw no trace of hinges. The passages are all arched over in semicircle.”
[Illustration: Cluseau de Fauroux.]
Lacoste, speaking of the Saracen invasion and devastation of Quercy, says that “in Lower Quercy, where caverns are not common as they are in Upper Quercy, the inhabitants dug _souterrains_ with a labour that only love of life could prompt. Three of vast extent have been discovered at Fontanes, Mondoumerc, and Olmie. That of Mondoumerc is cut in the tufa, and is about 20 feet deep. It consists of an infinity of cells, or small chambers, united by a corridor. But the vastest and most remarkable for its extent and the labour devoted on it, is that of Olmie. The chambers are scooped out of a very hard sandstone. In some of them are little wells or reservoirs that were filled with water as a precaution against thirst, if refugees were obliged to remain long in this asylum. The passages, with their turns, constitute a veritable labyrinth whence it would be hard to find one’s way out without the assistance of a guide.”
The entrance to these hiding-places was either under a ledger stone in a church, or through a cellar, or half-way down a well, or in a thicket.
It must be remembered that it was the duty of every feudal seigneur to provide for the safety of his vassels, and the security of their goods. Consequently a great number of such _souterrains_ are under castles or in the grounds of a feudal lord. The rock on which his towers stood was often drilled through and through with galleries, chambers, and store places, for this purpose. On the alarm being given of the approach of an army marching through the land, of a raid by a marauding neighbour, or the hovering of a band of brigands over the spot, within a few hours all this underground world was filled with ploughs, looms, bedding, garments, household stuff of every description, and rang with the bleating of sheep, the lowing of oxen, the neighing of horses, and the whimpering of women and children. At Vendome, the rock on which stands the castle is riddled with passages and halls, access to which is obtained not from the castle, but from the town. At Lavardin by Montoire it is the same. At Paulin in Tarn is a noble castle standing on a rock 300 feet high, and in this rock are storerooms, halls, a kitchen, a winding staircase. At Montvalon- Tauriac, in the same department, under the castle are refuges and granaries. At Murat in Cantal is the castle of Anterroche, and the rocks about it are traversed with galleries leading to chambers containing silos. At Salles-la-Source in Aveyron, in a cleft of the plateau, is the castle of the Count of Armagnac, and here also there is the same provision. At S. Sulpice in Tarn are the remains of a castle built in 1247, with its chapel over crypts and galleries carved out of the living stone. At Contigne, in Maine-et-Loire, is the manor of Gatines, underneath which are _souterrains_ that extend for a mile, with store-chambers and chapels, hewn out of the tufa. I might mention a hundred more. But all these pertain to a period before the feudal system had sunk into one of oppression, and when the vassals had confidence in their seigneur. In process of time the conditions altered, and then they contrived their own private hiding-places from their lords and masters.
The stories everywhere prevalent where there are castles, that there are under them passages connecting them with a church, a river, or another castle, are probably due to the fact of there having been these subterranean retreats intended for the use of the vassals. But when these latter ceased to look to their lords to protect them, and cast about instead to shelter themselves from their lords, the original purport of these _souterrains_ was forgotten and misinterpreted.
One has but to look through the brief notices of towns and villages in Joanne’s Departmental Geographies to see what a number of these refuges are already known to exist in France. And he records, be it remembered, only the most interesting. There are thousands more that have either not yet been discovered or remain unexplored. Some are revealed by accident; a peasant is ploughing, when his oxen are suddenly engulfed, and he finds that they have broken through the roof of one of these hiding-places. A gentleman is building his chateau, when in sinking his foundations he finds the rock like a petrified sponge–but not like a sponge in this, that the galleries are artificial. A _paysan_ lets himself down his well to clean it out, as the water is foul. He finds that in the side of the shaft is the opening of a passage; he enters, follows it, and finds a labyrinth of galleries.
As an instance of the abundance of the _souterrains_ in France, I will take the department of Vienne and give in a note below a list of the communes where they are known to be, from _De Longuemar, Geographie du dep. de la Vienne_, Poitiers, 1882, and also from several editions of Joanne’s Geography. [Footnote: Natural grottoes that may have served as refuges are not included. Availles, Bellefonds, Bethines, Beruges, Bonnes, Bussieres, Chateau Gamier, Champniers, Curzay, Civeaux, Gouex, Ingrandes, S. Julien Lars, Jazneuil, Leugny- sur-Creuse, Loudun, Lautiers, Lusignan, Marnay, Maire-le-Gautier, S. Martin-Lars, S. Martin-la-Riviere, Maslou Montmorillon, Mazerolles, Mondion, Maulay, Montreuil-Bonnin, Naintre, Princai, Romagne, S. Remy- sur-Creuse, Saulge, Nouvaille, Persac, S. Savin, Sossais, Thure, Usson, Varennes, Le Vigean, Veniers, Velleches, Verrieres, Venneuil-sur-Biard. Several of these are under churches, others under castles. At some of these places are three or more distinct _souterrains._]
Victor Hugo, in his _Quatrevingt Treise_, speaking of the war in La Vendee, says: “It is difficult to picture to oneself what these Breton forests really were. They were towns. Nothing could be more secret, more silent, and more savage. There were wells round and small, masked by coverings of stones or by branches. The interiors at first vertical, then carried horizontally, spread out underground like tunnels, and ended in dark chambers.” These excavations, he states, had been there from time immemorial. He continues: “One of the wildest glades of the wood at Misdon, perforated by galleries and cells, out of which came and went a mysterious society, was called ‘The Great City.’ The gloomy Breton forests were servants and accomplices of rebellion. The subsoil of every forest was a sort of sponge, pierced and traversed in all directions by a secret highway of mines, cells and galleries. Each of these blind cells could shelter five or six men. Usually the cover, made of moss and branches, was so artistically fashioned that, although impossible on the outside to distinguish it from the surrounding turf, it was very easy to open and close from the inside. In several of these forests and woods there were not only subterranean villages grouped about the burrow of the chief, but also actual hamlets of low huts hidden under the trees. These underground belligerents were kept perfectly informed of what was going on. Nothing could be more rapid, nothing more mysterious, than their means of communication. Sometimes they raised the cover of their hiding-places and listened to hear if there was fighting in the distance.” He mentions the ability of the ambushed men to spring up, as it were, under the feet of the armies sent against them. And to show the numbers of the concealed forces, he continues: “There are in existence lists which enable one to understand the powerful organisation of that vast peasant rebellion. In Isle-et- Villaine, in the forest of Pertre, not a human trace was to be found, yet there were collected 6000 men under Focard. In the forest of Meullac, in Morhiban, not a soul was to be seen, yet it held 8000 men. These deceptive copses were filled with fighters, lurking in an underground labyrinth.”
On March 26, 1807, Napoleon demanded a fresh conscription of 80,000 men. This was the third levy that had been called for since the Prussian War began. The three conscriptions supplied no less than 240,000 men in seven months, and the call for the third produced consternation throughout France. The number of young men who reached the age of eighteen annually in half a year, more than the entire annual generation, had been swept off to lay their bones in the East of Europe. Great numbers of young fellows fled to the woods, caves, and secret refuges, and concealed themselves; and the gendarmes were employed in hunting them out, but not often with success unless aided by a traitor. Again in 1812, when Napoleon meditated an invasion of Russia, fresh calls were made on the male population. Every male capable of bearing arms was forced to assume them, and again, as in 1807, the young men disappeared as rabbits underground. It is quite possible that the peasants, who have found these refuges so convenient in the past, should know more about them and where they are situated than they pretend, thinking that at some future time, another revolution or another German invasion, the knowledge may prove serviceable.
And now let us turn to Picardy, perhaps the one of the ancient provinces of France most undermined. On the night of February 13, 1834, after heavy rains, a portion of the wall of the apse of the parish church of Gapennes, half-way between Aussy-le-Chateau and S. Ricquier, collapsed, and in the morning the inhabitants of the commune were stupefied to see the desolation of the holy place. Not only was a large breach gaping in the sanctuary, but all the walls of the chancel were fissured, and the pavement of the nave was upheaved in places and in others rent.
At first it was supposed that this was the result of an earthquake, but after a while the true cause was discovered. The church had been erected over a vast network of subterranean passages and chambers, and the roofs of some of these had given way. This led to an exploration, and the plan of this subterranean refuge–for such it had been–was traced as far as possible.
But Gapennes is not the only place where such retreats exist throughout the province. Something like a hundred have been found, and more are every now and then coming to light. Indeed, it may safely be said that there is scarcely a village between Arras and Amiens and between Roye and the sea, betwixt the courses of the Somme and Authie, that was not provided with these underground refuges. The character of all is very much the same. They consist of passages communicating with square or circular chambers that served as stores. They have been described at length by M. Bouthers in _Memoires de la Societe d’Archeologie du departement de la Somme_, Amiens, 1834, t. i.
To what date, or period rather, do they belong?
