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CHAPTER X
THE COUNTS OF FOIX

THE Comté de Foix and its civilization goes back to prehistoric, Gallic and Roman times. This much we know, but what the detailed events of these periods were, we know not. Archæology alone, by means of remaining monuments in stone, must supply that which history omits. The primitives of the stone age lived mostly in caverns, but here they lived in some species of rude huts or houses. This at any rate is the supposition. With the Romans came civic importance; and fortified towns and cities sprang up here and there of which existing remains, as at St. Lizier, tell a plain story.

The principal historical events of the early years of the Middle Ages were religious in motive. Written records are few, however, and are mostly legendary accounts. Dynasties of great families began to be founded in the ninth century; and each region took on different manners and customs. The Couserans, a dismemberment of Comminges, became practically Gascon; while Foix cast off from Toulouse, had its own development. Victor Balaguer, the poet, expresses this better than most historians when he says: “Provence et Pyrénées, s’écriet-il, portent le deuil du monde latin. Le jour où tombèrent ceux de Foix tomba aussi la Provence.”

The resistance of the counts in the famous wars of the Albigeois only provoked the incursion of the troops of the cruel Simon de Montfort. The Comte de Foix fell back finally on his strong château; and, on the sixteenth of June, 1229, in the presence of the papal legate, representative of the king of France, Roger-Bernard II made his submission without reserve.

In 1272, under Comte Roger-Bernard III, the Château de Foix underwent a siege at the hands of Philippe-le-Hardi; and, at the end of three days, seeing the preponderance of numbers against him, and being doubtful of his allies, he surrendered. By marriage with Marguerite de Moncade, daughter of the Vicomte de Béarn, he inherited the two important fiefs of Catalogne and Béarn et Bigorre, thus preparing the way for possession of the throne of Navarre. By the thirteenth century the great feudal families of the Midi were dwindling in numbers, and it was this marriage of a Comte de Foix with the heiress of Béarn which caused practically the extinction of one.

The modern department of the Ariège, of which the ancient Comté de Foix formed the chief part, possesses few historical monuments dating before the Middle Ages. There are numerous residential châteaux scattered about, and the most splendid of them all is at Foix itself. Fine old churches and monasteries, and quaint old houses are numerous; yet it is a region less exploited by tourists than any other in France.

Not all these historic shrines remain to-day unspoiled and untouched. Many of them were destroyed in the Revolution, but their sites and their ruins remain. The mountain slopes of this region are thickly strewn with watch-towers and observatories; and though all but fallen to the ground they form a series of connecting historical links which only have to be recognized to be read. The towers or châteaux of Quié, Tarascon-sur-Ariège, Gudanne, Lourdat and Vic-Dessos are almost unknown to most travellers. They deserve to become better known, however, especially Lourdat, one of the most spectacularly endowed château ruins extant.

The fourteenth century was the most brilliant in the history of Foix. These were the days of Gaston Phœbus; and the description of his reception of Charles VI of France at Mazères, as given by the chroniclers, indicates an incomparable splendour and magnificence. Gaston Phœbus, like Henri de Béarn, was what might be called a good liver. Here is how he spent his day – when he was not warring or building castles. He rose at noon and after a mass he dined. Usually there were a great number of dishes; and, on really great occasions, as on a fête or festin, the incredible number of two hundred and fifty. These princes of the Pyrenees loved good cheer, and their usage was to surcharge the tables and themselves with the good things until the results were uncomfortable. Gaston’s two sons, Yvain and Gratain, usually stood behind him at table, and the youngest son, another Gaston, first tried all the dishes before his august father ate of them. He was weak and sickly, a “mild and melancholy figure,” and no wonder! The feasting terminated, Gaston and his court would pass into the Salle de Parlement, “where many things were debated,” as the chroniclers put it. Soon entered the minstrels and troubadours, while in the courts there were trials of skill between the nobles of one house and another, stone throwing, throwing the spear, and the jeu de paume. The count – “toujours magnifique” (no chronicler of the time neglects to mention that fact) – distributed rewards to the victors. After this there was more eating, or at least more drinking.

