Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe

by S. Baring-Gould

I will give but an instance.

Archibald V. (1361-1397) was Count of Perigord. He was nominally under the lilies, but he pillaged indiscriminately in his county. Surrounded by adventurers he planted his men in castles about Perigord, and from that of La Rolphie "hung over the city like the sword of Damocles," menaced Perigueux. One little town after another was pillaged. He intercepted the merchants on the roads. At S. Laurent-du-Manoir his captains added outrage to injury, for they took all the women of the place, and cut off their skirts at the knees; and one who made strenuous resistance they killed.

In 1385, the Seneschal of Perigord, in the name of the King of France, ordered Archibald to desist from his acts of violence. When he refused, his lands were declared confiscated. But who was to bell the cat? He mocked at the sentence, and was roused to fresh incursions and pillages. At last in 1391 the Parliament acted, and summoned the Count to appear along with twenty-three of his accomplices before its bar "to answer for having overrun with his troops the suburbs of Perigueux; for having assaulted the city, and neighbouring places; for having wounded and killed a great many persons; for having incarcerated others to extort a ransom from them; for having, like common highwaymen, seized cattle, fired granges, mills, houses; and for having committed crimes so infamous, so ferocious, that one would feel pain to disclose them."

Archibald paid not the slightest regard to the summons or to the sentence pronounced against him in contumaciam. The law could not enforce its judgment, and six years later in 1397 he died. The King refused to recognise his son Archibald VI. as Count of Perigord, but Archibald disregarded the refusal, and openly sided with the English. He successfully resisted the troops sent against him, and continued in the same courses as his father. At last he was brought to bay in Montignac, where he was constrained to capitulate. He was sent to Charles VI., but effected his escape and fled to London in 1399. Thence he returned in 1404, and captured Auberoche, much about the time of the English victory at Agincourt. He died in undisturbed possession of his county of Perigord in 1430.

Few portions of France so lent itself to the requirements of the feudal tyrants of the Middle Ages, as they did also to those of the routiers, as the volcanic district of Auvergne. There the floods of lava that flowed from the volcanoes have formed caps to hills, with precipices on every side, cut through by the streams, that have separated portions from the main current. Every such peak or fragment of plateau was laid hold of by the seigneurs of old, as sites for their fortresses. From the number of these strongholds and the almost impregnable nature of most of them, the feudal tyrants of Auvergne were able to hold their own, long after the rest had been brought to their knees; and it was not until Richelieu with iron hand moved against them that their career of rapine and violence was curbed. Beginning in 1626, Richelieu ordered the demolition of all feudal fortresses that were not necessary for the defence of the frontiers, and which were a permanent menace to the King's authority, and an object of terror to town and country, and to the nobles afforded reminiscence of past lawlessness. The demolition was entrusted to the communes themselves. And in order to bring the culprits to speedy judgment, he renewed the institution of the Grand Jours; that of Poitiers in 1634 condemned over two hundred nobles convicted of exactions and crimes.

But it was impossible in many places, notably in Auvergne, for the communes to get hold of the castles and blow them up. There, for some thirty years longer, the seigneurs defied justice, and it was much the same elsewhere. On the 31st August 1665, the Grand Jours were announced for all the centre of France, but notice that they were to be held had been given so long before that the guilty were allowed plenty of time to escape out of the country, go into hiding or come to terms. Great were the expectations of the people. Right was at length to prevail over Might. The Day of Judgment was coming on the oppressors. The Mighty would be put down from their seat and the humble would be exalted in their room. A peasant wearing his cap before a noble, the latter knocked it off his head "Pick it up," said the peasant, "or the King will cut off your head." The seigneur obeyed.

But the result was disappointing. Only one noble had his head cut off. Few executions were carried into effect, many were on paper. One of the latter, a ruffian steeped in blood, defied the sentence and was banished. Fléchier in his amusing and instructive book, Les grands Jours d'Auvergne, has given us a dramatic account of the trial.

Every description of intrigue was had recourse to, in order to neutralise the effect of justice. The fair ladies of Clermont, les chats fourrés, as Fléchier calls them, did their utmost to reduce the severity of the judges. The Great Days lasted three months, and ended in disappointment. Many of the worst offenders, convicted of atrocious crimes, entered the Royal service and fought in the armies of the King.

But if justice spared the culprits, the opportunity was accorded to destroy their strongholds, and now little remains of these Towers of Iniquity but the foundations, and some fragments of their massive walls, which were generally constructed of basaltic prisms taken from the rock that sustained the castles, laid horizontally. "Puzzolana was mixed with the mortar used in these constructions, and without the binding quality communicated by this ingredient, probably no cement would have taken effect on the smooth a rid iron surfaces of the prisms." [Footnote: Poulette Scrope, "The Extinct Volcanoes of Central France," Lond. 1858.]

The King had indeed desired that greater severity should be used. He wrote to the judges: "You must manage to banish oppression and violence out of the provinces. You have begun well, and you must finish well." At the conclusion he had a medal struck representing a slave rising from the ground, under the protection of the sword of royalty, and with the expressive device, Salus provinciarum repressa potentorum audacia.