Some doubtless are of extreme antiquity, but the majority are comparatively modern. It is a significant fact that the entrance to perhaps the majority is in the sacristy of the parish church, and in that at Gapennes care was taken not to undermine the tower of the church. M. de Carpentin, who explored and reported on the excavation at Gapennes, remarks on the care taken to so distribute the chalk brought up from these passages and vaults that no heaps were anywhere visible.
“The motive that can have induced the undertaking of such an extensive work can only have been that necessity drove the inhabitants to create for themselves a refuge in time of war.” In it he found two pieces of common pottery, a lock and a hinge of iron, some straw and leather soles of women’s shoes. He adds: “At the entrance of several of the chambers the stone is worked to receive doors, and here portions of decayed wood were found. And many of the chambers had their walls blackened by smoke as of lamps.”
At Naours in Somme, the underground galleries have been explored thoroughly; there are several circular chambers for stores, and corn has been found in them, also fourteen gold coins of Charles VI or Louis XIV. In all there are 201 galleries and 300 chambers and the labyrinth extends to the distance of 6000 feet. At Santerre, which possesses three of these refuges, that portion of its territory was called _Territorium Sanctae Libertatis_.
The north-east of France, Picardy and Artois, were always exposed to attack from pirates by sea, Northmen and Saxon, and from invaders over the border. But none of these can have exceeded in barbarity that of 1635 to 1641, when Spanish armies–the first under John de Werth and Piccolomini, 40,000 in number, and made up of Germans, Hungarians, Croats as well as Spaniards–poured over the provinces committing the most frightful atrocities. And precisely to this period some of the refuges may be referred.
A MS. account of this invasion, by a priest of Hiermont, named Claude Godde, leaves this in no manner of doubt. He says: “The Spaniards committed great outrages in Picardy, as they did later in 1658. These wars compelled the inhabitants of Hiermont in 1647 to construct the quarry which we now see. This quarry or cavern, which is a great masterpiece, was first undertaken by five or six of the inhabitants “– he gave their names. “They first of all dug out the entrance in 1647, but owing to its having given way several times, had to be repaired, and was not completed till 1648. The other inhabitants, seeing its great utility, wanted also to have their chambers, but they were not admitted unless they contributed to the cost of the undertaking, and to this they willingly agreed. This quarry was of great service to the inhabitants in the Wars of Louis XIV. against England, Holland, and the Empire during the years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711, which were the days of Marlborough. It was accordingly made by the inhabitants of Hiermont, to hide themselves, their cattle, their grain and their furniture, to preserve them from pillage by the soldiers, whether of the enemy or French. Each family had its own chamber.”
In a proces of 1638, one of those interrogated, a nun named Martha Tondu, stated that at Reneval and the neighbouring villages “the peasants are on the look out, and if alarmed, retire and conceal their cattle in ditches and quarries, without abandoning their houses or neglecting their agricultural work.”
Some, accordingly, of these subterranean refuges are of comparatively late date; but this does not apply to all. At every period of danger, instinctively the peasants would take advantage of the nature of the chalk to form in it suitable hiding-places, and although some of the finds in these labyrinths are of recent date, others go back to the Gallo-Roman period. In the Arras and Cambrai Chronicle of Balderic (1051), we are told that in the fifth century in those parts a persecution of the Christians occurred, on the invasion of the barbarians, and that the priests celebrated the Divine Mysteries in secret hiding-places. “Many,” he adds, “were suffocated in caves and in subterranean passages.”
There is, in fact, evidence both from archaeology and from history that these refuges were taken advantage of, and doubtless extended from a remote antiquity down to the eighteenth century.
It was not against the foreign foe only that the peasants excavated their underground retreats. Froissart paints the chivalry of his time in the brightest colours, and only here and there by a few touches lets us see what dark shadows set them off. Who paid for the gay accoutrements of the knights? Who were the real victims of the incessant wars? From whom came the ransom of King John and of the nobles taken at Crecy and Poitiers? From the peasant. The prisoners allowed to return on parole came to their territories to collect the sums demanded for their release, and the peasant had to find them. He had his cattle, his plough and tumbril. They were taken from him; no more corn was left him than enough to sow his field. He knew how he would be exploited, and he hid his precious grain that was to make bread for his wife and children. The seigneur endeavoured to extort from him the secret as to where it was concealed. He exposed the man’s bare feet before the fire; he loaded him with chains. But the peasant bore fire and iron rather than reveal the hiding-place. Here is Michelet’s account of the seigneur in the first half of the fifteenth century. “The seigneur only revisited his lands at the head of his soldiery to extort money by violence. He came down on them as a storm of hail. All hid at his approach. Throughout his lands alarm resounded –it was a _sauve-qui-peut_. The seigneur is no longer a true seigneur; he is a rude captain, a barbarian, hardly even a Christian. _Ecorcheur_ is the true name for such, ruining what was already ruined, snatching the shirt off the back of him who had one; if he had but his skin, of that he was flayed. It would be a mistake to suppose that it was only the captains of the _ecorcheurs_–the bastards, the seigneurs without a seigneurie, who showed themselves so ferocious. The grandees, the princes in these hideous wars, had acquired a strange taste for blood. What can one say when one sees Jean de Ligny, of the house of Luxembourg, exercise his nephew, the Count of Saint-Pol, a child of fifteen, in massacring those who fled? They treated their kinsfolk in the same manner as their enemies. For safety–better be a foe than a relation. The Count d’Harcourt kept his father prisoner all his life. The Countess of Foix poisoned her sister; the Sire de Gial his wife. The Duke of Brittany made his brother die of starvation, and that publicly; passers-by heard with a shudder the lamentable voice pleading piteously for a little bread. One evening, the 10th of January, the Count Adolphus of Gueldres dragged his old father out of bed, drew him on foot, unshod, through the snow for five leagues to cast him finally into a moat. It was the same in all the great families of the period–in those of the Low Countries, in those of Bar, Verdun, Armagnac, &c. The English had gone, but France was exterminating herself. The terrible miseries of the time find expression, feeble as yet, in the ‘Complaint of the poor Commoner; and of the poor Labourers.’ It comprises a mixture of lamentations and threats; the starving wretches warn the Church, the King, the Burgesses, the Merchants, the Seigneurs above all, that ‘fire is drawing nigh to their hostels.’ They appeal to the king for help. But what could Charles VII. do? How impose respect and obedience on so many daring men? Where could he find the means to repress these flayers of the country, these terrible little kings of castles? They were his own captains. It was with their aid that he made war against the English.” [Footnote: _Mist, de France,_ v. p. 184 _et seq._]
Thus, the subterranean refuges that had served at one time as hiding- places against Saracens, Normans, English, became places of retreat for the wretched people against their own masters. They no longer carried their goods into the _souterrains_ under the castles, but into refuges contrived by themselves in the depths of forests, known only to themselves; hidden, above all, from their seigneurs.
The peasantry might have said then, what was said long after by Voltaire: “Il faut etre dans ce monde enclume ou marteau; j’etais ne enclume.” Voltaire, however, speedily became a hammer, and after 1789 the Tiers Etat also became a hammer, and the Noblesse the anvil.
In Iceland there were underground retreats, as we learn from the same Saga that tells us of those in Aquitaine. Orvar Odd found a king’s daughter concealed in one. So, also, a very large one in Ireland is spoken of in the Landnama Bok. In England we have, both in Essex and in Kent, subterranean passages and chambers very similar to those described in Picardy and in Aquitaine. These also are excavated in the chalk. They are the so-called Dene Holes, of which there are many in Darenth Wood and near Chislehurst, and they have given occasion to a lively controversy. Some have supposed them to be retreats of the Druids, some that they were places of refuge during the invasions of the Saxons first, and then of the Danes, and others again contend that they were merely quarries for the excavation of chalk to burn into lime.
Here is an account of the Dene Hole at Chislehurst by Mr. W. J. Nichols. [Footnote: Nichols (W. J.), “The Chislehurst Caves,” _Journal of the Archaeological Association_, Dec. 1903.] “At the foot of the hill is a gap, which is the present entrance to the caves. A guide meets us here, who, unlocking a door, and switching on the electric light, introduces the visitor to a gallery or tunnel, about 150 feet long, 10 feet to 12 feet high, and with a width of 12 feet to 15 feet, narrowing to about 7 feet at the roof. This, and the galleries so far explored, have been cut through the chalk bed, at a depth of about 6 feet below the Thanet sand which covers it. At the end of the gallery, extending both right and left, are passages of like character. These again open into others so numerous that the visitor is fairly bewildered, and loses all idea of the direction in which he is travelling. The effect of the coloured electric lamps on the old chalk walling is remarkably beautiful. Proceeding on our way we get beyond the range of the electric lamps. Here candles or hand-lamps are lighted; and we pass, in Cimmerian gloom, through a succession of galleries of various dimensions, some of which, being only 4 feet wide and 5 feet high, are possibly of earlier construction than those already described. There is one gallery of the last-mentioned height and width 63 feet long, with several sharp turns which formerly terminated in a chamber about 12 feet high and 10 feet wide, and a like length, and near it is a seat cut into an angle of the walling. At no great distance from this chamber and near a Dene-hole shaft is a short gallery, at the end of which is a shaft originally level with the flooring, but now bricked round and further protected by an iron cover. On removing the cover and lowering a lamp, a well of excellent workmanship is discovered. Owing to the quantity of material thrown down from time to time by explorers, its present depth is no more than 43 feet. Further progress is made, and presently we notice a streak of daylight some distance ahead; here we find that we have reached the foot of a shaft 85 feet deep, which, though now partly covered in, had its mouth in what is at the present time the garden of a modern villa.”
