Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces

The Vignemale, composed of four peaks, each of them overreaching three thousand, two hundred metres, encloses a veritable river of ice. Its profound crevasses and its Mer de Glace remind one of the Alps more than do the accessories of any other peak of the Pyrenees.

The ascension of the Vignemale, from Cauterets or Luz, is the classic mountain climb of the Pyrenees. No peak is more easy of access, and none gives so complete an idea of the ample ranges of the Pyrenees, from east to west, or north to south.

CHAPTER XXII
OLORON AND THE VAL D’ASPE

OLORON, at the confluence of the Gave d’Ossau and the Gave d’Aspe, has existed since Roman times, when it was known as Iluro, finally changing to Oloro and Olero. It was sacked by the Saracens in 732, and later entirely ruined by the Normans. Centulle, Vicomte de Béarn, reëstablished the city, and for a time made it his residence.

The roads and lanes and paths of the neighbourhood of Oloron offer some of the most charming promenades of the region, but one must go on foot or on donkey-back (the latter at a cost of five francs a day) to discover all their beauties. The highroads of the Pyrenees are a speedy and a short means of communication between two points, but the delicate charm of the region is only discovered by following the by-roads, quite away from the beaten track.

Oloron will some day be an artists’ resort, but it hasn’t been exploited as such yet. It sits delightfully on the banks of the two Gaves, and has all the picturesqueness that old tumble-down Gothic and Renaissance houses and bridges can suggest, the whole surrounded with a verdure and a rocky setting which is “all things to all (painter) men.”

In reality Oloron is a triple city, each quite distinct from one another: Sainte-Marie, the episcopal city, with the cathedral and the bishop’s palace; Sainte-Croix, the old feudal bourg; and the Quartier Neuve, the quarter of the railway station, the warehouses and all the smug commercialism which has spoiled many a fair landscape elsewhere.

The feudal Sainte-Croix has character; the episcopal Sainte-Marie dignity. In Sainte-Croix the houses rise up from the surface of the Gave in the most entrancing, damp picturesqueness imaginable as the waters flow swiftly down towards Orthez. Back from the river, the houses are mounted on tortuous hillsides, with narrow, silent streets, as if they and their inhabitants all lived in the past. On the very crest of the hill is the Église Sainte-Croix, founded in the ninth century by one of the Vicomtes de Béarn, a monument every whit as interesting as the great cathedral lower down.

The diocese of Saint-Marie d’Oloron was the least wealthy of any of mediæval France. Its government allowance was but thirteen thousand francs, and this sum had to be divided with the Bishop of Lescar. On the other hand, the city of Oloron itself was important and wealthy in its own right.

In the Faubourg of Sainte-Croix one remarks as real a mediævalism as exists anywhere in France to-day. Its streets are narrow and silent, and therein are found many examples of domestic habitations dating back to Roman times. These are very rare to-day, even in southern Gaul, where the hand of progress is supposed to be weak. Interspersed with these Romanesque houses are admirable works of the Gothic and Renaissance periods. There is very little that is modern.

Of the old city walls but little evidence remains. A kind of rampart is seen here and there built into other structures, and one, at least, of the watch-towers is left, of the dozen or more that once existed. Sainte-Croix still has, however, an archaic aspect which bids fair not to change within the lives of the present generation.

The chief industries of Oloron are the making of espadrilles, and the weaving of “toile du Béarn,” a species of linen with which housewives all over these parts stock their linen closets once in a lifetime, and which lasts till they die, or perhaps longer, and is handed down to their daughters and granddaughters.

Another echo of Protestantism in Béarn still reverberates at Oloron. A one-time Bishop of Oloron, a protégé of Marguerite de Navarre, became a disciple of Martin Luther. He was named Roussel, and had been a professor of philosophy in the University of Paris. He had travelled in Germany, had met Luther, and had all but accepted his religion, when, returning to Béarn, he came into favour with the learned Marguerite, who nominated him Bishop of Oloron. He hesitated between the two religions, knowing not which to take. Meantime he professed both one and the other; in the morning he was for Rome, and in the evening for Luther; and preaching thus in the churches and temples he became a natural enemy of both parties. One day he was summarily despatched by a blow with a hatchet which one of his parishioners had concealed upon his person as he came to church. For this act the murderer was, in the reign of Henri IV, made Bishop of Oloron in the unworthy Roussel’s place.

