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

there a sustaining iron bar. Below the structure are chambers, possibly prisons, but more probably store rooms dug out of the rock. In this castle one of the Bishops of Sarlat, in stormy times, lived continuously, and there died. How was his body carried down the stair? Probably it was lowered by ropes.

I cannot quit La Roche Gageac without a word on one of its most illustrious natives, Jean Tarde, born there in 1561 the friend of Galileo, and who, the first in France, five years after the great Florentine had begun to search the skies with his telescope, invented one year previously, erected his tube here at one of the openings of this eagle's nest, and during ten consecutive years pursued his astronomic studies. He was a remarkable man in many ways. He was the first to map his native Perigord, and the first to write a chronicle of the diocese of Sarlat, a valuable work for any who would compile a history of the Hundred Years' War, the first also to repudiate the accepted attribution of the dolmens as altars of sacrifice, and to indicate their true character as sepulchres. His account of the ravages committed by the Huguenots is also valuable. The year before his birth, in 1560, at Lalande, the Calvinists got into the town through a hole in the wall, killed the first Consul, the Vicar, and six other priests, and massacred a hundred of the inoffensive citizens. Sixty took refuge in the church. The Calvinists forced such as could to ransom their lives, and slaughtered such as were too poor to do this. He was but six or seven years old when the Huguenot captain, the Sieur d'Assier, took La Roque, "killing the priests and burning the churches." He was aged twelve when Captain Vivant took Sarlat, suppressed the bishopric, and killed three of the canons and several of the citizens. At La Chapelle- Faucher in 1569 the heretics drove 260 peasants into the castle and massacred them all. He was made Vicar-General to the Bishop of Sarlat, and it was after having made a tour of the diocese in 1594 that the idea occurred to him to write the history of his country and repair as far as possible the loss of so many of the archives that had been burnt. In 1599 he was made honorary chaplain to Henry IV., and in 1626 was published his _Description du pais de Quercy_. His history of Sarlat, after remaining in MS. was at length published in 1887, but only 150 copies were printed. Happily one is in the British Museum, and I possess another.

Gluges is on the Dordogne near Martel, where high up in the cliff, difficult of access, is the fortified cave-castle of Guillaume Taillefer, son of Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse, who was created Lord of Quercy in 972. Nearly on the level of the river is a cave half walled up, with traces of fresco on the walls, of course much later than the time of Taillefer. A modern house has been built on the platform that has been levelled, and much of the wall demolished; the upper fortified cave has an opening in the wall, pointed, of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In much the same condition is another cliff castle in the rocks of the valley of the Alzou, between Grammat and Rocamadour, a little above the cascade of the mill Du Saut.

I have elsewhere [Footnote: "A Book of the Cevennes," Lond., J. Long.] given an account of the curious castle of La Roche Lambert at Borne in Haute Loire, built in a basaltic cleft through which roars the river. It is the theatre of George Sand's novel, Jean de la Roche. "I may say without exaggeration that I was reared in a rock. The castle of my fathers is strangely incrusted into an excavation in a wall of basalt 500 feet high. The base of this wall, with that face to face with it, identically the same rock, forms a narrow and sinuous valley, through which winds and leaps an inoffensive torrent in impetuous cascades. The Chateau de la Roche is a nest of troglodytes, inasmuch as the whole flank of the rock we occupy is riddled with holes and irregular chambers which tradition points out as the residence of ancient savages, and which antiquaries do not hesitate to attribute to a prehistoric people.

"The castle of my fathers is planted high up on a ledge of rock, but so that the conical roofs of the tower just reach above the level of the plain. My mother having poor health, and having no other place to walk save one tiny platform before the castle on the edge of the abyss, took it into her head to create for herself a garden at the summit of the crag on which we were perched midway."

In Cantal at Roqueville are the remains of a castle excavated out of the rocks. Between Jung-Bunzlau and Boehm-Leipa in Bohemia is the rock- castle of Habichstein. Two lakes lie in a basin of the hills that are well-wooded up their sides, but have bare turfy crowns. The upper lake is studded with islands. Between this and the lower lake stands an extraordinary hump of sandstone, on a sloping _talus_. This hump has much resemblance to a Noah's Ark stranded on a diminutive Ararat. The rock is perforated in all directions with galleries and chambers, and contains a stable for horses and for cattle, which, however, is no longer accessible. On the summit of the rock rises a keep very much resembling a Pictish broch. Habichstein belongs to the Wallenstein family that possesses a stately schloss at the head of the upper lake. It has been abandoned for, probably, two hundred years, as it can never have been a comfortable residence; moreover, the sandstone is continually breaking away. Below the hill and castle is the village. In 1811 there was a fall of the rock, and again in 1815, when it crushed three of the houses beneath.