There are numerous other Dene Holes or Danes’ Pits at East Tilbury, Crayford, and Little Thurrock. As to the theory that they were places of Druidical worship, we may dismiss it as not deserving serious consideration.
At East Tilbury the entrance to the Danes’ pit is from above, by narrow passages that widen and communicate with several apartments, all of regular forms. One of these pits consists of a shaft descending to chambers arranged like a sixfoiled flower. The shaft is 3 feet in diameter and 85 feet deep. This may be likened to one at Doue-la- Fontaine (Maine et Loire), where a descent is made under a private house into an area from which radiate on all sides chambers, some of which contain tombs.
That these Dene Holes were used as hiding-places when the sails of the Danish Vikings appeared on the horizon is probable enough, but originally they were chalk quarries–some very ancient–for British coins have been found in them. The existence of old lime-kilns near the Chislehurst caves places their origin beyond a doubt. Chalk was largely exported in early times from the Thames to Zealand, whence it was passed through the Low Countries and used in dressing the fields. Altars to Nethalennia, the patroness of the chalk quarries, have been found in the sand on the coast of Zealand; some bear votive inscriptions from dealers in British chalk, and Pliny, writing of the finer quality of chalk (_argentaria_) employed by silversmiths, obtained from pits sunk like wells, with narrow mouths, to the depth of a hundred feet, whence they branch out like the adits of mines, adds, “Hoc maxime Britannia utitur.” [Footnote: Roach Smith, _Collectanea Antiqua_, vi. p. 243, “British Archaeological Assoc. Journal,” N.S., ix.-x. (1903 and 1904).]
In Cornwall, moreover, there are what are locally called _fogous_. These are either excavated in the rock with passages leading to the sea or to houses, or else they are built of stone slabs standing erect, parallel and covered with other slabs leading to chambers similarly constructed, and all buried under turf or sand. Of the former description there is a very interesting example at Porthcothan in S. Ervan; of the latter the most remarkable is at Trelowaren. The former may have been excavated by smugglers. An interesting account of the excavation of two caves at Archerfield, in Haddingtonshire, is given in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for 1909. Both caves are natural, but one had been walled up in front, with a doorway and window and with oven; both had paved hearths in the centre, and there was evidence that they had been tenanted some time after the Roman occupation of Britain, as among the fragments of pottery found was some Samian ware. It would appear that both had been inhabited simultaneously, but not consecutively, for a lengthy period, and no doubt can exist that they were mere rock refuges. In a note to the article we read: “On the coast of Island Magee (Ireland) there is a cave, south of the Gobbins, which has been frequently used as a place of refuge. So late as 1798 it was inhabited by outlaws, who constructed a kind of fortification at the entrance, the remains of which still exist.” [Footnote: Cree (J. R.), “Excavation of Two Caves,” in “Proceedings of the Soc. of Arch. of Scotland,” Edin., 1909, vol. xliii.]
A cave in the Isle of Egg, one of the Hebrides, has a very narrow entrance, through which one can creep only upon hands and knees, but it rises steeply within and soon becomes lofty, and runs into the bowels of the rock for 225 feet. The stony, pebbly bottom of this cavern was for long strewn with the bones of men, women and children, the relics of the ancient inhabitants of, the island, two hundred in number, of whose destruction the following account is given. “The Macdonalds, of the Isle of Egg, a people dependent on Clanranald, had done some injury to the Lord of Macleod. The tradition of the isle says that it was by a personal attack on the chieftain, in which his back was broken; but that of the two other isles bears that the injury was offered by two or three of the Macleods, who, landing upon Egg and behaving insolently towards the islanders, were bound hand and foot, and turned adrift in a boat, which the winds safely conducted to Skye. To avenge the offence given, Macleod sailed with such a body of men as rendered resistance hopeless. The natives, fearing his vengeance, concealed themselves in the cavern; and, after strict search, the Macleods went on board their galleys after doing what mischief they could, concluding the inhabitants had left the isle. But next morning they espied from their vessels a man upon the island, and immediately landing again, they traced his retreat by means of a light snow on the ground to the cavern. Macleod then summoned the subterranean garrison, and demanded that the inhabitants who had offended him should be delivered up. This was peremptorily refused. The chieftain thereupon caused his people to divert the course of a rill of water, which, falling over the mouth of the cave, would have prevented his purposed vengeance. He then kindled at the entrance of the cavern a large fire, and maintained it until all within were destroyed by suffocation.” [Footnote: Lockhart’s “Life of Sir Walter Scott,” Edin., 1844, p.285.]
A no less horrible deed was committed during the campaign of Essex against the Irish rebels in 1575. This shall be given in the words of Froude. [Footnote: “Hist. of England,” 1870, x. p. 527 _et seq._]
“On the coast of Antrim, not far from the Giant’s Causeway, lies the singular island of Rathlin. It is formed of basaltic rock, encircled with precipices, and is accessible only at a single spot. It contains an area of about 4000 acres, of which a thousand are sheltered and capable of cultivation, the rest being heather and rock. The approach is at all times dangerous; the tide sets fiercely through the strait which divides the island from the mainland, and when the wind is from the west, the Atlantic swell renders it impossible to land. The situation and the difficulty of access had thus long marked Rathlin as a place of refuge for Scotch or Irish fugitives, and besides its natural strength it was respected as a sanctuary, having been the abode at one time of Saint Columba. A mass of broken masonry on a cliff overhanging the sea is a remnant of the castle, in which Robert Bruce watched the leap of the legendary spider. To this island, when Essex entered Antrim, Macconnell and the other Scots had sent their wives and children, their aged, and their sick, for safety. On his way through Carrickfergus, when returning from Dublin, the Earl ascertained that they had not yet been brought back to their homes. The officer in command of the English garrison was John Norris, Lord Norris’s second son. Three small frigates were in the harbour. The sea was smooth; there was a light and favourable air from the east; and Essex directed Norris to take a company of soldiers with him, cross over, and kill whatever he could find. The run up the Antrim coast was rapidly and quietly accomplished. Before an alarm could be given the English had landed, close to the ruins of the church that bears Saint Columba’s name. Bruce’s castle was then standing, and was occupied by a detachment of Scots, who were in charge of the women. But Norris had brought cannon with him. The weak defences were speedily destroyed, and after a fierce assault, in which several of the garrison were killed, the chief who was in command offered to surrender if he and his people were allowed to return to Scotland. The conditions were rejected; the Scots yielded at discretion, and every living creature in the place, except the chief and his family, who were probably reserved for ransom, were immediately put to the sword. Two hundred were killed in the castle. It was then discovered that several hundred more, chiefly mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the shore. There was no remorse–not even the faintest perception that the occasion called for it. They were hunted out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed. Surleyboy and the other chiefs, Essex coolly wrote, ‘stood upon the mainland of Glynnes and saw the taking of the island, and was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself, and saying that he had there lost all that ever he had.’ According to Essex’s own account, six hundred were thus massacred. He described the incident as one of the exploits with which he was most satisfied; and Queen Elizabeth in answer to his letters bade him tell John Norris, ‘the executioner of his well-designed enterprise, that she would not be unmindful of his services.'” The neighbourhood of Gortyna in Crete has a mountain labyrinth, and during the revolt of the Cretans against the Turks in 1822-28, the Christian inhabitants of the adjacent villages, for months together, lived in these caves, sallying forth by day to till their farms or gather in their crops, when it was safe so to do. None could approach within range of the muskets pointed from the loopholes at the entrance without being immediately shot down; nor could either fire or smoke suffocate or dislodge the inmates, as the caves have many openings.
Less happy were the Christian refugees in the cave of Melidoni. In 1822, when Hussein Bey marched against the neighbouring village, the inhabitants, to the number of three hundred, fled to the cave, taking their valuables with them. Hussein ordered a quantity of combustibles to be piled at the entrance and set on fire. The poor wretches within were all smothered. The Turks waited a few days, and then entered and rifled the bodies. A week later, three natives of the village crept into the cavern to see what had become of their relatives. It is said that they were so overcome by the horror of what they witnessed, that two of them died within a few days. Years after, the Archbishop of Crete blessed the cavern, and the bones of the victims of Turkish barbarity were collected and buried in the outer hall, which has in its centre a lofty stalagmite reaching to the summit, and the walls on all sides are draped with stalactites.
