Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe Part 4

"My 'usband dug his grave wi' his own hands," said the widow of this shepherd, "close beside the hut, and buried him next day. He put the axe and slings just as he told him, wi' the stones and all the bits of flint things as he found 'em in the hut." [Footnote: "Mad Shepherds, and other Human Studies," Lond. 1910, p. 137 _et seq_.]

CHAPTER III

SOUTERRAINS

In the year 1866 the Prussian Army of the Elbe broke into Bohemia, when it was found that the inhabitants of a certain district had vanished along with their cattle and goods, leaving behind empty houses and stables. It had been the same during the Thirty Years' War, and again in the Seven Years' War, when the invaders found not a living soul, and contented themselves with destroying the crops and burning the villages and farms. Even the Government officials had disappeared. Whither had they gone? Into the rock labyrinths of Adersbach and Wickelsdorf, each accessible only through a single gap closed by a door. The mountain of what the Germans call Quadersandstein is four miles long by two broad, and was at one time an elevated plateau, but is now torn into gullies, forming a tangled skein of ravines, wherein a visitor without a guide might easily lose himself. The existence of this labyrinth was unknown save to the peasants till the year 1824, when a forest fire revealed it, but for some time it remained unexplored. [Footnote: It had indeed been mentioned by Dr. Kausch in his _Nachrichten uber Bohmen_, 1794; but he lamented its inaccessibility.]

As Adersbach and Wickelsdorf lie on the frontier of Bohemia and Silesia, the existence of this region of cliffs and natural refuges had been kept secret by the natives, who looked upon it as a secure hiding- place for themselves and their chattels when the storm of war swept over the Riesen Gebirge. But the fatal fire of 1824 betrayed their secret to the world, and after a little hesitation, thinking to make profit out of it as a show-place, paths were cut through it, and it was advertised in 1847. When, in 1866, the Prussians pa.s.sed by, they incurred neither the risk nor the trouble of hunting out the refugees from their place of concealment.

The rocks run up to 200 feet, the loftiest being 280 feet. They a.s.sume the most fantastic shapes. The pa.s.sage through the fissures is so narrow that in some places it can be threaded by one man alone at a time, the others following in single file. A rivulet, clear as crystal, traverses the network of gullies, and in one place forms a tiny cascade. One nook is called the Southern Siberia, because in it the snow lies unmelted throughout the summer.

At intervals the rocks fall back and form open s.p.a.ces, and at one describe an amphitheatre upon a vista of rolling forest.

But if this "petrified forest," as it has been called, served as a refuge for the peasants in troublous times, it has also been employed by brigands as their fastness whence to ravage the country and render the roads perilous. But of their exploits I shall have more to say in the chapter on robber-dens.

Caverns, as well as chasms, have always served this same purpose.

There is something remarkably human and significant in the prophecy of Isaiah relative to the coming of the Judge of all the earth: "They shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty." And in the Book of Revelation: "And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains."

As the first men found their refuges and homes in caves and rock shelters, so the last men, with the instinct implanted in them from the first and never eradicated, will fly to the earth as a hiding-place, just as a frightened child flies to the lap of its mother.

When Ahab persecuted the prophets, Obadiah hid them by fifties in a cave. After the battle of Bethhoron the five kings of the Amorites hid themselves in the cave of Makkedah. When the Midianites oppressed Israel, the latter "made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves and strongholds." From the Philistines "the people did hide themselves in caves and in thickets and in high places, and in pits."

Twice did Elijah take refuge in a cave.

What took place in Palestine, took place in every part of the world wherever there are limestone and chalk and volcanic breccia and sandstone. It would seem as though a merciful Providence had not only provided the first shelters for man against the inclemency of the weather, but had also furnished him with places of secure refuge against the violence of his fellow-man. As sure as the rabbit runs to its hole on the sight of the sportsman, so did the oppressed and timorous when the slayer and the marauder appeared.

In the South of France, where caves abound, the unhappy Gauls fled from Caesar and concealed themselves in them. He bade his lieutenant Cra.s.sus wall up the entrances. When the Armenians fled before Corbulo--"fuere qui se speluncis et carissima sec.u.m abderent"--he filled the mouths of the caverns with f.a.ggots and burned them out. [Footnote: Tacit., "Annals," xvi. 23.]

