Lauragais Blog

Where three French generals rest in peace

15/11/2019

How many generals are buried in your local graveyard? I have found three in mine, all from the same family!

I did not discover my three General Reys while wandering among the grandiose funerary monuments in the Catholic cemetery of Puylaurens, south-west France. Instead, I found them buried in the Protestant graveyard, hidden away on the steep northern slopes of town like a guilty family secret. Resting alongside them are other relatives, including a Colonel Rey who was killed in May 1940 in the north of France when he tried to stop German tanks with his cavalry regiment. As one of the survivors noted, ‘Poor us with our horses!’

But back to the generals. Jean and Louis were brothers, both born in Puylaurens in the 1860s. Louis survived two world wars and died peacefully in 1960 at the age of 94. His brother was less fortunate. Throughout the Great War, Brigadier-General Jean Rey commanded the 5th brigade of dragoons. On the day of the armistice he was still alive, but he died five weeks later on 17 December 1918 from an illness he had contracted during the war.

For me, it was their grandfather who had the most fascinating career. Jean-Pierre Antoine Rey (1767-1842) fought in dozens of Napoleonic battles across Europe, including Arcole Bridge, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau and Vitoria. His last fight was down the road at the Battle of Toulouse in 1814, where he had a truly disastrous day (too long to explain here: either read Captain Edouard Lapène’s ‘Evènements Militaires devant Toulouse en 1814’ published in French in 1822, or Colin Duncan Taylor’s ‘Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood’ published in English in 2018).

Public domain work sourced from Wikipedia.
Original painting by Henri Louis Dupray, c.1890.

During Napoleon’s exile to Elba, General Rey was given a knighthood by Louis XVIII and appointed military commander for the department of Basses-Pyrénées (now called Pyrénées-Atlantique). He remained in post during Napoleon’s Hundred Days, but after Waterloo he was placed on the reserve list. Under Louis-Philippe, he was appointed military commander of several other departments until his retirement in 1832.

If you come to Puylaurens, as well as visiting the Protestant graveyard, you can spend the night in the Rey’s family home. Anny Lapeyre offers bed-and-breakfast in the fine old building she has renamed Maison Rey, and while you are enjoying your croissant and morning coffee, you can admire the Protestant temple next door and the gate of the Protestant Academy that was closed by Louis XIV in 1685.

Cracker Fair 2019

12/11/2019

Abbaye de Valmagne,
34560 Villeveyrac

23 - 24 November 2019
from 10h-18h

The perfect place to find all your Christmas presents!

I am sharing a stand with eight other authors offering a range of English-language books (Le Cloître Nord, Stands CN4-CN6), and there are over 200 other exhibitors. Come and get into the festive spirit!

The French concept of laïcité

27/10/2019

I live close to one of Europe’s most-travelled pilgrimage routes – the road to Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle. This proximity has often made me toy with the idea of making a pilgrimage of my own, but frankly, it’s a long, long way to the wild western coast of Spain. Last weekend I had the opportunity of making a much shorter pilgrimage – less than three hundred metres from my front door. How could I resist such an easy alternative?

The hill above my village has been graced by a life-sized effigy of Christ on a seven-metre-high cross since 1943. Usually I can see if from my kitchen window, but for over a year, the skyline has been empty. In a winter storm, the cross fell, and Jesus broke his arm. The original cross was the initiative of a local priest, Julien Salles. He believed it would watch over Saint-Sernin-les-Lavaur during the German Occupation. Since then, it has often been the other way around, and the villagers have had to watch over the cross.

Anyone who climbs up the steep hillside to our cross can enjoy a magnificent panorama of the Lauragais, the Montagne Noire and the Pyrenees. Towards the end of the 10th century, there was a motte and bailey castle up there. One major disadvantage of such an elevated position, particularly if you are a wooden cross, is its exposure to all the winds and rains that nature has to offer. Despite this, the solid oak construction of 1943 lasted forty years. The faithful erected a new one in August 1983. In 2009, the cross was felled once more. This time, the mairie decided to bury the base of a new wooden cross inside a concrete plinth, but that did not stop the wood from rotting, and a decade later I looked out of my kitchen window one morning and thought, where’s the cross?

So there we were on 19 October 2019, almost the whole village gathered outside the church ready to start our pilgrimage. The mayor gave us a short historical resumé, then off we went. The intrepid attacked the hill by its shortest, steepest route, the majority took a longer path around the back, and the infirm were ferried to the top in a couple of 4x4s.