We must not pass over without a word the treatment of the Arabs in Algeria by the French troops, when General Lamorciere suffocated the unfortunate refugees in the caves whither they had fled, in the same way as Caesar’s general had suffocated the Gauls.
CHAPTER IV
CLIFF REFUGES
I have divided Refuges into two classes–those that have been burrowed under the soil, and those that open in the face of a cliff. Occasionally they run one into another, and yet they materially differ. The first have their entrances elaborately concealed, whereas the latter are bare to the face of day, and no concealment is possible or attempted. Those who had recourse to the first trusted in being able, should the entrance be discovered or betrayed, to defend themselves by various devices, whereas those who resorted to the latter relied on their inaccessibility.
Where a cliff stood up precipitous or overhanging, and in its face gaped caverns, those who sought refuge in time of danger naturally looked to them, and contrived means of reaching them, therein to ensconce their goods and secure their persons. They might have to contemplate the devastation of their fields, and their farms burning, from their eyries, but they knew that their persons were safe. There were various ways by which these caves could be reached; one was by cutting notches in the face of the cliff for fingers and toes, so that it could be climbed to from below, but not accessible to an enemy exposed to the thrust of pikes, and to stones being cast down upon him. Or else the notches were cut laterally from an accessible ledge, but if so, then this mode of approach was carefully guarded. A second method was by ladders, but as some of these caves are so high up that no single ladder could reach their mouths, a succession was contrived notched below and above into the rock where ledges either existed naturally or were contrived artificially, so as to enable the climber to step from one ladder to the next. In the event of danger the ladders could be withdrawn. A third method was by a windlass, rope and basket, and this was employed where the ascent by finger and toe notches was peculiarly perilous, for the conveyance of goods or of children and old people. But cattle had also to be saved from the depredators, and in some of the cliff refuges are stables for horses and cowstalls, with mangers and silos; places also where the windlass was fixed and there the sharp edge of the rock has been smoothed to an easy slope to facilitate the landing of the beasts, that were hauled up by bands placed under their bellies. Provision was also made for the baking of bread and the storage of water, this latter in the same way as already described in the account of the contrivances for permanent rock- dwellings. These cliff refuges can have been had recourse to only on emergencies, on account of their inaccessibility.
At Cazelles in the commune of Sireuil (Dordogne) is a cliff 1200 feet long, and about 150 feet high. It has been worn into a deep furrow some twenty or thirty feet from the top, horizontal and running its entire length. The whole cliff overhangs its base. The entire groove has been occupied as a refuge, and there have been excavations in the back of the groove for additional chambers. In front, moreover, there must have been a balcony of wood, sustained by beams and props. In three places the edge of the terrace has been cut through for the convenience of hauling up cattle and farm produce. At the time when this was in use there was a hamlet at the foot of the cliff, as is shown by the furrows cut in the rock into which the tile roofing was let, and notches for the reception of the roof timbers.
No trace of a stair remains; in fact no stair could have been cut in the face of a rock that overhangs as does this. Another very remarkable cliff-refuge is Le Peuch Saint Sour on the Vezere. It is not mentioned in any chronicle as having been a resort of the English in the Hundred Years’ War, and we may accordingly conclude that it was a refuge for the inhabitants of the hamlet at its feet.
[Illustration: LA ROCHE GAGEAC. A town and castles on the Dordogne, never captured by the English, but afterwards sacked and ruined by the Huguenots.]
[Illustration: LE PEUCH S. SOUR. A series of refuges in the face of the cliff. Originally a place of retreat of S. Sour, a hermit.]
S. Sorus or Sour was a hermit, born about the year 500; he set off with two companions, Amandus and Cyprian, to find a desert place where he might take up his abode. I will quote from the Latin life. “All at once in their wanderings they arrived at a place in the midst of vast forests, and dens of wild beasts, a place so barren and abrupt, of access so difficult, that surely no one had ever hitherto ventured to reach it either to dwell there, or for pleasure, even to visit it for curiosity. A rock very lofty furnished him above with a shelter that sufficed; out of the flanks of the rock issued a spring and watered the little valley that was on the other side surrounded by the Vezere.”
I think that it was in the Peuch S. Sour that the hermit settled, though afterwards through the favour of King Gontram he moved to lands granted him at Terrasson. And now for a story. Here he resolved to live alone, and here he parted with his companions. But before they separated, “Let us have a love feast together,” said he. But he had with him only a bit of fat bacon. He divided it into three parts, and gave a share to each of his companions. Now it was Lent, and one of them was scandalized at the idea of eating bacon in Lent, so he put the bit of meat into his bosom, where it was at once transformed into a serpent, which enwrapped him in its coils. Terrified, he screamed to Sour to deliver him, which the hermit did, and the monster was at once resolved into a bit of bacon. “Eat it,” said the hermit, “and remember that Charity is above all rules.”
The description of the place so well accords with the Peuch that bears his name, that I cannot doubt but that Sour occupied for some years the cave high up in the cliff, and only to be reached by crawling to it sideways, holding on to the rock by fingers and toes. But afterwards it was greatly enlarged to serve as a place of retreat by the peasants of the hamlet below. It consists of three groups of chambers cut in the rock, one reached by a very long, forty-round ladder, when a chamber is entered which has a hole in the roof through which, by another ladder, one can mount to a whole series of chambers communicating one with another. The face of some of these was originally walled up. A second group is now inaccessible. A third is reached by climbing along the face of the cliff, with fingers and toes placed in niches cut in the cleft to receive them.
[Illustration: Beginning of a Gallery.]
[Illustration: The Pick employed.]
A recess at the foot of the crag, arched above, contains three perpendicular grooves. This was the beginning of another artificial cave, never completed, begun maybe in 1453 and suddenly abandoned, as the glad tidings rang through the land that the English had abandoned Aquitaine and that the Companies were disbanded.
At the Roc d’Aucor, in the valley of the Vers (Lot), a gaping cave is visible far above where any ladder could reach and inaccessible by climbing from the top of the crag, as that overhangs like a wave about to break. Nevertheless, athwart the opening are, and have been from time immemorial, two stout beams let into the rock horizontally. Dimly visible in the depth of the cavern is some tall white figure, and the peasants declare that it is that of a man–a statue in marble, keeping guard over a golden calf.
In 1894, M. Martel and three friends, taking with them Armand, the trusty help in descending _avens_, pot-holes, and exploring the course of subterranean rivers, resolved on an attempt at the exploration of this mysterious cavern.
The mouth is 90 feet from the ground, and its floor is about 95 feet from the summit of the cliff, [Footnote: Martel (A.), Le Refuge du Roc d’Aucor, Brive, 1895.] which is crowned by the _oppidurn_ of Murcens, the best preserved of all Gaulish strongholds in France, and was held by the English in 1370. The only possible way to obtain access to the interior would be from above, as the plumb-line let down from the summit fell 44 feet wide from the base of the cliff. Accordingly a rope ladder was attached to a tree on the top, and Armand descended furnished with a plumb-line, the end of which was attached to a cord. “Having descended 77 feet, he swung free in the air at the level of the transverse poles. Then he endeavoured to throw the lead-weight beyond one of the poles. He succeeded only after the seventh or eighth attempt, and was well pleased when the weight running over it swung down to our feet, as the position of the poles and the slope of the floor of the fissure did not allow it to rest in the cavern. ‘Pull the cord,’ shouted Armand. ‘What for?’ ‘You will soon see. Pull’–and speedily the string drew after it one of our stout ropes. ‘Now do you understand?’ asked Armand. ‘I have fastened my rope ladder to the cord that goes over the pole. Four or five of you pull and draw me in towards that pole, and so we shall get the better of the situation. When I have fixed the ladder to the pole you may all mount by the grand stair.'”
By good fortune that beam held firm, and first Armand got into the cave and then the others mounted from below. What made the entrance treacherous was that the floor at the orifice sloped rapidly downwards and outwards.
When within, it was seen that the posts were still solid and firmly planted in notches cut in the rock on both sides. In line with them were two rows of similar notches for the reception of beams extending inwards for about twenty feet, as though at one time there had been rafters to divide the cave into two storeys, but of such rafters none remained. The back of the cave was occupied by a gleaming white stalagmitic column that certainly from below bore some resemblance to a human figure, but the floor of the cavern was so deep in birds’ nests, and droppings of bats, leaves and branches, that it was not possible at the time to explore it. This, however, was done by M. Martel in 1905, but nothing of archaeological interest was found. However, he noticed a sort of ascending chimney that extended too far to be illumined to its extremity by the magnesium wire, and he conjectured that it extended to the surface of the rock above, where was the original entrance, now choked with earth and stone.
