Some bastides were square, some linear and others radial. The plan was adapted to suit the local terrain, but all had a central rectangular market square lined with stone arcades, supporting beamed ceilings, a feature known locally as cornières or garlanda. In the centre of the square stood a covered market hall, where sheep, cattle and other goods could be sold under cover.
Traders of every description set up shop under the arches, selling animals, food, salt, wine, pottery and cloth. The arcaded squares were the purpose-built shopping centres of their time and on market days they would have been crowded, noisy, smelly places, full of people, geese, ducks, pigs, goats and any other animals that were for sale. Along the side streets were artisanal workshops, usually run by a master craftsman helped by one or two compagnons, apprentices or journeymen, who lived with their master on a more or less equal footing. In the bastides of the Comminges, with so many sheep on the hills, there was plenty of work for spinners and weavers. Local consuls checked on the products being made – mediaeval quality control!
Gascony enjoyed strong traditions of freedom and equality, which were reflected in life in the bastides. Voisins had many privileges, and all had a say in the running of the town. They were allowed to hunt, fish and farm the surrounding countryside and to arm themselves to defend their bastide against attack.
It was a land of local seigneurs rather than great overlords. Each bastide was closely tied to one manor or abbey. The bastide of Boulogne-sur-Gesse was founded in 1283 by the Abbé Taillefer, Superior at the nearby Abbey of Nizors. It was built on a grid pattern with a central square and four main streets, each leading to a town gate. It was named after Bologna in Italy, chosen because Abbé Taillefer had been a student there.
The modern-day Boulogne-sur-Gesse was the nearest town to Péguilhan and provided all the necessary shops and services: the gendarmerie, the Maison d’agriculture, a lycée, banks, clothes shops, food shops including two boulangeries, two pharmacies and the local abattoir.
Wednesday was market day. It was the high point of the week for many locals. Notices on the arches forbade parking in the square and the town centre was closed to traffic.
Anja and I went to the market one Wednesday near the beginning of August. The square was full of stalls under striped awnings, selling clothes and household goods. Food stalls were confined to the edges and the side streets. All the basic necessities of domestic life were available: brushes, mops, buckets and cleaning products, ornaments, knickknacks, bags and all sorts of everyday items. The market goers were mostly older people. Stout, middle-aged women, carrying chequer-patterned shopping bags, carefully examined the wares on each stall. Old men wearing berets sat on white plastic chairs in the shade under the arches in front of the grandly named Café Bar Hôtel du Parc, chatting and watching people go by. A sense of expectancy hung in the air, as if something exciting was going to happen, even though it was probably exactly the same each week.
Anja and I walked slowly round the square. We felt like two children on a day out, holding hands so we wouldn’t lose each other. The market had an endearing simplicity. Although it was old-fashioned, it suited the steady, traditional lives of the Boulonnais, and certainly showed the more idiosyncratic side of Gascon life.
The clothes stalls sold everything to achieve the Boulogne-sur-Gesse ‘look’. A womenswear stall displayed full-length, sleeveless, cover-all pinafores in stiff cotton, heavily patterned with flowers on a blue background.
No fewer than three stalls were piled high with women’s underwear, offering mountains of knickers and bras for sale. All ages, sizes, shapes, tastes and occasions were catered for, in every possible colour. The range went from lacy thongs to seriously big pants, made from thick cotton with elasticated waists and knees for older women of ample proportions. Some of the bras were very odd in shape and looked like pairs of white pudding basins. We laughed at this cheeky glimpse into the lives of the female population.
A hat stall sold a variety of headgear in different styles. Hanging up at the front were broad, black Pyrenean berets. Emblazoned in bright red and gold letters inside each beret was the name El Bandido. I couldn’t resist trying one on. The stallholder was a tiny man, with a curly Mexican bandit-style mustachio, sporting a wide-brimmed, green tweed hunting hat with a brightly coloured feather in the band. I think he fancied himself a bewhiskered reincarnation of Sancho-the-Terrible. He looked at me with a market trader’s eye.
‘It suits you,’ he said.