When he was not sleeping or eating or amusing himself, or conducting such affairs as he could not well depute to another, such as the planning and building of castles, Gaston occupied himself, like many other princes of his time, with belles-lettres and poesy. He had four secrétaires to do his writing; and it is possible that they may have written much which is attributed to him, if the art of employing literary “ghosts” was known in that day. He composed chansons, ballades, rondeaux and virelais, and insisted on reading them aloud himself, forbidding any one to make a comment on them. How many another author would like to have the same prerogative!

Gaston Phœbus de Foix, so named because of his classic beauty, was undoubtedly a great author in his day. This bold warrior wrote a book on the manners and usage of hunting in mediæval times, entitled the “Miroir de Phœbus;” and, while it might not pass muster among the masterpieces of later French literature, it was a notable work for its time and literally a mirror of contemporary men and manners in the hunting field.

Gaston de Foix was another gallant noble. He died at the age of twenty-four at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512. Jacques Fournier, who became Pope Benoit XII, also came from Foix.

The honour of being the most celebrated of the Counts of Foix may well be divided by Gaston Phœbus (1343-1390) and Henri Quatre (1553-1610). The latter was the last of the famous counts of the province; and he it was who united it with the royal domain of France, thus sinking its identity for ever, though his predecessors had done their utmost to keep its independence alive.

During the Hundred Years War the Comtes de Foix, masters of the entire middle chain of the Pyrenees, were the strongest power in the southwest; and above all were they powerful because of their alliances and relations with the Spanish princes, whose friendship and aid were greatly to be desired, for their support meant success for their allies. This is proven, absolutely, from the fact that, when the English were ultimately driven from France, it was through the aid and support of Gaston Phœbus himself and his successors, Archambaud, Jean I and Gaston IV.

The fifteenth century saw the apogee of the house of Foix. One of its princes married Madeleine de France, sister of Louis XI. The sixteenth century saw sad times during a long civil war of more than thirty years duration. War among the members of a household or among one’s own people is really an inexcusable thing. In the Comté the Abbey of Boulbonne was destroyed. At Pamiers all the religious edifices were razed; and the Abbey of St. Volusien at Foix, the special pride of the counts for ages, was destroyed by fire.

Calm came for a period under the reign of Henri IV, at Paris; but, after his death, local troubles and dissensions broke out again, inspired and instigated by the wily Duc de Rohan, which culminated at Pamiers, where the great Condé and Montmorenci appeared at the head of their troops.

The peace of Alais ended this final struggle; and, to assure the security of the country, Richelieu gave the order to dismantle all the walls and ramparts of the fortified places in the Comté, and all the châteaux-forts as well. This was done forthwith, and that is why many a mediæval château in these parts is in ruins to-day. The Château de Foix, by reason of its dignity, was allowed to keep its towers and battlemented walls.

For a hundred and fifty years, that is up to the Revolution, Foix was comparatively tranquil. Under the reign of Louis XIV, however, the region saw the frequent passage of troops and warlike stores as they came and went to the Spanish wars. This nearly ruined many dwellers in town and country by reason of the tax they had to pay in money and provisions.

Like the Basques and the Béarnais the inhabitants of the Ariège, the descendants of the old adherents of the Comtes de Foix, bear many traces of their former independence and liberty. Civilization and their easy, comfortable manner of living have not made of them a very robust race, but they are possessed of much fairness of face and figure and gentleness of manner.

The smugglers of feudal times, and considerably later times for that matter, were the pest of the region. It was rude, hard work smuggling wines or tobacco over the mountains, in and out of Spain, and its wages were uncertain, but there were large numbers who embarked on it in preference to grazing flocks and herds or engaging in other agricultural pursuits.