But an investigation by M. A. Vire has solved the mystery of how access was obtained to this refuge. The beams visible from below are, as already said, two in number. The upper and largest is square, and measures seven by eight inches. The lower is nearly round and is four inches in diameter, and shows distinct traces of having been fretted by a rope having passed over it. It must have been used for the drawing up of food or other objects likely to excite the cupidity of robbers and _routiers_. The number of notches for beams of a floor in the sides of the cave is remarkable, but no floor can have been erected there, otherwise it would not have rotted away, whilst the two cross- beams at the entrance remain sound. The chimney supposed by Martel to communicate with the surface does not do so. Spade work at the foot of the rock revealed the manner in which the cavern had been reached. A tradition existed in the Vers valley that at one time there had been a tower at the foot of the rock, and old men remembered the removal of some of its ruins for the construction of a mill. By digging, the foundations of the tower were disclosed. It had been square and measured 44 feet on each side. It had stood about 60 feet high, and had been topped with a lean-to tiled roof resting against the uppermost beam in the cave and thereby masking it. [Footnote: “Le Roc d’Aucour,” in _Bulletin de la Soc. des Antiquaires de Quercy_, Cahors, 1901, t. xxvi.]
A somewhat similar cave is that of Boundoulaou in the Causse de Larzac (Lozere). Although this has an opening in the face of the precipice, which is partly walled up, it can be entered from another and more accessible cave. At a considerably lower level flows a stream that at one time issued from it, but has worked its way downwards, and now gushes forth many feet below. However, apparently in times of heavy rain, the overflow did burst forth from the upper cavern, for in it were found the skeletons of a whole family that had perished on one such occasion.
At nearly 180 feet up the face of a sheer perpendicular cliff near Milau is the cave of Riou Ferrand, 45 feet below the brow of the precipice. The mouth of the grotto is partly blocked by a well- constructed wall. It has been entered from above and explored. It yields delicately fine pottery and a spindle-whorl, so that a woman must have taken refuge here, and here sat spinning and looking down from this dizzy height on the ruffians ravaging the valley below and setting fire to her house. Bones of sheep and pigs in the cave showed that it had been tenanted for some time, and tiles of distinctly Roman character indicated the period of its occupation. The only possible means of entering this cavern is, and was, by a rope or a ladder from above. [Footnote: Martel, _Les Abimes_, Paris, 1894.]
I was in the valley of the Cele in 1892 with my friend M. Raymond Pons, a daring explorer of _avens_ and caves. There was one cavern in a precipice on the left bank near Brengues that showed tokens of having been a refuge, from having a pole across the entrance. M. Pons obtained a stout rope, and the assistance of half-a-dozen peasants, and was let down over the brink, and by swinging succeeded in obtaining a foothold within. He there found evident traces of former occupation. But how was it entered and left in ancient times? From below it was quite inaccessible, and from above only by the means he employed–a rope.
At Les Mees in the Basses-Alpes is a very similar cave, with two beams across fastened at the ends into the rock, which is a conglomerate, at the height of 350 feet, and quite inaccessible. They are mentioned by the historian Bartel in 1636 as inexplicable by him, and by the residents in the place.
A not less perplexing rock shelter is that of Fadarelles in the Gorges of the Tarn.
Of this M. Martel writes: “In a superb cliff of dolomitic limestone of the _cirque_ of the Beaumes Chauds, M. l’Abbe Solanet was good enough to conduct me beneath the Baume des Fadarelles, a chasm inaccessible, at the height of something like 1770 feet in the face of the precipice, something like the openings of Boundoulaou, but much narrower.
“In it one can see three coarse beams or rather trunks of trees from which the boughs have been cut away, each about 12 feet long. As this opening might well have been that of discharge of a stream, now choked, for the Baumes Chauds and its adjoining fissures, one is led at first to suppose that water had brought down these logs that had fallen into some pot-hole. But this hypothesis is untenable, for it can be seen that these poles have been artificially pointed at each end, and that they have been made firm by cross pieces of metal, either bronze or iron. This may be the remains of a roof or a floor destined to supplement the insufficiency of the overhanging rock–and of the size of the fissure, so as to convert it into some sort of shelter. To study the matter, a ladder of nearly 50 feet would be needed (to be let down from above). In the absence of all tradition, these beams of Les Fadarelles remain a mystery. As the face of the cliff is absolutely smooth above the opening, below and on both sides, completely devoid of anything like a ledge by which access could be obtained to it, the question presents itself to one for the third time, as at Boundoulaou and at Riou Ferrand, were these cliff-dwellers in the Causses like those in the Canon of Colorado, or has the demolition of ledges by weather on these limestone cliffs proceeded with great rapidity?”
Two apparently inaccessible caves, that have been the habitation of man as a temporary refuge, and that have been explored by M. Philibert Lalande, show that there was a way in which some, though by no means all, were reached. The grottoes of Puy Labrousse near Brive, comprising five or six chambers, have isolated from the rest one that opens in the face of a sheer precipice at a considerable height above the valley. It can be entered only from behind, by a very small oval opening, preceded by a gallery very narrow, and masked at the entrance by enormous rocks, and which could be barricaded by stout beams, hollows for the reception of which are visible.
The other is at Soulier-de-Chasteaux on the Couze, an affluent of the Vezere. Here are two caverns excavated by the hand of man. The most curious is on the right bank near the top of a Jurassic cliff that is absolutely precipitous, and this also can be entered _a retro_. A narrow path leads to an opening very small, excavated in the vault of the cavern, through which a man could squeeze himself so as to descend into it by means of a ladder. The gaping mouth of this grotto, which is from 15 to 18 feet square, is in part closed by a breastwork of stone.
Below this cave is a very large shelter cut out square-headed in the cliff, but not deep; and this is used by the peasants of Soulier as a place for stacking their hay. Square hollows wrought in the rock show that formerly some building was accommodated to it, and the roof ran back under it. In Auvergne are many _souterrains_ that have served as places of concealment in times of war. The Puy de Clierson occupies the centre of an area of four volcanoes. It is shaped like a bell, the slopes are covered with brushwood, and a ring of broken rocks forms the precipitous wall of the circular and flattish cap. The hill is composed of trachyte, and the upper portion is perforated in all directions by galleries and vaults that served formerly as a quarry for the extraction of stone of which the Romans formed their sarcophagi, in consequence of its powers of absorption of the moisture exuding from the bodies laid in their stone chests. The same may be said of Le Grand Sarcoui, shaped like a kettle turned bottom upwards. In some of the galleries are unfinished sarcophagi. But although originally quarries, they were used as refuges in later times. At Corent, on the Allier near Veyre-Mouton, are refuges in caves, so also at Blot-l’Eglise near Menat, which served the purpose during the troubles of the League.
Meschers is a village in Charante Inferieure, lying in the lap of a chalk hill that extends to a bluff above the Gironde. This cliff is honeycombed with caves, excavated perhaps originally as quarries, but several certainly served as habitations; the several chambers or dwellings are reached by a ledge running along the face of the cliff, but the chambers of each particular cave-house have doors of intercommunication cut through this rock. The Grottes de Meschers are said to have been used by the Huguenots at a time when it was perilous to assemble in a house for preaching or psalm-singing. But it is also quite possible that they served as refuges as well to the Catholics, when the Calvinists had the upper hand; as, indeed, they had for long. Their attempts at proselytising was not with velvet gloves, but with fire-brand, sword, and the hangman’s rope. In that horrible period, exceeding far in barbarity that of the _routiers_ in the Hundred Years’ War, it is hard to decide on which side the worst atrocities were committed.
[Illustration: CAVES OF MESCHERS. In these caves overlooking the Atlantic, the Huguenot refugees congregated to hear their preachers. During the Revolution and Reign of Terror they were occupied by priests and Royalists.]
[Illustration: CAVE REFUGE AT SOULIER DE CHASTEAU, CARREZE. This refuge is accessible by a secret way opening on to the plateau above. Below are indications of buildings having been constructed against, and in part into the rock.]
Later still, in the Reign of Terror, the grottoes may have harboured priests and nobles hiding for their lives. But now they shelter none but the peaceful dreamer, who sits there at eventide looking out over the yellow waters of the Gironde, ever agitated by the tide, at the setting sun that sends shafts of fire into these recesses–and sets him wishing that the light would reveal the details of tragic stories connected with these caves.
In the department of Ariege are a vast number of natural caverns, many of which have served as places of retreat for the Albigenses. Between Tarascon and Cabannes are some that were defended by crenellated walls, and are supposed to date from the Wars of Religion, but probably go back beyond the time of the English occupation. It is also said that the Huguenots met in them for their assemblies. In the country they go by the name of _gleizetos_, or _petites eglises_. They are found on the left bank of the Ariege. In the fourth century the Priscillianist heretics expelled from Spain settled in the mountains on the north slope of the Pyrenees, and propagated their doctrines throughout the country and among the population more than half pagan, and this explains the spread of Albigensian Manichaeism later. In 407 the Vandals, Suevi and Alani, during three years in succession swept the country, committing frightful ravages, as they passed on their way into Spain; and no doubt can be entertained that at this time the numerous grottoes were used by the natives as refuges. In 412 there was another influx of barbarians, this time Visigoths; their king Walla made Toulouse his capital, and gave over two-thirds of the land to his followers. After the battle of Voulon, in 507, Clovis took possession of Toulouse. In 715 the Saracens poured through the gaps in the Pyrenees, occupied the basin of the Ariege, and destroyed the city of Couserans. In 731 more arrived in a veritable invasion of multitudes, and ravaged all the south of France. Again the caves served their end as places of hiding. The south of France, rich and dissolute, was steeped in heresy. This heresy was a compound of Priscillianism, the dualism of Manes, Oriental and Gnostic fancies, Gothic Arianism, and indigenous superstition, all fused together in what was known as Albigensianism, and which was hardly Christian even in name. The terrible and remorseless extermination of these unfortunate people, who knew no better, by order of Innocent III. and John XXIII., presents one of the most horrible passages in history. The country reeked with the smoke of pyres at which the heretics were burnt, and was drenched with their blood. In 1244 their last stronghold, the Montsegur, was taken, when two hundred of them were burnt alive. Only some few who had concealed themselves in the dens and caves of the earth survived this terrible time. The last heard of them is in 1328, when some of the proscribed took refuge in the grottoes of Lombrive, when 500 or 600 were walled in and starved to death, as already related.