When Civilis rose in insurrection against Vespasian, he was joined by a young native, Julius Sabinus from Langres, who boasted that, in the great war with the Gauls, his great-grandmother had taken the fancy of Julius Caesar, and that to him he owed his name.

After the death of Nero, the Druids had come forth from the retreats where they had remained concealed since their proscription by Claudius, and proclaimed that "the Roman Empire was at an end, and that the Gallic Empire was come to its birth." Insurgents rose on every side, and Julius Sabinus a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Caesar. War broke out; confusion, hesitation, and actual desertion extended through the Colonies, and reached the legions. Several towns submitted to the insurgents. Some legions yielding to persuasion, bribery, or discontent, killed their officers and went over to the rebels. The gravity of the situation was perceived in Rome, and Petilius Cerealis was despatched to crush the revolt. The struggle that ensued was fierce but brief, and Civilis was constrained to surrender. Vespasian being disinclined to drive men or matters to an extremity, pardoned him; but no mercy was to be extended to Julius Sabinus. After the ruin of his cause, Sabinus took refuge underground in one of those retreats excavated in the chalk beneath his villa, and two of his freedmen were alone privy to the secret. The further to conceal him, they set fire to his house, and gave out that he had poisoned himself and that his dead body had been consumed in the flames. His young wife, named Eponia, was in frantic despair at the news; but one of the freedmen informed her of the place of his retreat, and advised her to a.s.sume the habit and exhibit the desolation of widowhood, so as to confirm the report they had disseminated. "Well did she play her part," says Plutarch, "in this tragedy of woe." She visited her husband in his cave at night, and left him at daybreak, but at last refused to leave him at all. At the end of seven months, hearing talk of the clemency of Vespasian, she set out for Rome taking her husband with her, disguised as a slave, with shaven head and a dress that rendered him unrecognisable. But friends who were in her confidence dissuaded her from prosecuting the journey. The imperial clemency was not a quality to be calculated upon with confidence. They accordingly returned to their subterranean abode.

There they lived for nine years, during which, "as a lioness in her den," says Plutarch, "Eponia gave birth to two young whelps, and suckled them at her own breast." At length they were discovered, and Sabinus and his wife were brought before Vespasian.

"Caesar," said Eponia, showing him her children, "I conceived and suckled them in a tomb, that there might be more of us to entreat thy mercy." But the Emperor was not disposed to be clement to one who pretended to inherit the sacred Julian blood, and he ordered Sabinus to be led to the block. Eponia asked that she might die with her husband, saying: "Caesar, do me this grace, for I have lived more happily underground and in darkness than thou hast done in the splendour of thy palace."

Vespasian fulfilled her desire by sending her also to execution; and Plutarch, their contemporary, expressed the general feeling in Rome, when he adds: "In all the long reign of this Emperor there was no deed done so cruel, and so piteous to look upon; and he was afterwards punished for it, for in a brief time all his posterity was cut off."

In 731 the Saracens, masters of the peninsula, poured over the Pyrenees, and entered the Septimania. They had come not to conquer and pillage, but to conquer and occupy. They had brought with them accordingly their wives and children. They took Narbonne, Carca.s.sone and Nimes, besieged Toulouse, and almost totally destroyed Bordeaux.

Thrusting up further, they reached Burgundy on one side and Poitou on the other. Autun was sacked, and the church of S. Hilary in Poitiers given to the flames. The Christians, wherever met with, were hewn down with their curved scimitars; they pa.s.sed on like a swarm of locusts leaving desolation in their wake. Those of the natives who escaped did so by taking advantage of the subterranean refuges either natural or artificial that abounded. And that they did so is shown by the relics of Merovingian times that have been found in them.

The Mussulmans were routed at Poitiers by Charles Martel. Three hundred thousand Saracens, say the old chroniclers, with their usual exaggeration, fell before the swords of the Christians. The rest fled under the walls of Narbonne.

Between 752 and 759 Pepin the Short resolved on the conquest of Septimania, _i.e._ Lower Languedoc. The Goths there had risen against the Arabs and appealed for his aid. Nimes, Agde, Beziers, Carca.s.sonne opened their gates, but Narbonne resisted for seven years.

