SOUTERRAINS
a mixture of lamentations and threats; the starving wretches warn the Church, the King, the Burgesses, the Merchants, the Seigneurs above all, that 'fire is drawing nigh to their hostels.' They appeal to the king for help. But what could Charles VII. do? How impose respect and obedience on so many daring men? Where could he find the means to repress these flayers of the country, these terrible little kings of castles? They were his own captains. It was with their aid that he made war against the English."[1]
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.
The peasantry might have said then, what was said long after by Voltaire: "Il faut être dans ce monde enclume ou marteau; j'étais né enclume." Voltaire, however, speedily became a hammer, and after 1789 the Tiers État also became a hammer, and the Noblesse the anvil.
In Iceland there were underground retreats, as we learn from the same Saga that tells us of those in Aquitaine. Orvar Odd found a king's daughter concealed in one. So, also, a very large one in Ireland is spoken of in the Landnama Bok. In England we have, both in Essex and in Kent, subterranean passages and chambers very similar to those described in Picardy and in Aquitaine. These also are excavated in the chalk. They are the so-called Dene Holes, of which there are many in Darenth Wood and near Chislehurst, and they have given occasion to a lively controversy. Some have supposed them to be retreats of the Druids, some that they were places of refuge during the invasions of the Saxons first, and then of the Danes, and others again con-
- ↑ Hist. de France, v. p. 184 et seq.
95
