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«La première idée qui se présente est celle des eaux souterrains. Ce qui pourroit même faire soupçonner que ces couches ont été réellement relevées par une force souterraine c'est que, sur la droite du rocher qu'elles forment, il y
The entrance to these hiding-places was either under a ledger stone in a church, or through a cellar, or half-way down a well, or in a thicket. It must be remembered that it was the duty of every feudal seigneur to provide for the safety of his vassels, and the security of their goods. Consequently a great number of such souterrains are under castles or in the grounds of a feudal lord.
Square hollows wrought in the rock show that formerly some building was accommodated to it, and the roof ran back under it. In Auvergne are many souterrains that have served as places of concealment in times of war. The Puy de Clierson occupies the centre of an area of four volcanoes.
Thus, the subterranean refuges that had served at one time as hiding- places against Saracens, Normans, English, became places of retreat for the wretched people against their own masters. They no longer carried their goods into the souterrains under the castles, but into refuges contrived by themselves in the depths of forests, known only to themselves; hidden, above all, from their seigneurs.
Nobody else had ever shown enough intelligence to care! So she gave me the history of the cakes, and of everything else in Arras; also, before we went away, she escorted Brian and me into a marvellous cellar beneath her shop. It went down three storeys and had fireplaces and a well! The earth under La Grande Place was honeycombed with such souterrains, she said. They must have been useful in 1914!
At S. Sulpice in Tarn are the remains of a castle built in 1247, with its chapel over crypts and galleries carved out of the living stone. At Contigne, in Maine-et-Loire, is the manor of Gatines, underneath which are souterrains that extend for a mile, with store-chambers and chapels, hewn out of the tufa. I might mention a hundred more.
These allegations were, however, never proved. When he was at last captured, he was tried and sentenced to be placed in the stocks at Wiesbaden in the market. Two days after he hung himself in prison. In the chapter on Souterrains I have spoken of the Adersbach and Wickelsdorf rock labyrinths, without mentioning that they have served as a haunt for robbers.
One can see the notches for the reception of the closing beams. I saw no trace of hinges. The passages are all arched over in semicircle." Lacoste, speaking of the Saracen invasion and devastation of Quercy, says that "in Lower Quercy, where caverns are not common as they are in Upper Quercy, the inhabitants dug souterrains with a labour that only love of life could prompt.
But when these latter ceased to look to their lords to protect them, and cast about instead to shelter themselves from their lords, the original purport of these souterrains was forgotten and misinterpreted. One has but to look through the brief notices of towns and villages in Joanne's Departmental Geographies to see what a number of these refuges are already known to exist in France.
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