A Book of the Pyrenees

Toulouse, the whole South, writhed under the despotism of Simon de Montfort, and called back its exiled count. A new Crusade was preached. Remission of sins was offered to all who would glean what the first locust swarm had left, and massacre such as had been spared. Excommunication was again launched against the Count of Toulouse and the Count of Foix. In an attack on Toulouse Simon de Montfort was killed, and the command was taken by Prince Louis of France. Before this vast army the cities of Languedoc opened their gates. Count Raymond and he of Foix bowed to the storm. Louis died of exhaustion on his return, after having secured the submission of almost the whole land.

Count Roger Bernard of Foix was excommunicated in 1228, and was forced to subscribe to the most degrading terms. The truce lasted eight years. In 1237 he was summoned to appear and answer for his orthodoxy before the papal Inquisitors quartered in his own domains, and holding their court in his own castle. Because he refused he was again excommunicated. He was compelled to submit in 1240, and died in the ensuing year.

The horrors of the extirpation of heresy continued till 1244, when the last of the strongholds of the Albigenses was taken, and two hundred of them were burnt alive without a trial.

After that all trace of them gradually disappears.

Bernard Roger III (1265) married Margaret de Moncada, second daughter of Gaston de Béarn, and as she was heiress, he annexed her territories, and thenceforth the history of Foix is merged in that of Béarn.

Foix, in local patois Fouch, is situated at the junction of the Arget with the Ariège, and where, most conveniently for military purposes, a rock shoots up, abrupt and bold, inviting the mediæval noble to plant his castle on the summit. The castle never was a palace like that of Pau; it never was anything but a stronghold. When the counts became lords of Béarn they abandoned their ancient nest, which if secure was inconvenient, and betook themselves to their own creations at Mazères, Orthez, and Pau. The town occupies a triangle where the two rivers already mentioned unite. It is a dull place, its sole feature being the castle, like a very plain man with a very prominent nose. That it should be capital of the department is due to association, not to size, for Pamiers, where was a cathedral, exceeds it in population. It has a theatre, in which but rarely a performance is given; a public library, open for a few hours one day in the week, into which an occasional reader saunters; baths, better known externally than within; an abattoir, where oxen past work are slaughtered, for consumption by those of the inhabitants who have digestions that could dissolve leather; a promenade which lacks promenaders; a vast prefecture, in which the prefect is dying daily of ennui. The Hotel des Gouverneurs has become Palais de Justice – “un édifice banal, malgré ce nom grandiloquent.”

The rock of Foix is 178 feet above the river, and is surmounted by three noble towers that served successively as keeps. In the donjons the Inquisition had their court, their trials, and sentences, and the Count had to resign his castle to them in pledge of submission to the judgment of the Holy See. The loftiest of the towers is cylindrical, and is attributed to Gaston Phœbus, but apparently it dates from the fifteenth century. Between the noble towers appear the mean buildings of a prison, in which those who are confined yawn their time away. Below the rock, near the river, at the apex of the triangle, is the church of S. Volusinian, of the fourteenth century, and, like most of the great churches in this portion of the south of France, consists of a nave without aisles. The choir is surrounded by radiating chapels.

Volusinian was Bishop of Tours, a native of Auvergne. When Alaric, King of the Goths, invaded Gaul he carried Volusinian away with him south, and as he proved to be uncompromising in his adherence to the Creed of Nicæa, had him executed at Foix. His festival is on 11 February, and he suffered in 491. Foix has no manufactures, no trade – hardly an expectant commis voyageur visits it; but I am in error. It has perpetrated a joke, a miserable pun – Foix produces patés de foie gras.

Were there but coal-mines near at hand Foix would revive, for the whole county is full of iron ore. Foix bleeds iron from its veins, but the ferruginous springs run away into the river. The stars in their courses fight against Foix; the valley of the Arget was full of nailmakers at one time – in 1835 there were forty-seven forges. Now their fires are put out: machine-made nails have killed the hand-made nails. Those made in the Barguillère, the valley of the Arget, were for horseshoes, and the makers dubbed themselves chevaliers. The extinction of the little forges has led to depopulation; between 1891 and 1901 there was a loss of 27,092 inhabitants in that district.