For a pilgrimage, there was a disappointing lack of religious representation. When I reached the top, I was expecting at least a priest, or even a nun or two. Instead, we were simply a gathering of villagers celebrating the rebuilding of our most notable and most noticeable monument. And a fine sight it now makes: Jesus has been re-armed and firmly attached to a sturdy new cross of galvanised steel. This one should outlast the Eiffel Tower.

After a photocall, the assembly headed back down to the village. A pause at the church would perhaps have been in keeping with the spirit of a pilgrimage, but instead the mayor led us all to the Salle des Fêtes for a different kind of spirit: whiskey or pastis, accompanied by a celebratory buffet.

Over a glass I reflected that my short pilgrimage was a good illustration of the French concept of laïcité – the strict separation of civil society and religious society. The mairie can pay for the upkeep of the village church, repair fallen crosses, and provide a good buffet, but it must not involve itself in religious practices such as entering a place of worship.

Overdosing on châteaux

18/10/2019

If you like visiting ruined châteaux, then a real treat awaits you in the valley of the Orbiel. Drive twenty minutes north from Carcassonne and you will reach the village of Lastours. Red and gold Occitan flags flutter from lampposts alongside the river, and high on a ridge above the village, four separate châteaux stand in a line: Cabaret, Tour Régine, Surdespine and Quertinheux.

A few days ago, it was my birthday, and I decided to make another trip to this stunning location with my wife. We paid the €8 entry fee and I was soon reminded that this is an energetic visit requiring a good level of fitness.

The hillside is riddled with caves, and one of them provided us with an unusual entrance to the main site. A 35-metre long tunnel called le trou de la cite took us through the side of the mountain, and when we emerged at the far end, we were able to enjoy our first full view of the four châteaux. They stand in a line atop a rugged hillside dotted with cypress trees.

During the Albigensian Crusade, this part of Occitanie was the home of two Cathar lords: Pierre-Roger de Cabaret and his brother Jourdain. After the fall of Carcassonne in 1209, the brothers provided a safe haven for Cathars and dispossessed knights. Together they carried out numerous attacks on the crusaders and their supply trains.

By 1211, Pierre-Roger de Cabaret realised that he was too isolated to resist indefinitely and he negotiated surrender terms with Simon de Montfort: he would give up his possessions at Cabaret/Lastours in exchange for a quiet life on an estate near Béziers. Both sides respected the agreement until the death of Simon de Montfort in 1218 prompted the Cabaret brothers to return home. Before long, they were once again sheltering communities of heretics within their walls, including the Cathar bishop for the Carcassès. During the second, royal, phase of the Albigensian Crusade, the Cabarets found themselves besieged once again. They resisted for two years, but in 1229 they surrendered and the king’s seneschal, Humbert de Beaujeu, destroyed their châteaux and villages.

Like many visitors to Lastours, I was disappointed to learn that the four ruins I was visiting had nothing to do with the Cabarets or the Cathars. They were all built during the 1230s to create a royal fortress that was garrisoned up until the time of the Revolution. So where did Pierre-Roger and Jourdain de Cabaret live? Probably in a fifth, older château lower down on the north-western slope of the mountain.

Below it, a medieval village was constructed on terraces which led all the way down to the banks of the Grésilhou. During the last thirty years, this village has been gradually excavated by archaeologists, and visitors can wander around the foundations of houses, stables, a forge and other buildings. In some homes, the archaeologists found the remains of the occupants’ last meal, half-burned firewood in the hearth and various household items which led them to conclude that the village had abandoned in a moment of panic, probably when the Cabaret brothers surrendered in 1229.

When we had finished trudging up and down the steep, rocky slopes, we rounded off our visit with a light lunch just outside the museum entrance.

Le Diable au Thym is a cafe whose food comes out of the same kitchen as the Michelin-starred restaurant next door. It was my birthday, but we didn’t want to break the bank.

If Lastours isn’t enough to satisfy your appetite for castles, more ruined pleasures await you further up the valley of the Orbiel. Climb the grassy terraces of the Château de Mas-Cabardès, take a peek at the Château de Roquefère (now a private residence), marvel at the surprisingly extensive ruins of a thirteenth-century church abandoned in the middle of nowhere, and finally, seven kilometres further up the valley from Lastours, climb the castle mound at Miraval-Cabardés, once the home of a famous troubadour, Raimon de Miraval, who wrote love songs about the wives of Pierre-Roger and Jourdain de Cabaret.