‘I think it’s too small,’ I replied.
‘No problem,’ he assured me. ‘I’ve got berets in all sizes!’
I was about to say that I didn’t really want to buy one, I was only looking, when he disappeared into the back of his van to find a beret in my size. He was sure he’d made a sale.
‘He’s going to make me buy one,’ I said to Anja.
‘Let’s do a runner,’ she said. ‘Quick, he’s not looking.’
No sooner were we out of sight than our noses began to twitch with the strong smell of vinegar. It was coming from a van, where a red-faced, scruffy-looking man, smoking a fat cigar, was selling cheap red wine by the litre from big yellow plastic barrels. The floor was littered with used glass and plastic bottles. Customers could bring their own bottle, or one would be retrieved from the floor. The stall holder opened the tap on the barrel to fill a big blue plastic jug, then poured the wine down a funnel into the customer’s bottle. We shuddered to think what it tasted like and what it did to the liver. One customer was eagerly holding out a jug to be filled; he was either going to carry it home or drink the contents on the spot. Poor-quality red wine is the biggest single cause of alcohol-related illness in France; I think we’d identified a culprit.
We walked under the arcade of the market hall, where everything seemed old and worn. The stone columns were pock-marked and gouged in places. In the centre steps led up to the offices of the Mairie on the upper storey. We held our noses as we passed the public toilets à la turque.
Under the arches, a young woman with long, beaded hair had set up a small stall for a travel company selling Caribbean cruises. She wasn’t doing any business.
In a corner, an orange-and-black sign advertised Tatouage temporaire au Henna. The woman tattooist, with copper-coloured hair and a long ruffled gypsy skirt, was sitting next to her stall. She raised an eyebrow and smiled welcomingly when she thought she saw a customer approaching, but then quickly looked disappointed.
A very elderly man, with the stature of a garden gnome, stooped and bandy legged, shuffled towards her. He was wearing a broad, floppy beret and a check shirt, the waistband of his grey trousers pulled up to just below his armpits. And on his feet were orange corduroy slippers – just the thing for market day. The tattooist waited patiently until he drew near, agonisingly slowly. When he finally reached her stall, he looked curiously at the orange sign, which matched his slippers. He bent farther forward, with his hands crossed behind his back, to ask her what she did. She explained about temporary henna tattoos, pointing to the designs displayed on a board. The old man raised his hands in a gesture that obviously meant henna tattoos were not for him!
Later on, we saw the same old man causing a hold-up as he backed out of the doorway to the pharmacie. This was in the main street off the square and was impossible to miss. Jutting out from the wall above was a neon sign, a green flashing cross, showing the time of day, the temperature and the shop opening times. With gleaming plate-glass windows set in stainless-steel frames, spot-lit window displays and electric sliding doors, it was the most modern shop in Boulogne-sur-Gesse. A trip to the pharmacie appeared to be the new religion – no one went into the church opposite, but there was a steady stream of customers in and out of the pharmacie. They all left with a carrier bag full of items, well prepared to indulge in the French pastime of over-medicating oneself.
A mature woman came outside and stood on the pavement accompanied by a white-coated assistant. They put their heads together in a conspi
ratorial way, comparing the benefits of the different products in the white boxes they were holding. This was obviously a problem of a delicate and intimate nature, which could not be discussed in front of other customers.
Then the cyclists made their entrance to the square. There were six of them, three couples, the sort of Brits I dread meeting abroad. Middle-aged and overweight, they had squeezed into bright Lycra cycling outfits and fancied themselves in the Tour de France. They formed their own small peloton, about three weeks behind the main race. They pulled up outside the café, leant their bikes against the arches, and took over two tables. The local men eyed them from under their berets and chuckled, but the British cyclists didn’t notice. The men all had paunches; the women were rather big-bottomed for their cycling shorts. The purple, orange and pink Lycra, glistening in the sunlight, stretched over their bodies, making them look like a group of assorted balloon sculptures. They ordered citrons pressés all round. How very French! Their leader, with a pink face and a ridiculous comb-over that was standing vertical from the effect of cycling, made rude remarks very loudly in English about the French people around them, assuming no one could understand. Anja and I walked away, embarrassed for them.
