Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe - Sabine Baring-Gould (books to read to improve english TXT) 📗

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