Chapter XII: Section X: Mont-De-Marsan to Biarritz,

66 MILES

(106 KILOMETRES)

DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE

Kil. Miles. =Mont-de-Marsan= to Campagne =12= 7½ =Campagne= to Tartas =14= 8¾ =Tartas= to Pontoux =11= 7 =Pontoux= to Saint-Paul (Dax, 1 kil. to left) =13= 8 =Saint-Paul= to St.-Géours-de-Marenne =17= 10½ =St.-Géours= to St. Vincent-de-Tyrosse =7= 4½ =St. Vincent-de-Tyrosse= to Ondres =16= 10 =Ondres= to Bayonne =9= 5½ =Bayonne= to Biarritz =7= 4½

NOTES FOR DRIVERS

From =Mont-de-Marsan= to =St. Vincent= the route traverses a corner of
Les Landes, and there are no hills. The rest of the way is hilly,
without anything steep.

PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE

This section of the route is chiefly through the forest country adjoining Les Landes.

=Tartas.=--A little town on the Midouze with a few towers of its
early fortifications left standing.

=Dax= (_just off the road to the left_).--Has hot mineral springs,
which were known to the Romans, and is still a small bathing-place.

=St. Géours-de-Marenne.=--A roadside hamlet with a semi-fortified
church.

=St. Vincent-de-Tyrosse.=--The same, with a modern church.

=Bayonne.=--A large fortified town on the Adour, the scene of much
fighting in the Peninsular War. (1) Cathedral, built when the town
belonged to the English, dates from 1213, and the cloisters from
1240; the west end is the latest portion; (2) the Château Vieux, an
imposing building of twelfth to fifteenth century date, now
barracks.

=Biarritz.=--A very attractive watering-place of recent growth; rocky
promontory, with slight remains of thirteenth-century castle,
picturesque coves and harbours, and a spray-drenched statue of the
Virgin.

When one leaves Mont-de-Marsan the road is still through forest, and for mile after mile the dark pines shut out the views. The marshy district of Les Landes, where the shepherds use stilts in getting over the wet places, lies to the north-west.

The traffic on the roads, with the exception of automobiles, is drawn either by bullocks or mules, with their heads yoked together in a wooden framework, in addition to their collars. A horse is rarely seen.

After passing the village of Campagne the road twists through the little town of Tartas, where there remain two towers of the fortifications dismantled by the order of Louis XIII. In the sixteenth century Tartas was one of the principal strongholds of the Protestants in Gascony. The church is modern.

After crossing the bridge over the Midouze the turning to the left is taken. One then goes to the right and to the left at the fork.

On passing over a rise a little beyond Tartas a great view to the south and south-east appears, and on a fine day one notices on the distant horizon what at first seems to be a long pale ruffle of cloud. The next glimpse, however, shows them to be the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees, ranging from 6,000 to 11,000 feet in height. The ethereal beauty of the huge mountain barrier that has for so long formed the frontier of France and Spain, when seen at a distance under the sunshine of a spring afternoon, is one of the loveliest sights in Europe. The delicacy of the amethyst and violet shadows is as exquisite as mother-of-pearl. The distant range appears and vanishes as the car races along a series of switchback hills, and every glimpse is a picture framed with the tall red stems of pines and firs, with a golden foreground of gorse.

There is scarcely a tree passed without gashes in the bark, and a small earthenware cup attached to each, into which the resinous gum trickles--if it is possible to use such a word in connection with a fluid of the consistency of the thickest honey. The inquiring individual who puts a finger into one of the pots to discover the nature of its contents is impressed for several hours afterwards with its adhesiveness.

Just before reaching Pontoux and in that village the road is paved. The road goes to the right after the open space in Pontoux, and there continue to be wide views at intervals across the River Adour down below on the left. The town of Dax is not entered unless one wishes to make a slight détour to the left. It can be plainly seen across the river from the main road. The hot mineral springs, for which Dax still has a small reputation, were known to the Romans as _Aquæ Tarbellicæ_, and Hare writes of the ‘curious Roman fortifications destroyed in 1856.’ The church was rebuilt in the seventeenth century.

The scenery continues of the same forest character until near Ondres, and only two other villages are passed--St. Géours-de-Marenne, with a quaint semi-fortified type of church, and St. Vincent-de-Tyrosse, with a modern church shaded by big plane-trees. When this latter village is passed cork oaks begin to abound, and near Ondres come the first glimpses of the sea horizon of the Bay of Biscay.

The road crosses one of the group of small lakes scattered over the hilly country between the Adour and the sea. They are the only lakes in France.

Some of the lower peaks and a confusion of dark green foot-hills of the western extremity of the Pyrenees are boldly conspicuous as one goes due south on the last few miles to

BAYONNE

A portion of the town is on the north bank of the Adour, but all that is interesting is reached when the long bridge has been crossed.

