Part 9

The atrocities inflicted by the Roman Catholics on their fellow-citizens of the Protestant faith during the reign of terror, which began in October of 1685, need not be recalled; they are among the blackest pages in the annals of Romish tyranny. But we must know that in the mountainous regions of the south of France, where the work of the Reformation had been fruitful, and blessed in inverse ratio to the poverty of the people and the barrenness of their country, these hardy hill folk were too poor to quit their villages, and too devoted to their religious faith to submit meekly to the new order. Like all peoples whose lot it is to scrape a scanty living from a grudging soil, the inhabitants of the Cevennes resemble in many ways the Highlanders of Scotland and Wales. We find in them the same qualities of sturdy independence, patience, endurance; the same strain of gravity, associated with a deep fervour for the things that are eternal. Thus isolated in their mountain fastnesses, hemmed in by the ravening hordes of Catholicism and constituted authority, they determined to fight for the faith they valued more than life. In this hour of awful trial it was not surprising that, out of the frenzy of despair, strange things were born, and an era of religious hysteria began, simple women, poor ignorant men, children even, in great numbers, being thought to come under the direct inspiration of God, arising as "prophets" to urge the rude mountaineers into a holy war with "His Most Christian Majesty, Louis, King of France and Brittany."

But although there had been many encounters of an irregular kind between the Camisards and the leagued officials of Pope and King in the closing years of the seventeenth century, it was not until that weird figure, Spirit Séguier, who has been called the "Danton of the Cevennes," planned the murder of the Archpriest du Chayla at the little town of Pont de Montvert, on the 23rd of July, 1702, that the first blow in the Protestant rebellion may be said to have been struck. Of this tragic event R. L. Stevenson writes:

"A persecution, unsurpassed in violence, had lasted near a score of years, and this was the result upon the persecuted: hanging, burning, breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left their hoof-marks over all the country side; there were men rowing in the galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church; and not a thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant."

On the 12th of August, nineteen days after the murder of the Archpriest, the right hand of Séguier was stricken from his body, and he was burned alive at the spot where he had driven home the first knife into the oppressor of his people.

II.

So began the war of the Camisards, for the faggots that burned the prophet only added to the fire he lighted when he struck at Du Chayla. Presently his place, as leader of the revolt, was taken by an old soldier named Laporte, who gave the rising a touch of military discipline, and soon the Camisards had many captains, all men who believed themselves endowed with the gift of prophecy.

The Protestants of the Cevennes, thorough in every habit of life, took up their arms and set about the making of entrenchments and works of defence with the determination of men prepared to fight to a finish. It is easy for us in these peaceful days to deprecate their vengeful deeds, but let us remember, in charity, that if they met blood-thirstiness with the same, they were maddened by a system of oppression so brutal as to be almost beyond our belief. Their leader, Roland, issued a dispatch which for callous suggestion has seldom been equalled in the annals of war: "We, Count and Lord Roland, Generalissimo of the Protestants of France, we decree that you have to make away with, in three days, all the priests and missionaries who are among you, under pain of being burned alive, yourselves as well as they."

But the most picturesque figure among the Camisards was introduced when Jean Cavalier, a baker's apprentice at Geneva, returned to his native mountains, and by sheer force of a military genius to which history offers few parallels became the chief leader of the Camisards while still in his teens. The story of his life is romantic beyond the invention of any novelist. Not only did he succeed over a period of three years in defending many important parts of the Cevennes from organised attacks, but in the course of that time he met and defeated successively Count de Broglie and three Marshals of France--Montrevel, Berwick, and Villars--although at one time there was a force of 60,000 soldiers in the field against him. At Nages, a little village in the southern Cevennes, he encountered Montrevel, and, outnumbered by five to one, he succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in effecting a successful retreat with more than two thirds of his thousand men. Not even the blessings of the Pope on the royalist troops, and on the "holy militia," raised among the Catholic population, brought the submission of the Camisards one day nearer. Commander after commander retired baffled, and Montrevel's policy of extermination--during which four hundred and sixty-six villages in the Upper Cevennes were burned, and most of the population put to the sword--left Cavalier, still a mere lad, master of the southward mountains, threatening even to attack the great city of Nimes.

Marshal Villars, a renowned soldier, recognised the hopelessness of continuing the methods of barbarism pursued by his predecessors, and succeeded in concluding an honourable peace with Cavalier in the summer of 1704, whereby the Camisards were granted certain important rights affecting the liberty of conscience and of person. But Roland and the more fanatical section of the Protestant army held out until January of 1705, their battle-cry being, "No peace until we have our churches," Cavalier's treaty having recognised the right to assemble outside walled towns, but not in churches.

