A Summer In Gascony Page 5

  When I look at a map I see the landscape it represents spreading out as I view it from above. And when I look at a landscape I see the map around me, describing the limits of my view. The old map of Gascony gave me a bird’s-eye view to carry in my mind. I was creating my own map.

  The landscape varies from the flat, sandy pine forests of the Landes, facing the ocean, through rolling countryside to the foothills of the Pyrenees in the south. In the early part of the year Atlantic breezes reach far inland, bringing nourishing rain. The land is green in spring and dries golden brown in summer, although wetter, greener summers are not unknown. The rivers in the valleys are fed steadily throughout the year with water from the mountains. The small rivers that flow from the high chain of the Pyrenees to become the tributaries of the Garonne form a broad fantail of long ridges and valleys, steeply carved upstream, ever wider and flatter as they approach the plain. Most of the land in Gascony is in some way influenced by the mountains.

  Gascony has been inhabited since time immemorial. Early in the twentieth century, in a cave near the village of Lespugue just to the south of Boulogne-sur-Gesse, the oldest piece of sculpture found anywhere in the world was discovered, a small female figurine, thirty thousand years old. The Venus of Lespugue, as she became known, did not remain in Gascony; she was taken to the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. One of the oldest known roads in Europe, the Salt Road, linking the Atlantic with the Mediterranean since the Stone Age, crossed southern Gascony, through Salies-de-Béarn, Pau, Lourdes and Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges.

  Prehistoric Gascony presents an obscure picture of tribes who lived cut off in the mountains, of people who settled the lower land for a while then moved on or were pushed out by incoming tribes, who spoke unknown languages and who didn’t record their history, leaving behind only cave paintings, simple artefacts and stone monuments that give little away.

  Gascony entered recorded history in 56 BC, during the Roman conquest of Gaul. As the legions marched westwards they crossed the river Garonne at Toulouse, where they came up against people they had never before encountered. The Romans called this new land Aquitaine. Julius Caesar, at the opening of his famous account of the conquest of Gaul, De Bello Gallico, clearly stated that the river Garonne marked a frontier: Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen… dividit. Gaul from Aquitaine the river Garonne divides. He wrote that the Aquitanians had a distinct identity, with their own language, laws and way of life. The name Aquitanian is a vague term, referring to the group of thirty or so tribes who inhabited the lands to the west of the Garonne.

  While Caesar was engaged in subduing the northern parts of Gaul, he charged General Crassus with conquering Aquitaine. The Aquitanians built a fortified camp on the plain of the river Adour. Their numbers swelled daily with reinforcements from the south, and they attempted to cut off the Roman supply routes. Crassus wasted no time in attacking the camp. The Aquitanians resisted fiercely, hurling stones and javelins from their ramparts at the attacking Romans, but they had left the rear entrance to the camp unsecured. A cohort of Roman soldiers made their way inside, unnoticed, while the battle was raging at the other end. The Aquitanians, finding themselves trapped, broke out of the camp in panic and began to run across the plain. The Roman cavalry pursued them, slaughtering them as they fled. As news of the massacre spread, other Aquitanian tribes submitted to the Romans; all but the most remote tribes inhabiting the Pyrenees, who relied on the onset of winter and the mountains to save them.

  The Aquitanians gradually became Romanised, adopting Latin as their language, absorbing the Roman religion and customs. Under the pax Romana, Aquitaine became a prosperous province of the Empire. Good roads were built linking the main towns, trade flourished and the locals felt safe to move out of their fortified villages and settle on the fertile land in the valleys. The Romans of course enjoyed the baths created over the thermal springs rising where the high valleys met the plain.

  The Barbarian invasions began in AD 407, bringing in a period of instability, when populations across Europe were on the move. The Visigoths made Gascony part of their kingdom, until they were pushed out by the Franks – the Germanic tribe who would later give their name to the land they settled, France. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pyrenees, the Vascones were waiting. They were a tough, stubborn lot, living high in the Cantabrian mountains around the headwaters of the river Ebro. Protected by their position, they had escaped the influence of Roman rule, preserving their ancient tribal language and traditions. In the late sixth century the Vascones began to migrate across the Pyrenees. At first they made brief raids, taking advantage of the anarchy that prevailed in the lowlands. Soon they began to migrate in substantial numbers. The reasons for this move are unclear: it could have been the pressure of population, the desire to leave the mountains and move down to more productive land, or the conflict that seems to have begun about that time with their neighbours to the east. When the Vascones first moved down from the mountains, they were a marauding band of cutthroats, destroying crops, ripping up vines and setting fire to sheep pens, but before long they had settled and made good. As the Vascones made the land their home, they gave it their name, Vasconia, which later took the form Gascony.

