A striking incident is remembered. One of the friars was at the altar when the Huguenots burst in. He hastily took the monstrance, folded his arms over it, and to save the Host from profanation, threw himself into the Gave. The river swept his body into the Bidouze, and the Bidouze into the Adour, and it was washed up under the walls of the Cordelier Convent at Bayonne, still clasping in its rigid arms the vessel with its sacred contents.
Terride, accompanied by the principal chiefs, had retreated into the castle, but with such precipitation that they had forgotten to take in a supply of provisions. Consequently in a few days they were forced to surrender, under oath from Montgomery that their lives would be spared.
They were sent to Pau, ten barons of Béarn in all. One evening they were invited by the Calvinist captain to dine with him at his table in the Queen’s banqueting hall. During the meal they shook off their despondency, and began to be merry over their cups, when, at a signal from Montgomery, soldiers entered and butchered all the barons about the table where they had been feasting.
“This cruel execution,” says Favyn, in his History of Navarre, “took place on 24 August, the feast of S. Bartholomew.... The news angered King Charles greatly, and it is supposed that he then formed the resolution of making a second S. Bartholomew’s Day in expiation of the first.” So one crime draws on another—a Nemesis, which, however, does not fall on the criminals, but on the guiltless. Montgomery was now master of Béarn. How many priests and monks were slaughtered none knew. Nearly all the friars of Morlaas were shot down. The prior of the Carmelites at Sauveterre was hung, and the rest of the brethren thrown into a well till they choked it up. All the priests caught near S. Sever were led to the brow of a precipice and forced at the point of pikes to leap down. At Orthez the prior of the Augustines was ordered to mount the pulpit and recant. He ascended, but it was to profess his adherence to the Catholic faith, whereupon he was shot in the pulpit. All his seven brethren met their fate with like heroism. They were made to walk down a lane formed of Huguenot soldiers with swords drawn, and were hacked to pieces, one after another.
The Calvinist soldiers did not even respect the dead. They broke open the vault in which lay Gaston Phœbus, took his skull, and played skittles with it. Great numbers of gentlemen and their families, Catholics of every rank and sex, fled to the mountains or crossed into Spain.
Montgomery, having finished with Béarn, left the command with the Baron d’Arros, and departed for more active work elsewhere. Jeanne d’Albret now dispatched injunction after injunction, proclamation after proclamation, in one continuous stream, into Béarn from her refuge in La Rochelle. On 28 November, 1569, she required that Calvinistic worship should be established everywhere, in every town and parish, throughout her dominions; and in 1571 she forbade the celebration of the Mass under pain of death. She would allow an amnesty to such as had taken up arms during the late troubles, but only on condition that they adopted her form of religion.
In 1572 Jeanne died in Paris, not without suspicions of poison. She had gone there to negotiate the marriage of her son Henry with Marguerite de Valois, sister of Charles IX.
An excursion may be made to the Castle of Belocq, whose towers are visible from the high road to Bayonne, on the further side of the Gave. It is situated on a height, at the feet of which the green river sweeps past the wooded slopes on the farther bank.
The castle is ruinous. It consists of a large, irregular yard with seven towers in the wall. The entrance gateway is under a donjon. Through a little door one can mount to the top by a flight of stone steps, disturbing the bats. On the same side of the enclosure is a circular tower, octagonal within, with a vaulted chamber in the basement. On the west side is a beautiful little chamber in a tower, also vaulted. One tower towards the river, and commanding it, has been blown up and a great solid mass has fallen into the river below; on it sit the washerwomen of the village beating their linen. On the right bank, opposite Belocq, is the village of Puyôo. Puyôo in patois signifies a tumulus, and the place takes its name from a huge mound hollowed out as a cup at the top. Certainly the substructure of a Frank wooden castle, exactly like the tumps that are found in Southern Wales, and the representations of fortresses in the Bayeux tapestry. The hamlet of Puyôo is occupied mainly by Calvinists.
But that which will mainly interest an Englishman at Orthez will be to go over the ground of the battle fought on 27 February, 1814, in which Lord Wellington defeated Marshal Soult. It was, in fact, one of his most brilliant victories.