It is this extraordinary baker's apprentice--who at twenty-four had concluded a long and desperate war, in which he played a part entitling him to be remembered with national heroes such as William Tell and Sir William Wallace--that Mr. S. R. Crockett has made the chief figure in his brilliant romance of the Cevennes, _Flower-o'-the-Corn_.

III.

The little-known region of the Causses is "the Cevennes of the Cevennes," but Stevenson in his travels did not visit the innermost Cevennes, and was during most of his journey only on the outskirts of the real country of the Camisards. The chief of these great plateaux is the Causse de Sauveterre, which extends south-west from the town of Mende for upwards of forty miles, and is in parts at least twenty miles wide. It is divided from the Causse Méjan on the south by the splendid gorges of the river Tarn, and due south of the Méjan, with the beautiful valley of the Jonte between, lies the Causse Noir, some twenty miles east and west, and ten from the Jonte on its north to the no less beautiful glen on its south, where flows the river Dourbie. Still southward, and with only this waterway dividing, extends the splendid mass of the Causse du Larzac, some thirty miles in length, from the neighbourhood of Millau to the ancient Roman town of Lodève, which boasted a continuous bishopric from the year 323 to the Revolution, and is now a bright and populous industrial centre. These are the more notable of the Causses, and all, no doubt, formed one mighty plateau in prehistoric times; but numerous swift flowing rivers have through the ages worn them asunder, producing a series of magnificent ravines that contain some of the finest scenery in France, and on whose sides we can trace the slow and steady work of the streams wearing down to their present courses through the limestone, the local name for which is _cau_, whence _causse_.

To describe the character of the Camisard country, and to convey some idea of it to English readers, is no easy matter, since there is nothing in the British Islands, and little elsewhere in Europe, to which it may be readily compared. Yet the effort must be made, since the peculiar nature of the country is of first importance to the understanding of its people and their historic resistance of all the might of France two centuries ago.

Conceive, then, a vast expanse of rugged and rock-strewn land, covering it may be an area of two or three hundred square miles, and terminating abruptly on every side in mighty ravines, or ending in precipitous cliffs, that look down on wide and fertile valleys, frown on smiling plains. This is what the word Causse stands for, and the wonder is that folk should be content to live in dreary little villages high up on these stony fields, when a thousand feet and more in the plains and valleys below rich and fruitful soil invites the husbandman. But so it is, and in this region of France we have the strange circumstance of two peoples, differing in many essentials of character, living within a day's walk of each other, and mingling but little in the intercourse of life. As you thread your way through the valleys of the Tarn, the Dourbie, or any of the other streams that follow the rifts between the Causses, you realise that up there among the clouds live people who have small commerce with their fellows in the valleys, and in such a town as Millau, whose inhabitants must look each day of their lives at the giant walls of the Causse Noir and the Larzac, upreared to the immediate east of their own paved streets, there are thousands who have never scaled these heights.

Mr. Crockett gives us this graphic word-picture of the Larzac:

"The surface of the Causse--once Yvette had attained to the higher levels--spread out before her, plain as the palm of a hand, save for those curiously characteristic rocks, which, apparently without connection with the underlying limestone, stand out like icebergs out of the sea, irregular, pinnacled, the debris of temples destroyed or ever foot of man trod there--spires, gargoyles, hideous monsters, all dejected in some unutterable catastrophe, and become more horrible in the moonlight, or, on the other hand, modified to the divine calm of the Bhudda himself, by some effect of illumination or trick of cloud umbration....

"A wonderful land, this of the Causses, where the rain never comes to stay. Indeed, it might as well rain on a vast dry sponge, thirty miles across and four or five thousand feet in height. The sheep up there never drink. They only eat the sparse tender grass when the dew is upon it. Yet from their milk the curious cheese called Roquefort is made, which, being kept long in cool limestone cellars--the cellules of the stony sponge--puts on something of the flavour of the rock plants--thyme, juniper, dwarf birch, honeysweet heath--from which it was distilled."

IV.

A country better adapted to the exigencies of defence against an attacking army from the plains could not be imagined, for, as the novelist says in another passage, "It seemed impossible for any living thing to descend those frowning precipices. Even in broad daylight the task appeared more suited to goats than to men." The roads which now connect these great uplands with the lower country are marvels of engineering, and you can count as many as twenty or thirty "elbows" in the track, from the point at which it leaves the valley until it disappears over the edge of the table-land, the entire length of it being in view at one stroke of the eye. The task of ascending is laborious in the extreme, and much sitting at cafés, which is the habit of the townsfolk, does not equip them for the undertaking. Few wayfarers are encountered, and when the summit of the Causse is gained the signs of life are still meagre. The roads, now flat and dusty, lie like bright ribbons on a dull and melancholy stretch of earth. Here and there a lonely shepherd is seen tending a flock of shabby-looking sheep, that crop the sparse herbage in fields where stones are more plentiful than grass.