It is to a very large extent through its history that Bayonne makes many appeals to the visitor, and particularly to the Englishman, for it is the capital of the country of that remarkable people the Basques. It stands on a noble river, with a magnificent mountainous country to the south, contrasted with the level wastes of Les Landes to the north, and its history as a possession of England almost to the beginning of the Renaissance, and as the centre of Wellington’s victories preceding Napoleon’s abdication in 1814, is of thrilling interest.

Bayonne was included in the vast possessions of the Dukes of Aquitaine, and it passed with them into the hands of England for three centuries. The rule of the English kings was considerate, and Bayonne and Bordeaux prospered through their extensive exports of wine to England. Bayonne, in fact, reached its greatest prosperity while it was an English possession.

Towards the end of the fourteenth century the mouth of the Adour became completely blocked with a bank of sand and shingle, and the river’s course was diverted to the north, so that it entered the sea ten miles from Bayonne. This was a disaster to the town, and it was not until two centuries later, in the year 1579, that the engineer-architect Louis de Foix, aided by a great gale, succeeded in reopening the old mouth, and restoring the river to its earlier course.

The English lost Bayonne in 1451, when they were shorn of all their possessions in France except Calais.

In 1526, when François I. was released from his palatial prison in Madrid, he rejoined his Court at Bayonne, and announced his intention of eluding the treaty which gave Burgundy to the Emperor Charles V.

An interesting meeting took place in 1565, when Charles IX., with his mother, Catherine de Medici, met his sister Elizabeth, the Queen of Philip II. of Spain. It was for a long while thought that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was decided upon on this occasion, but modern historians are inclined to think otherwise.

Coming down to Napoleonic times, the year 1814 brings Bayonne into the centre of the latter phase of the Peninsular War.

Wellington’s victorious army, composed of English, Spanish, and Portuguese, having crossed the Pyrenees, attacked Marshal Soult, who had taken up a strong position on the Nivelle. Soult was defeated, and withdrew to Bayonne, where he was again defeated by Sir Rowland Hill, who commanded the right wing of the British army. Soult left a strong garrison in Bayonne, and marched towards Orthez, followed by Wellington. Sir John Hope was left to besiege Bayonne, which capitulated after the abdication of Napoleon on April 5, 1814. Nine days after the declaration of peace, when the British forces investing the town were entirely off their guard, the governor of the citadel suddenly made a treacherous sortie, which was nevertheless unsuccessful, although they captured Sir John Hope, who was wounded. The French losses were 910 to the English 830, a fact which may have been due in part to the reckless firing of the French gunboats on the river.

In the little cemetery of the Coldstream Guards, about two kilometres north of the town, can be seen the tombs of the officers and men who fell in resisting this sortie. It has been visited by the late Queen and King Edward VII.

Perhaps one of the greatest feats performed by the British army at this time was the building of a bridge of boats across the Adour below Bayonne, in order that the troops and artillery might cross the river and complete the investment of the town as rapidly as possible. Sir John Hope had managed to get a detachment of about 600 guards, under the command of Major-General Stopford, ferried across on pontoons before nightfall, and they successfully resisted an attack from the citadel of 1,300 French, who were terrified by the rockets, or Congreves,[E] which were used with startling success. The English army on the south bank of the river could only assist their comrades with artillery fire.

On the next day, February 24, the flotilla of small vessels bringing material for a bridge arrived off the river-mouth, but, owing to the force of the wind, they were only able to cross the bar with the most heroic efforts. The description given by Colonel W. Hill James gives a vivid idea of the dangers that the British sailors faced:

‘The bar at the mouth of the Adour was, and is to this day, one of
the most dangerous and difficult in the world. This storm-lashed
coast receives all the violence of the Bay of Biscay, and on the
day in question, a gale having arisen, the white line of boiling
surf, extending as far as the eye could reach, seethed and raged
upon the bar with appalling fury. Captain O’Reilly, R.N., was the
first to try the entrance, and, with a pilot, to see if he could
discover the shifting passage.

‘The French had removed all distinguishing signs that marked the
safe passage, but a new signal staff was improvised by using a
pocket-handkerchief tied to a sergeant’s halbert, and then the
vessels made gallant attempts to cross the bar.

‘Captain O’Reilly’s boat had been toppled over like a cork by a
great breaker, and he himself, stunned and insensible, cast up on
the beach, whilst several of the crew were drowned, and the
remainder dragged out with difficulty, whereupon they relaunched
their boat, which had followed them, and materially aided in
ferrying the troops over the river.

‘Many boats were wrecked and their crews drowned, but eventually
some succeeded in getting safely through.