It was hard work for the smugglers of Foix to get their burdens up the mountains, but they had a custom of rolling their load up into great balls bound around with wool and thongs and rolling them down the other side. Thus the labour was halved. The Romany chiel or gypsy adopted the contraband business readily; and with the competition of the French and Spanish, there were lively times on the frontier between Foix and Gascogne and Spain and Andorra.

M. Thiers recounts an adventure in an auberge of the Pyrenees with such a crew of bandits, and thought himself lucky to escape with his life.

The chief of the band, as the travellers were all sitting around the great log fire, began cleaning his pipe with a long poignard-like knife which, he volunteered, was ready to do other service than whittling bread or tobacco if need be. The night passed off safely enough by reason of the arrival of a squad of gendarmes, but the next night a whole house full of travellers were murdered on the same spot.

The roads of the old Comté de Foix, a very important thing for many who travel by automobile, are throughout excellent and extensive. There are fourteen Routes Nationales and Départementales crossing in every direction. The highway from Toulouse to Madrid runs via St. Girons and Bayonne into Andorra by way of the valley of the Ariège, and to Barcelona via Perpignan and the Col de Perthus.

The valley of the Ariège, to a large extent included in the Comté de Foix, has a better preserved historical record than its neighbours on the east and west.

In the ninth century the ruling comte was allied with the houses of Barcelona and Carcassonne. His residence was at Foix from this time up to the Revolution; and his rule embraced the valley of the Hers, of which Mirepoix was the principal place, the mountain region taken from Catalogne, and a part of the lowlands which had been under the scrutiny of the Comtes de Toulouse.

CHAPTER XI
FOIX AND ITS CHÂTEAU

FOIX, of all the Préfectures of France of to-day, is the least cosmopolitan. Privas, Mende and Digne are poor, dead, dignified relics of the past; but Foix is the dullest of all, although it is a very gem of a smiling, diffident little wisp of a city, green and flowery and astonishingly picturesque. It has character, whatever it may lack in progressiveness, and the brilliant colouring is a part of all the cities of the South.

Above the swift flowing Ariège in their superb setting of mountain and forest are the towers and parapets of the old château, in itself enough to make the name and fame of any city.

Architecturally the remains of the Château de Foix do not, perhaps, rank very high, though they are undeniably imposing; and it will take a review of Froissart, and the other old chroniclers of the life and times of the magnificent Gaston Phœbus, to revive it in all its glory. A great state residence something more than a mere feudal château, it does not at all partake of the aspect of a château-fort. It was this last fact that caused the Comtes de Foix, when, by marriage, they had also become seigneurs of Béarn, to abandon it for Mazères, or their establishments at Pau or Orthez.

Foix nevertheless remained a proud capital, first independent, then as part of the province of Navarre, then as a province of the Royaume de France; and, finally, as the Préfecture of the Département of Ariège. The population in later times has grown steadily, but never has the city approached the bishopric of Pamiers, just to the northward, in importance.

Many towns in this region have a decreasing population. The great cities like Toulouse and Bordeaux draw upon the youth of the country for domestic employment; and, lately, as chauffeurs and manicurists, and in comparison to these inducements their native towns can offer very little.

If one is to believe the tradition of antiquity the “Rocher de Foix,” the tiny rock plateau upon which the château sits, served as an outpost when the Phoceans built the primitive château upon the same site. Says a Renaissance historian: “On the peak of one of nature’s wonders, on a rock, steep and inaccessible on all sides, was situated one of the most ancient fortresses of our land.”

In Roman times the site still held its own as one of importance and impregnability. A representation of the château as it then was is to be seen on certain coins of the period. This establishes its existence as previous to the coming of the Visigoths in the beginning of the sixth century. The first written records of the Château de Foix date from the chronicles of 1002, when Roger-le-Vieux, Comte de Carcassonne, left to his heir, Bernard-Roger, “La Terre et le Château de Foix.”

