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

lateral valley opens on that of the Dronne: here there is a _talus_ overgrown with box and juniper leading up to a rock, of inconsiderable height, with some holes in it, overhanging, and capped with brushwood that at one time also covered the slope below the rock.

By the roadside, immediately under this rock, is the opening into a cave that admits into another much larger, and lighted from above, and in which at the extremity is a passage leading upwards, now choked with earth and stone.

The original entrance to the cave has been destroyed through the widening of the highroad, so that it is now impossible to tell whether it was effectually concealed or whether precautions had been taken for its defence.

At one spot only in the rocks above is there a gap, and through that gap, probably once walled up, access is obtained into a sort of circular courtyard, where there are traces of a fireplace, and where is a stone bench. From this court a spiral staircase, rock-hewn, leads to the platform on top of the rocks. In the wall on the right of the court is a doorway neatly cut in the chalk, square-headed and adapted for a framed door that could be strongly barricaded. Immediately within is a quadrangular pit sunk in the floor, now choked with stones. This, in such a position, could not be a silo, it probably was the opening through which those who entered the cave from below, by the road, made their way into the interior of the fortress. Stepping over this pit one enters a hall with six large round holes cut in the roof communicating with an upper chamber, and receiving a borrowed light through them. A spiral staircase at the side furnished with _meurtrieres_ through which the besieged could stab at their enemies, leads to the upper hall or chamber, which is lighted by two rude windows, one high up, the other low down, and with a bench recess opposite them. But the strange and perplexing feature of this room is that it has in the floor eight round holes, each large enough to let a man fall through. Six communicate with the chamber below, but the other two open under the overhanging cornice, outside the castle. One of the holes--opening into the nether chamber, is precisely where would rest the feet of men seated on the bench. There is no trace of a groove to receive covers to these holes.

It has been conjectured that this strange construction was a granary, in which the peasants concealed their corn; but there are difficulties in accepting this theory. The Rochebrune commands the road, and a hiding place would assuredly be located in the depths of a wood, away from a highroad, in some secluded valley. It has been conjectured that the holes served for discharging the corn into the lower chamber. But why carry it by a narrow winding stair aloft to pour it down into a nether cave, when the latter, the supposed granary, itself was at once accessible through the doorway? Moreover, two of the holes open outwards, and not into the supposed store-chamber. It may be said that these were for hauling up the sacks of corn, but the incline on which they open is so steep, that it would be a prodigious waste of labour to drag the corn up under the cornice in which they are, whereas the other ascent is easy. The precautions taken to provide means of stabbing at an assailant point to this having been a fortress. My interpretation of the puzzle is this: first, that the left hand stair leading to the summit of the crag enabled one of the defenders to light a beacon, so as to warn the people of Brantome when danger threatened; that next, the garrison, which could not have comprised more than five or six men, as Rochebrune is very small, retired within the rock. If this courtyard were invaded, they escaped into the lower chamber and barred the door, and were able to thrust at assailants through the slots. But if the door yielded they would scramble up the rock stair into the upper apartment, and as the enemy broke into the lower cavern, they stabbed and thrust at them through the six holes in the floor. Should their position be rendered untenable, they could slip through the two holes that opened outwards, into the brushwood and so effect their escape; for these holes would not be perceived, or their purpose understood by besiegers unfamiliar with the castle.

Usually, over the floor, riddled like a colander, planks were laid, that on emergency could be turned up on their sides. I may add that the windows opening outwards are purposely so inartificially made that no one passing along the road underneath would suspect that there was a fortress above his head. He would certainly suppose that these holes were natural, such as are commonly found in the chalk cliffs. In fact the first time I visited Brantome, and walked down the river to Bourdeilles, I passed this rock and entertained no suspicion that it contained anything remarkable, that it was as a matter of fact, a mere shell, with all the artificial work within.

Why was it that every city--nay, every little town--had to be not only walled about but to have its outposts? Because France was not a nation, only a congeries of individualities. As Michelet says of the fourteenth century: "The kingdom was powerless, dying, losing self-consciousness, prostrate as a corpse. Gangrene had set in, maggots swarmed, I mean the brigands, English and Navarese. All this rottenness isolated, detached the members of the poor body from one another. One talks of the Kingdom, but there were no States General, nothing at all general, no intercommunication, the roads were in the power of cut-throats. The fields were all battlefields, war was everywhere, and none could distinguish friend from foe."

