A walk across the French frontier into North Spain

Front matter

BENTLEY'S SHILLING SERIES, FOR THE RAIL, STEAMBOAT, AND HOME LIBRARY i. THE COMIC ENGLISH GRAMMAR. ii. TURF CHARACTERS. in. NOTES ON NOSES. IV. JAS. MORIER'S MARTIN TOUTROND. v. NIGHTS AT SEA. vi. THE LOSS OF THE AMAZON. VII. MAXWELL'S BORDER TALES. VIII. COL. CUNYNGHAME'S AMERICA. IX. ALBERT SMITH'S COMIC TALES. X. BROAD GRINS FROM CHINA. XI. ALBERT SMITH'S LIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD XII. y MRS.GORE'S SKETCHES OF ENGLISH CHARACTER. " One of the best set of books going, for lightness, readableness, and cheap copyright.''' — Spectator. RECENTLY PUBLISHED. In post 8vo. 10s. Gd. ZOOLOGICAL ANECDOTES. By Sestersius Holt. In ilvo. 15s. THE MODERN COOK ; a complete Guide to Cookery in all its branches. By Charles ElmiS Francatelli, late Cook to tho Queen. In small 8vo. 6s. THE NAVAL OFFICERS' GUIDE FOR PREPARING SHIPS FOR SEA.

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Preface

. The author felt such vivid pleasure while traversing the scenes, of which he has here attempted to give a description, that he hopes that he may communicate a little of his gratification to the reader. Many books have appeared depicting the manners and scenery of the south of Spain ; but the northern corner of that interesting country has entirely escaped the notice of author-tourists. August 25, 1852.

Chapter I

O'er vales that teem with fruits, romantic hills, Whereon to gaze the eye with joyance fills. Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase, And marvel men should quit their easy chair, The toilsome way and long, long league to trace, Oh ! there is sweetness in the mountain air, And life, that bloated ease can never hope to share. Byron. We never entered a strange city without previ ously experiencing the strength of first impressions, and gratefully acknowledging the soothing effect of the prospect, not of hill and dale — twenty-four hours of that from a diligence window, render a man somewhat indifferent to the beauties of nature, — but of a good picturesque road to a well-ordered hotel. We say good, because picturesque roads are generally bad. Comfort, and the sublime and beautiful, i; seldom journey together.

A Pyrenean pass, with its overhanging crags, and awful abyss, " Down which you cannot gaze a minute, Without an awful wish to plunge within it," and mule-track worn out of the rock by the traffic of ages, is more romantic-looking than the Great Western railway; but how easy and expeditious is a first-class carriage compared to the back of an ill conditioned mule. St. James's Square and Carlton House Terrace are pleasanter places to live in than the Plazas of Venice and Granada ; albeit, the latter make the best pictures. We confess a predilection for old houses. Their thick walls render them cool in summer and warm in winter ; and then they have such snug nooks and corners wherein to escape the garish eye of day, such queer stair-cases and intricate passages, redolent of the Minerva press, leading heaven knows where, and delightfully adapted for love-making.

How different are these solid mansions to the would-be aristocratic and elegant villas which appear day by day in prim rows round London. Run up on speculation, at as low a figure as possible, in an ambitious eye-taking style of architecture, their thin stuccoed walls, fragile partitions, disproportioned windows, underground-kitchens and stunted height, make them ovens in hot weather, cold and damp in winter; a whisper in one room is audible in the next, and unless the blinds are kept down, inquisitive passers-by can see as much of the inmates as they do of them. But we were talking of first impressions, so often the arbiters of our destiny. Delightful is the approach to Bordeaux on a summer evening, through noble avenues, skirted by villas and golden vineyards, whose mellow tints and festooned depths make one dream of Rubens' rolicksome satyrs surprising laugh ing nymphs, whilst ■" The showering grapes, In bacchanal profusion reel to earth Purple and gushing."

