The Mount became a place of execution in the Middle Ages and towards the end of the seventeenth century there would never be a time when bodies could not be seen swinging from the beam of the great gallows, since it was here that the brigands known as the Barbets were hanged.
The term “Barbet” has a somewhat curious history. It was originally a nickname given by the Catholics to the Protestant Vaudois and later to the Protestants of the Cevennes and elsewhere. The name had origin in the circumstance that the Vaudois called their ministers “barbes” or “uncles,” in somewhat the same way that the Catholics call their priests “fathers.”
The term was later applied to Protestant heretics generally and notably to the Albigensians who held to the mountains of Piedmont and Dauphiné. They refused baptism, the Mass, the adoration of the Cross, the traffic in indulgences. “What was originally a logical revolt of pure reason against dogmatic authority soon took unfortunately varying forms, and then reached unpardonable extremes.”[[50]] These men were outlawed, were hunted down and massacred and treated as rogues and vagabonds of a pernicious type. For their ill name they were themselves not a little to blame. They kept to the mountains from which great efforts were made to dislodge them about the end of the seventeenth century.
The term Barbets was subsequently given to the inhabitants of the valleys of the Alps who lived by plunder and contraband and finally to any brigands or robbers who had their lairs among the mountains. “In the year 1792,” writes Rosio,[[51]] “irregular bands were formed, under the name of Barbets, which were trained and commanded by military officers devoted to Sardinia. These bands of men harassed the French army, pillaged the camps and held up convoys. When the House of Savoy lost its hold on the Continent the Barbets divided into smaller companies and gave themselves up to open brigandage. Their habitat was in the mountains of Levens, of L’Escarene, Eze and La Turbie. Near Levens the unfortunates who fell into their hands were hurled into the Vesubie from a rock 300 metres high which is still called Le Saut des Français.”
GALLOWS HILL.
MONT JUSTICIER: THE TWO PILLARS OF THE GALLOWS.