‘Thus was achieved this perilous and glorious enterprise. In
addition to the lost vessels, twelve _chasse-marées_ [coasting
luggers], not caring to face the bar, had returned to St.
Jean-de-Luz. Thirty-four which had entered the river still
remained; these were more than sufficient to form the bridge.
Headed by the gunboats, which placed themselves in advance of
where the boom was to be fixed, above the bridge, as a guard, the
sappers and sailors at once began to work with a will that in an
incredibly short time arranged these native boats and the boom in
order across the Adour.’

A model of the bridge is to be seen in the United Service Institution in Whitehall.

The old portion of Bayonne has narrow streets and high buildings, and among them are the _Château Vieux_, a grim pile of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, now used as barracks, and the very interesting cathedral. It was begun in 1213, the chief portions being completed while the town belonged to the English, and on the keystones of the vaulting one can see the arms of England. The west end is the latest part of the building, the graceful crocketed spires of the two towers having only been finished in 1884. The restored cloister, dating from 1240, is of particular interest, and should not be forgotten.

It has often been stated that bayonets get their name from Bayonne, but this is denied by Colonel Hill James, who states that they were first used at Baïonnette, a few miles from St. Jean de Luz, in a sixteenth-century battle between the Basques and the Spaniards. Having come to the end of their ammunition, the Basques tied their knives to the muzzles of their guns, and the efficiency of the weapons thus produced soon caused them to be generally adopted.

There is a good view of the fortifications of Bayonne as one goes on to Biarritz, a short run of seven kilometres to the south.

BIARRITZ

When Queen Victoria ascended the throne Biarritz was a very small fishing village, and in 1856 its population was only about 2,500. It has now risen to from 25,000 to 30,000, and every year the visitors reach the huge figure of over one and a half millions.

In 1855, when the Empress Eugénie built a villa where the huge red-and-white pile of the Hôtel du Palais now stands, and began to make Biarritz popular, a favourite means of reaching the place was that called the _cacolet_. Two people rode in baskets or panniers slung on either side of a mule led by a Basque girl, as shown in the illustration reproduced on page 189.

Perhaps the reasons that have made Biarritz popular are, firstly, that it is neither too big nor too small; secondly, that it has very beautiful mountain scenery at its very doors; thirdly, that it is King Edward VII.’s favourite seaside resort; fourthly, that the coast is one of exceptional beauty; and, lastly, because the hotels are very reasonable in their prices in winter and spring.

To those for whom the sea has charms there is an extraordinary appeal in the huge Atlantic waves that seem for ever to break on the rocky coast,

‘Champing and whirling white foam about their green flanks,
And tossing on high their manes of sunlit rainbow-gold,
Dazzling white and multitudinous,
Far as sight can reach.’[F]

And at sunset, when the mountains respond to the western glories, and a trackway of burnished gold goes across the heaving waters to a fiery red disc that hangs above the horizon, there is such a charm about the place that the very thought of leaving is distressing.

The central portion of the town is built on a flat-topped promontory with deeply indented margins, fringed with isolated masses of rock, some of which have been joined with sea-walls to make small harbours for the fishing-boats. At the extreme point is the unfinished harbour of refuge begun by Napoleon III. and partially demolished by the

_Reproduced by permission from ‘The Battles of the Nivelle and Nive,’ by Colonel Hill James._]

waves, and raised picturesquely on a rock above it is a statue of the Virgin. The promontory bears the Moro-Spanish name of Atalaye, and still retains slight ruins of the Château of Ferragus, built in the thirteenth century to guard the harbour. A little to the south-east of the town is the only other early structure of Biarritz--the Church of St. Martin, dating back in part to the same period as the château. The pillars are dated 1541.

Sir John Hope--afterwards the Earl of Hopetoun--to whom reference has been made in connection with Bayonne, had his headquarters for a time in a house above the Vieux Port.

The walks and drives that have been made round the promontory are delightful places in which to be industriously idle while watching the breaking waves, the curving sweep of sandy shore towards the blue mountains beyond the Spanish frontier, and the foreground of French, English, and cosmopolitan visitors.

One may be looking at the people quite aimlessly, when one of the groups strolling slowly along among the rest suddenly attracts one’s attention, owing to the extreme familiarity of one of the figures--a man a little below the average height, having an almost white beard and a very pleasant and charming manner as he talks to a little girl and boy walking with him. It is King Edward VII., with two of his grandchildren, and with them are one or two friends or members of the Court. No one pays the slightest attention to the royal group, no one raises his hat, and no one turns his snapshot camera in that direction; for it is understood that when the King of England comes to the Hôtel du Palais at Biarritz he wishes to leave all ceremony behind, and enjoy a spring holiday with as little ostentation as possible.