The Brèche de Roland, with the Col de Roncevaux, shares the fame of being the most celebrated pass of the Pyrenees. It is a vast rock fissure, at least three hundred feet in height. As a strategic point of defence against an invading army or a band of smugglers ten men could hold it against a hundred and a hundred against a thousand. At each side rises an unscalable rock wall with a height of from three to six hundred feet.
The legend of this famous Brèche is this: Roland mounted on his charger would have passed the Pyrenees, so giving a swift clean cut of his famous sword he clave the granite wall fair in halves, and for this reason the mountaineers have ever called it the Brèche de Roland. The Tours de Marboré were built in the old days to further defend the passage, a sort of a trap, or barbican, being a further defence on French soil.
The aspect roundabout is as of a desert, except that it is mountainous, and the gray sterile juts of rock and the snows of winter—here at least five months of the year—might well lead one to imagine it were a pass in the Himalayas.
Bordering upon Béarn on the north is the ancient Comté d’Armagnac, a detached corner of the Duché de Gascogne, which dates its history from the tenth century. It passed to Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre, in 1525, and by reason of belonging to the crown of Navarre came to France in due course.
The ancient family of Armagnac had many famous names on its roll: the first Comte Bernard, the founder; Bernard II, who founded the Abbey of Saint Pé; Gerard II, successor of the preceding and a warrior as well; Bernard III, canon of Sainte-Marie d’Auch; Gerard III, who united the Comté de Fezensac with Armagnac; Bernard V, who, in league with the Comtes de Toulouse, went up against Saint Louis; Gerard V, who became an ally of the English king; Bernard VI, who warred all his life with Roger-Bernard, Comte de Foix, on the subject of the succession of the Vicomté de Béarn, to which he pretended; Jean II, who terminated the quarrel with the house of Foix; Bernard VI, the most famous warrior of his race, whose name is written in letters of blood in the chronicles of the wars of the Armagnacs and Jean IV, who was called “Comte par la grace de Dieu.”
CHAPTER XVII
PAU AND ITS CHÂTEAU