Miss M. Betham-Edwards is one of the few writers who have visited this little-known corner of France, and in the following passage she refers to what is perhaps its most curious feature:

"Another striking feature of the arid, waterless upper region is the _aven_, or yawning chasm, subject of superstitious awe and terror among the country people. Wherever you go you find the _aven_; in the midst of a field--for parts of this sterile soil have been laid under cultivation--on the side of a vertical cliff, of divers shapes and sizes: these mysterious openings are locally known as 'Trous d'enfer' (mouths of hell). Alike, fact and legend have increased the popular dread. It was known that many an unfortunate sheep or goat had fallen into some abyss, never, of course, to be heard of after. It was said that a jealous seigneur of these regions had been seen thus to get rid of his young wife--one tradition out of many. According to the country-folk of Padirac, the devil, hurrying away with a captured soul, was overtaken by St. Martin on horseback. A struggle, amid savage scenery, ensued for possession of the soul. 'Accursed saint,' cried Satan, 'thou wilt hardly leap my ditch'--with a tap of his heel opening the rock before them, splitting it in two--the enormous chasm, as he thought, making pursuit impossible. But St. Martin's steed leaped it at a bound, the soul was rescued, and the prince of darkness, instead of the saint, sent below."

Many of the _avens_ have been explored by M. E. A. Martel, and his adventures in these underground tunnels and caves have rarely been equalled in modern exploration.

V.

The scene of _Flower-o'-the-Corn_, so far as it is laid in the Cevennes, occupies but a small part of that splendid chain of mountains, but it is perhaps the most picturesque part. Much of the action is centred in the little Camisard town of La Cavalerie, situate at an altitude of nearly 2,500 feet on the lonely plateau of the Larzac, some ten miles along the main road from Millau, a beautiful and important cathedral town in the valley of the Tarn. To-day, as in the past, the innkeeper is usually the man of most importance in these mountain towns, but I have visited no _auberge_ that would compare, in romantic situation, with that so graphically described by Mr. Crockett under the style of "le Bon Chrétien" at La Cavalerie:

"To those unacquainted with the plan of such southern houses, it might have been remarkable how quickly the remembrance of the strange entrance-hall beneath was blotted out. At the first turn of the staircase the ammoniacal stable smell was suddenly left behind. At the second, there, in front of the ascending guest, was a fringed mat lying on the little landing. At the third Maurice found himself in a wide hall, lighted from the front, with an outlook upon an inner courtyard in which was a Judas-tree in full leaf, with seats of wicker and rustic branches set out. Here and there in the shade stood small round tables, pleasantly retired, all evidencing a degree of refinement to which Maurice had been a stranger ever since he left those inns upon the post-roads of England, which were justly held to be the wonder of the world."

One fears that the "good old times" have disappeared from the Causses, as most of the inns, built, like many of the houses, in sunk positions by the roadside, so that one enters on the top flat, sometimes by way of a crazy wooden bridge, are sad advertisements of poverty. The houses are often like that in which Mr. Crockett's heroine lodged in the little Camisard town of St. Vernan, in the valley of the Dourbie, "built out like a swallow's nest over the abyss." For it is noteworthy that most of these highland villages cluster along the river courses, as though the hill-folk were fain to have the sound of the glad waters in their ears. In the valley of the Jonte I marvelled often at these "swallows' nests." Many of the cottages have a scrap of garden, surrounded by a wall not higher than three feet, from the base of which the cliff sweeps down at an acute angle to the river bed, six hundred feet below. Children play in these tiny eeries with as little concern as youngsters in a city court.

Not all the surface of these great table-lands lies flat and stone-strewn; one will often come on dark forests of pines, and sometimes the woodman has a better return for his labour than the shepherd. But on every hand the conditions of life are primitive beyond anything in our own land. Here, more frequently than in his native Normandy, may we find the sullen clod depicted by Millet in the "Man with the Hoe." "Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox," as Markham has described him in his powerful poem. It is, indeed, difficult to realise that among these crumbling villages and beggarly fields we are in the heart of fair France.

VI.