'Lauragais' climbs to the top of the charts!

13/10/2019

This morning, the excellent website 'Living Languedoc' published the first of a series of extracts from my book 'Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood'.

This evening, the book reached Number One on the Amazon.fr list of best selling English language books about French history. A rather specialist chart, perhaps, but it's still wonderful to be at the top of it!

Follow this link if you would like to read the extract:

Living Languedoc

Book signing at the Château de Thuriés

20/9/2019

A busy morning signing more books, this time at the Château de Thuriés near Revel. If you are interested in experiencing luxury château-living in south-west France, Jayne and Steve offer bed-and-breakfast in their stylish home.

Chateau de Thuries

A rare chance to visit the only Cathar castle still occupied by the living

16/9/2019

During the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine on 21 and 22 September, the owners of the Chàteau de Montgey will be offering visitors a rare chance to see inside their historic home.

Pierre Bouyssou and his wife Sophie have spent over forty years researching the story of their château. As Pierre told me when I interviewed him for my book about the Lauragais, this is a home with at least two thousand years of history. Parts of the foundations date back to Roman times – probably the remains of a watchtower, or maybe a small temple because the name Montgey is believed to derive from Mons Jovis, the Latin for Mount Jupiter.

The Chàteau de Montgey was built more than eight centuries ago by a powerful local family called the Roqueforts, and during the Albigensian Crusade, Jourdain de Roquefort was the lord of Montgey and a staunch Cathar. One evening in April 1211, several thousand crusaders halted for the night in the fields below his walls. Newly arrived from Germany, they were on their way to join Simon de Montfort at the siege of Lavaur. Jourdain watched them pitch their tents for the night and decided to send word to Toulouse. In response, the Count of Foix and his son set out from the city with a band of soldiers and mercenaries. On their way to Montgey their ranks were swollen by thousands of local peasants who joined them once they understood what was afoot.

If you want to know what happened next, Pierre and Sophie Bouyssou will tell you if you go to Montgey on 21 or 22 September between 14.00 and 17.30*. You will also find the full story, much of it told by Pierre, in ‘Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood’ But to give you a clue, on your way to the château stop at the crossroads in the centre of Auvezines. There you will find a stele with this inscription: ‘Ici et aux environs reposent 6000 croisés surpris en embuscade fin d’avril 1211’ (‘In this place and nearby rest 6,000 crusaders ambushed towards the end of April 1211’)

Oh, and don’t forget to ask Pierre and Sophie about their ghost and some sticky moments with the Black Prince!

* Times as announced by Revel tourist office. Montgey is situated 50km to the east of Toulouse and 10km north-west of Revel.

How the Protestants of Revel stole a market from their Catholic neighbours

30/8/2019

Most Saturday mornings, I go to the market in Revel, a royal bastide founded in 1342. This is one of the busiest weekly events in the Lauragais, and it is the main reason the town has spent over a decade in the Michelin guide to ‘Les 100 Plus Beaux Détours de France’. But few visitors, be they tourists or locals, know that this popular market was stolen from the neighbouring town of Sorèze 440 years ago during the Wars of Religion. Before that, Revel held its market on a Thursday in accordance with its founding charter.

During the first 15 years of religious strife, Revel was controlled by the Catholics, except for a fleeting moment in 1567. Then, in December 1576 the town fell to the Protestants who were already masters of Sorèze.

Four years later on 3 March 1580, Catholic troops scaled the walls of Sorèze and recaptured the town. With a promise of safe conduct, eighty Protestants surrendered, but were then beaten to death with mallets by their captors.

Over the next few months, the Protestants of Revel and Puylaurens tried to think of a way to recapture Sorèze. In July 1580 they set up a blockade. It was harvest time, and they wanted to ensure that their supporters gathered the crops and the Catholics went hungry. But a side-effect of the blockade was that it discouraged and sometimes prevented the local peasants from taking their goods to the Saturday market in Sorèze. The consuls of Revel then came up with the bright idea of establishing their own Saturday market. When the new vendors and customers discovered the square of Revel with its magnificent market hall and elegant arcades, they never looked back.

Over the next couple of centuries, the consuls of Sorèze tried in vain to reclaim their lost business, but even sending a letter of complaint to the king failed to produce the desired result.

When I am sitting enjoying a beer under the arcades tomorrow morning, I shall spare a thought for the unfortunate people of Sorèze and their lost market.

