From political exile to founder of the Foreign Legion When Louis XVIII was restored to the throne, even Soult’s political skills couldn’t save him from exile. But after four years in Germany, he was allowed to return to France where Louis XVIII restored him to the rank of marshal. Charles X awarded him a peerage and Louis-Philippe made him minister of war. As part of his plans to expand the army, Soult created the Foreign Legion in 1831. By this time, he had also begun a construction project in his home town. His wife’s maiden name was Berg, and their new home became the Château de Soult-Berg. It was completed in 1835. Queen Victoria’s coronation In 1838, Louis-Philippe chose Soult to be his representative at the coronation of Queen Victoria in London. As far as I can determine, Soult and Wellington never met face-to-face during all the years they spent fighting each other in Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium. But according to the tale I was told during my visit to Soult-Berg, this long-overdue encounter took place at the time of the coronation. Supposedly, while Soult was at a banquet, Wellington crept up behind him, grabbed his shoulders and cried, ‘I’ve got him, by damme; I’ve found you at last, Marshal Soult!’ And the next day, the two men rode around London in a carriage admiring the sights and receiving rapturous applause. I had always doubted this story until I came across a piece in the 3 July 1838 edition of the French daily newspaper La Quotidienne, written by its London correspondent two days after the coronation.
Although there is no mention of the two former foes taking a carriage ride together, the idea of Soult receiving rapturous applause from the public is believable. According to Nicole Gotteri’s authoritative and monumental biography of Soult, this visit to London was among the highlights of Soult’s career, one of his most glorious campaigns. At the age of 69, a man who had spent so many years fighting the British was treated like a hero, received too many invitations to accept, visited the main sights in London, made trips to Windsor, Liverpool and Manchester, and hosted a ball in his ambassadorial residence where 1,000 high-society guests danced until five in the morning. The Château de Soult-Berg When Soult returned to France after this triumphal visit, Louis-Philippe appointed him foreign minister. Soon after, he added the role of prime minister, and at various times during the next seven years he also held the post of war minister. In 1847, Soult retired from politics and returned to his home at the Château de Soult-Berg. One of his first acts was to order the construction of a grand mausoleum attached to the parish church. On 26 November 1851 he died at home and was buried in this neo-classical tomb where the highlights of his career as a soldier and a politician are engraved in white marble. Shortly before the day of Soult's funeral, the town honoured its most famous son by changing its name to Saint-Amans-Soult. It lies ten kilometres east of Mazamet, in the department of the Tarn and in the shadow of the Montagne Noire. Note: all photographs of painted portraits were taken inside the Château de Soult-Berg.
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Naurouze is one of those places that seems to attract legends and history, as well as being notable from a geological and geographic perspective. It is located south-east of Toulouse, conveniently close to the main road between Villefranche-de-Lauragais and Castelnaudary.
Unfortunately, this event is a legend because it had long been known that Naurouze was a watershed. Riquet’s genius lay in working out how to collect and channel a large volume of water from the Montagne Noire to Naurouze.
The monument to Pierre-Paul Riquet Even in a place so rich in legends, Riquet is quite literally a towering presence. In 1825, his family decided that the Stones of Naurouze would make a perfect pedestal for a monument to his memory. Unfortunately, they also decided to protect their obelisk by encircling the site with a stone wall nearly three metres high, with a single entrance which is firmly sealed by locked iron gates. A short stroll between the obelisk and the canal takes you down the Chemin des Légendes, past the engineer’s house and a flour mill built by Riquet and along a path lined with plane trees planted in 1809. This shady avenue traverses an octagonal island, 400 metres from side to side, encircled by a channel bringing water from the Montagne Noire to the canal. Originally, this island was a basin built by Riquet to store more water for his canal, but unfortunately it soon silted up and was abandoned to become a grassy meadow. Just beyond the island is the highest section of the canal. A legendary meeting between Wellington and Soult Another legend claims that after the Battle of Toulouse in 1814, Soult and Wellington met at Naurouze and signed their armistice. This too is untrue, although Marshal Soult did indeed stop at this mill on 13 April 1814, and it was here that he received Wellington’s aide-de-camp and a French officer who brought dispatches and newspapers from Paris telling him that Napoleon had abdicated. Roman remains