When it surrendered in 759, the Empire of the Franks for the first time touched the Eastern Pyrenees. Pepin now picked a quarrel with Waifre, Duke of Aquitaine, and crossing the Loire made of the unhappy country a hunting-ground for the Franks. He delivered the land over to a systematic devastation. From the Loire to the Garonne the houses were burnt, and the trees cut down. "The churches, the monasteries, and secular buildings were reduced to ashes. Vineyards and fields were ravaged, and the inhabitants put to the edge of the sword. Only a few strong places escaped the fury of the soldiers.... The city of Cahors fell into the power of the conqueror and was reduced to the same pitiable condition into which it had been brought by the Saracens. The inhabitants of Quercy who survived owed this to the subterranean retreats which they had made and to the caverns in the rocks that had served them as refuges during the incursion of the infidels. The princ.i.p.al caves are situated on the Banks of the Lot at Cami, Luzech, Vers, Bouzier, S. Cirq, La Toulsanie, Larnagol, Calvignac, S. Jean de Laur, Cajarc and Laroque-Toirac, to above Capdenac; on the banks of the Cele, at Roquefort, Espagnac, Brengues, S. Sulpice, Marcillac, Liauzun, Sauliac, Cabrerets; on the banks of the Dordogne at Belcastel, La Cave, Le Bon Sairon, Mayronne, Blansaguet, Montvalent, Gluges, Saint Denis, &c., and between the rivers, Autoire, Gramat, S. Cirq d'Alzou, Rocamadour, S. Martin de Vers, Cra.s.s Guillot, to Vers among the high cliffs athwart which runs the Roman aqueduct, which in certain places, behind its high walls, could shelter a great number of the inhabitants.

These caverns are still called Gouffios, Gouffieros, or Waiffers, from the name of Duke Waifre. [Footnote: Lacoste's derivation is absurd; Gouffieros comes from Gouffre, a chasm.] They were closed by a wall, of which there are remains at Canis, at Brengues, and at S. Jean de Laur, on the rock that commands the abyss of Lantoui. This last cavern is the most remarkable of all, as it is at but a little distance from the castle of Cenevieres, which was one of the princ.i.p.al strongholds of the Duke of Aquitaine in Quercy." [Footnote: Lacoste, _Histoire de Quercy_, Cahors, 1883, i. pp. 267-8.]

The wretched country had to suffer next from the expedition of the Northmen, who pushed up every river, destroying, pillaging, and showing no mercy to man or beast. The most redoutable of these pirates was Hastings, who ravaged the banks of the Loire between 843 and 850, sacked Bordeaux and Saintes and menaced Tarbes. In 866 he was again in the Loire, and penetrated as far as Clermont Ferrand. There seemed to be no other means of appeasing him than by granting him the country of Chartres. But this did not content his turbulent spirit, and at the age of nearly seventy he abandoned his county to resume his piracies.

An Icelandic Saga relating the adventures of a Viking, Orvar Odd in Aquitaine, describes how he saw some of the natives taking refuge in an underground retreat, and how he pursued and killed them all. [Footnote: _Fornmanna Sogwr_, Copenhagen, 1829, ii. p. 229.]

In the persecution of the Albigenses at the instigation of Pope Innocent III. the unfortunate heretics fled to the caves, but were hunted, or smoked out and ma.s.sacred by the Papal emissaries.

Nevertheless, a good many escaped, and in 1325, when John XXII. was reigning in Avignon, he ordered a fresh _battu_ of heretics. A great number fled to the cave of Lombrive near Ussat in Ariege. It consists of an immense hall, and runs to the length of nearly four miles. In 1328 the papal troops, to save themselves the trouble or risk of penetrating into these recesses after their prey, built up the entrance, and left from four to five hundred Albigenses along with their bishops to perish therein of starvation. Of late years the bones have been collected, removed, and buried. From 1152, the Bordelois, Saintonge, Agenois, Perigord, and the Limousin were nominally under the English crown. But the people did not bear their subjection with patience, and often rose in revolt, and their revolts were put down with ferocity. As to the Barons and Seigneurs of Guyenne, they took which side suited their momentary convenience, and shifted their allegiance as seemed most profitable to them. But the worst season was after the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, when a vast part of France, from the Loire to the Pyrenees was made over to the English. The Hundred Years' War was the consequence, of which more shall be said in the fifth chapter. Froissart describes the condition of the country: "Matters were so woven together there and the lords and knights were so divided, that the strong trampled down the weak, and neither law nor reason was measured out to any man. Towns and castles were intermixed inextricably; some were English, others French, and they attacked one another and ransomed and pillaged one another incessantly."