Six kilometres from Oloron, at Eysus, a tiny hamlet too small to be noted in most guide books, is an old Château de Plaisance of the Vicomtes de Béarn. Folks had the habit, even in the old days, of living around wherever fancy willed – the same as some of us do to-day. It has some advantages and not many disadvantages.

Back of Oloron, towards the foot-hills of the Pyrenees, is another of those little kingdoms which were scattered all over France, and which only geographers and antiquarians know sufficiently well to be able to place offhand. This is the Barétous, and very curious it is with the survival of its old customs and costumes. Up to Aramits the routes are much frequented, but as one penetrates further into the fastnesses of the mountains, there is an immense sadness that is as entrancing as the most vivid gaiety. Pushing through to the Spanish frontier, fifty kilometres or more beyond Aramits, a whole kaleidoscope of mountain charms unrolls itself at every step.

At the Spanish frontier limit, a quaint and curious ceremony is held on the thirteenth of July in each year by the Baretains and their Spanish neighbours. The Baretains, by an ancient right, pasture their flocks up in the high valleys of the Ronçal, and, to recognize the right of the Ronçalois to keep them out of their pasturage if they so chose, the Baretains pay them homage. The ceremony is carried out before a notary, seven jurats being the representatives of the Baretains, each armed with a pike, as are the representatives of Ronçal. The first lay down their pikes before the latter, and, in a second layer, their points turned towards the Béarnais capital, are placed those of the Ronçalois. Then a shout of acclamation goes up and rends the air: “Patz abantz! Patz abantz! Patz abantz! – Peace for the future!” This is the signal for a general rejoicing, and a merry-making of dancing and eating and drinking, not far different from other fêtes. It is the setting that makes it so remarkable, and the quaint costumes and customs of the men and women of two nations mingling in a common fête.

This Franco-Espagnol ceremony is accomplished with much éclat on a little square of ground set off on the maps of the État Major as “Champ de Foire Français et Espagnol.” Tradition demands that three cows be given or offered to the Spanish by the French for the privilege of pasturage over the border in the Spanish valleys. The cows are loosed on the Champ de Foire, and if they remain for half an hour without crossing the line into France again they belong to the Spanish. If, on the other hand, one or more cross back into France they remain the property of the French.

Formerly three horses were used for this part of the function, but as they were bound to have a white star on the forehead, and as that variety of beast is rare in these parts, a compromise was made to carry out the pact with the cows.

The most historic spot in the Gave d’Aspe is unquestionably Sarrance. Notre Dame de Sarrance is a venerable and supposedly miraculous statue. Numbers of pilgrims have visited the shrine in times past, among them the none too constant Louis XI, who, if he was devoted to Our Lady of Cléry and Notre Dame de Embrun, was ready to bow down before any whom he thought might do him a good turn.

Certainly Sarrance’s most favourite memory is that of the celebrated Marguerite de Navarre. If she did not write, she at least conceived the idea of her “Heptameron” here, if history is to be believed.

The title page of this immortal work reads as follows,

L’HEPTAMERON

 
“des nouvelles de très illustré et très excellente
princesse, Marguerite de Valois, Reine de Navarre.”
 

The history of the inception of these tales is often inexactly recounted at this late day, but in the main the facts seem to be as follows: —

In September (1549?), when the queen and her followers were journeying from Cauterets to Tarbes, the waters of the Gave overflowed their banks and destroyed the bridge of Sarrance. The party stopped first at the Abbaye de Saint Savin, and again at the Monastère de Notre Dame de Sarrance. Ten days were necessary to repair the bridge which had been carried away, and time apparently hung heavy on the hands of every one. To break the ennui of their sojourn in the company of these austere monks of Sarrance, the royal party sought what amusements they might.