Even that does not exhaust the supply of stories at Naurouze. Two thousand years ago, the Via Aquitania passed through here a few paces to the north, and the Roman town of Elusio grew up alongside it. In the twelfth century, the church of Saint Pierre d'Alzonne was built on the Roman remains, and inside the church porch you can see a collection of unusual discoidal gravestones. Just beyond the church is another site, Peyre-Clouque, which includes the remains of Elusio’s Roman baths and a collection of 52 stone coffins dating from the 6th century CE. Note that Peyre-Clouque can only be visited by prior arrangement (contact the mairie in Montferrand for up-to-date details). Two places to the east of Toulouse are known as le cimitière des anglais, or the English cemetery. The question is, are any Englishmen buried there? This story follows on from my previous post about the Battle of Toulouse, fought on 10 April 1814 between the armies of Wellington and Soult. In that post, I explained that Wellington’s allied army included troops from all corners of the British Isles, several German cavalry regiments and a large number of Spanish and Portuguese units. The retreat along the Canal du Midi The day after the battle, Marshal Soult and his army retreated along the south bank of the Canal du Midi. The allies were scouting the hills to the north, so Soult’s engineers blew up the bridges along the canal to keep them at a safe distance. The French planned to cross the canal at Baziège and follow the old Roman road towards Castelnaudary. To protect this crossing point, Soult posted infantry and cavalry units in the hills above Baziège to stop the allies attacking the long column of his retreating army. The Battle of Baziège A detachment from the French 75th infantry regiment took up a position in the grounds of the Château de Lamothe, two kilometres north-east of Baziège. Four hundred metres to the north-east of the château stands the chapel of Sainte-Colombe, and inside its porch is a brief account of a cavalry clash that took place in the surrounding fields on 12 April 1814. At the end of it, 25 French and 52 allied cavalrymen lay dead.
The account in the chapel’s porch claims the allied dead came from the 5th dragoons, a British regiment. My own research suggests they came from a brigade that comprised an Anglo-Irish regiment (the 18th hussars) and the 1st hussars of the King’s German Legion. This cimitière des anglais is unlikely to be filled with Englishmen, although there may be few.
Le cimitière des anglais? Le cimitière des irlandais? Le cimitière des allemands? No one knows for sure.
If you are walking the GR46 long-distance footpath, or simply enjoy exploring Toulouse beyond the Place du Capitole, you may encounter this imposing memorial column on a hill behind Matabiau railway station. Whenever I see it, the word ‘folly’ comes to mind, not with regards to the monument but because it commemorates a pointless and bloody battle in which 1,000 men lost their lives and over 6,000 were wounded. Spot the difference between French and Occitan There are two plaques beside the column, one in French, one in Occitan, and anyone who can understand both languages will notice an intriguing difference between the two texts. Both tell us that the column was inaugurated in 1839 and designed by the architect Urbain Vitry to commemorate the Battle of Toulouse, 10 April 1814. The Occitan version then adds an extra phrase: ‘a battle lost by the armies of Napoleon against those of Wellington.’ This reflects the fact that at the time the column was being built, some French officers were disputing their defeat. Toulouse, in contrast, had retained a strong royalist sentiment throughout the Napoleonic period, as Wellington discovered for himself after the battle. The fighting on 10 April lasted from dawn to dusk. A larger information board near the memorial shows how the battle unfolded, although anyone with that level of interest would be better advised to read Edouard Lapène’s, ‘Evènements Militaires devant Toulouse en 1814’ which can be viewed for free on Google Books, or my book ‘Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood’. A royalist welcome for Wellington The next day, Marshal Soult and his army slipped out of town along the Canal du Midi. On 12 April, Wellington and his troops entered the city to cries of ‘Vivent les anglais!’, ‘Vive Louis XVIII!’ and ‘Vivent les Bourbons!’ In the Place du Capitole the crowds tore down the bust of Napoleon and dragged it towards the river. Ladies distributed white royalist cockades from their baskets, and inside the Capitole building even the city officials wore the royalist symbol when they welcomed the allied commander-in-chief. Inside the Salle des Illustres, Wellington was visibly perturbed. He warned the assembled dignitaries that their royalist zeal was premature, and perhaps dangerous to their persons; he was still waiting for news from Paris, and a peace treaty with Napoleon remained a possibility; the return of the king was by no means certain. Late news or fake news? Within a few hours, Wellington learned the truth: he had fought an unnecessary battle. Two colonels – one English and one French – brought him dispatches and newspapers from Paris: Napoleon had abdicated unconditionally on 6 April, Louis XVIII had been declared king, and the provisional government had ordered all the armies of France to suspend hostilities. The messengers had left Paris on 7 April, but they reached Toulouse too late to prevent the battle. It took another week to convince Marshal Soult that the news from Paris was genuine, a long week during which several bloody skirmishes took place in the fields of the Lauragais. On 19 and 20 April, copies of an armistice were shuttled back and forth along the Canal du Midi between Toulouse and Narbonne for signature by Wellington, Soult, and Marshal Suchet who commanded the French army in Catalonia. Both sides claim victory When the Napoleonic Wars were finally over, some French officers began to question who had really won the Battle of Toulouse. This dispute reached its height in 1837 when a French military engineer, Pierre-Marie Théodore Choumara, wrote a book in which he argued that because the allies lost more men, and because Soult remained in control of Toulouse and merely lost some defensive positions outside the city before choosing to withdraw, the French army was victorious. When Wellington was shown the book, he predictably wrote a long and indignant rebuttal. Given that the battle had served no purpose, it is reasonable to wonder why anyone cared. The explanation lies, perhaps, in the broader historical context. Ever since the Norman Conquest of 1066, the kingdoms of England and France had usually been at war, and occasionally in a state of uneasy peace. The 26 years between the start of the French Revolution and the downfall of Napoleon was one of the most intense periods of this long conflict.