The Château de Foix owes its reputation to its astonishingly theatrical site as much as to the historic memories which it evokes, though it is with good right that it claims a legendary renown among the feudal monuments of the Pyrenees. All roads leading to Foix give a long vista of its towered and crenelated château sitting proudly on its own little monticule of rock beside the Ariège. Its history begins with that of the first Comtes de Foix, the first charter making mention thereof being the last will and testament of Roger-Bernard, the first count, who died in 1002.

During the wars against the Albigeois the château was attacked by Simon de Montfort three times, in 1210, 1212, 1213, but always in vain. Though the surrounding faubourgs were pillaged and burned the château itself did not succumb. It did not even take fire, for its rocky base gave no hold to the flames which burned so fiercely around it.

The most important event of the château’s history happened in 1272 when the Comte Roger-Bernard III rebelled against the authority of the Seneschal-Royal of Toulouse. To punish so rebellious a vassal, Philippe-le-Hardi came forthwith to Foix at the head of an army, and himself undertook the siege of the château. At the end of three days the count succumbed, with the saying on his lips that it was useless to cut great stones and build them up into fortresses only to have them razed by the first besiegers that came along. Whatever the qualifications of the third Roger-Bernard were, consistent perseverance was not one of them.

Just previous to 1215, after a series of intrigues with the church authorities, the château became a dependence of the Pope of Rome; but at a council of the Lateran the Comte Raymond-Roger demanded the justice that was his, and the new Pope Honorius III made over the edifice to its rightful proprietor.

During the wars of religion the château was the storm-centre of great military operations, of which the town itself became the unwilling victim. In 1561 the Huguenots became masters of the city.

Under Louis XIII it was proposed to raze the château, as was being done with others in the Midi, but the intervening appeal of the governor saved its romantic walls to posterity. In the reign of Louis XIV the towers of the château were used as archives, a prison and a military barracks, and since the Revolution – for a part of the time at least – it has served as a house of detention. When the tragic events of the Reformation set all the Midi ablaze, and Richelieu and his followers demolished most of the châteaux and fortresses of the region, Foix was exempted by special orders of the Cardinal-Minister himself.

Another war cloud sprang up on the horizon in 1814, by reason of the fear of a Spanish invasion; and it was not a bogey either, for in 1811 and 1812 the Spaniards had already penetrated, by a quickly planned raid, into the high valley of the Ariège.

In 1825 civil administration robbed this fine old example of mediæval architecture of many of those features usually exploited by antiquarians. To increase its capacity for sheltering criminal prisoners, barracks and additions – mere shacks many of them – were built; and the original outlines were lost in a maze of meaningless roof-tops. Finally, a quarter of a century later, the rubbish was cleared away; and, before the end of the century, restoration of the true and faithful kind had made of this noble mediæval monument a vivid reminder of its past feudal glory quite in keeping with its history.

The actual age of the monument covers many epochs. The two square towers and the main edifice, as seen to-day, are anterior to the thirteenth century, as is proved by the design in the seals of the Comtes de Foix of 1215 and 1241 now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. In the fourteenth century these towers were strengthened and enlarged with the idea of making them more effective for defence and habitation.

The escutcheons of Foix, Béarn and Comminges, to be seen in the great central tower, indicate that it, too, goes back at least to the end of the fourteenth century, when Eleanore de Comminges, the mother of Gaston Phœbus, ruled the Comté.

The donjon or Tour Ronde arises on the west to a height of forty-two metres; and will be remarked by all familiar with these sermons in stone scattered all over France as one of the most graceful. Legend attributes it to Gaston Phœbus; but all authorities do not agree as to this. The window and door openings, the mouldings, the accolade over the entrance doorway and the machicoulis all denote that they belong to the latter half of the fifteenth century. These, however, may be later interpolations.