Two elderly ladies in blue and green pinafore dresses looked disdainfully at the British cyclists. ‘Par pitié!’ said one. For pity’s sake! The other agreed and they shrugged their square shoulders.
Anja and I turned our attention to the food stalls, selling fresh produce from all over Gascony and across the Spanish border. Most were lorries and vans with drop-down sides, which travelled from market to market over a wide area.
The butcher’s stall, Boucherie – Viandes – Gibiers, sold all the bits of pigs, cows, sheep and game, and more tripe than we cared to look at. Along its front whole rabbits were hanging up by hooks through the tendons in their back legs. The butcher warned us there was lead shot inside. These had clearly been wild rabbits.
At the poulterer’s stall, La Volaillerie, plump ducks and geese were lined up in rows, neatly plucked and trussed, ready for the oven.
At the charcuterie stall, Produits Régionaux, there was lapin en gelée, chunks of rabbit preserved in a terrine of clear jelly. There was also a white oblong dish of fromage de tête. We weren’t fooled by the name – fromage de tête had nothing to do with cheese, it was everything from a pig’s head cooked and pressed into a mould. On close inspection, we could just make out bits of tongue and brain squashed together. Taking pride of place in the centre of the charcuterie display was the speciality of Boulogne-sur-Gesse, terrine de daube à la boulonnaise, a beef stew cooled and pressed in long terrines, cut by the slice like pâté.
The adjacent stall was a family business specialising in duck and goose products: Foie Gras – Oie – Canard – Françoise et Denis Gaujacq et leur Fille – Produits de la Ferme. Everything was sold in tins and preserving jars: pâté de campagne, jarrets de porc, rillettes de canard à l’ancienne, confit d’oie, terrine de lièvre, terrine de caille, terrine de sanglier … The phrase ‘local speciality’ is often a euphemism for something other people wouldn’t eat. Monsieur and Madame Gaujacq tried to persuade us to buy a local speciality, cou farci de canard, a duck’s neck stuffed with foie gras, duck meat and figs, in a tubular tin. Er, no thank you.
Our noses led us quite naturally to the cheese stall, Artisans Fromagers Affineurs, which seemed a more tempting option. We tried slices of different types. Anja liked the Cabécou creamy goat’s cheese and we bought a couple of rounds. Having given us quite a few samples, I think the woman on the stall was a little piqued that we didn’t want to buy anything else.
The various fruit and vegetable stalls were a colourful sight. We stopped at Les Produits du Pays, which had a green and yellow canopy above huge, misshapen Marmande tomatoes, crisp lettuces, giant courgettes, cucumbers, artichokes, green beans, onions, garlic, stacks of pink and red radishes and a small mountain of cornichons. The stallholder was a jolly man in green overalls, who struck up a conversation and cracked a joke with any potential customer.
The fruit stall nearby had a mouth-watering display, wooden trays of full, ripe fruit: peaches, both red and yellow fleshed, large Agen plums, small yellow mirabelles, grapes, stacks of yellow melons, and the first apples and pears of the season from Spain. We asked for some delicious-looking apricot-plums. The fruitière helpfully told us not to choose our plums from the tray because they were not the best; instead she brought out a fresh tray of even riper and more succulent fruit from under the stall. The apricot-plums had red and orange skin like plums, and the flesh and taste of apricots. They were very juicy: as we bit into them the juice ran through our fingers and dribbled down our fronts.
A stall beside the doors to the church, Torréfaction Artisanale de Cafés, sold loose coffee beans and tea from giant round tins, and sweet things like nougat, candied fruit and locally produced honey.
The market was all over by lunchtime, the stalls shut up and driven away. In the afternoon the town went quiet: the square was empty, the streets deserted, the shops closed up and the shutters drawn on the apartment windows above. It seemed that the residents had all gone home for a sieste to recover from the excitement. Perhaps they needed to gather their energy for next week.