On safari at the bison farm At the farm, I soon forget what continent I am on. Our safari bus is a rickety trailer pulled along in bottom gear by a Massey-Ferguson tractor. We crawl past African Watusi cattle, their heads weighed down by horns a metre long, and a herd of Père David’s deer from China which eye us nervously from a shrinking waterhole. We rattle over a cattle grid and grind our way through a section of sparse oak woodland. The trees stop abruptly and the Pyrenees shimmer in the distance. Something catches my eye to the left, three silhouettes in a line where emerald green grass meets faultless blue sky. There is no mistaking the identity of this beast. The line of its back rises towards bulging shoulders and a massive horned head. For an instant, I forget the sunshine and think of the dark caves where I have seen this exact profile drawn or etched on the walls. Hunted for half-a-million years We inch our way forward and more bison come into view. In the wild, the sight of a human would send them galloping away into the distance, un understandable reaction when you remember that Tautavel Man was hunting them half-a-million years ago, and that our more recent ancestors drove them to the verge of extinction in both Europe and North America during the 20th century. Humans have long been the bison’s principal predator, but the bison was rarely man’s principal prehistoric prey. Through all the different strata of the Caune de l’Arago, bison bones represent at most 10% of prey animals. They are far outnumbered by – depending on the strata – horse, deer, muskox, reindeer or wild sheep. Tough characters Based on observations of wild bison in North America where they face predators such as grizzly bears and wolves, we know that these animals stand firm in a group and face their enemy, horns at the ready. But should they choose to run, the bison is as fast as a horse and it can maintain a top speed of around 60 kilometres per hour for much longer than an equine. Despite weighing up to a tonne, it can do a standing jump higher than my head, pirouette on the spot and swim across raging torrents. Seen in the wintry landscapes of the last Ice Age with their hot breath steaming in the bitter air, they must have inspired a mixture of fear and esteem, or even veneration, emotions which were subsequently expressed on the walls of many a prehistoric cave.
![]() Occitanie has played a central role in our understanding of prehistory, and Ariège boasts more prehistoric caves than any other department in France. Over a period of several months last year, I visited several of the ones that are open to the public. The prehistorians who were involved in the discovery or interpretation of these grottes were in many cases the same internationally renowned experts who explored even more famous caves which lie just outside my region (Lascaux, Les Eyzies and the Grotte de Chauvet, for example). They included people like Émile Cartailhac who, in 1882, took up a post at the faculty of science in Toulouse and became the first academic in France to teach prehistoric archaeology. And a young priest called Henri Breuil who, over the next 60 years, would become even more influential than Cartailhac. And more recently, Jean Clottes, the man who was called upon to assess the Grotte de Chauvet when it was rediscovered in 1994. Caune de l’Arago and the Tautavel museum of prehistory The village of Tautavel is a mere 20 minutes inland from the A9 just north of Perpignan. The museum is highly informative, although some visitors may find it rather dated. As for the cave, the Caune de l’Arago is the one exception on my list: you cannot go inside unless you are accepted to participate in the summer dig, an annual event which started in 1964. To reach the cave, drive a couple of kilometres north of Tautavel to Les Gorges du Gouleyrous. Here, the Verdouble emerges from limestone cliffs a hundred metres high and forms a shallow pool roughly the size of a football pitch. This is an idyllic and popular spot for a swim (in principle this is prohibited, thus making the presence of an obligatory car park with a ticket collector rather unexpected). The Caune de l’Arago is a couple of hundred metres above the river, and although you cannot go inside, most of the cave is visible through the iron bars that protect it between each season’s dig. Just inside the bars, a diagram shows the cave in cross-section and explains why it is of such exceptional scientific interest. The hillside curves over a lip at the cave entrance, and then the floor slopes down towards the interior before rising up again to create a bowl. This underground hollow has acted as a time trap. Over a period of 600,000 years (from 700,000 to 100,000 years ago), it captured 16 metres of sediment, and contained within the different layers are human remains, the bones of the animals they hunted and ate, the tools they made, and pollen and seeds that blew in with the wind or were carried in by humans and other creatures. Five metres of sediment remain to be excavated. Five-hundred-and-sixty thousand years ago, a child died in this cave. In 2018, one of its milk teeth was unearthed by archaeologists, and this tooth is the oldest human remain yet found in France. But the cave owes most of its fame to Tautavel Man, the hunter in his