Originally one entered the château from exactly the opposite side from that used to-day. The slope leading up to the rock and swinging around in front of the town is an addition of recent years. Formerly the plateau was gained by a rugged path which finally entered the precincts of the fortress through a rectangular barbican.

Finally, to sum it up, the pleasant, smiling, trim little city of Foix, and its château rising romantically above it, form a delightful prospect. Well preserved, well protected, and for ever free from further desecration, the Château de Foix is as nobly impressive and glorious a monument of the Middle Ages as may be found in France, as well as chief record of the gallant days of the Comtes de Foix.

Foix’ Palais de Justice, built back to back with the rock foundations of the château, is itself a singular piece of architecture containing a small collection of local antiquities. This old Maison des Gouverneurs, now the Palais de Justice, is a banal, unlovely thing, regardless of its high-sounding titles.

In the Bibliothèque, in the Hôtel de Ville, there are eight manuscripts in folio, dating from the fifteenth century, and coming from the Cathedral of Mirepoix. They are exquisitely illuminated with miniatures and initials after the manner of the best work of the time.

It was that great hunter and warrior, Gaston Phœbus who gave the Château de Foix its greatest lustre.

It was here that this most brilliant and most celebrated of the counts passed his youth; and it was from here that he set out on his famous expedition to aid his brother knights of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. At Gaston’s orders the Comte d’Armagnac was imprisoned here, to be released after the payment of a heavy ransom. As to the motive for this particular act authorities differ as to whether it was the fortunes of war or mere brigandage.

They lived high, the nobles of the old days, and Froissart recounts a banquet at which he had assisted at Foix, in the sixteenth century, as follows: —

“And this was what I saw in the Comté de Foix: The Count left his chamber to sup at midnight, the way to the great salle being led by twelve varlets, bearing twelve illumined torches. The great hall was crowded with knights and equerries, and those who would supped, saying nothing meanwhile. Mostly game seemed to be the favourite viand, and the legs and wings only of fowl were eaten. Music and chants were the invariable accompaniment, and the company remained at table until after two in the morning. Little or nothing was drunk.”

Froissart’s description of the table is simple enough, but he develops into melodrama when he describes how the count killed his own son on the same night – a tragic ending indeed to a brilliant banquet. “‘Ha! traitor,’ the Comte said in the patois, as he entered his sleeping son’s chamber; ‘why do you not sup with us? He is surely a traitor who will not join at table.’ And with a swift, but gentle drawing of his coutel (knife) across his successor’s throat he calmly went back to supper.” Truly, there were high doings when knights were bold and barons held their sway. They could combat successfully everything but treachery; but the mere suspicion of that prompted them to take time by the forelock and become traitors themselves.

Foix has a fête on the eighth and ninth of September each year, which is the delight of all the people of the country round about. Its chief centre is the Allées de Vilote, a great tree-shaded promenade at the base of the château. It is brilliantly lively in the daytime, and fairy-like at night, with its trees all hung with great globes of light.

A grand ball is the chief event, and the “Quadrille Officiel” is opened with the maire and the préfet at the head. After this comes la fête générale, when the happy southrons know no limit to their gaieties. There are three great shaded promenades, and in each is a ball with its attendant music. It is a pandemonium; and one has to be habituated to distinguish the notes of one blaring band from the others. The central park is reserved for the country folk, that on the left for the town folk, and that on the right for the nobility. This, at any rate, was the disposition in times past, and some sort of distinction is still made.

In suburban Foix, out on the road to Pamiers, is the little village of St. Jean-de-Vergues. It has a history, of course, but not much else. It is a mere spot on the map, a mere cluster of houses on the Grande Route and nothing more. In the days of the Comte Roger-Bernard, however, when he would treat with the king of France, and showed his willingness to become a vassal, its inhabitants held out beyond all others for an “indépendance comtale.” They didn’t get it, to be sure, but with the arrival of Henri Quatre on the throne of France, the vassalage became more friendly than enforced.