In Derbyshire are numerous caves–at Castleton, Bradwell Eyam, Matlock, and Buxton–but they are all natural, except such as are old mine- workings.
Poole’s Hole, the Buxton cavern, may be traced underground for the distance of something like half a mile. It is now lighted with gas, its inner ways have been made smooth, and it is even possible for invalids in bath-chairs to enter. But it was at one time the haunt of an outlaw named Poole, in the reign of Henry IV., who made it his home, and here accumulated his stores. But it was inhabited long before his time, and proves to have been a prehistoric dwelling-place, and was later occupied by the Romans.
Reynard’s Cave is high up on the Derbyshire side of Dove Dale, and the way to it is steep and dangerous. It is approached through a natural archway in a sheer cliff of limestone, about 20 feet wide and twice as high, beyond which a difficult pathway gives access to the cave itself. Near it is a smaller cavity, called Reynard’s Kitchen. This cavern has undoubtedly served as a shelter, it is said, to persecuted Royalists. Here it was that the Dean of Clogher, Mr. Langton, lost his life a century ago. He foolishly tried to ride his horse up the steep side of the Dale to the cave, and carry a young lady, Miss La Roche, behind him. The horse lost its foothold among the loose stones, and the rash equestrian fell. The Dean died two days afterwards, but the young lady recovered, saved by her hair having caught in the thorns of a bramble bush. High up, among the rocks on the Staffordshire side in a most secluded spot, is a cleft called Cotton’s Cave, which extends something like 40 feet within the rock. Here it was that Charles Cotton, the careless, impecunious poet, the friend of Isaac Walton, was wont to conceal himself from his creditors. On the top of Lovers’ Leap, a sheer precipice, is what was once a garden where the two anglers sat and smoked their pipes. Close by is an ancient watch-tower, from which was seen Cotton’s wife’s beacon-fire lit to announce to him that the coast was clear of duns, and to light him home in the black nights of winter.
Thor’s Cave is in a lofty rock on the Manifold River. The cliff rises to an altitude of four or five hundred feet, terminating in a bold and lofty peak; and the cave is situated about half-way up the face of the precipice. The cave is arched at the entrance, a black yawning mouth in the white face of the limestone. It is a natural phenomenon, but appears to have been enlarged by cave-dwellers. It has been explored by a local antiquary, and has yielded evidence of having been inhabited from prehistoric times.
The name of Thor’s Cavern carries us back to the time when the Norsemen occupied Deira and Derbyshire, and Jordas Cave in Yorkshire does the same–for the name signifies an Earth-Giant.
In the crevices of Bottor Rock in Hennock, Devon, John Cann, a Royalist, found refuge. He had made himself peculiarly obnoxious to the Roundheads at Bovey Tracey, and here he lay concealed, and provisions were secretly conveyed to him. Here also he hid his treasure. A path is pointed out, trodden by him at night as he paced to and fro. He was at last tracked by bloodhounds to his hiding-place, seized, carried to Exeter and hanged. His treasure has never been recovered, and his spirit still walks the rocks.
At Sheep’s Tor, where is now the reservoir of the Plymouth waterworks, may be seen by the side of the sheet of water the ruins of the ancient mansion of the Elfords. The Tor of granite towers above the village. Among the rocks near the summit is a cave in which an old Squire Elford was concealed when the Parliamentary troopers were in search of him. Polwheel in his “Devon” mentions it. “Here, I am informed, Elford used to hide himself from the search of Cromwell’s party, to whom he was obnoxious. Hence he could command the whole country, and having some talent for painting, he amused himself with that art on the walls of his cavern, which I have been told by an elderly gentleman who had visited the place was very fresh in his time.” None of the paintings now remain on the sides of the rock.
The cave is formed by two slabs of granite resting against each other. It is only about 6 feet long, 4 wide, and 5 feet high, and is entered by a very narrow opening.
CHAPTER V
CLIFF CASTLES. THE ROUTIERS
From a very early period in the Middle Ages–in fact from the dissolution of the Carlovingian dynasty–we find communities everywhere grouped about a centre, and that centre the residence of the feudal chief to whom the members of the community owed allegiance and paid certain dues, in exchange for which he undertook to protect his vassals from robbery and outrage. By the Edict of Mersen, in 847, every freeman was suffered to choose his own lord, whether the King or one of his vassals, and no vassal of the King was required to follow him in war, unless against a foreign enemy. Consequently the subjects were able to make merchandise of their obedience. In civil broils the King was disarmed, helpless; and as he was incapable of defending the weak against their oppressors, the feeble banded themselves under any lord who could assure them of protection. The sole token that the great nobles showed of vassalage to the Crown was that they dated their charters by the year of the Sovereign’s reign.
As the security of the community depended on the security of the seigneur, it behoved that his residence should be made inexpugnable. To this end, where possible, a projecting tongue of land or an isolated hill was selected and rendered secure by cutting through any neck that connected it with other high ground, or by carving the sides into precipices. Like a race of eagles, these lords dwelt on the top of the rocks, and their vassals crouched at their feet.
But although the dues paid to a seigneur were fixed by custom, it not infrequently happened that the receipts were inadequate to his wants. He had to maintain armed men to guard his castle and his tenants, and these armed men had to be paid and kept in good humour. The lord accordingly was disposed to increase the burdens laid on his serfs, and that to such an extent as to drive them into revolt. He on his part was not unaware of the fact that he held a wolf by the ears, and his impregnable position was chosen not solely as a defence against foreign enemies, but also against his rebellious vassals.
The village of Les Eyzies is dominated by the ruins of a castle of the tenth or eleventh century, that was restored in the fifteenth, when a graceful turret was added. The keep is planted on a precipitous rock, and rises to the overhanging roof of chalk that is pierced with rafter- holes for the reception of roof beams, and with openings only to be reached by ladders leading to caves that served as storehouses. At the junction of the Beune with the Vezere, a little further down is a rock standing by itself, shaped like a gigantic fungus. This is called the Roche de la Peine, as from the top of it the Sieur de Beynac, who was also lord of Les Eyzies, precipitated malefactors. But under that designation he was disposed to reckon all such as in any way offended him. In 1594 the Sieur, to punish two of his peasant vassals who had committed a trifling offence, killed one, and dragged the other over stones, attached to the tail of his horse. This act of barbarity roused public indignation, and a deputation waited on the seneschal of Perigord to demand retribution. But having received no satisfaction from this officer, in 1595, the peasants took the matter into their own hands, revolted and besieged the castle. As they failed to take it, they turned on the property of the seigneur, tore up his vines, cut down his woods, and burnt his granges.
The incessant wars that swept France, its dismemberment into duchies and counties and seigneuries, practically independent, and above all the English domination in Guyenne for three hundred years, enabled the petty nobles to shake off the very semblance of submission to their liege lords, and to prosecute their private feuds without hindrance. After Poitiers, 1356, and the captivity of King John, anarchy reigned in the land; bands of plunderers ranged to and fro, threatening persons and ravaging lands; and the magistrates could not, or would not, exercise their authority. Local quarrels among rival landowners, the turbulent and brutal passions of the castle-holders, filled the land with violence and spread universal misery, from which there seemed to be no escape, as against the wrongdoers there was no redress. After the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, Aquitaine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted in the interests of the King of England into an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces of Poitou, the Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois and Rouergue, greatly to the dissatisfaction of the people, who remonstrated against being handed over to a foreign lord. Charles V. and Charles VII. sought on every available occasion to escape from its obligations, and the towns were in periodic revolt. William de Nangis says of the condition of the country under Charles V.: “There was not in Anjou, in Touraine, in Beauce, in Orleans, and up to the very approaches of Paris, any corner of the country that was free from plunderers. They were so numerous everywhere, either in little castles occupied by them, or in villages and the countryside, that peasants and tradesmen could not travel except at great expense and in mighty peril. The very guards told off to protect the cultivators of the soil and the travellers on the highways, most shamefully took part in harassing and despoiling them. It was the same in Burgundy and the neighbouring countries. Some knights who called themselves friends of the King, whose names I am not minded to set down here, kept brigands in their service, who were every whit as bad. What is more strange is that, when these ruffians went into the cities, Paris, or anywhere else, everybody knew them and pointed them out, but none durst lay hands on them.”