To the north of the town rises a steep hill, on the summit of which is the hermitage of S. Sauveur, but the last hermit has departed this life; his occupation also is gone, and he has no successor. The Administration has put an end to the hermits.

In the neighbourhood of Foix is the Grotto de l’Herme, that has yielded notable finds of prehistoric man. But the main curiosity is the Mas d’Azil, where the river Arize has bored its way through the limestone barrier of the Planturel. This long chain opposed a passage northwards to the river descending from the mountains to the south. The Arize discovered a fault in the barrier and pierced it, forming a noble arch 250 feet high. Beside it is an artificial gallery bored for the passage of the road. The length of the tunnel is 1250 feet. The road follows the right bank of the Arize, separated from it by a wall of rock. The river descends into the gallery, the average width of which is ninety-five feet, breaking over masses of rock that have fallen from the roof. Above the left bank, under the huge vault, rises a natural column, called the Monk. Farther on in the gallery, a pillar thirty feet in diameter sustaining the roof. There are lateral galleries, at a higher elevation, that have yielded evidence of human occupation. The guano produced by the innumerable bats that inhabit the cave actually forms an article of commerce.

The opening to the north, through which the river effects its escape, is less striking in appearance than that where it makes its plunge underground.

The road from Foix to Ax leads up the river that gives its name to the department, and penetrates deep into the recesses of the mountains.

The first town reached is Tarascon, prettily situated at the junction of the Vicdessos with the Ariège, about a conical hill surmounted by a round tower, which is all that remains of a castle that was blown up by order of Richelieu. The great cardinal thought that the best means of maiming the independence of the nobles, petty barons, and seigneurs, was to destroy their nests. It was he, not the Revolutionists, who made the worst havoc among the stately châteaux of France. He went so far even as to insist on the pepper-castor roofed round towers at the angles of every small squire’s mansion being lowered a story to the level of the eaves of the main roof. Tarascon on Ariège is a busier place than sleepy Tarascon on Rhone, that was drawn out of its obscurity by the mythical Tastarin. It is the great centre of activity to the country, “a land whose stones are iron.” Formerly it was more prosperous than it is to-day. But the population remains stationary, which in the midst of a universal shrinkage may be reckoned as good. The town is divided into two parts. Old Tarascon clusters about the decayed castle. New Tarascon forms the faubourg Sainte Quitterie, where there is a ferruginous spring bearing the name of the saint, and supposed miraculously to cure insanity. The wonder in this part of the mountains is to find any springs that do not run red. Quiteria, who has given virtue to this spring, is a person of problematical existence. Once upon a time – the Bollandists even know not when – there lived a King Katillas and his wife Calsia, who inhabited doubtlessly a Château en Espagne. Queen Calsia gave birth to nine daughters at once, and being afraid what the King would say, gave them to the nurse with orders to drown them like puppies. But the nurse took them to her home, and reared all in the Christian faith. In time of persecution the nine damsels dispersed, but were caught and offered the alternative of marriage or death. They accepted the latter. One of them, named Wilgefortis, when pestered by a princely suitor, prayed, and lo! out sprouted a thick beard and moustache. She was crucified. Quiteria’s head was struck off with a sword. But unwilling to be less of an oddity than her sister, after death she developed into three entire bodies. One became the perquisite of the Portuguese, another of the Spaniards, and the Gascons got hold of the third, and buried it at Aire. I have little doubt that, when a man reputed insane was brought to Quiteria’s well and made to drink eight tumblers full of the red water, he remonstrated, and vowed that he was well; whereupon his relations cried out, “A miracle! He has spoken sensibly. Thanks be to Quiteria.”

