Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe by Sabine Baring-Gould (books to read to improve english TXT) 📖

walls of the chancel were fissured, and the pavement of the nave was upheaved in places and in others rent.

At first it was supposed that this was the result of an earthquake, but after a while the true cause was discovered. The church had been erected over a vast network of subterranean passages and chambers, and the roofs of some of these had given way. This led to an exploration, and the plan of this subterranean refuge--for such it had been--was traced as far as possible.

But Gapennes is not the only place where such retreats exist throughout the province. Something like a hundred have been found, and more are every now and then coming to light. Indeed, it may safely be said that there is scarcely a village between Arras and Amiens and between Roye and the sea, betwixt the courses of the Somme and Authie, that was not provided with these underground refuges. The character of all is very much the same. They consist of passages communicating with square or circular chambers that served as stores. They have been described at length by M. Bouthers in _Memoires de la Societe d'Archeologie du departement de la Somme_, Amiens, 1834, t. i.

To what date, or period rather, do they belong?

Some doubtless are of extreme antiquity, but the majority are comparatively modern. It is a significant fact that the entrance to perhaps the majority is in the sacristy of the parish church, and in that at Gapennes care was taken not to undermine the tower of the church. M. de Carpentin, who explored and reported on the excavation at Gapennes, remarks on the care taken to so distribute the chalk brought up from these passages and vaults that no heaps were anywhere visible.

"The motive that can have induced the undertaking of such an extensive work can only have been that necessity drove the inhabitants to create for themselves a refuge in time of war." In it he found two pieces of common pottery, a lock and a hinge of iron, some straw and leather soles of women's shoes. He adds: "At the entrance of several of the chambers the stone is worked to receive doors, and here portions of decayed wood were found. And many of the chambers had their walls blackened by smoke as of lamps."

At Naours in Somme, the underground galleries have been explored thoroughly; there are several circular chambers for stores, and corn has been found in them, also fourteen gold coins of Charles VI or Louis XIV. In all there are 201 galleries and 300 chambers and the labyrinth extends to the distance of 6000 feet. At Santerre, which possesses three of these refuges, that portion of its territory was called _Territorium Sanctae Libertatis_.

The north-east of France, Picardy and Artois, were always exposed to attack from pirates by sea, Northmen and Saxon, and from invaders over the border. But none of these can have exceeded in barbarity that of 1635 to 1641, when Spanish armies--the first under John de Werth and Piccolomini, 40,000 in number, and made up of Germans, Hungarians, Croats as well as Spaniards--poured over the provinces committing the most frightful atrocities. And precisely to this period some of the refuges may be referred.

A MS. account of this invasion, by a priest of Hiermont, named Claude Godde, leaves this in no manner of doubt. He says: "The Spaniards committed great outrages in Picardy, as they did later in 1658. These wars compelled the inhabitants of Hiermont in 1647 to construct the quarry which we now see. This quarry or cavern, which is a great masterpiece, was first undertaken by five or six of the inhabitants "-- he gave their names. "They first of all dug out the entrance in 1647, but owing to its having given way several times, had to be repaired, and was not completed till 1648. The other inhabitants, seeing its great utility, wanted also to have their chambers, but they were not admitted unless they contributed to the cost of the undertaking, and to this they willingly agreed. This quarry was of great service to the inhabitants in the Wars of Louis XIV. against England, Holland, and the Empire during the years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711, which were the days of Marlborough. It was accordingly made by the inhabitants of Hiermont, to hide themselves, their cattle, their grain and their furniture, to preserve them from pillage by the soldiers, whether of the enemy or French. Each family had its own chamber."

In a proces of 1638, one of those interrogated, a nun named Martha Tondu, stated that at Reneval and the neighbouring villages "the peasants are on the look out, and if alarmed, retire and conceal their cattle in ditches and quarries, without abandoning their houses or neglecting their agricultural work."

Some, accordingly, of these subterranean refuges are of comparatively late date; but this does not apply to all. At every period of danger, instinctively the peasants would take advantage of the nature of the chalk to form in it suitable hiding-places, and although some of the finds in these labyrinths are of recent date, others go back to the Gallo-Roman period. In the Arras and Cambrai Chronicle of Balderic (1051), we are told that in the fifth century in those parts a persecution of the Christians occurred, on the invasion of the barbarians, and that the priests celebrated the Divine Mysteries in secret hiding-places. "Many," he adds, "were suffocated in caves and in subterranean passages."

There is, in fact, evidence both from archaeology and from history that these refuges were taken advantage of, and doubtless extended from a remote antiquity down to the eighteenth century.