And Tours ; our mind still dwells upon its match less landscape, neat limestone houses, ancient tower, and graceful bridge spanning the broad rippling Loire. Again, as the weary traveller, after passing the dreary desert of sand and spectral pines stretching between Bordeaux and Bayonne, is rapidly whirled over the heights of St. Etienne, his eyes are re freshed with a glimpse of the latter place, and its old cathedral nestling beneath at the confluence of the Nive and the Adour in the midst of a glorious expanse of champaign, bounded on the west by the Atlantic, and od the east and south by the Pvrenees. Such was the view that greeted us one fine morning in the month of August 1850. A minute afterwards the malle-poste we sat iu rattled through b the Hebrew town of St. Esprit— Anglici the Hoi} Ghost, and rumbling over the floating bridge of the Adour,* bore us swiftly into Bayonne.

The pos tilions'1 loud crick-crack, the headlong career of the six high-mettled steeds through the Place d'Armes towards their well-known stables, the thunder of the wheels of the vehicle over the stones, and the neck and-neck race of hotel servants, and itinerant shoe blacks, eager to secure a guest, or the polishing of a pair of boots, all render the last gallop of the Bayonne mail an imposing incident. Suddenly the smoking team was pulled up with a jerk, the expectant ostler ran out, the guard stepped down from the rumble, grasping his official letter-bag with the dignity of a man holding the fate of others in his hand ; the driver threw his whip to the ground and leaped after it ; the coach-door was beleaguered by the afore-mentioned touters, and in a few minutes we were marched off in triumph to the Hotel St. Etienne by the enterprising boots of that establishment ; a bold coup de main had given him possession of our baggage, and we were fain to follow it, or risk being cut off from our supplies.

After dining d la mode Francaise, on — no, we will not enter into gastronomic particulars, lest per chance the reader raises a stomachic sigh for dainties only attainable in England at a costly price. Our meal cost three francs. Suffice it to say, that after * Now replaced by a fine stone bridge. dinner we took a stroll through Bayonne. The evening was deliciously balmy ; the indefinable hum of active life rose through the still air with a lulling sound, and the unclouded sun, ere it plunged into the Atlantic, to light up other lands, cast upon Bayonne a last bright look, and, as if delighting to honour holy things, its rays lingered upon the mas sive tower of the cathedral and lit up the gilt cross upon its summit ; it must have been visible for leagues around, and, as the vespers at that moment rang far and wide, " the knell of parting day" sum moning the faithful to prayer, it seemed to grow brighter and brighter, symbolical, we thought, ofthe Redemption, of which it is the emblem.

This fine old edifice is still unfinished, and seems likely to remain so, although the French government had for some years been expending large sums in beautifying the interior, and renovating the walls. It was commenced in 1141, and to the English, who occupied Bayonne in 1153, is due the honour of having consecrated it as a cathedral. The three leopards of the Plantagenets and several Anglo- Norman escutcheons, may still be seen emblazoned on the roof of the principal aisle. The legend of St. Leon, whose name the cathe dral bears, is catholically believed in Bayonne. He made his appearance in Guienne towards the com mencement of the tenth century. On arriving at Bayonne, or Lapurdum, as it was then called, St. Leon found the gates closed, in consequence of a feud between the Normans, its possessors then, and the Basques.

Returning to the banks of the Nive, he built a hut, and, planting a cross before it, con verted many to Christianity. It is related that on one occasion some infidels called on him to prove the divinity of his mission by performing a miracle, whereupon he entered the Temple of Mars, and overturned the statue of the false god by merely breathing upon it. The fate of this saint was similar to that of many others who preceded and succeeded him. As long as his doctrine did not militate against any favourite vice, or popular interest, there was no lack of seem ing converts. But when he denounced the cruel piracies by which they had enriched themselves at the cost of the unfortunate inhabitants of the adja cent coasts, and called upon them as Christians to make restitution, his hearers became disgusted, and finding intimidation of no avail, decapitated him at the foot of the cross.

Great was the trepidation of the holy man's murderers when he arose, and taking up his head walked several paces, and then calmly lay down and expired. The miracle did not end here ; a spring of the purest water sprung up where the saint terminated his wonderful pro menade. A fountain, said to be the identical one, still supplies Bayonne, and its worthy citizens may congratulate themselves on being able to wash and cook in holy water. Hear that ! ye heretic Londoners, condemned to lave and fill your tea kettles with the abominations of the Thames ! Once a year the Bishop of Bayonne and his clergy, followed by a devout crowd, walk in pro cession, bearing an image of St. Leon, and there celebrate mass upon the green sward before an ele gant altar erected for the purpose. Many persons in Bayonne and its neighbourhood still believe that its waters are eudued with supernatural qualities, and at times pregnant women, and persons affected with diseases of the eyes, may be seen drinking them.