The condition of Germany was but little superior to that of France. The central authority, if that can be called central which was always shifting its position, was unequal to restrain the violent. Its pretensions were in inverse proportion to its efficiency. The Emperor was too far off to see to the policing of the Empire, too weak to enforce order; and his long absences in Italy left the German lords and lordlings to pursue their own courses unrestrained. When the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa visited the Baron van Kingen in his castle near Constance, the freiherr received him seated, because, as he said, he held his lands in fee of none but the sun. Although he was willing to receive the Emperor as a guest, he refused to acknowledge him as his lord. If this was the temper of the petty nobility in a green tree, what must it have been in the dry. After that the great houses of Saxony and Swabia had been crushed out by the policy of the Papacy, it was to the interest of the electors to keep the Emperor weak; and the fact that the Imperial Crown was elective enabled the electors to sell their votes for extended privileges. At last, against the raids of the petty nobles, whom the Emperor could not control, the cities leagued together, took the matter in hand, attacked the fortresses, levelled them and gave to the inmates short shrift, a halter and a tree. In Italy the towns proceeded in a less summary manner. Surrounded as they were on all sides by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held undisputed sway over their serfs and controlled the arteries of trade, the cities were compelled to proceed against them; but instead of sending them to the gallows, they contented themselves with forcing them to take up their residence within the town walls. But though the feudal lordship of these nobles had been destroyed, their opulence, their lands, the prestige of their names remained untouched, and in place of disturbing the roads they filled the streets with riot. They reared in the towns those wonderful towers that we still see at Bologna, San Gemigniano, Savona, &c. “From the eighth to the thirteenth century,” says Ruskin, “there was little change in the form;–four- square, rising high and without tapering into the air, storey above storey, they stood like giants beside the piles of the basilicas and the Lombardic churches… their ruins still frown along the crests of every promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far away in the great Lombard plain, from distances of half a day’s journey, dark against the amber sky of the horizon.” [Footnote: Lectures on Architecture, 1853.]
I propose dividing my subject of cliff castles into four heads:–
1. Those that were seigneural strongholds. 2. Those that with castle and town occupied a rock. 3. The fastnesses of the _routiers_, the Companies in the Hundred Years’ War.
4. Outpost stations guarding fords, roads into a town, and passes into a country.
And I shall begin with No. 3–The Castles of the _routiers_.
The face of a country is like that of a woman. It tells the story of its past. The many-windowed English mansion sleeping among turfy lawns to the plash of a fountain, and the cawing of rooks in the beechwood, tell of a tranquil past life-record broken only by transient unrest; whereas the towers on the Continent with their _meurtrieres_ and frowning machicolations, bristling on every hill, frequent as church spires, now gutted and ruinous, proclaim a protracted reign of oppression and then a sudden upheaval in resentment and a firebrand applied to them all. The old English mansion has its cellars, but never an _oubliette_, its porch-door always open to welcome a neighbour and to relieve the indigent. It was not insulated by a dyke, and its doors clenched with a portcullis. The spoils of the chase were not a drove of “lifted” cattle taken from a peasant left stark upon his threshold, but foxes’ masks and the antlers of deer. The pigeons coo about the English gables and the peacock dreams in the sun on the balustrade of the terrace, as in past centuries, but the castle of the French noble and the burg of the German ritter are given over to the bats and owls, and are quarries whence the peasants pick out the heraldic carvings for the construction of their pig-styes.
Nowhere did tears so stain and furrow the face of the land as in that portion of France that was ceded to England. De Quincey says: “Within fifty years in three pitched battles that resounded to the ends of the earth, the chivalry of France had been exterminated. Her oriflamme had been dragged through the dust. The Eldest Son of Baptism had been prostrated. The daughter of France had been surrendered on coercion as a bride to her English conqueror. The child of that marriage, so ignominious to the land, was King of France by the consent of Christendom; that child’s uncle domineered as regent of France; and that child’s armies were in military possession of the land. But were they undisputed masters? No!–under a perfect conquest there would have been repose; whereas the presence of the English armies did but furnish a plea, making strong in patriotism, for gathering everywhere of lawless marauders, of soldiers that had deserted their banners, and of robbers by profession. This was the woe of France more even than the military dishonour.” [Footnote: Essay on Charles Lamb.]
The Hundred Years’ War, that has left ineffaceable traces in the south of France, began in 1336 before the conclusion of the Treaty of Bretigny, which was in 1360, and it lasted till 1443–over a century, though not without interruption; and it desolated the fields of Perigord, Quercy, and to a less degree Rouergue and the Limousin, and wrought havoc to the gates of Paris.
The close of the fourteenth century saw no hope anywhere, only gathering storms. In France, to the prudent Charles V. succeeded the mad fool Charles VI. In England the strong King Edward III. was followed by the incompetent Richard II. In Germany the Emperor Charles IV., a statesman, had as his successor the drunken sot Wenceslas. In England the Wars of the Roses were looming in the future. Agincourt proved more disastrous to England than to France. There was hopeless turmoil everywhere. As Luther said when a somewhat similar condition existed in Germany–“God, tiring of the game, has thrown the cards on the table.” In France the free Companies ran riot unrestrained. About them one word.
The engagement of mercenaries in the war between England and France had begun early. As Michelet says: “The population of the North saw appear among them mercenary soldiers, the _routiers_, for the most part in the service of England. Some came from Brabant, some from Aquitaine; the Basque Marcader was one of the principal lieutenants of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The mountaineers of the South, who to-day descend into France and Spain to gain a little money by huxtering, did so in the Middle Ages, but then, their sole industry was war. They maltreated priests as they did peasants, dressed their wives in consecrated vestments, beat the clergy, and made them sing mass in mockery. It was also one of their amusements to defile and break the images of Christ, to smash the legs and arms, treating Him worse than did the Jews. These _routiers_ were dear to the princes precisely on account of their impiety, which rendered them insensible to ecclesiastical censures.” [Footnote: _Histoire de France_, ii. p. 362. The first to introduce them was Henry Courtmantel when he rebelled against his father. On his death in 1163 they disbanded, and then reunited under elected captains, and pillaged the country.]
From 1204 to 1222 was the period of the Crusade against the Albigenses. Pope Innocent III. poured over that beautiful land in the south of France–beautiful as the Garden of God–a horde of ruffians, made up of the riffraff of Europe, summoned to murder, pillage and outrage, with the promise of Heaven as their reward. After committing atrocities such as people Hell, these scoundrels, despising the religion they had been summoned to defend, with every spark of humanity extinguished in their breasts, looked about for fresh mischief, and found it, by enrolling themselves under the banner of England; their tiger cubs grew up with the lust of blood and rapine that had possessed their fathers. Generation after generation of these fiends in human form ranged over the soil of France committing intolerable havoc. A carpenter of Le Puy formed an association for the extermination of these bands. Philip Augustus encouraged him, furnished troops, and in one day slaughtered ten thousand of them. But so long as the English claim on so large a portion of the soil of France was maintained, the bands were incessantly recruited. The French King hired them as well as the King of England. So, later, did the Popes, when they quitted Avignon, and by their aid recovered the patrimony of S. Peter.
The barons and seigneurs in the South were no better than the _routiers_. They transferred their allegiance from the Leopards to the Lilies, or _vice versa_, as suited their caprices. The Sieur de Pons went over to the side of France because he quarrelled with his wife, who was ardent on the English side. The local nobility helped the _routiers_, and the _routiers_ assisted them in their private feuds.
The knights of the fourteenth century were no longer the protectors of the weak, the redressers of wrongs, loyal to their liege lords, observers of their oaths. They had reversed the laws of chivalry. Their main function was the oppression of the weak. They forswore themselves without scruple. The Sire d’Aubrecicourt plundered and slaughtered at random _pour meriter de sa dame_, Isabella de Juliers, niece of the Queen of England, “for he was young and outrageously in love.” The brother of the King of Navarre plundered like the rest. When the nobles sold safe-conducts to the merchants who victualled the towns, they excepted such articles as might suit themselves–silks, harness, plate. A prince of the blood sent as hostage to England returned to France in defiance of treaties, and if King John surrendered himself, it was because of the ease and pleasures he enjoyed in London, and to be rid of cares. The name given to the Companies in the South was Raobadous (Ribauds)–the very name has come to us under the form of _ribald_, as indicative of all that is brutal, profane, and unseemly.