As I later discovered, we were by no means the first foreigners to pass through this bastide. Nearly two hundred years earlier, during the rainy spring of 1814, the Duke of Wellington had garrisoned the British army at Boulogne-sur-Gesse.
Towards the end of the Peninsular War, Wellington invaded southwest France, pursuing the French army under General Soult through southern Gascony. In February, at the battle of Orthez, the Iron Duke was slightly injured when a musket ball hit his sword hilt, bruising his thigh and leaving him limping for several days. The battle-weary army bivouacked at the mediaeval town of Pau to recuperate. Wellington, who never travelled without his hounds, went foxhunting. The rolling countryside of Gascony was ideal for pursuing the local renard.
The French withdrew and took the longer but surer route through Saint-Gaudens towards Toulouse. General Soult was a Gascon and he knew the terrain. The British took the shorter route through Boulogne-sur-Gesse and Lombez in an attempt at heading off the French. They had chosen unwisely: the roads through the valleys of the Gesse and the Save were in an awful condition, and they had problems with rain, mud and swollen rivers.
Wellington garrisoned his army of about 50,000 troops at Boulogne-sur-Gesse on 23 March. The arrival of so many soldiers was a serious concern for the local population, and the small town must have been overwhelmed. The Boulonnais need not have feared. Wellington was a strict disciplinarian and issued an order that every scrap of his men’s provisions was to be paid for. When a local farmer complained that one of his geese was missing, straight away a search was mounted for the bird. The missing goose couldn’t be found, until some soldiers started laughing at the sound of flapping and squawking coming from inside a drummer-soldier’s drum. The stolen goose was extracted, given back to the farmer, and the soldier was duly punished.
There was another problem with bullock carts being taken by the army without the owners’ consent, for carrying food and equipment. Wellington issued an order that commandeered carts were to be returned to their owners and payments made in full. In future, no bullock cart was to be kept by the army for longer than a day’s march.
The local population came to welcome Wellington and his troops as liberators. The French army had not behaved so well: the Duke authorised local mayors to form urban guards, to protect the Gascons from marauding French soldiers.
The presence of the British army at Boulogne-sur-Gesse left no permanent mark, as if the town were simply too small to meet the grand events of history face to face. Wellington and his troops stayed there briefly, then moved on, leaving the town to get on with its business. On 24 March the British reached L’Isle-en-Dodon, where Wellington issued an order that because of the wet weather, all infantry soldiers and non-commissioned office
rs were to be issued with new shoes, gratis.
Wellington caught up with General Soult at Toulouse in early April. The battle outside the city on 10 April was a decisive victory for the British and ended the military campaign in the southwest. Wellington was received as a conquering hero. The Prefect and the Mayor of the city had fled. The Deputy Mayor and most of the municipal council, with the Urban Guard drawn up in rank, accompanied by a band and a vast assembly of citizens, waited to greet Wellington at one of the main gates to the city. Unfortunately, the Duke didn’t know about this, and he entered by another gate. Everyone made a dash to the main square, where the whole delegation hastily reassembled. A messenger ran off to tell Wellington, who was a little confused when he was finally led into the square. Amid great cheers and applause, the Deputy Mayor presented him with the keys to the city on a velvet cushion while the French band played God Save the King.
When peace was formally declared, the town hall, known as the Capitole, was decked out with laurel branches and royalist banners. The Toulousains threw Napoleon’s statue out of the window; they had had enough of the tyrant and the trouble he had caused. While the Allied generals ate dinner in the Capitole and toasted their victory with champagne, the news reached them of Napoleon’s abdication six days earlier at Fontainebleau.
A spin-off from the Gascony campaign was the development of tourism in Pau. Many of the officers in Wellington’s army had been so delighted with the town during the bivouac there that at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, some veterans of the campaign returned and began developing the mediaeval town into a Victorian health resort. It quickly grew famous for the healing effects of its rarefied climate and the benefits of the local mineral waters. By the middle of the nineteenth century it was a star resort for the British, a genteel outpost of the Empire. It became known as Pau-Ville-Anglaise, a playground for leisured tourists and expatriates.
A Summer In Gascony Page 14