How needful these outposts were may be judged from what Froissart says: "Rogues took advantage of such times (of truce), and robbed both towns and castles; so that some of them, becoming rich, constituted themselves captains of bands of thieves; there were among them those worth forty thousand crowns. Their method was to mark out particular towns or castles, a day or two's journey from each other; then they collected twenty or thirty robbers, and travelling through by-roads in the night-time, about daybreak entered the town or castle they had fixed upon, and set one of the houses on fire. When the inhabitants perceived it they thought it had been a body of soldiers sent to destroy them, and took to their heels as fast as they could" (Bk. i., c. 147).

Passing on from the outposts to towns, or defences to highways, we must glance at such as guard the approaches to countries, or such as Gibraltar that commands the great waterway between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Gibraltar is certainly the most complete and marvellous of all cliff castles. This is too well known to English travellers to need description here.

The French Gibraltar, Urdos, commands one of the passes through the Pyrenees. It is hewn out of the mountain in a buttress of rock, and rises in stages from the road to the height of 500 feet. Externally the mountain looks harmless enough. A cave opens here, and a rift there, and a few streaks of masonry may be noticed, but actually the mountain is riddled with galleries, batteries, and long flights of stairs, and hollowed out for ammunition and other stores; and it is capable of containing a garrison of three thousand men.

Faron also, 1660 feet high, with its magnificent precipices of salmon- coloured limestone, commanding both the harbour of Toulon and the Bay of Hyeres, is capped with fortifications and pierced with batteries, casemates, and chambers for military stores, a position made by Nature and utilised with supreme skill. Nor must the chain of rock-forts of Campi delle Alte and of Mont Agel above Monaco, dominating the Corniche road be forgotten, ready to drop bombs amidst an army from Italy venturing along that splendid road, nor must Besancon be forgotten, occupying its inaccessible rock--inaccessible that is, to an enemy.

"Oppidum maximum Sequanorum," as Caesar described it in his day; "natura loci sic muniebatur ut magnam ad ducendum bellum daret facultatem."

Ehrenbreitstein faces the opening of the Moselle into the Rhine; and Frankenfeste holds the key of the Brennerpass; and Dover Castle commands the strait at its narrowest. Koenigstein crowning a precipitous rock 748 feet above the Elbe, though in Saxony is garrisoned by Prussians, guards the pass down the river from Bohemia; and Peterwardein is a rock-built fortress, that has been called the Ehrenbreitstein and Gibraltar of the Danube. What are these frontier fortresses but the same on an extensive scale as the Gue du Loir, the Roche Corail, and the Rochebrune? In the Middle Ages every city, every little town had to have its outposts and watch-tower on the look-out for the enemy, and to break the first impetus of an attack. But now it is not the town but the nation that has to gird itself about with frontier fortresses.


CHAPTER VII


SUBTERRANEAN CHURCHES

When the periods of persecution of the early Christians had come to an end, and they were able in security to assemble for worship, two distinct types of Church contested for the supremacy--the Basilican and the Catacumbal.

Even during the times before Constantine, when persecution was in abeyance, Christians had been accustomed to gather together for the Divine mysteries in private houses. But after that Christianity was recognised and favoured, the wealthy and noble citizens of Rome, Italy, and Africa, who had become Christians, made over their stately reception halls, or basilicas, to be converted into churches. These basilicas, attached to most palaces, were halls comprising usually a nave with side aisles separated from the nave by ranges of columns, and an apse at the extremity of the nave in which the master of the house was wont to sit to receive his clients and his guests. This is the type upon which cathedral and parish churches in east and west are modelled. But the early Christians had become accustomed in times of danger to resort to the subterranean chapels in the Catacombs. The poorer members doubtless preferred these dingy meeting-places to the lordly halls of the nobles, and the slaves could not feel their equality with their masters under the same roof where they had served, and been whipped, as in the Catacombs, where all were one in fear of their lives and in the darkness that, buried distinction. Moreover, the cult of the martyrs had grown to a passion, and it had become customary to commemorate their nativities as it was called, _i.e._ the anniversaries of their deaths, at their tombs in the Catacombs. It was there that the faithful habitually prayed, it was near the bones of the Saints that it was believed special sanctity dwelt, and that prayers were most effectually answered through their intercession; and it was there, _ad martyres_, that they themselves purposed to be laid in expectation of the Resurrection.

In Rome, the tombs of the martyrs continued to enjoy popular favour, and to attract crowds, till the incursion of the Lombards, when, to save the relics of the Saints from profanation, they were transferred to the basilicas within the walls, whereupon the Catacombs ceased to interest the faithful, that were neglected and allowed to fall into oblivion. Gaul rejoiced in having had its soil watered with the blood of many witnesses to the Faith, consequently it had numerous hypogee chapels, and when, to the Martyrs were added hermits, abbots, bishops, devout women, and confessors of all descriptions, their underground tombs became extraordinarily