early 20s who spent time here with his family 450,000 years ago, and parts of whose skull was dug up in 1971. A copy of the front of his skull is displayed in the museum and the original is the oldest human face discovered in Europe. More recently, objects a mere 5,000 years old have been discovered outside the entrance. Both Tautavel Man and the child belonged to the species homo erectus which arrived in this area around a million years ago. Although they walked upright and had an anatomy not dissimilar to our own, they are not thought to be our direct ancestors. Instead, homo erectus evolved into Neanderthal man who, in Europe, became extinct after having lived alongside our own species, homo sapiens, for several thousand years. Both species lived at the Caune de l’Arago, although perhaps not at the same time because the sedimentary layers include long periods with no trace of human activity. FOLLOW THESE LINKS TO READ OTHER SECTIONS OF THIS POST:
Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 1: Grotte d’Aurignac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 2: Grotte de Niaux Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 3: Grotte de Bédeilhac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 4: Grotte de Gargas Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 5: Grotte de Mas d’Azil ![]() Occitanie has played a central role in our understanding of prehistory, and Ariège boasts more prehistoric caves than any other department in France. Over a period of several months last year, I visited several of the ones that are open to the public. The prehistorians who were involved in the discovery or interpretation of these grottes were in many cases the same internationally renowned experts who explored even more famous caves which lie just outside my region (Lascaux, Les Eyzies and the Grotte de Chauvet, for example). They included people like Émile Cartailhac who, in 1882, took up a post at the faculty of science in Toulouse and became the first academic in France to teach prehistoric archaeology. And a young priest called Henri Breuil who, over the next 60 years, would become even more influential than Cartailhac. And more recently, Jean Clottes, the man who was called upon to assess the Grotte de Chauvet when it was rediscovered in 1994. Grotte de Mas d’Azil Lost in gentle hills to the west of Pamiers. the most astonishing aspect of the Grotte de Mas d’Azil is that you can drive right through it on the D119. For a more relaxed visit, leave your vehicle in the car park just beyond the upstream entrance, maybe pause at the café for a refreshment and then stroll underground alongside the river until you reach the ticket office and entrance to the prehistoric section. Although the road seems out of place, its construction in the 1850s was the first step towards the discovery of the cavern’s archaeological importance. That first road was swept away by a flood in 1875, so it was rebuilt higher up. This second tranche of works unearthed prehistoric objects such as bones, tools and weapons, and given the site’s easy access, it is perhaps unsurprising that it soon attracted private collectors as well as geologists and archaeologists. In 1902 Henri Breuil discovered the first cave paintings. More rock art has been discovered since – both painted and engraved – but at Mas d’Azil, the greatest interest lies in the objects. Among the most intriguing finds is a tooth carved with an ibex on each side. A fine piece of work, no doubt, but it was the tooth itself that caught the eye of the archaeologists: it belonged to a sperm whale. Now, even in prehistoric times there were no sperm whales anywhere near Mas d’Azil. The presence of this tooth, and the wide range of materials, styles and techniques used to make many of the other objects found here suggest that Mas d’Azil was an important trading centre, or at least a communications hub through which Stone Age traders passed regularly. Many of the other objects found in this cave (or in some cases, copies) are on display at the Museum of Prehistory in the village of Le Mas d’Azil a couple of kilometres downstream. FOLLOW THESE LINKS TO READ OTHER SECTIONS OF THIS POST:
Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 1: Grotte d’Aurignac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 2: Grotte de Niaux Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 3: Grotte de Bédeilhac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 4: Grotte de Gargas Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 6: Caune de l’Arago and the Tautavel museum of prehistory ![]() Occitanie has played a central role in our understanding of prehistory, and Ariège boasts more prehistoric caves than any other department in France. Over a period of several months last year, I visited several of the ones that are open to the public. The prehistorians who were involved in the discovery or interpretation of these grottes were in many cases the same internationally renowned experts who explored even more famous caves which lie just outside my region (Lascaux, Les Eyzies and the Grotte de Chauvet, for example). They included people like Émile Cartailhac who, in 1882, took up a post at the faculty of science in Toulouse and became the first academic in France to teach prehistoric archaeology. And a young