It was not against the foreign foe only that the peasants excavated their underground retreats. Froissart paints the chivalry of his time in the brightest colours, and only here and there by a few touches lets us see what dark shadows set them off. Who paid for the gay accoutrements of the knights? Who were the real victims of the incessant wars? From whom came the ransom of King John and of the nobles taken at Crecy and Poitiers? From the peasant. The prisoners allowed to return on parole came to their territories to collect the sums demanded for their release, and the peasant had to find them. He had his cattle, his plough and tumbril. They were taken from him; no more corn was left him than enough to sow his field. He knew how he would be exploited, and he hid his precious grain that was to make bread for his wife and children. The seigneur endeavoured to extort from him the secret as to where it was concealed. He exposed the man's bare feet before the fire; he loaded him with chains. But the peasant bore fire and iron rather than reveal the hiding-place. Here is Michelet's account of the seigneur in the first half of the fifteenth century. "The seigneur only revisited his lands at the head of his soldiery to extort money by violence. He came down on them as a storm of hail. All hid at his approach. Throughout his lands alarm resounded --it was a _sauve-qui-peut_. The seigneur is no longer a true seigneur; he is a rude captain, a barbarian, hardly even a Christian. _Ecorcheur_ is the true name for such, ruining what was already ruined, snatching the shirt off the back of him who had one; if he had but his skin, of that he was flayed. It would be a mistake to suppose that it was only the captains of the _ecorcheurs_--the bastards, the seigneurs without a seigneurie, who showed themselves so ferocious. The grandees, the princes in these hideous wars, had acquired a strange taste for blood. What can one say when one sees Jean de Ligny, of the house of Luxembourg, exercise his nephew, the Count of Saint-Pol, a child of fifteen, in massacring those who fled? They treated their kinsfolk in the same manner as their enemies. For safety--better be a foe than a relation. The Count d'Harcourt kept his father prisoner all his life. The Countess of Foix poisoned her sister; the Sire de Gial his wife. The Duke of Brittany made his brother die of starvation, and that publicly; passers-by heard with a shudder the lamentable voice pleading piteously for a little bread. One evening, the 10th of January, the Count Adolphus of Gueldres dragged his old father out of bed, drew him on foot, unshod, through the snow for five leagues to cast him finally into a moat. It was the same in all the great families of the period--in those of the Low Countries, in those of Bar, Verdun, Armagnac, &c. The English had gone, but France was exterminating herself. The terrible miseries of the time find expression, feeble as yet, in the 'Complaint of the poor Commoner; and of the poor Labourers.' It comprises a mixture of lamentations and threats; the starving wretches warn the Church, the King, the Burgesses, the Merchants, the Seigneurs above all, that 'fire is drawing nigh to their hostels.' They appeal to the king for help. But what could Charles VII. do? How impose respect and obedience on so many daring men? Where could he find the means to repress these flayers of the country, these terrible little kings of castles? They were his own captains. It was with their aid that he made war against the English." [Footnote: _Mist, de France,_ v. p. 184 _et seq._]

Thus, the subterranean refuges that had served at one time as hiding- places against Saracens, Normans, English, became places of retreat for the wretched people against their own masters. They no longer carried their goods into the _souterrains_ under the castles, but into refuges contrived by themselves in the depths of forests, known only to themselves; hidden, above all, from their seigneurs.

The peasantry might have said then, what was said long after by Voltaire: "Il faut etre dans ce monde enclume ou marteau; j'etais ne enclume." Voltaire, however, speedily became a hammer, and after 1789 the Tiers Etat also became a hammer, and the Noblesse the anvil.

In Iceland there were underground retreats, as we learn from the same Saga that tells us of those in Aquitaine. Orvar Odd found a king's daughter concealed in one. So, also, a very large one in Ireland is spoken of in the Landnama Bok. In England we have, both in Essex and in Kent, subterranean passages and chambers very similar to those described in Picardy and in Aquitaine. These also are excavated in the chalk. They are the so-called Dene Holes, of which there are many in Darenth Wood and near Chislehurst, and they have given occasion to a lively controversy. Some have supposed them to be retreats of the Druids, some that they were places of refuge during the invasions of the Saxons first, and then of the Danes, and others again contend that they were merely quarries for the excavation of chalk to burn into lime.

Here is an account of the Dene Hole at Chislehurst by Mr. W. J. Nichols. [Footnote: Nichols (W. J.), "The Chislehurst Caves," _Journal of the Archaeological Association_, Dec. 1903.] "At the foot of the hill is a gap, which is the present entrance to the caves. A guide meets us here, who, unlocking a door, and switching on the electric light, introduces the visitor to a gallery or tunnel, about 150 feet long, 10 feet to 12 feet high, and with a width of 12 feet to 15 feet, narrowing to about 7 feet at the roof. This, and the galleries so far explored, have been cut through the chalk bed, at a depth of about 6 feet below the Thanet sand which covers it. At the end of the gallery, extending both right and