To Tarascon comes the iron ore from the mines in the Vicdessos valley in carts and tumbrils, and is there smelted. There are here also quarries of gypsum for the manufacture of plaster of Paris.

To the south of the town is the church of Notre Dame de Sabart, so-called from Sabarthès, the name of the little region formed by the Valley of Vicdessos and of the Ariège as far as Les Cabannes. The church is Romanesque, and there are remains of an abbey founded for an order of military knights, founded, it is said, by Charlemagne, as a protection of the population and the valuable iron-mines. This is a resort of pilgrims on 8 May and 15 September, when fairs are held at Tarascon, and business, pleasure, and devotion can be harmoniously combined. The Valley of Vicdessos is, and has been from time immemorial, the great seat of iron-mining in the Pyrenees. The ore is nearly pure, and lies in veins and pockets in the limestone of the mountains of Rance, and the deposits form bands alternating with the calcareous rock through a height of over 1800 feet.

The working of the mines is the privilege of the inhabitants of Sem, Goulier, and Olbier, and natives of Vicdessos and other villages about can only be admitted to this privilege by marrying a girl of one of the three named. Otherwise they can be employed only as wagoners drawing the ore to Tarascon.

The earliest mention of these mines is in a charter of the Count of Foix in 1293. For centuries the counts found the utmost difficulty in levying a toll on the iron carried out of the valley; the miners exercised their ingenuity in evading it, and overriding all the restrictions hampering their industry. Unhappily, for many hundred years the mining was not carried on by companies, but by individuals who grubbed where they would and carried on the works in the most wasteful manner. Now the veins of ore are giving out; but the men who have exclusive rights to the mines refuse obstinately and ignorantly to admit of new methods in the extraction of the ore, and disapprove of co-operation. The ancient medieval corporations have survived at Sem, with their traditional rites and formulas. The law on mines of 1893 has somewhat modified some of the restrictions and extended the rights of mining. But the men are stolidly opposed to improvement; they retain the prejudices of their fathers. They have cut down the trees, and the mountain torrents now devastate their little fields and carry away the roads. The State has vainly endeavoured to replant, and by so doing diminish the range of the ravages caused by goats and sheep. The output of the mines dwindles and the impoverishment of the villagers increases. From Usat may be visited the cavern of Lombrive, only an hour’s walk from the baths of Usat. The last stronghold of the unfortunate Albigenses was the Castle of Montségur, in the valley of the Lasset, that flows into the Hers. Buried among the mountains, hidden from most eyes, in an apparently inaccessible position, they hoped to be forgotten and to remain in security. But they were scented and tracked by the bloodhounds of the Papacy, and the army of the Crusaders, reluctantly led by Raymond VII of Toulouse, constrained by Innocent VI, who carried on the remorseless policy of Innocent III, and as the sole means of obtaining forgiveness for himself, surrounded it in 1244. The castle stands on and amidst tremendous precipices, and is commanded by the Pic S. Barthélemy. The Albigensian chiefs held out for long, and repulsed several assaults. Then, seeing that their provisions were failing, and that they could not much longer maintain their position, they dispatched four of their number to carry away their treasures to some place of security. These four men crossed the mountain spurs, and hid the treasure in one of the many caverns that open in the cliffs above Usat, but where has not yet been discovered.

On 14 March Montségur was taken, and over two hundred heretics found in it were thrown alive into a huge bonfire that had been erected, and burnt alive to satisfy the implacable vengeance of the Papacy. After that the horde of Crusaders went to Tarascon to search the valleys for more on whom to glut their rage. All the Albigenses of the country round had fled to the caves; they were hunted out and massacred. Nevertheless, all had not been exterminated. In 1325, when John XXII was reigning in Avignon, a fresh pursuit of the heretics was instituted. It was reported that the Albigenses employed the cave of Lombrive as their cathedral. The armies of the Papacy assembled anew and filled the valley. From five to six hundred of the unfortunate heretics – men, women, and children – took refuge in the cavern that runs deep into the heart of the mountain. It has been explored for a distance of three miles. To save themselves the trouble and risk of pursuing the Albigenses in darkness through the winding recesses of the cave, the entrance was walled up, and the miserable wretches were all left to perish there of starvation in abysmal night. Their bones still lie scattered about the pit. The treasures of the Albigenses, supposed to have been hidden there, have never been recovered; but the true treasure, for which they fought and for which they died, the emancipation of the human soul from the fetters of slavery in which it had been bound by Rome, has been won by nearly all Europe.