priest called Henri Breuil who, over the next 60 years, would become even more influential than Cartailhac. And more recently, Jean Clottes, the man who was called upon to assess the Grotte de Chauvet when it was rediscovered in 1994. Grotte de Gargas The Grotte de Gargas lies in the foothills of the central Pyrenees south of the A64 between Saint-Gaudens and Lannemezan. When humans lived here between 28,000 and 24,000 years ago, there were two separate caves, each with its own small entrance. In the 19th century, someone decided to connect them by a tunnel for reasons of tourism. Today, visitors come in through the upper cave and exit via the lower entrance. Both caves contain paintings, but only the lower one has handprints. With a total of 231 handprints, the Grotte de Gargas contains 30% of all known handprints in Europe, and on a single wall near what is today the exit, archaeologists have counted 137, one yellow, the rest black or red. Inevitably, Breuil and Cartailhac were the first people to carry out a detailed inspection. In a report written after their second visit in 1907, they noted a peculiarity that has continued to generate hypotheses ever since: many of these handprints are missing a couple of phalanges from a finger or two, or sometimes all the hand’s fingers were mutilated in this way. As with all works of prehistoric cave art, other mysteries include who produced them and why. The second of these questions is still in search of a plausible and generally accepted answer. As for the first, research in the last decade has come up with some curious findings. The crucial difference between a handprint and, say, a painting of a bison is that one can deduce the gender and age of the artist. For example, modern men tend to have longer ring fingers than index fingers, while the opposite is true for women. This variation was more pronounced among our prehistoric ancestors, and a ten year research programme of handprints around the world concluded that around three-quarters of them belonged to females. And then in 2022, a Spanish study found that most of the artists had held their hands a short distance away from the wall, a technique that creates a slightly three-dimensional effect and enlarges the hand. As a result, they concluded that around a quarter were produced by children between the ages of two and twelve. Talking of children, Gargas divides its visitors into groups of 25 and I was tagged onto the second half a busload of eight-year-olds. I have never before seen children so captivated by works of art. FOLLOW THESE LINKS TO READ OTHER SECTIONS OF THIS POST:
Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 1: Grotte d’Aurignac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 2: Grotte de Niaux Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 3: Grotte de Bédeilhac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 5: Grotte de Mas d’Azil Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 6: Caune de l’Arago and the Tautavel museum of prehistory ![]() Occitanie has played a central role in our understanding of prehistory, and Ariège boasts more prehistoric caves than any other department in France. Over a period of several months last year, I visited several of the ones that are open to the public. The prehistorians who were involved in the discovery or interpretation of these grottes were in many cases the same internationally renowned experts who explored even more famous caves which lie just outside my region (Lascaux, Les Eyzies and the Grotte de Chauvet, for example). They included people like Émile Cartailhac who, in 1882, took up a post at the faculty of science in Toulouse and became the first academic in France to teach prehistoric archaeology. And a young priest called Henri Breuil who, over the next 60 years, would become even more influential than Cartailhac. And more recently, Jean Clottes, the man who was called upon to assess the Grotte de Chauvet when it was rediscovered in 1994. Grotte de Bédeilhac The Grotte de Bédeilhac is a few kilometres north-west of Tarascon-sur-Ariège. At first sight, it does little to evoke thoughts of prehistory. A wide concrete floor leads through the cavernous entrance and melts away into darkness. In the half-light, a small aircraft offers a misleading clue to the origins of this unusual surface. In 1939, Emile Dewoitine planned to shift production of his D520 fighter plane from Toulouse to the Grotte de Bédeilhac where he would be safe from aerial bombardment. He even began some preparatory works, but France surrendered before his plans came to fruition. Then, soon after they took over Vichy France in November 1942, the Germans dug out the first few hundred metres of cave floor, levelled it with concrete and set up an underground workshop where they repaired Junkers 88s. The presence of the light aircraft inside the entrance has helped created the myth that German bombers flew in and out of the cave. The true reason for its presence? In 1972, a test pilot called Georges Bonnet became the first pilot in the world to land in and take off from a cave. Two years later, Bonnet repeated his feat for a film, this time with his aircraft painted in the colours of the Luftwaffe. The plane on display today is the same model, but it was assembled on site using spare parts in 2010.