In the morning all met with the Dame Oysille, the eldest of the company, when they had an hour’s reading of the Scriptures. After this there was a mass; then at ten o’clock they dined; finally each retired to his room – “pour ses affaires particulières,” says the old record – presumably to sleep, though it was early in the day for that. In the afternoon (“depuis midi jusques à quatres heures,” ran the old chronicle) they all assembled in the meadow by the river’s bank beneath the trees, and each, seated at his ease, recounted such salacious satires and tales as would have added to the fame of Boccaccio. This procedure went on until the tellers of tales were interrupted by the coming of the prior who called them to vespers.

These tales or “contes,” or “petites histoires,” or whatever one chooses to call them, free of speech and of incident as was the custom of the time, were afterwards mothered by the queen of Navarre, and given to the world as the product of her fertile mind. Judging from their popularity at that time, and since, the fair lady must have been a wonderful storyteller.

The gentle slopes of a prairie along the banks of the Gave near by is the reputed spot where these tales were told, – a spot “where the sun could not pierce the thick foliage,” certainly romantically and picturesquely endowed. The site is charming, and one can picture the scene all out again for himself if he is possessed of the least bit of imaginative sense.

Still following the valley of the Aspe upward, one comes next to Bedous, really a pretentious little city, but unheard of by conventional travellers. Everything begins to take on a Spanish hue, and the church, dating from 1631, is more Spanish than French in its architecture and all its appointments. All the commercial life of the valley centres here, and a mixed Franco-Espagnol traffic goes on. It is principally the trading of cattle, sheep and wool, with an occasional porker or a donkey sold, or bargained for, on the side. Bedous has been marked out as being the terminus of a railway line yet to be built. Until the times shall be propitious for pushing the railway on into Spain the town will remain simply what it has been for centuries. When that day comes, much of the charm of the region will be gone. The automobile is no such desecrator as the railway, let scoffers say what they will.

In the valley of the Aspe, with snow-capped mountains in full view, there is a surprising softness of climate all through the year. In this valley was the last refuge of Protestantism in the days of the religious wars, and the little village of Bedous still possesses a “temple” and a “pastor.”

Above Bedous, towards the crest of the Pyrenees, is Accous, and as one progresses things become more and more Spanish, until the sign “Posada” is as frequent as “Auberge.”

Accous offers no curiosities to visitors, but it was here that Victor Hugo gave the last glimpses of Jean Valjean when the police were close upon his trail; “at the place called the Grange de Doumec, near the hamlet of Chavilles,” ran the romance.

From this point the valley of the Aspe opens almost perpendicularly into the heart of the rock wall of the Pyrenees; it is a veritable chasm in its upper reaches; and in this rocky defile was once a tiny feudality, absorbed and later wiped into oblivion by the Revolution.

Beyond Sarrance are Urdos and Somport and the fortress of Portalet. The route was known to the ancients as that through which the Saracens came from Spain to over-run southern Gaul. Somport was the Summus Pyreneus of the old-time historians of the Romans.

CHAPTER XXIII
ORTHEZ AND THE GAVE D’OLORON

ORTHEZ is another of those cities of the Pyrenees which does not live up to its possibilities, at least not in a commercial sense. Nevertheless, some of us find it all the more delightful for that. It is a city where the relics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are curiously intermingled, and if one within its walls so chose he could imagine himself as living in the past as well as in the present, and this in spite of the fact that the city has been remodelled and restored in certain quarters out of all semblance to its former self.

There is little or nothing remaining of that time which Froissart described with such minuteness when writing of the court at Orthez’ château.

All that remains of this great pile is the Tour de Moncade, but from its grandeur and commanding site one realizes well enough that in its time it was hardly overshadowed by the better preserved edifices at Pau and Foix.

At the northeast of Orthez, on a hill overlooking the city is an ancient, rectangular tower, its sides mellowed by ages, and its crest in ruins.

“Savez-vous ce que sont ces ruines?” you ask of any one, and they will tell you that it is all that remains of the fine chateau of Gaston Phœbus. Fêtes and crimes were curiously intermingled within its walls, for always little rivulets of blood flowed in mediæval times as the accompaniment of the laughter of the feast.

Gaston de Foix, after the burning of his château, came to Orthez in the thirteenth century, and began the citadel of Orthez – the “château-noble” of the chronicles of Froissart. The edifice played an important rôle in the history of Béarn.