Faith is everything : as has been proved on more than one occasion, with respect to the healing virtues of these waters. Until the breaking out of the old French Revolu tion, a ship freighted with this eau extraordinaire annually left Bayonne for South America, where it fetched the price of vin ordinaire. It is said that when the demand was greater than the supply, the speculator, who made the shipment, refilled his casks from the River Plate, because, as he observed to his partner in iniquity, " any water will do, provided it was not salt, and the drinkers of it had faith." Within a niche of the cathedral cloisters is a large oil-painting of St. Leon — (water-colours would have been more appropriate to the legend) — dressed in full pontificals, and bearing his head in one hand. His attitude, at least, inculcates humility, and, truly, he does not carry his head so high as do certain of his successors in partibus infidelium.

Few frontier towns possess more general interest for the antiquary, the historian, and the lover of the ro mantic, than Bayonne. The proximity of this place to the frontier of Spain, that classic land of brigands, insurrections, civil wars, and non-advancement, have not failed to identify it with many a stirring event of the pugnacious days of chivalry, and the not less deadly, but more formal horrors of modern warfare, agree ably intermingled with gentle episodes of political intrigue, royal* meetings, and marriage fetes, and the passage to and fro from France and Spain of potentates, warriors, princesses, and statesmen. The precise period of the foundation of Bayonne is unknown. Probably from a collection of huts, it was gradually transformed into a fortified town, the usual origin of cities.

In the third century it was occupied with the surrounding countries by the Romans, who called it Lapurdum. Towards the end of the fourth century, Rome, decayed in glory, and saturated in blood, saw the dominion of the world torn from her enervated grasp by the barba rians. Gaul shared the fate of her other colonies, and Lapurdum and Aquitaine were laid waste by the Arian Gauls. They in their turn were van quished by Clovis, King of the Franks, at the com mencement of the sixth century. He slew in battle Alaric, the last of the Gothic kings, and annexed Lapurdum to his dominions. In 588 the Basques of Upper Navarre pressed on the side of Spain by the Goths, and by the Franks from the eastern Pyrenees, flung themselves back upon this corner of France, formed colonies, and then uniting in one tribe, placed themselves under the sovereignty of the Frank kings, who, however, were too much occupied in holding their own against powerful enemies to render their protection effective.

In 84 i those rest less wanderers of the deep, the Normans, found their way by sea to the mouth of the Adour, ascended it, and touk Bayonne, retaining possession of the sur rounding country until a short time after the death of St. Leon, when the Duke of Guienne, in order to terminate their piratical invasions, drove them out of Lapurdum. Those who escaped his vengeance fled by sea, and were heard of no more. Bayonne had never been to them anything but a sort of military post for the deposit of their booty. In 1 1 32, Lapurdum sustained an angry siege against Alfonso, King of Arragon ; and the Duke de Guienne, in whose name the inhabitants fought, rewarded them hy enlarging and improving the place, to which he gave the name of Baiaona. This appellation is a compound of two Basque words, baia and ona, signifying good port or bay, and indicates the estimation in which the harbour was formerly held.

I n later times it has lost all claim to this complimen tary title, by the formation of a dangerous bar at the B mouth of the Adour, which renders it the dread of mariners in stormy weather. The most important epoch in the history of Bayonne, was the year 1152, when it passed into the possession of England, by the marriage of the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry the Second, with Eleanor of Guienne, the divorced wife of Louis the Sixth of France. This was quite a mariage de convenance, for Henry, in his e<agerness to obtain her wealth to assist him in the expected struggle for the English crown, overlooked her gross immorality whilst accompanying her husband Louis in his crusade to Palestine. In 1190, Bayonne furnished Richard Cœur de Lion with twenty out of the one hundred and fifty vessels which accompanied him to the Holy Land.