Under these circ.u.mstances it may well be understood that if Nature herself had not of her own accord furnished the miserable, hara.s.sed people with refuges, they would themselves have contrived some. As we shall see they did this, as well as make use of the natural provision supplied for their safety.

Of refuges there are two kinds, those patiently and laboriously excavated under the surface of the soil, and those either natural or contrived high up in the face of inaccessible cliffs.

Each shall be dealt with; they are different in character. The town of Saint Macaire on the Garonne is walled about. But the walls did not give to the citizens all the security they desired; the ramparts might be battered down, escaladed, or the gates burst open. Accordingly they excavated, beneath the town, a complete labyrinth of pa.s.sages, chambers, halls, and store-rooms into which they might either retreat themselves or where they might secure their valuables in the event of the town being sacked.

At Alban in Tarn there are retreats of like nature under the houses, refuges at one time of the persecuted Albigenses, at another of the inhabitants secreting themselves and their goods from the Routiers. At Molieres in Lot they are beneath the church, and the approximate date can be fixed when these were excavated, as Molieres was founded in 1260.

Bourg-sur-Garonne is likewise honeycombed with such retreats, so is Aubeterre, of which more hereafter. The network of underground galleries and chambers is now closed, because the soft chalk rock has fallen in in several places. At Ingrandes-sur-Vienne there are three groups of these refuges, extending to a considerable distance. At Chateau Robin in the Touraine is a chalk cliff that rises above the road to the height of sixty feet and is crowned by a tumulus. In its face are two sets of caves, one superposed over the other. This upper cave or shelter is the most ancient, and dates from prehistoric times, but has been utilised much later. The lower cave is exposed by the widening of the road which has obliterated the original face of the cliff and the original entrance, having made three openings by cutting into a chamber to which formerly there was but a single entrance. The plan of the excavation was made by M. Antoine and communicated to the "Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique de Touraine," in 1858, but I will give a description from the pen of a later visitor.

"The upper rock-shelter has been dug out or enlarged with a pick. The stone is a tender tufa, containing a quant.i.ty of little cores of black silex, giving it a spotty appearance. It was quite impossible to cut the stone so as to give a smooth surface.

"The most mysterious portion, however, of the whole is certainly the lower range of vaults, a subject of terror to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who believe them to be the abode of the devil. Some persons have visited them, but very few have explored them. Having calculated on the a.s.sistance of a poacher of some repute as a fearless fellow, he pointblank refused to accompany me when I proposed an expedition into the cave. I applied to a man of more resolution, a landowner at Arzay-le-Rideau, who readily volunteered his a.s.sistance; but when we arrived on the spot, contented himself with showing me the entrance, but declined to adventure himself within, though he a.s.sured me he had visited the interior some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago.

"These excavations have now several openings upon the road; the two princ.i.p.al are accessible enough, if one is suitably dressed, for beyond the entrance one has to crawl on hands and knees, and this is but the initiation of other discomforts.

"The entrances are, so to speak, in the ditch of the road to Azay. The most practicable of them, and that by which M. Antoine and I penetrated, is the easternmost of the three, and is marked A on the plan, and it gives access to a small triangular chamber C; but the entrance is so low that one can only enter on one's knees or in a doubled position. Further on it is loftier. On advancing to the end one leaves on the right a sort of staircase B cut in the rock, but very worn, which formerly ascended spirally to the upper cave, but is now without issue.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plan of the Refuge of Chateau Robin (Indre et Loire).]

"At the bottom of the chamber C a very narrow pa.s.sage turns at a right angle and gives access to a large hall E that is sustained by a pillar F. This pillar is three feet square and the vaulted chamber may be 15 to 18 feet square and 5 feet high. On the left a great pier G allows of two pa.s.sages I I which lead to the other openings that gape upon the road, and turning to the right give access to the further depths of the underground retreat. A pa.s.sage H is, however, the most direct means of communication between the cavern E and the larger hall J to which also access is obtained through the openings I I separated by the pillar S.