At that time Gaston was a vassal of Edward III of England who was then making a Crusade in the East. On his return he found this “château-noble” already built, and his surprise was great, for he knew not what it portended. He concluded that it could only mean the rebellion of his vassal, and he ordered the Seneschal of Gascony to demand the surrender of the property. When this was refused Edward seized it and all the domains of Béarn, and sent Gerard de Laon as envoy to put the new political machinery in running order. The envoy entered Orthez without the least obstacle being put in his way, but in an instant the gates were closed and he was made a prisoner. Irritated by this outrage, Edward, at the head of an imposing army, marched on Orthez. Gaston, seized with fear, lost his head, and made up his mind to surrender before he was attacked. No protestations of future devotion to his overlord would, however, be accepted, and Edward made him prisoner on the spot. To regain his liberty, Gaston promised to turn over the “Fortresse d’Orthez” but, when he was set free, he established himself with a doubled garrison behind his walls and prepared for resistance. Edward pleaded for justice and honourable dealing, and a quarrel, long and animated, followed. The affair took on such proportions that the Pope sent his legate, as an intermediary, to make peace. Gaston would hear of no compromise, and called upon the king of France to take his part. A sort of council was finally arranged, during which Gaston became so exasperated that he threw his glove in the face of the English king. He begged the king’s pardon afterwards, and an agreement was reached whereby everything was left as it had been before the quarrel began.

Many imperishable souvenirs are left of the reign at Orthez of the brilliant Gaston de Foix, when tourneys and fêtes followed in rapid succession. It was Orthez’ most brilliant epoch.

It was here, to the court of Gaston Phœbus, that Messire Jehan Froissart came, in 1388, and stayed three weeks and some of his most brilliant pages relate to this visit. Of his host, the chronicler said: “De toutes choses il est si parfait.”

Gaston Phœbus was so powerful and magnificent a seigneur in his own right, and his castle at Orthez was such a landmark of history that Louis XI – who conceded little enough to others as a usual thing – said to his followers as he was passing through Béarnais territory on a pilgrimage: “Messeigneurs, laissez l’epée de France, nous sortons ici du royaume.”

Gaston Phœbus was the most accomplished seigneur of his time, and he had for his motto “Toquos-y se gaasos” – “Attack who dares.”

One day, in the month of August, 1390, on returning from a bear hunt, greatly fatigued, he was handed a cup from which to drink. He drank from the cup and instantly expired. Was he poisoned? That is what no one knows. It was the custom of the time to make away with one’s enemies thus, and in this connection one recalls that Gaston himself killed his own son because he would not eat at table.

Orthez was deserted by the court for Pau, and in time the natural destruction of wind and weather, and the hand of man, stripped the château to what one sees to-day.

The Pont d’Orthez is a far better preserved monument of feudal and warlike times, and it was a real defence to the city, as can be readily understood by all who view it. Its four hardy arches span the Gave as they did in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was from the summit of one of the sentinel towers of this most remarkable of mediæval bridges that the soldiers of Montgomery obliged the monks to throw themselves into the river below. The “Brothers of the Bridge” were a famous institution in mediæval times, and they should have been better treated than they usually were, but too frequently indeed they were massacred without having either the right or the means to defend themselves.

The history of Montgomery’s connection with Orthez, or more particularly the Pont d’Orthez, reads almost as if it were legend, though indeed it is truth. The story is called by the French historians “La Chronique de la Tour des Caperas.”

Jeanne d’Albret, the mainstay of Protestantism in her day, wished to make Orthez the religious capital, and accordingly she built here a splendid church in which to expound the theories of Calvin and brought “professors” from Scotland and England to preach the new dogma. Orthez became at once the point of attack for those of the opposite faith, and as horrible a massacre as was ever known took place in the streets of Orthez and gave perhaps the first use of the simile that the river flowed as a river of blood. Priests and monks were the special prey of the Protestants, while they themselves were being attacked from without. One by one as they were hunted out from their hiding-places the priests and lay brothers were pushed from the parapet of the bridge into the Gave below. If any gained the banks by swimming they were prodded and stabbed by still other soldiery with lances, and from this great noyade the great Tour des Caperas became known as the Tour des Prêtres.

To-day Montauban and Orthez have relatively the largest Protestant populations of any of the cities of France.