This contingent was commanded by Bertrand La carre, bishop of Bayonne, a fighting ecclesiastic, who thought he did God better service in knocking the Infidels on the head in Palestine, than in the cure of souls at home. He was much esteemed by the warlike Richard. It is a notable fact worthy the study of the naturalist, that whale-fishing had been extensively carried on by the Basques upon the coast of Canta bria, down to this period when that fish began to forsake them for the colder regions of the north, and at a later period retired farther northward, and gradually receded towards the poles. Nothing worthy of note occurs in the annals of Bayonne until 1337, when its mayor, Peter de Puyanne, was ordered by Edward the Third to equip thirty men-of-war, in consequence of the recommencement of hostilities between that monarch and his rival, Philippe de Valois.

In the same year he captured a large vessel containing the bishop of Glasgow and a number of Scotch knights, on their way to joiu the French king. This lucky exploit gave great satisfaction to Edward, who, in recompense for such an important service, gave him the revenues of the ports of Biarritz and Bedarede, doubtless flourishing places at that time through the whale fishery. Further honours and emoluments were conferred upon him for his intrepidity at the battle of Sluys, 1340, and he became an important personage in his native town, nothing less indeed than a dictator, as will be seen by the following incident, which gives one a pretty good idea of the lawless manners of the day : — An ancient privilege exempted from duty merchandise and provisions destined for the use of Bayonne, but Peter, avaricious as he was brave, obtained its abolition in 1341.

A great fermentation ensued among the neighbouring Basques, and in collusion with some of the inhabitants of Bayonne, they set the mayor's order at defiance. On one occasion, having notice that some g*oods were about to be entered over the bridge of Villafranca, he sent some men-at-arms to exact the payment of the duties on them, by virtue of a compact extending his jurisdiction as far as the Nive rose at high tide. If Peter was a Protectionist, the Basques were certainly Free-traders. They forced the passage of the bridge, and killed the sol diers, crying out derisively, " that they had only come a Vaimable to see if the tide rose as high as the mayor of Bayonne pretended." This act of violence caused considerable ill-will between the Basques and the Bayonnaise, which was increased by the murder of some traders of Bayonne, who had hitherto been allowed to traverse the Pyre nean valleys unmolested.

The mayor of Bayonne remonstrated against these outrages, and appeared satisfied with the flimsy excuses offered by the ag gressors. But he only waited an opportunity to strike a sure blow, and take vengeance upon those who had thus dared to beard him. It came. Not withstanding the general agitation, the fete of St. Bartholomew, the patron of Villafranca, attracted numerous Basques to his shrine. The day before, Peter received an anonymous communication, stating that the Basques intended profiting by their assemblage at Villafranca to surprise Bayonne, and that five of their principal chiefs would pass the night in the Castle of Miots, a feudal stronghold near the former place. The hour of retribution had arrived ; the foes who had mocked him and slain his soldiers were at last in the power ofthe vindictive Peter.

He instantly set out for Miots, accompanied by fifty chosen followers, armed to the teeth, and ready for anything. They arrived at the castle just before daybreak. The doomed party slumbered heavily after the carousal of the preceding evening, and the first warning of danger they received was the sudden irruption of the enemy through a postern which had been care lessly left open. The Basques within were quickly slain, with the exception of the chiefs, for whom a lingering and horrible fate was reserved. Peter seems to have been a humorist, after the fashion of Nero and Pedro the Cruel ; and his retaliation on the present occasion was certainly as original as it was inhuman. He bound the prisoners to the arches of the bridge of Villafranca, and as the tide slowly crept over them, answered their agonized appeals for mercy by telling them that they were only going to discover, a Vaimable, whether the stream rose as high as the Mayor of Bayonne pretended.

At last the water covered these victims of an atrocious revenge. Their death was the signal of the breaking out of a bellum internecinum between the Bay onnaise and the Basques, until, exhausted in the contest, they agreed to abide by the arbitration of Bernard Ezy Lord of Albret, who condemned the town of Bayonne to pay an indemnity of fifteen hun dred new golden ecus, and to found ten prebendaries, plentifully endowed with masses for the repose of the souls of the five chiefs. Peter, considering the sentence too severe, appealed to the King of England ; and Edward the Black Prince, the governor of the province of Guienne, commuted it at Bordeaux, in the year 1357, to five hundred ecus and six preben daries. Until 1368 Bayonne had suffered but little through the wars between England and France, which were continually recurring on the most trifling pretexts.

