In a Pyrenean Hermitage
French and Spanish manners, customs and speech are here much intermingled. On one side of the frontier they are very like those on the other; only the uniforms of the officialdom made up of douaniers, carabineros, gendarmes and soldiers differ. The type of face and figure is the same; the usual speech is the same; and dress varies but little, if at all. “Voilà! la fraternité Franco-Espagnole”.
One ever-present reminder of two alien peoples throughout all Roussillon is the presence of the châteaux-forts, the walled towns, the watch-towers, and defences of this mountain frontier.
The chief characteristics of Roussillon, from the seacoast plain up the mountain valleys to the passes, are the château ruins, towers and moss-grown hermitages, all relics of a day of vigorous, able workmen, who built, if not for eternity, at least for centuries. In the Pyrénées-Orientales alone there are reckoned thirty-five abandoned hermitages, any one of which will awaken memories in the mind of a romantic novelist which will supply him with more background material than he can use up in a dozen mediæval romances. And if he takes one or more of these hallowed spots of the Pyrenees for a setting he will have something quite as worthy as the overdone Italian hilltop hermitage, and a good deal fresher in a colour sense.
The strategic Pyrenean frontier, nearly six hundred kilometres, following the various twistings and turnings, has not varied in any particular since the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. From Cap Cerbère on the Mediterranean it runs, via the crests of the Monts Albères, up to Perthus, and then by the crests of the Pyrénées-Orientales, properly called, up to Puigmal; and traversing the Sègre, crosses the Col de la Perche and passes the Pic Nègre, separating France from the Val d’Andorre, crosses the Garonne to attain the peaks of the Pyrénées-Occidentales, and so, via the Forêt d’Iraty, and through the Pays Basque, finally comes to the banks of the Bidassoa, between Hendaye and Irun-Feuntarrabia.
The Treaty of Verdun gave the territory of France as extending up to the Pyrenees and beyond (to include the Comté de Barcelone), but this limit in time was rearranged to stop at the mountain barrier. The graft didn’t work! Roussillon remained for long in the possession of the house of Aragon, and its people were, in the main, closely related with the Catalans over the border, but the Treaty of the Pyrenees, in 1659, definitely acquired this fine wine-growing province for the French.
The frontier of the Pyrenees is much better defended by natural means than that of the Alps. For four hundred kilometres of its length—quite two-thirds of its entirety—the passages and breaches are inaccessible to an army, or even to a carriage.
From the times of Hannibal and Charlemagne up to the wars of the Empire only the extremities have been crossed for the invasion of alien territory. It is in these situations that one finds the frontier fortresses of to-day; at Figueras and Gerone in Spain; in France at Bellegarde (Col de Perthus), Prats-de-Mollo, Mont Louis, Villefranche and Perpignan, in the east; and at Portalet, Navarrino, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (guarding the Col de Ronçevaux) and Bayonne in the west. Bayonne and Perpignan guard the only easily practicable routes (Paris-Madrid and Paris-Barcelona).
Hannibal and Charlemagne are the two great names of early history identified with the Pyrenees. Hannibal exploited more than one popular scenic touring ground of to-day, and for a man who is judged only by his deeds—not by his personality, for no authentic portrait of him exists, even in words—he certainly was endowed with a profound foresight. Charlemagne, warrior, lawgiver and patron of letters, predominant figure of a gloomy age, met the greatest defeat of his career in the Pyrenees, at Ronçevaux, when he advanced on Spain in 778.
Close by the Cap Cerbère, where French and Spanish territory join, is the little town and pass of Banyuls. This Col de Banyuls was, in 1793, the witness of a supreme act of patriotism. The Spaniards were biding their time to invade France via Roussillon, and made overtures to the people of the little village of Banyuls—famous to-day for its vins de liqueur and not much else, but at that time numbering less than a thousand souls—to join them and make the road easy. The procureur du roi replied simply: “Les habitants de Banyuls étant français devaient tous mourir pour l’honneur et l’indépendance de la France.”