The old Route Royale between Bayonne and the capital of Béarn and Navarre passed through Orthez, and the same narrow streets, irregular, badly paved, and badly kept up, are those which one traverses to-day on entering and leaving the city. One great improvement has been made in the ancient quarter of the town – though of course one does not know what historical souvenirs it may have supplanted – and that is the laying out of a mail or mall, planted on either side with great elms, and running from the banks of the Gave to the fine fifteenth-century – but still Gothic – church, well at the centre of the town.

The “jambons de Bayonne” are mostly cured at Orthez, and it is indeed the leading industry of the city. The porkers of Orthez may not be corn fed, but they are well and cleanly nourished, which is more than can be said of many “domesticated pigs” in New and Old England, which are eaten with a great relish by those who have brought them up.

In the religious wars Orthez played a grand rôle, and in 1814 it was the scene of one of the great struggles of France against alien invasion of her territory. Just north of the city, on the height of a flanking hill, Wellington – at the head of a force very much superior, let no one forget – inflicted a bloody defeat on Maréchal Soult. The Duc de Dalmatie lost, it is recorded, nearly four thousand men, but he wounded or killed six thousand in the same engagement. General Foy here received his fourth wound on the field of battle.

Orthez is one of the really great feudal cities of the south of France. In the ninth century it was known as Orthesium, and belonged to the Vicomtes de Dax, who, only when they were conquered by Gaston III, Prince of Béarn, ceded the city to the crown of Béarn and Navarre.

It was in the château of Orthez that the unfortunate Blanche of Castille, daughter of the king of Aragon, was poisoned by her sister, the wife of Gaston IV, Comte de Foix. This was one of the celebrated crimes of history, though for that matter the builder of the château, the magnificent (sic) Gaston Phœbus, committed one worthy to rank with it when he killed his brother and “propre fils” on the mere suspicion that they might some day be led to take sides against him.

Orthez flourished greatly under its Protestant princes, but it waned and all but dwindled away in the unpeaceful times immediately following upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The cessation of the practice of the arts of industry, and very nearly those of commerce, left the city poor and impoverished, and it is only within recent generations that it has arisen again to importance.

The donjon of Moncade is all that remains of the once proud château where Gaston Phœbus held more than one brilliant court on his excursions beyond the limits of his beloved Foix. It dominates the whole region, however, and adds an accentuated note of grimness to the otherwise gay melody of the Gave as it flows down to join the Adour from the high valleys of the Pyrenees.

On the opposite hillside is a memorial in honour of the brave General Foy, which will recall to some the victory of Wellington over Soult, and to others, who have not forgotten their Dumas, the fact that it was General Foy who first gave the elder Dumas his start as writer of romances.

Salies de Béarn is a near neighbour of Orthez, and can be omitted from no Pyrenean itinerary. The bustling little market-town and watering-place combined dates, as to the foundation of its great industry, back to the tenth century, when the Duc de Gascogne gave to the monks of the Monastery of Saint Pé an establishment ready fitted that they might commence the industry of recovering salt from the neighbouring salt springs. All through mediæval times, and down as late as 1840, the industry was carried on under the old concession.

All the distractions of a first-class watering-place may be had here to-day, and the “season” is on from May to September. The city is the birthplace of Colonel Dambourges, who became famous for his defence of Quebec against the English in 1775.

At Salies is still the house which sheltered Jeanne d’Albret when she took the waters here, and not far away is the spot where died Gaston Phœbus, as he was returning from a bear hunt. These two facts taken together make of Salies hallowed historic ground.

At Salies de Béarn one recalls a scrap of literary history that is interesting; Dumas père certainly got inspiration for the names of his three mousquetaire heroes from hereabouts. Not far away is Athos – which he gave to the Comte de la Fère, while Aramits and Artagnan are also near-by. In any historical light further than this they are all unimportant however.

Six kilometres to the northward is the Château de Bellocq, a fine mediæval country house (fourteenth century), though unroofed to-day, the residence of Jeanne d’Albret when she sojourned in the neighbourhood. The walls, flanked with four great round towers, are admirably preserved, and the vaulting and its ribs, two square towers and a great entrance gate show the manner of building of the time with great detail.