The former country, after the battle of Cressy, seems to have consolidated her dominions on the Continent ; but all at once, some of the great seig neurs of Guienne, considering themselves aggrieved by the fiscal measures of the Prince of Wales, broke out into rebellion, and threw themselves on the pro tection of the King of France, Charles the Fifth. He was too pleased at such an important defection from his powerful rival not to respond to the call, and hostilities forthwith commenced in Gascony and Aquitaine. This time Bayonne got involved in the contest, and not only suffered in its commerce severely, but was likewise decimated by the plague. In 1374 the King of Castile passed the Bidassoa, captured St. Jean de Luz and advanced upon Bay onne. The want of provisions and heavy rains compelled him, however, to raise the siege in the middle of winter, after losing twelve thousand men.

Froissart thus recounts this event in chapter sixteenth ofthe second volume of his Chronicles : — " The King of Castile about this time laid siege to Bayonne with full twenty thousand men, Spa niards and Castilians ; he began the siege in the winter, and continued it through the whole season. Many gallant deeds were performed there by sea and land, for Rodrigue le Roux, Don Fernando de Castille, Ambrose de Boccanegro and Peter Basile, lay at anchor before Bayonne with two hundred ves sels, and gave sufficiency of employment to its inha bitants. The governor of the town at the time was a right valiant knight from England, called Sir Ma thew Gurney. His good sense and prowess were, as I have been informed, of great assistance to the townsmen. I have heard from some of those who were besieged, that the Spaniards would have succeeded in their attempt upon Bayonne, had not a great mortality afflicted their army, so that out of five who were taken ill three died.

King Henry had with him a necromancer from Toledo, who declared that the whole air was poisoned and cor rupted, and that no remedy would be had for it, without risking the death of all. In consequence of this decision the King broke up the siege ; but the Spaniards and Bretons had conquered a number of small forts and castles in the adjacent country into which they entered ; and the King went to refresh himself at La Bolougne." * Within half an hour's walk of Bayonne is the cool * Now called the Urrogne. and umbrageous spring of Lissague, close to the vil lage of St. Pierre l'lrube. More than once we have laved our way-worn feet in its limpid waters, and mused upon the marvellous combat between the Count de Belzance and a dragon, which took place there. The date of this occurrence is fixed at 1407 by chroniclers, and there is no reason to suppose it did not actually occur, although the dragon in question was most likely one of tho.se large serpents which are still found in the South of France and Spain.

The legend tells us that the monster, when hungry, sallied forth from a grotto near Lissague, spreading consternation through the district of St. Pierre. The boldest hunters feared to encounter him, declaring he was covered with impenetrable scales, an excuse, probably, for their timidity in not ridding the coun try of such a nuisance ; for the brute led a dainty life, feeding on the sheep and lambs of the peasantry, and occasionally bolting a child or two as a bonne bouche. Things were in this plight when the intrepid Lord of Belzance, doubtless opining that such a tenant should be got rid of at all risks, vowed to kill him or perish in the attempt. He proceeded to the mouth of the cavern, accompanied by an esquire, who ran away as soon as the monster appeared. For a moment Belzance was the conqueror, but the wounded dragon, with a dying effort, encircled the champion in its folds, and both were precipitated into the Nive.

It would be a pity to insist upon the origin of the monster, or to what species it belonged, and thus deprive the legend of its antique perfume. Legends, like ladies' faces, should not be too closely exa mined. In 1451, Bayonne was invested by the French, and surrendered after the reduction of Bordeaux. With its submission terminated the dominion of the English in France, after an occupation of nearly three hundred years. During the wars of Henry d'Albret for the reco very of Navarre, Bayonne was again besieged by the Spaniards. " For three days," says Beaucaire, the local Froissart of Gascony, " the Spaniards at every tide stormed the palisades of the Nive and the land fortifications with incredible fury, but were always repulsed with loss. On the fourth day their fleet returned to St. Sebastian and Passages, and that por tion of the army which did not embark returned to Yrun."