For me, the highlight of the visit was the presence of two positive handprints. They are called ‘positive’ because they were made by coating the hand with pigment before placing it on a surface, in this case a stalagmite. Examples of positive handprints are rare. Around 90 percent are negative, meaning that the person making them placed his or her hand against a wall and blew dried powder or pigment mixed with water through a hollow bone or reed, or even directly from the mouth, to create a stencilled outline. If you want to see negative handprints, the best place in the world is the Grotte de Gargas. FOLLOW THESE LINKS TO READ OTHER SECTIONS OF THIS POST:
Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 1: Grotte d’Aurignac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 2: Grotte de Niaux Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 4: Grotte de Gargas Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 5: Grotte de Mas d’Azil Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 6: Caune de l’Arago and the Tautavel museum of prehistory ![]() Occitanie has played a central role in our understanding of prehistory, and Ariège boasts more prehistoric caves than any other department in France. Over a period of several months last year, I visited several of the ones that are open to the public. The prehistorians who were involved in the discovery or interpretation of these grottes were in many cases the same internationally renowned experts who explored even more famous caves which lie just outside my region (Lascaux, Les Eyzies and the Grotte de Chauvet, for example). They included people like Émile Cartailhac who, in 1882, took up a post at the faculty of science in Toulouse and became the first academic in France to teach prehistoric archaeology. And a young priest called Henri Breuil who, over the next 60 years, would become even more influential than Cartailhac. And more recently, Jean Clottes, the man who was called upon to assess the Grotte de Chauvet when it was rediscovered in 1994. Grotte de Niaux The Grotte de Niaux on the outskirts of Tarascon-sur-Ariège is famous for its prehistoric paintings of bison, deer, ibex, horses and even a fish. The best-known and most-visited part of the complex is a spacious chamber called Le Salon Noir. It lies deep inside the mountain, 800 metres from the main entrance. At the time of my first visit ten years ago, I was struck by the quantity of graffiti left by more recent visitors. Most of them had been cleaned off by the time I made my second visit, but one specimen has been retained as a historical relic in its own right, a signature left in Le Salon Noir by Ruben de la Vialle in 1660. A veteran tourist guide from Niaux claims to have identified 16 other examples of Ruben de la Vialle’s signature in different parts of the cave. Why he came so often is a mystery. In the summer of 1660, he was waiting for his exam results, having studied for a doctorate in both civil and canonical law. Despite his education, Ruben had no way of knowing or even suspecting the age or significance of the paintings at Niaux. In fact, the religious side of his education made it inconceivable. A few years earlier, an Irish archbishop called James Ussher had, after long and careful study of the Old Testament, calculated with extraordinary precision that the world had been created on 23 October 4004 BCE. It would have been both heretical and illogical for Ruben to imagine that the paintings at Niaux were at least 10,000 years older than the world itself. Their importance only became recognised in 1906 when an infantry officer called Jules Molard and his two sons visited Le Salon Noir and decided to tell Émile Cartailhac about their ‘discovery’. Cartailhac and Breuil explored the cave in the autumn of the same year. Directly opposite Niaux on the left bank of the Vicdessos river lies a smaller prehistoric cave. If the Grotte de Niaux was something of an artist’s studio, the Grotte de la Vache was more of a residential property, and the paintings in the former may have been produced by the people who lived in the latter. The Grotte de la Vache is privately owned and it was closed when I was there in 2022 as it had been for several years before that. However, the area outside the cave entrance was fenced off and building works were in progress. Reports in the local press suggest that a reopening is planned, but the date has yet to be confirmed. FOLLOW THESE LINKS TO READ OTHER SECTIONS OF THIS POST:
Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 1: Grotte d’Aurignac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 3: Grotte de Bédeilhac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 4: Grotte de Gargas Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 5: Grotte de Mas d’Azil Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 6: Caune de l’Arago and the Tautavel museum of prehistory |
Colin Duncan Taylor"I have been living in the south of France for 20 years, and through my books and my blog, I endeavour to share my love for the history and gastronomy of Occitanie and the Pyrenees." |