Five leagues from Orthez, on a little valley plain, watered by the Gave d’Oloron, is the tiny little city of Navarreux. Its population is scarce above a thousand, but it is the centre of affairs for twenty-five communes, containing perhaps twelve thousand souls. It is a typical, bustling, little Pyrenean metropolis, and the comings and goings on market-day at the little Hôtel de France are as good an illustration of the life and manners of a people of small affairs as one will find in a year of travel.

Henri d’Albret of Navarre picked out the site of the city in the midst of this fertile plain, and planned that it should increase and multiply, if not in population, at least in prosperity, though it was at first a “private enterprise,” like Richelieu’s garden-city in Touraine.

The preëminence of Navarreux was short lived. Henri d’Albret had built it on the squared-off, straight-street, Chicago plan, had surrounded it with walls, and even had a fortress built by Vauban, in the expectation of making it the commercial capital of the Pyrenees, but man proposes, and the lines of communication or trade disposes, and many a thought-to-be-prosperous town has finally dwindled into impotency. There was a good deal in the favour of Navarreux; its situation was central, and it was surrounded by a numerous population, but its dream was over in a couple of hundred years and the same year (1790) saw both its grandeur and its decadence.

To-day it remains still a small town, tied to the end of an omnibus line which runs out from Orthez a dozen or fifteen kilometres away. The fortifications of Vauban are still there and a remarkable old city gate, called the Porte St. Antoine, a veritable gem of feudal architecture. The very dulness and disappointment of the place appeal to one hugely. One might do worse than doze away a little while here after a giddy round at Pau or Biarritz. Navarreux is of the past and lives in the past; it will never advance. As a fortress it has been unclassed, but its walls one day guarded – as a sort of last line of defence – the route from Spain via Ronçevaux and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. In those days it certainly occupied a proud position in intent and in reality, as its citadel sat high on a little terrace-plateau, dominated in turn by the red dome of its church still higher up. The effect is still much the same, impotent though the city walls and ramparts have become.

The route into Navarreux from the south is almost a tree-shaded boulevard, and crosses the Gave on an old five-arched bridge, so narrow that one vehicle can scarcely pass, – to say nothing of two. This picturesque bridge was also the work of Henri d’Albret, the founder of the primitive city. This first foundation was a short distance from the present village. Its founder in a short time came to believe he had made a mistake, and that the bourg as it was placed would be too difficult to defend, so he tore it down in real northwest Dakota fashion, and built the present city. Louis XIV and Vauban had great plans for it, and would have done much, but Oloron in time relieved it of all pretensions to a distinction, as, in turn, Pau robbed Oloron.

Between Navarreux and Sauveterre, along the Gave d’Oloron, is a whole string of little villages and hamlets whose names are scarcely ever mentioned except by the local postman. It is a winsome valley, and the signs of civilization, pale though they be, throw no ugly shadows on the landscape. Midway between these two little centres is Audaux, which possesses a vast seventeenth-century château, flanked with a series of high coiffed pavilions and great domes, like that of Valençay in Touraine.

Its history is unimportant, and is rather vague, but a mere glance at its pompous ornateness is a suggestion of the great contrast between the châteaux of the north and centre of France and those of the Midi. In the north the great residential châteaux, as contrasted with the fortress-châteaux, were the more numerous; here the reverse was the case, and the feudal château, which was more or less of a fortress, predominated. The Château d’Audaux, sitting high on its own little plateau, and surrounded by great chestnut trees, is almost the peer of its class in these parts – from a grandiose architectural view point at any rate.

Sauveterre, twenty kilometres from Navarreux, is one of those old-time bourgs which puts its best side forward when viewed from a distance. Really it is nothing but a grim old ruin, so far as its appeal for the pilgrim goes. Close acquaintance develops a squalor and lackadaisical air which is not in the least in keeping with that of its neighbours. It is the ensemble of its rooftops and its delightful site which gives Sauveterre almost its only charm. In the Middle Ages it was a fortified town which played a considerable part in olden history. To-day the sole evidence that it was a place of any importance is found in a single remaining arch of its old bridge, surmounted by a defending tower similar to those which guard the bridges at Orthez and Cahors, but much smaller.