A rare memorial to the Wars of Religion

18/8/2019

This calvary in Soual may be unremarkable at first sight, but it is highly unusual. It is the only memorial I have been able to find to those who died in the Wars of Religion (if you know of any others, please let me know!). And if the mairie hadn’t recently pinned a helpful sign to the iron railings, passers-by like me would have had no clue as to its importance.

When I reflect on the numbers of war dead, I find this lack of memorials surprising, Nearly every French community has its monument des morts in memory of the 1.4 million soldiers who died in the Great War (3.5 percent of the population), but the Wars of Religion are largely forgotten, even though they left between two and four million dead, or between ten and twenty-five per cent of the population (if my maths seems odd, it is because the exact size of the population is unknown).

The calvary in Soual honours the memory of Charles d’Alric, lord of Farinières, who was assassinated nearby in 1575. His death, and the death of his son three weeks later, are typical examples of just how personal this conflict often was, particularly in my part of south-west France. Elsewhere in the kingdom there were major battles – Jarnac, Moncontour and Coutras for example – but the area to the west of Toulouse suffered an endless succession of skirmishes and sieges which were never decisive and always bloody. There was no frontline, no geographic logic to which town, village or château was Catholic and which was Protestant.

Charles d’Alric and his family were Catholics, and their home was the Château de Farinières on the road between the Protestant strongholds of Puylaurens and Castres. The Protestants of Puylaurens knew that every Saturday Charles d’Alric was in the habit of making the journey from Labruguière, where he was governor, to Soual, where he kept a mistress. On Sunday morning, 25 December 1575, they lay in ambush in a ruined mill on the outskirts of Soual and waited for him to emerge after his Christmas Eve of pleasure. Before long, Charles d’Alric rode out of town through a gate near the calvary-memorial accompanied by the governor of Soual and three soldiers who were armed only with swords. Under cover of thick fog, the assassins took the Catholic party by surprise and brought Alric to the ground with a pistol shot. He rose to his knees, and with sword in hand he defended himself courageously until one of the attackers ran him through with a Protestant blade. The governor of Soual and the escort were taken prisoner.

When news of the assassination reached Labruguière, Charles d’Alric’s son was appointed governor in his place. Three weeks later, on 17 January 1576, the young Alric decided to avenge his father’s murder by attacking a passing troop of Protestant cavalry and musketeers. He and his men killed thirty of their enemies. The others fled except for their commander, Captain Daves, who was carried off to Labruguière a prisoner. For some unexplained reason, one of the Catholic soldiers then decided to take a sword swipe at the captive. Fearing he was mortally wounded, Daves decided to use his final moments on earth to further the Protestant cause. He still had his pistol, and the young Alric was standing right in front of him, so he shot him dead. Predictably this earned Daves a second sword strike which killed him instantly. Two more men lay dead on the ground, two more victims of the murderous hatred that divided two versions of Christianity.

I have translated and adapted this account from a book written by a Protestant from Castres called Jacques Gaches. He was born around 1555, took an active part in the conflict and wrote his memoirs twenty or so years after the wars were over. His book is freely available on the internet in digitised form from https//archive.org (in the original early 17th century French) and, along with the journal kept by another Protestant from Castres, Monsieur Faurin, was among my main sources when I wrote about this tragic period of French history in my book ‘Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood.’ But apart from written reminders of the past such as these, I failed to track down any other physical memorials like Charles d’Alric’s cross, despite searching extensively online and always keeping an eye open whenever I was out and about in my part of France.

If you live in the area and want to find the memorial, it’s in the centre of Soual on a corner half-way along the Rue du Barry.

Saturday 24 August: book signing event in Revel

17/8/2019

Revel’s Saturday market is one of the busiest weekly events in the Lauragais, and it is the main reason the town has spent over a decade in the Michelin guide to ‘Les 100 Plus Beaux Détours de France’.

Next Saturday 24 August, for one morning only, there will be an extra attraction: call in at the tourist office in the centre of town and meet the author of ‘Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood’.

As well as signing copies of my book, I shall be delighted to discuss how the history of our region has inspired my work, or how this year's heatwave has affected the price of tomatoes.

The picture shows an impromptu rehearsal outside Le Centre at this morning’s market. The photographer bought two copies as well – he’s a lovely man, Jean-Yves!

Saturday 24 August
10.30 until 12.00

Office de Tourisme,
Place Philippe VI de Valois,
31250 Revel