There is little to choose between the Catholic and Protestant villages; all are more or less in a state of dilapidation, all have poverty written on their walls; but to mingle with the people and discuss affairs with them, quite apart from all questions of religion, is a sure and ready way to discover how great is the difference between the two classes. The one is usually a sullen and unintelligent mortal, tied neck and crop to the stony soil on which he has been born; the other bright, receptive of ideas, quick with life and hope, and, if he be old, happy in the knowledge that his sons have gone forth from this bare land equipped by the liberal training of the Protestant schools to take dignified part in the great life of the Republic. For you will find that even in the veritable strongholds of a debased and superstitious Catholicism all the important officials are Protestants.

The Protestants of to-day are no unworthy descendants of the men whom Cavalier led against the forces of civil and religious tyranny, and though these lonely mountains shelter also many who are still willing slaves of the yoke which the sturdy "Sons of God" endeavoured to shake off for ever, the Camisards of two centuries ago did not fight and die in vain; their children's children are to-day the little leaven that may yet "leaven the whole lump."

The Wonderland of France

I.

"Whatever you do, you must not miss the valley of the Tarn--the finest scenery in Europe." Thus wrote a celebrated novelist and traveller to me when sending some hints on my projected tour in the Cevennes, a district which to Mr. S. R. Crockett is almost as familiar as his own romantic Galloway. I have good reason to be grateful for his advice, as the river Tarn is the waterway through what I shall venture to call the Wonderland of France. A clever writer has observed that "there are landscapes which are insane," and truly in this little-known corner of southern France nature has performed some of her maddest, most fantastic freaks. Here she is seen in a mood more sensational than the weird imaginings of a Gustave Doré; there is no scenery that I have looked upon or read about in any other part of Europe comparable with this of the Tarn. In the old world at least it is unique, and we have to go for comparison to the renowned cañons of the Colorado.

Not the least curious feature of the story of the Tarn, its awesome gorges and wondrous caverns, is the fact that less than thirty years ago the region was "discovered" to France by M. E. A. Martel, the celebrated grottologist, with as much éclat as it had been an island in an unknown sea. Of course, the whole district, like every other part of France, had long ago taken its place in history and romance; but although many a generation of peasant folk and monkish fraternities had lived out their lives in these southern fastnesses, the Tarn country-side had not before been explored by one in search of the picturesque or the wonders of Nature. Thus, in every sense of the word, M. Martel is to be reckoned a discoverer, and the surprise is that, despite a somewhat tiresome journey, there are so few English tourists who find their way to this enchanted land. The journey is no more fatiguing than that to Geneva or Lucerne, which in the summer months swarm with English visitors, and, for all their beauties, possess nothing to equal the natural glories of the Tarn.

There are several ways of reaching this little-known corner of France, but the best is undoubtedly by way of Mende, a fine town 434 miles south of Paris, "chief place" of the Department of the Lozère. Mende, although one of the cleanest and brightest of the French towns, with a population of less than 10,000, and pleasantly situated in a wide green valley, with low and sparsely-timbered hills billowing on every side under a sky so blue and in atmosphere so clear that the eye seems to acquire an unusual power of vision, would scarcely be worth the journey for itself alone. But it is the real starting-place for the descent of the Tarn gorges, and it possesses many excellent hotels and an ample service of coaches for the journey across the great plateau of the Causse de Sauveterre to Ste. Enimie, a distance of about eighteen miles. This would be the most convenient route for the traveller who depended upon the train and coach for his locomotion, but those who, like the writer, make use of the bicycle, would be well advised to make Florac their starting-point, as not the least beautiful part of the river scenery lies between that pretty little town and Ste. Enimie.

II.

It fitted well with my plans one summer to explore a much longer reach of the Tarn than most visitors are in the habit of following, and I should have been sorry indeed to have missed any part of the journey. In company with another friend of the wheel, I struck eastward from Mende along the lovely valley of the Lot, and crossing the great mountain range that gives its name to the Department of the Lozère we first came upon the Tarn at Pont de Montvert, some fourteen miles north-east of Florac, at which point R. L. Stevenson began his acquaintance with the river. From this sleepy old town the river runs through a deep and narrow valley, the slopes thick with mighty chestnut trees, and the scenery in parts somewhat reminiscent of our Scottish Highlands, and totally unlike those reaches which, in its south-westerly course, render it unique among the rivers of Europe. For a few miles beyond Florac the aspect of the country is somewhat similar in kind, but on a more massive scale, the valley wider and more pastoral; but when one has reached the little town of Ispagnac, which sits snugly amid its fruitful orchards, the real character of the Tarn begins to reveal itself.