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Walking in the Cevennes. Janette Norton
Читать онлайн.Название Walking in the Cevennes
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781783621095
Автор произведения Janette Norton
Жанр Книги о Путешествиях
Издательство Ingram
Finally the forces of authority led by the Maréchal de Villiers managed to seriously wound Cavalier after discovering his arms depot. He then capitulated and was accused of treachery by his compatriots. Fleeing to England he eventually became Governor of the island of Jersey. In the autumn of 1703 the Maréchal de Montrovel, the chief of the royalist forces, decided to burn 32 parishes loyal to the Camisard cause. Roland continued to fight but was betrayed and killed near Uzzes in 1704. After that the Camisards lost heart and the war fizzled out.
In 1787 the Edict of Nantes was reinstated and the Protestants were free again to lick their wounds and rebuild their chapels. When walking in the Cevennes it is not unusual to come across isolated small graveyards; since the people did not wish to bury their dead in the official Catholic cemeteries they buried them on their land or, in many cases, in their basements so they would not be discovered by the royalist soldiers!
The War of the Camisards has become a legend of Cevenese pride and endurance, but has permanently marked the mentality of the people, who tend to be uncommunicative and self-contained. Although many villages, particularly in the north Gevaudan, reconverted to Catholicism, the majority of the region has remained strongly Protestant; it has taken until the Second World War for the tensions to really heal so that both religious communities can live together in harmony.
Every first Sunday in September some 15,000 protestants and descendants of those that fled the country in the 15th century gather in Le Mas Soubeyran, near Mailet, at the Musée de Désert (so called in memory of the Hebrews who crossed the desert). Here, in the birthplace of the Camisard chief Roland, which has now been turned into a musem, they commemorate the hundreds of Cevenese who died for their belief. The museum is worth a visit and is open from 1st March to 30th November from 9.30 to 12.00 and 14.30 to 18.00, and all day from 1st July to 1st September.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
No book can be written about the Cevennes region without a mention of the renowned writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote his classic Travels with a Donkey in 1878. A young, penniless Scottish student, he walked from Puy-en-Velay southwards, over Mont Lozère to Florac, and continued down the Mimente valley to St-Jean-du-Gard. His adventures and tribulations with his donkey, Modestine, have enchanted readers the world over and put this remote mountainous region, in many ways so like Stevenson’s native Scotland, firmly on the map.
Walking the Stevenson Trail, which takes around five days (though it took Stevenson longer), is still very popular, and on some walks in this book (Walk 31 and the Tour of Mont Lozère) you will see signposting indicating that you are on the Sentier Stevenson.
Cevenese Life
The Bible, the tree of bread and the tree of gold: these were the three mainstays of Cevenese life – the Bible their source of culture, the chestnut tree their source of food and the mulberry tree fed the silkworms providing economic stability. Through these three resources the Cevennes people emerged from obscurity in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Chestnut Industry
The origins of the chestnut tree forests are obscure but could date from the Iron Age, when the religious orders penetrated the region and began to clear the land and create the farms and villages that remain today. Chestnut trees were never part of the natural vegetation of the Cevennes, which was mainly oak, green oak and beech, but were planted on the slopes between 300m and 900m. In order to prosper the trees required constant maintenance, as they hate the cold and fog, needing a deep, rich soil with long periods of sunshine to ripen the nuts; they also need constant pruning, thinning out and manuring (they particularly like iron deposits) – all time-consuming and manpower-intensive activities. Indeed the Cevennes population could not cope alone, and itinerant workers came every year from surrounding regions to help with the chestnut harvest, and special markets were held to recruit these labourers (see Walk 29).
Until the end of the 19th century the cultivated chestnut trees were the main source of food for the Cevenese population. The nut, the wood, the leaves – every part of the tree was utilised. The nuts, collected in the autumn by special wooden rakes called gratto, were eaten fresh or dried and also ground into flour to make bread. The drying process took place in a stone building called a clède, which was built next to the mas (farm) or in the chestnut wood itself. The chestnuts were funnelled in from the outside and spread on a wooden grating hung underneath the beams. A fire was lit underneath and kept going for several weeks until the constant smoke had dried the nuts. They were then shelled, which was achieved by walking on them with special spiked shoes! The wood was used for building and for making furniture, beer barrels and fencing – even the traditional Cevenol beehives are made out of chestnut trunks. At the end of the harvest the flocks of sheep, goats and pigs grazed in the woods to fatten up on the leaves and remaining nuts.
In 1871 the chestnut forests were hit by disease called‘la maladie d’encre’and this, together with the exodus of the population, was the death knell of this noble tree. Two-thirds of the splendid chestnut woods have disappeared, cut down for their excellent wood, but have been replaced by other species, such as the Austrian pine, which do not need looking after. However, hundreds of chestnut trees still remain, most of them untended and some of magnificent size; they are a symbol of the Cevennes and of a tree that can nourish a whole population.
The Silk Industry
The other tree that is a symbol of the Cevennes is the mulberry. Again it was planted for a specific reason – to feed the silk worms whose cocoons furnished the silk thread to make clothes and stockings, the main economic resource of the region. Sericulture, or the art of making silk, started at the end of the 13th century but was at its height in the 17th.
Mulberry trees were planted at altitudes of up to 600m beside the roads and fields in convenient places where the leaves could be easily picked. Two tons of leaves were required to nourish 33g of eggs when they hatched into worms. Before special incubators were constructed in the 18th century, the eggs were kept warm in special sacks hung under the blouses and skirts of the women!
Once the worms had hatched they were kept and fed in the huge high buildings called magnanerie which are still seen in the Cevennes today, many of them in ruins. These buildings were constructed so that the rooms were kept at an even temperature with constant ventilation – hence the rows of small windows and many chimneys. After one month, when the worms had ceased eating and started to weave their cocoons – which took around three days and yielded 1500m of silk thread, it was imperative that the cocoons remained dry and did not rot. The thread was then spun off the cocoons, mainly by the nimble hands of women and young girls, to be made into bolts of silk, garments and stockings in the local factories.
In the middle of the 19th century the silk worms were struck by a disease called pébrine, and a remedy was not discovered until 20 years later in 1870. By this time cheap silk imports from China and India were entering the country, and the industry never recovered – the last silk-producing enterprise closed in 1965.
Decline of the Region
When the chestnut and silk industries failed, many of the Cevenese could no longer survive and the exodus began. Rather than emigrating to Australia, the United States or Canada, the people tended to move to the coalmining area around Alès, in the southeast, at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Between 1846 and 1896 the population of this area tripled, but the age of prosperity was short-lived, and one by one the mines closed. Many of the population then moved to other areas such as Marseilles and Montpellier.
Traditional beehives made of chestnut logs at Moulin des Geminards (Walk 29)
The First World War is the main reason why the Cevennes became one of the least populated areas of France. Because there was no work for the young men they signed up in droves and died likewise. During these years the population declined drastically, as in some villages all the young men were killed, leaving women and children to survive as best they could. Many of the villages