"The cavern J, the largest of all, is 25 feet long by 15 feet wide at the one end and 24 feet at the other. It is supported by the pillar K, shaped to suit the widening of the hall. At the bottom of this chamber is a staircase L descending from the floor and without any breastwork to protect it, and therefore dangerous, as it goes down 6 feet, and is but about a foot and a half wide. This staircase is 12 feet long, and the pa.s.sage M that is a continuation of it is hardly more than 4 feet high at the entrance, and is nearly 20 feet long, so that one has to creep along it, bent double, a.s.sisted by one's hands.

"In this position it is absolutely impossible for one to turn round, so narrow is the pa.s.sage. At this point a difficulty that is not antic.i.p.ated arrests many a visitor. Water rises through the stones that form the floor and contributes to reduce the height of the gallery. If one elects to continue, there is no choice but to take a bath that reaches to one's middle. At a distance of nearly 7 feet comes a right angle, and the pa.s.sage goes on for 6 feet, then turns to the left by an obtuse angle and pursues its course for 12 feet, then again turns to the right by another obtuse angle, and for 15 feet more one is still half under water, till N is reached, after which the level of the floor rises, as does also the ceiling; one is able to stand erect alongside of another person. In face of one, the wall is cut perpendicularly and seems abruptly to close the pa.s.sage. However, at a few inches above the soil is a little opening D, formed like the mouth of an oven, and giving indications of a s.p.a.ce beyond. In diameter it is about 1 foot 6 inches; by crawling through this hole, an achievement difficult to accomplish, as one cannot even use the elbows to work one's way forward, the explorer descends into a semicircular hall P whose vault is arched and is supported by two oval pillars, 7 feet high. The hall is 24 feet deep and 18 feet wide at the entrance, and is rounded at the further extremity. The soil in this chamber is enc.u.mbered with stones and rubbish thrown in from an opening at R, which seems to communicate with other subterranean excavations." Nothing was found in these chambers and pa.s.sages that could give an approximate date, but in the upper "abris" was some Gaulish pottery. The water that had half filled the lower pa.s.sage is due to the river having been dammed up for a mill, and so having raised the level considerably. Originally the pa.s.sage was certainly dry.

Although this _souterrain refuge_ is curious, yet it does not present some of the peculiarities noticeable in others--that is to say, elaborate preparations for defence, by contriving pitfalls for the enemy and means of a.s.sailing him in flank and rear.

The usual artifice for protection was this. The entrance from without led by a gallery or vestibule to an inner doorway that opened into the actual refuge. The pa.s.sage to this interior doorway was made to descend at a rapid incline, and as it descended it became lower, so that an enemy entering would probably advance at a run, and doubled, and would pitch head foremost into a well, from 20 to 30 feet deep, bottle- shaped, sunk in the floor immediately before the closed and barred door, and which was gaping to receive him. Such a well-mouth would usually have a plank crossing it, but in time of danger this plank would be removed. To make doubly sure of precipitating the a.s.sailant into it, a side-chamber was contrived with slots commanding the doorway, through which slots pikes, spears and swords could be thrust.

Beside these contrivances there were also lateral recesses in which the defenders might lurk in ambush, to rush forth to hew at the enemy, or at least to extinguish his torch. Almost invariably these hypogees have two exits or entrances, so that those within could escape by one should the enemy force the other, or endeavour to smoke them out. Moreover, to keep up a circulation of air, and to obviate the contingency of being smoked out, these underground retreats are almost invariably supplied with ventilating shafts. The marks made by the implements employed in hewing the rock are always distinctly recognisable. Moreover within, sunk in the floor, are silos for the storage of grain, the soil often somewhat higher about their orifices than elsewhere, and sometimes provided with covers. Niches for lamps may be seen, also cupboards for provisions, in which have been found collections of acorns, walnuts, hazel-nuts and chestnuts carbonized by age.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sections.

Chateau of Fayrolle (Dordogne).

A. Entrance.

B. Continuation, unexplored.

C. Shaft.

DD. Doorways.

E. Modern entrance.

FF. Store chambers.