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Updated: May 26, 2025
And all day, on the Sunday and the Monday and the Tuesday following, he made in his castle of Orthez such dull and simple cheer that none could drag a word out of him. All these three days he would not leave his chamber, nor speak to knight or squire, howsoever near him they might be.
It is not yet over but," she added, bursting into a vehement flood of weeping, in which personal apprehensions had some share, "it will soon, unless some course be taken." "I will vow a golden candlestick to the Holy Sepulchre, a shrine of silver to our Lady of Engaddi, a pall, worth one hundred byzants, to Saint Thomas of Orthez," said the Queen in extremity.
They tell also how Manuel victoriously encountered a rather terrible dragon at La Flèche, and near Orthez had trouble with a Groach, whom he conquered and imprisoned in a leather bottle, but they say that otherwise the journey was uneventful.
MORE than five hundred years ago, on St. Catherine's Day, 1388, Master Jean Froissart, a priest of Hainault, rode into the little town of Orthez.
On the last day of 1813 their forces crossed the Rhine; and a third of France passed, without opposition, into their hands. For two months more Napoleon maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of raw conscripts against their overwhelming numbers; while in the south, Soult, forced from his entrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at Orthez, fell back before Wellington on Toulouse.
Clad in his favourite green uniform, he fared forth to his resting-place under two large weeping willow trees in a secluded valley: the coffin, surmounted by his sword and the cloak he had worn at Marengo, was borne with full military honours by grenadiers of the 20th and 66th Regiments before a long line of red-coats; and their banners, emblazoned with the names of "Talavera," "Albuera," "Pyrenees," and "Orthez," were lowered in a last salute to our mighty foe.
What can any English house, of which even here scarce any man has heard, be as compared with our vast forest lands of Gascony our Castle of Saut of Orthez where the false Sieur de Navailles rules with the rod of iron? It is there that I would be; it is there that I would rule.
To explain how this last event was possible we must retrace our steps. After Soult was driven by Wellington from the mountains at the back of the town of Orthez, he drew back his shattered troops over the River Adour, and then turned sharply to the east in order to join hands with Suchet's corps.
Augereau was betraying softness and irresolution in the Lyonnais in front of a smaller Austrian force. Suchet and Davoust were shut up in Catalonia and Hamburg. St. Cyr and Vandamme were prisoners. Soult had kept a bold front near Bayonne: but now news was to hand that Wellington had surprised and routed him at Orthez.
Then he rode back to Orthez, and showed his father all the presents and jewels that had been given to him in Navarre, except the little purse.
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