Among the commanders very few were English. There was the Welshman Griffith, whom Froissart calls Ruffin, who ravaged the country between the Seine and the Loire. Sir Robert Knollys, or Knolles, led a band of English and Navarrese, “conquering every town and castle he came to. He had followed this trade for some time, and by it gained upwards of 100,000 crowns. He kept a great many soldiers in his pay; and being very liberal, was cheerfully obeyed.” So says Froissart. Sir Robert Cheney was another; so was Sir John Amery. Sir John Hawkwood was taken into the service of Pope Gregory XI., and sent to ravage in Italy. Bacon, a notorious brigand, may or may not have been English. The name is common in lower Brittany. “This robber,” says Froissart, “was always mounted on handsome horses of a deep roan colour, apparelled like an earl, and very richly armed.”
But usually the free Companies enrolled themselves under some bastard (Bourg) of a noble house in France or Guyenne. It was a bastard warfare on their side; they stood in the same relation to the regular forces that privateers do to a fleet of the Royal Navy. They paid no regard to treaties. As the Bourg d’Espaign told Froissart: “The treaty of peace being concluded, it was necessary for all men-at-arms and free Companies, according to the treaty, to evacuate the fortresses and castles they held. Great numbers collected together, with many poor companions who had learnt the art of war under different commanders, to hold councils as to what quarters they should march, and they said among themselves that, though the kings had made peace with each other, it was necessary for them to live. They marched into Burgundy, where they had captains of all nations–Germans, Scots, and people from every country–‘and they agreed to disregard the treaty and to surprise towns and castles as before.’ A notorious Breton captain on his deathbed said: ‘Such has been my manner of carrying on war, in truth, I cared not against whom. I did indeed make it under shadow of the King of England’s name, in preference to any other; but I always looked for gain and conquest, wherever it was to be had.'”
When they captured a town or castle, nominally for the English, they were quite ready to sell it to the French for a stipulated sum.
Froissart says that the Ribauds were “Germans, Brabantines, Flemings, Gascons, and bad Frenchmen, who had been impoverished by the war” (i. c. 204). He gives in one place the names of twenty of these captains, not one English. [Footnote: Robert King of Puy Guihbem was an Englishman, but an authorised governor and commander under the English crown.] In another place he enumerates ten, all French or Gascons (ii. c. 10). Among those who harassed the Languedoc, Quercy and Perigord, not a single captain was English. The Bastard de Beby, the Bastard d’Albret, Amadeu de Pons, Benezet Daguda, De l’Esparre, Menard de Favas, l’Archipretre, Bertrand de la Salle, Le Non de Mauroux, Jean l’Esclop, Nolibarba, Bertrand de Besserat, Perrot de Savoie, Ramonet del Sort, and a score more, all base French or Gascon names. “These brigands,” says Lacoste, “were mainly composed of French soldiers to whom the State had been unable to pay their wages.” One whole company was entitled that “des Bretons.”
But it was not the captains of the Companies alone who were Gascons, French, and Bretons. The nobles throughout Guyenne were more than half of them on the English side. The famous commander who did so much towards achieving the victory of Poitiers was a Frenchman, the Captal de Buch, Jean de Greuilly, Constable of Aquitaine for the English crown. Amandeu and Raymond de Montaut, the Sire de Duras, Petiton de Courton, Jean de Seignol, the Sire de Mussidan, and many more. “Following their interests or their passions, all these nobles passed from side to side, now that of the English, then that of the French; but they preferred the English side to the other, for war against the French is more pleasant than that against the English,”–that is to say, it was more profitable. The _Livre de Vie_ of Bergerac under the date 5th April 1381, speaks of Perducat d’Albret as “loyally French.” But his loyalty lasted but for a moment. Froissart has a characteristic passage upon the Gascons that deserves quotation. After giving a list of towns and castles on the Garonne and the Dordogne, he says: “Some of these being English, and others French, carried on a war against each other; they would have it so, for the Gascons were never, for thirty years running, steadily attached to any one lord. I once heard the Lord d’Albret use an expression that I noted down. A knight from Brittany inquired after his health, and how he managed to remain steady to the French. He answered, ‘Thank God my health is good, but I had more money at command, as well as my people, when I made war for the King of England, than I have now; for, whenever we took any excursions in search of adventures, we never failed meeting some rich merchants from Toulouse, Condom, La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which made us gay and debonair, but now all that is at an end.’ On hearing this I concluded that the Lord d’Albret repented having turned to the French in the same manner as the Lord of Mucidens, who swore to the Duke of Anjou he would set out for Paris and become a good Frenchman. He did go to Paris, when the King handsomely received him; but he slunk away and returned to his own country, where he again became an Englishman, and broke all his engagements with the Duke of Anjou. The Lords of Rosem, Duras, Langurant, did the same” (iii. c. 21).
As with the captains of the Companies, so with the knights and seigneurs who fought in the South for the Crown of England–their names are for the most part French and Gascon, and not English. [Footnote: Let it not be forgotten that those who condemned Joan of Arc to be burnt were Frenchmen. The University of Paris denounced her as a heretic. Her judges were the Bishop of Beauvais, a Frenchman by birth, Jean Graveraut, Professor of Theology at the University of Paris, Grand Inquisitor of France, Jean Lemaitre, prior of the Dominicans at Rouen. Her bitterest accuser was the Canon Jean d’Estivet, general procurator, who after the execution drowned himself in a pool. The Bastard of Vendome sold her to John of Luxembourg, and John of Luxembourg sold her to the English for 10,000 francs. Charles VII. and his friends did not raise a finger in her behalf. They forgot her at once, as a thing that had answered its purpose and was no longer of use.]
The Companies formed their nests in the rocks, which they fortified, or in castles they had captured, or in such as had been abandoned by the French, from inability to garrison them. The Causse was in their possession from the Dordogne to the Lot, and Perigord to the gates of the capital. They overran Auvergne, the Gevaudan, Poitou, the Angoumois, the Rouergue and the Saintonge, to speak only of provinces south of the Loire. The Government exhibited incredible feebleness towards them. In 1379 the Count d’Armagnac, Royal Lieutenant in the south, paid 24,000 francs to one of the _routiers_ to evacuate the castle of Carlat, and 12,500 to the Bastard of Albret for five others. In 1387 he convened an assembly of the States of Auvergne, Velay, Gevaudan, Rouergue, Quercy, &c., to debate what was to be done to rid the country of these pests. Instead of resolving on an united effort to put them down by force of arms, they agreed to pay them 250,000 francs to quit. They took the money, but remained. Every town, every village was forced to come to terms with the brigands, by means of a _patis_ or convention to pay a certain sum annually, to save it from pillage. Should the covenanted money not be forthcoming to the day, the place was sacked and burnt.
At length the inhabitants, unable to endure the exaction of the _routiers_ on one side and those of the King and the seigneurs on the other, migrated to Spain and never returned. In 1415, as all the inhabitants of Caudon had crossed the frontier, the cure applied to have his cure united to that of Domme. He had no parishioners left. Domme had been reduced from a thousand families to a hundred and twenty, and these would have abandoned their homes unless stopped by the Seneschal of Perigord.
In 1434 the inhabitants of Temniac and Carlux began to pack their goods for leaving, but the citizens of Sarlat stopped them, by promising to feed them till the conclusion of the war. Some of the large towns had lost so many of their citizens that they were glad to receive peasants out of the country and enrol them as burgesses. In 1378, as the Causse of Quercy was almost denuded of its population and nothing remained to be reaped, the Companies abandoned it for the Rouergue, the Gevaudan and the Limousin and Upper Auvergne. Thence the wretched peasants fled to the deserted limestone Causse of Quercy and occupied the abandoned villages and farms. They obtained but a short respite, for in 1407 the Companies returned to their former quarters. Charles VI. imposed a heavy tax on the whole kingdom to enable him to carry on the war against the English. But Quercy was wholly unable to meet the demands, and the King, in a letter dated the last day of February 1415, gives a graphic account of the condition to which the land had been reduced.
“Whereas, this land, at the time when it passed under the obedience of the King of England, was the richest and most populous in all the Duchy of Guyenne, and contained the finest cities, towns, and castles and fortresses in the said duchy, which were free and quit of all taxes and imposts, and with privileges conferred on them and confirmed by the King of France when they shook off the English yoke; and the said land of Quercy, after having returned to its legitimate sovereigns, has testified to them the greatest loyalty; yet have its inhabitants been grievously injured, assailed, beaten, robbed, pillaged, imprisoned, killed, maltreated by the English in divers ways, which enemies have since taken and occupied the greater part of the finest towns and fortresses of the land; on which account the land of Quercy has since continued in a condition of mortal warfare with the said enemies for the space of fifty-five years; and this carried on without aid from us, or from any one:–This unfortunate land has resisted to the utmost of its powers and is doing so still; and it has been surrounded for long by our said enemies, and is as it were destroyed and uninhabitable, and the greater number of its towns, castles, and strongholds have become desert and wild, covered with forest and scrub, inhabited by wild beasts, with the exception of some few small places that are very poor and miserable, and though at one time they were great and rich, they have been to such an extent depopulated–partly through the war and partly through pestilences that have ensued–there are now hardly one hundredth part of the people remaining, and those who do remain are but poor labourers and men of servile class; and these are kept night and