  In the year 602, the Frankish kings appointed a Duke of Gascony in an attempt at controlling the unruly Gascons, but it didn’t work. The Gascons were a law unto themselves and they fought the French armies using the natural fortifications of the mountains and the forests, where they could hide, ambush and disappear. In a similar way as the cartoon character Astérix the Gaul, in his village by the sea, refused to submit to the Romans, so the Gascons in their isolated land resisted the power of the faraway French kings. The Gascon historian Louis Barrau-Dihigo wrote that Gascony was too far from the political centres of the kingdom for the authority of the kings of France to be felt in any effective way. It was inevitable that an independent state would form between the Pyrenees, the ocean and the Garonne, and this is just what happened.

  The Gascons had a habit of assassinating the envoys sent to rule over them by the French. Their natural affinities lay to the south, with the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon. The Gascon chiefs went across the Pyrenees to find a leader. In 864, Sans-Mittara, the youngest son of the Prince of Navarre, was elected Duke of Gascony. The name Sans in Gascon is the equivalent of Sancho in Spanish. The epithet Mittara meant ‘the terrible’. So Sancho-the-Terrible, a character shrouded in mystery, was the first of the hereditary Dukes of Gascony. His son and the next Duke of Gascony was Garcia-Sans, followed by Sans-Garcia. Confused? You will be! The next Duke was Sans-Sans, followed by Guilhem-Sans, Bernat-Guilhem and Sans-Guilhem. Well, why waste a good name or two?

  The Dukes of Gascony were a legendary dynasty, yet little is known of them apart from their names. These were feudal times. Gascony was a land of fiefdoms, where each local count had a mind of his own and there were many local conflicts. Perhaps it reveals something about the Gascon temperament that when left to their own devices, they were too busy getting on with living or fighting one another to bother writing things down.

  GASCONNADE

  THE LONG AND DISTINCTIVE HISTORY OF GASCONY, AND THE qualities of the land, have left their imprint on the people. The Gascon character is unique and complex, difficult to define, steeped in local traditions and for outsiders rich in stereotypes.

  The French outside Gascony think the Gascons are boastful. The word gasconnade means telling unlikely stories, bragging about one’s own abilities, exaggerating one’s achievements. Rodomontade. Fanfaronade. Gasconnade. Jean de La Fontaine, in his Fables, wrote about a Gascon who couldn’t stop boasting, who went from gasconnade to gasconnade, until his friends brought him down to size. Jean Froissart, in his famous Chronicles of the fourteenth century, was also unkind about the Gascons, describing them as unstable, greedy and opportunistic. In his view Gascons were fickle and inclined to follow – or rebel against – the master of the moment, as it suited them.

  Gascons had to use their
wits and seize the moment in order to survive. Throughout the centuries the Gascon land, although pleasant, has never been easy to cultivate. In many ways life on the land has always been tough. The Gascon farmer is often at the mercy of the elements, whether he is a shepherd on the high mountain pastures, a cowherd in the foothills, a vine grower on the lower hills or an arable farmer down on the plain. Sometimes the soil can be unyielding, the spring rains too heavy or the summer sun too fierce. Farmers have to be adaptable and resourceful, and they have to understand their environment. Making the land productive takes knowledge and skill. Working the land gave the Gascons a reputation for being hardy and brave. There is an old saying: Si le terrain est ingrat, semez-y des Gascons, ils pousseront partout ! If the soil is unyielding, plant some Gascons in it, they’ll grow anywhere. The Gascons are often thought of as being hospitable and charitable, as if the difficult life on the land has taught them the value of extending kindness to others.