Les Cabannes lies in a beautiful basin formed by the junction of the Aston with the Ariège. From hence the lateral valley branches off that formed the seigneuries of the Lordadais. In it is planted one of the mightiest fortresses of the counts of Foix, perched on a rock, and commanding a most picturesque site. It was blown up in 1632, by order of Louis XIII, but still retains portions of four concentric oval-enclosing walls, and a square keep. From the castle can be viewed the entire mass of the Tabe; its culminating point, the Pic S. Barthélemy, shoots up superbly to the height of 7060 feet. At Vernaux is a Romanesque church. This place has given its name to the talc that is found in quarries near by, situated at a great elevation, some 6600 feet above the sea, and where the workmen can be employed only from 1 May to 15 November. The bed of talc is about 120 feet thick, and extends for a length of 1500 feet, and is sent down to the station of Luzenac by a wire rope.

Ax-les-Thermes is planted at the junction of the Oriège and the Ariège. About it rise many bold crags; on the summit of one is Castel Maü, supposed to have been a Moorish fortress. Another supports a huge statue of the Virgin. The whole valley has been studded with castles, of which now only the ruins remain. In troubled times, when warfare was incessant between the counts of Foix and the counts of Urgel, or between them and the Crusaders, every country gentleman was obliged to pitch his house on the top of a rock, and give it the character of a stronghold. Some of these are so small that they could not have accommodated more than a little garrison; and the seigneurs must have lived cramped and uneasy in them. Probably they had their houses in the valley, and only retreated to these castles when the clash of arms sounded. It is a pity that some of these picturesque ruins should not be restored. On the Dordogne, the Lot, and the Vezère, some rich wine merchant of Bordeaux buys up a castle, and makes it habitable in the midst of a park. When in residence there M. Blom of Bordeaux blossoms out into le Comte de Montréal, and M. Dois into le Marquis de Beausejour. In England we have to pay heavy fees when we acquire a title; it is not so in France. There a man dubs himself baron, or count, or marquis. As to the armorial bearings that they assume – “Ma foi!” exclaimed a painter, looking at the heraldic shield over one of these châteaux, “what imaginations these nouveaux riches possess!”

Ax (Aquæ) was probably a Roman thermal station. The place was frequented in the Middle Ages, when the Hôtel Dieu was founded (in 1260) for the reception of patients. Even before that, in 1200, a bath for lepers was constructed here. The Hôtel Dieu owes its origin to King Louis IX, who had it constructed for the use of Crusaders who had contracted leprosy in Palestine and Egypt. But it was not till the beginning of the eighteenth century that Ax was much frequented. Now it receives about ten thousand visitors in the year, seeking healing in its water. The springs are so numerous, and so thickly strewn, that the town seems as though erected over the rose of a fountain of thermal waters.

From Ax Andorra may be reached by the Port de Saldeu. Andorra is the sole remaining independent republic in the Pyrenees. It has a legendary origin. In 805 Louis “le Débonnaire” was on his way to besiege Urgel, and the Andorrans took up arms and materially aided him. In recognition of their services Louis conferred on them a charter that accorded to them the rights of self-government. Later, when Emperor, he conceded to the Bishop of Urgel half the tithe of the six parishes in the valley, as well as half his right of suzerainty over the diminutive republic. Actually Andorra formed a lordship in the county of Urgel, and it was the counts of that place who granted rights over it to the bishops of the see of Urgel. Later on the seigneural rights passed to the counts of Foix. Counts and bishops wrangled over their respective claims, till in 1278 the feud was settled by a convention that accorded to the republic the privileges that it still enjoys – local autonomy under the double suzerainty of the bishops of Urgel and the counts of Foix, to whom has succeeded the French Government. The Andorrans pay a tribute to France annually of 950 francs, and to the Bishop of Urgel 450 francs.