The most brilliant episode in the history of Ba yonne is the one to which the massacre of Saint Bartholomew gave birth. It is not our intention to reproduce here the sanguinary history of that terrible tragedy, when Charles the Ninth, one of the best shots of the day, placed himself at a window of the Louvre, and giboyait (winged) the Calvinists, to use the forcible expression of the historian D'Aubigny, and the sextons of the Cemetery of the Innocents received twenty livres for burying eleven hundred the first day. Catherine de Medicis exclaimed, on hearing of this catholic butchery, " che pieta lors ser crudele, die crudatte lor ser pietoso." Paris decimated, it became the turn of the pro vinces to join in the bloody Saturnalia. Everywhere the rivers were reddened, everywhere covered with corpses ; everywhere the Catholic tocsin sounded the death-knell of the heretic.

Bayonne alone refused to obey it ; and when Adrian d'Aspremont, Viscount d'Orthez, its governor, was ordered by the King to exterminate the Protestants residing there, he made the following noble reply, which has indeed rendered Bayonne worthy of its motto — " Nunquam polluta." " Sire," wrote the Viscount, " I have communi cated your Majesty's command to the loyal inhabitants of this place, and its garrison, and find none but good citizens and brave soldiers, but not one ex ecutioner. We therefore humbly supplicate your Majesty to deign to employ our arms and our lives in possible things ; no matter how hazardous they may be, we will execute them to the last drop of our blood." We could tell thee, gentle reader, a great, deal more about the visits to Bayonne of Catherine de Medicis and Charles the Ninth, of Louis the Four teenth and Philip of Spain, and how the two former and the Spanish Duke of Alva discussed the feasibi lity of an indiscriminate slaughter of all the Protes tants in Spain ; but we skip over these episodes to arrive at one which so gloriously brought forth the military worth of Great Britain, and had such a momentous effect upon the fortunes of Napoleon and the destinies of Europe.

Napoleon arrived at Bayonne on the 14th April, 1808, at eleven o'clock p.m. An immense crowd filled the streets, and eager thousands thronged the Place, the two bridges over the Nive and Adour, and the quays along them. The dark azure of infinite space, spangled with myriads of twinkling stars, canopied the scene ; and the twin rivers, creeping silently from the mountains to the sea, grew bright as they passed Bayonne with the reflection of the illuminated houses and shipping. The open windows showed a blaze of light within, and beautiful faces gazing down from the balconies. Flags waved, masses of troops filled the streets, their burnished arms gleaming and glancing like summer lightnings through the nocturnal gloom ; whilst grand bursts of harmony, the mighty one-voiced cheer of an enthusiastic multitude, salvos of artillery, and the reverberating clang of the church bells, seemed to shake the vault of heaven itself.

It must, indeed, have been an impressive and magnificent sight, that midnight procession through a town well nigh delirious with curiosity and admiration. And what was the errand of the mighty conqueror, the hero of this ovation ? He came to kidnap a feeble old king, and to betray a nation ! Napoleon descended at the Hotel de Ville. It had been splendidly furnished by the municipality, but the next day he removed to the Chateau of Marrac ; built by the widow of Charles the Second of Spain, and now forming the artillery barracks of the garrison of Bayonne ; or, rather, the tene ments upon the estate do, for nothing remains of the chateau but the bare walls, calcined by the conflagration which destroyed it. A couple of days after the Emperor had taken up his abode there, a broad gravel road, of formal cut, connected Marrac with Bayonne, the work of a thousand labourers and soldiers, employed day and night.

Holiday pedestrians, splendid equipages, generals, field-officers, and aides-de-camp, in varied uniforms, hurried, over it from morning to evening. Every description of work seemed to be suspended, and the entire population of Bayonne, and the sur-i rounding country, joyously hastened to catch a glimpse of the Emperor and admire Marrac, transformed by his creative genius into a miniature city full of military display ; and with a court composed of a motley assemblage of nobles, statesmen, generals, authors, men of science, schemers, singers, and opera dancers, his usual attendants in these peregrinations. The park was converted into a parade-ground where Napoleon reviewed and animated, as he only knew how to animate, the regiments which were successively hurried into the Peninsula to feed the vulture and the worm, or to return home, broken down and wounded, spectres of an eclipsed glory.