  Hard times led many to become adventurers and fortune seekers. They were good soldiers; renowned for their courage in battle, they often hired themselves out as mercenaries. Some Gascons made dashing military figures. Gascony’s most famous son was the legendary Charles de Batz-Castelmore, better known as D’Artagnan, the swash-buckling musketeer. His character showed the proverbial Gascon traits of swaggering hot-headedness, tenacity and courage to the point of reckless bravado, all combined in an oh-so-likeable persona, eternally 20 years old. Like a good Gascon, D’Artagnan left his life shrouded in mystery and legend, for others to write stories about. He spent most of his time away from Gascony in the service of his kings. He was at the famous siege of Arras in Flanders, he fought for Charles I of England at the battle of Newbury, he was charged with arresting the infamous embezzling finance minister Fouquet at Nantes in Brittany, he was appointed Governor of Lille, and on a glorious June day in 1673 he was shot down, a hero, at the siege of Maastricht in the Netherlands. Always he led from the front, swelled with Gascon pride, distinguished as much by his - colourful language and earthy accent as by his bravery. You can take the man out of Gascony, but you can’t take Gascony out of the man!

  When Edmond Rostand wrote his play Cyrano de Bergerac at the end of the nineteenth century, he made his hero a typical Gascon, a mixture of the real-life Cyrano de Bergerac and the popular myths surrounding D’Artagnan, with a dash of the Garonne in his veins and a flicker of the Pyrenees in his eyes. The real Cyrano de Bergerac of the seventeenth century was a free-thinker, a braggart, a soldier, a duallist, a lover, grotesque in his appearance, famed for his enormous nose; he was also an original writer of burlesque stories and eccentric science fiction. Rostand’s Cyrano is the leader of a band of cadets, all of them proud, mad, gallant Gascons, who boast about being Gascon, sing about being Gascon – Ce sont les cadets de Gascogne – listen to the music of a shepherd’s flute to remind them of Gascony, are quick to draw their sword, fond of the all-important gesture, and get drunk on the smell of gunpowder in battle. United by honour, the cadets look out for each other and are delighted when their haughty regimental commander, the Comte de Guiche, lets his proper French accent slip and reveals himself to be a Gascon, one of their own after all! Cyrano, to compensate for his nose, has a poet’s soul and a way with words, and if he fails to win fair lady, it’s because his boastfulness hides a deep-seated modesty and he puts friendship before love.

  Rostand’s Cyrano is a nostalgic creation, a dream of how old Gascony should have been. Let’s not forget, the real Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac was not a Gascon at all, he was a Parisian; his name Bergerac does not come from the town of that name on the river Dordogne, it was the name of an estate in the Chevreuse valley near Paris. No one knows for sure if he really had such a big nose.

  If D’Artagnan and Cyrano showed how the fiery Gascon temperament could turn out well, the feudal Counts of Armagnac demonstrated how it could go horribly wrong. They had caused trouble for generations: they refused to submit to the wishes of any king and regularly started feuds with their neighbours. Their unruliness reached its peak in Count Jean V of Armagnac. Unusual in appearance, he was a short, chubby man, with his neck set into his shoulders, a pock-marked face, long red hair, and eyes that looked in different directions. He was bad tempered and lacked the energy to see any project through to its conclusion. He did exactly what he wanted.

  Count Jean had a long relationship with his beautiful younger sister Isabelle. He called her affectionately ma mia costa, my own rib, an allusion to the story of Adam and Eve. Brother and sister had three children, the Bastards of Armagnac, two boys and a girl, whom Isabelle referred to discreetly as her niece and nephews; which in a sense they were. The Count asked the Pope for special dispensation to marry Isabelle. The Pope refused, so Jean forged a papal Bull to celebrate their marriage. When the Pope found out, he was furious and excommunicated the incestuous Count. Eventually Jean had to settle for marrying a woman to whom he was not related.

  Count Jean antagonised the Kings of France even more than he upset the Pope. He openly rebelled against King Charles VII, behaving like a local king himself. When the Dauphin was in dispute with his father, Jean sided with the insubordinate heir to the throne. The king sent an army to crush the rebellious vassal, confiscated his property and forced him into exile in Catalonia. The following year, when the Dauphin succeeded his father as King Louis XI, he allowed the Count of Armagnac to return home and restored his property. Having returned home, the count turned against his former ally.