Another and still more curious cliff castle in Bohemia is that of Burgstein. There are several on the frontier of the Wargau and the Hardt in North Bohemia, where the German and Czech languages meet, but it is not possible here to describe them all. Burgstein is the most curious. It consists of an isolated mass of sandstone springing out of level land, an outlying block of the Schwoik chain. Formerly it rose out of a lake or marsh, but this is now drained. The entrance is through a narrow gap in the rock by a flight of steps that lead into a court on all sides surrounded by sheer precipices except towards the North-west, where a gap was closed by a wall. Out of this court open caves, one was formerly the smithy, another the guard-room, a third the stable, and in a recess is the well. From the court access to the main structure is obtained by a rift in the sandstone commanded by the guard-room, and up which ascends a stair of 15 steps that leads to a second rift at right angles, up which leads a further stair of 76 steps, and from the landing 37 descend to a lower portion of the rock, a platform with a breastwork of wall, important for defence of the entrance.

The steps lead to various chambers, and to an open court that looks out over the precipice, and has on one side scooped out of the rock a watchman's chamber, and on the other an armoury, where pilasters on each side supported shelves on which helmets and breastplates were laid; and beyond this is a guard-room. The summit of the rock has on it a lantern that lights an underground chapel, and formerly contained a bell, also a modern summer-house. As the rock was commanded from the south by a spur of the Schwoik range, when cannon were introduced, a new mode of access was devised on the north side, a passage in loops was constructed leading to the upper court. The castle called in Czech, Stolpna, or the pillar, is first mentioned in the fourteenth century. The great highroad to and from Boehmisch-Leipa passed near it, and it became the stronghold of a Raubritter, Mikisch Passzer of Smoyn, who became such a terror to the neighbourhood that the Sixtowns league of Lausitz in 1444 attacked it with 9000 men, broke down the dam that held back the water, and made of the rock an islet in a lake and constrained Mikisch to surrender. Soon after, however, he recommenced his lawless proceedings, and was again attacked in 1445, and after a siege that lasted five weeks, forced to quit his fortress. At the end of the seventeenth century Burgstein was converted into a hermitage and Brother Constantine, the first hermit, either enlarged or dug out the present chapel and built the lantern above, through which it obtains light. He did more, he carved a figure of himself looking through a telescope, life size, and planted on the summit of the rock. On the occasion of the Prussian invasion of Bohemia the image was assumed to be a spy, and the Germans fired at it and greatly damaged the figure, and were much puzzled at being unable to prostrate the dauntless spy. The present possessor of the rock castle has had the figure restored. Burgstein remained the abode of a hermit till 1785, when the reforming Joseph II. abolished all hermitages, and turned out every hermit in his dominions. And now, back to the Jura limestone again. A few words must be given to Kronmetz in Tirol, at the mouth of the Val di Non, opening into the Etschthal.

This castle belonged to the Bishops of Trient, and was intended by them to serve as a place of "ward and custody" against invading or marauding bands.

But _quis custodiet custodies_? It was granted in fief to two brothers Von Leo, who turned it into a robbers' nest, so that the neighbourhood rose in arms in 1210 and stormed it. Then the bishops confided it to the Herren von Metz, and they carried on a feud with their overlord, the bishop.

At last it came to the Counts von Firmian, who, in 1480, built a more convenient mansion at the foot of the cliff, and turned the old castle into a hermitage.

The castle, that is in a fair condition, occupies a broad cleft in the rock, only accessible by a narrow path cut in the rocks on the west side. It consists of an outer court and an inner court, protected on the side of the precipice by a stout wall, behind which were originally chambers, as windows in the wall and beamholes show to have been the case. There is a donjon that reaches to the overhanging rock and a ruinous chapel with apsidal east end. The cleft runs further east, but is blocked with a wall.

Another cliff castle, of which Merian, in his Topographia, 1640-88, gave a picture to arouse interest and wonder, is that of Covolo, at one time in Tirol, now over the Italian border. His description of it is as little accurate as his illustration. As a matter of fact, although it is certainly a cliff castle, constructed in a cave, it is accessible on foot, and it is by no means necessary to be conveyed to it by a windlass. Indeed it would not be easy to erect a crane on the platform of the castle that could haul up men and provisions from below.

A more famous fortress in a cave is that of Schallaun in the Puxerloch. Here is a grotto in the face of the precipice, 75 feet above the valley. The cliff itself is 4500 feet high. The castle consists of