This duodecimo republic has an area of 175 square miles, and a population of six thousand. It is governed by a council of twenty-four, elected by the householders, and two provosts – one nominated by the French Government, the other by the Bishop of Urgel, exercising in common judicial powers. These provosts are theoretically the captains of the Andorran militia, which is composed of all the heads of houses. Of the twenty-four councillors, elected every four years, one half are renewable every two years. The republic consists of three valleys, surrounded by mountains on every side save where in the south the River Embaline issues and flows down to Urgel. The land is fertile for the altitude at which the basin lies, but its principal products are timber and iron, and its chief industry is smuggling. Some years ago a proposal was made to the little republic to convert it into a monster gambling hell. This was after the closing of the house at Homburg; but although the sum offered was tempting, the Andorrans had the good sense to refuse the offer, which accordingly was then made to the Prince of Monaco, and by him seized.

The capital is a dirty, ill-built village; the principal buildings in it are a Romanesque church and the palace, a fortified structure of the fifteenth century, which serves as the seat of government, school, Palais de Justice, and prison. On the ground-floor are stables for the horses of the councillors.

In the council hall is a great oak chest containing the archives, and fastened by six locks, the key to each being retained by each of the six parishes. The town or village has a dismal look, the houses being constructed of slate and schist rock.

The original capital was at S. Julien de Loria, where a cross marks the site.

On the heights are the remains of an old Moorish castle, called Carol, a name derived from Charles the Great, who is supposed to have expelled the infidel. The name of Andorra is supposed to be taken from the Arabic aldarra, “a place thick with trees.” Mr. Ford says: —

“The hills around the rich alluvial basin of Andorra abound in pine forests, which afford fuel; nothing can be prettier than the distant views of the villages, embosomed in woods; at Mont Melous are three lakes enclosed by lofty and fantastic walls of rock.”

A rough road leads from Andorra to Seo de Urgel, a distance of sixteen miles. This is a quaint old Spanish town with an interesting cathedral of the eleventh century, and a cloister of considerable beauty. The town is commanded by the citadel on the height Las Horcas, “The Gallows,” where the Bishop of Urgel, who was a sovereign prince, hung miscreants.

Urgel was the headquarters of a Carlist insurrection in 1827. This was put down by an adventurer of French origin; none knew his real name, and what had been his position in life, before he turned up and offered his services to Ferdinand VII and dubbed himself the Count of Spain. He served the King well, was absolutely without scruples, and remorselessly cruel. He was made by Ferdinand Governor of Catalonia. But, on the death of his patron in 1833, he passed over to Don Carlos, and fought under him for the very cause which a few years previously he had put down. But his former cruelties were not forgotten. He made his headquarters at Urgel. The Junta of the Carlists was summoned to meet at Aira on 26 October, 1839, and the Count went to attend it. He was received with expressions of pleasure and devotion by his aide-de-camp, Mariano Orteu, who engaged him in conversation, whilst the curé, Ferres, levelled a pistol at him, fired, and wounded him.

The Count fell, and pleaded for a drink of water. This was refused. He was then mounted on a mule, his feet bound together under the belly, and he was conducted from place to place, exposed to the insults and derision of the people, till 1 November, when he found himself at Ceselles; there, with cruel irony his former friend Orteu informed the unfortunate man that he was to be speedily “sent to his own place.” Then he deliberately shot him, and the rest of the company fell on him and hacked him to pieces with their long knives.