  After years of trouble, the French had had enough of the Armagnacs and sent another army to sort out the intractable rebel once and for all. When the end finally came in 1473, Count Jean had brought it on himself. He made a last stand against the French from his stronghold in the walled town of Lectoure, on a lofty promontory high above the plain of the Gers. The French laid siege to the town and, after a couple of hard winter months, the king offered to make a deal: the count’s previous misdeeds would be forgiven, an amnesty would be granted for him and his family, the town would be spared, and in return he would recognise the will of the king. The count accepted the deal and on 4 March peace was declared.

  Two days later the town gates were opened and the French army entered with their ensigns flying. An apparently accidental scuffle broke out – no doubt premeditated – and the French turned on the count and the towns-people. One French soldier stabbed Count Jean through the heart while another smashed his skull with an axe. They weren’t taking any chances. His body was dragged through the streets for the soldiers to hack as it went by. The French went on the rampage, slaughtered most of the menfolk, sacked and burned the town and demolished the ramparts. The long-suffering countess, who was seven months pregnant with the couple’s first child, was taken to the Château de Buzet and locked in a cell with what was left of her husband’s body. Perhaps not surprisingly, her child was stillborn a month later. It was rumoured that the French guards gave her a potion to induce a miscarriage, to ensure the extinction of the House of Armagnac. These were gruesome times. What we would call war crimes nowadays were merely sideshows in the Middle Ages.

  The County of Armagnac subsequently became a royal domain and the town of Lectoure was gradually rebuilt. When I visited I stayed at the Hôtel de Bastard, an elegant eighteenth-century mansion near the old ramparts; despite its name, the present owners are welcoming hosts and quite charming. For breakfast they serve excellent rillettes d’oie, shredded goose – very Gascon, but a goose too far for some! The town has a forlorn, aristocratic air, as if at heart it has never truly recovered from that treacherous assault in the early spring of 1473.

  Whatever others might say about them, the Gascons are a proud breed. In the words of the Gascon social historian Pierre Veilletet: Soyez Gascons, que diable! On n’est jamais assez Gascon. Be Gascon, damn it. You can never be too Gascon.

  In Jacques-Henri Cazagnac I’d found the friendly face of Gascony, a descendant of those stubborn, unruly, fun-loving Gascons of old. He lived up
to the image of the honest, jovial Gascon, who shouldn’t be taken seriously all the time. Whether he was welcoming guests to the Auberge or teaching me how things worked at the farm, he had a sense of being the principal actor on his stage. No more trouble making, of course: Jacques-Henri just wanted to have a nice time, tipple away at his Armagnac and look after his family. He had faith in his own values and he trusted the people he knew best. He didn’t trust banks, he wasn’t sure what they might do with his money. I heard a rumour that he had a pot of money buried somewhere under the floor of the barn, although I never saw any evidence of it.

  ENGLAND’S VINEYARD

  ‘YOU ARE A GODON,’ JACQUES-HENRI SAID TO ME.

  ‘Pardon?’

  Godon is an old Gascon name for an Englishman, from the time when the Gascons fought alongside English soldiers during the Hundred Years War, because of the English soldiers’ habit of swearing ‘Goddam’. Well, I thought, it was better than being a Rosbif.

  I was beginning to feel at home in Gascony, and with good reason. A special relationship once existed between England and Gascony. The shifting alliances of mediaeval Europe brought the two together by a combination of chance and one strong-willed woman.

  In the eleventh century Gascony had become part of the Duchy of Aquitaine, whose territory extended over nearly all of southwest France south of the Loire. The lands of the kings of France covered a small area of northern central France. Although Aquitaine paid homage to the kings of France, the dukes of Aquitaine were wealthier than the French kings and Aquitaine was effectively independent. In 1137, Duke William X of Aquitaine succeeded in marrying off his beautiful red-haired daughter and sole heir, Eleanor, to King Louis VII of France. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the richest heiress in Christendom; uniting Aquitaine and France seemed like a coup for both sides. Eleanor and Louis were married for fifteen years and they had two daughters, but the marriage was not to last. Eleanor was lively and spirited, Louis cold and monkish, so they were hopelessly incompatible, and in March 1152 the marriage was annulled, on the grounds that they were cousins and should never have been married in the first place.