This week, our columnist Étienne Madranges takes us to Lozère, in the Occitanie region. Land of legends, rural refuge of city dwellers who aspire to a quiet life, the former Gévaudan is an authentic terroir which has retained its traditions.
On this territory, humans have been decimated by animals, a prefect was shot, a court was energized. These events do not make it a tormented land, although it still contains a few bell towers… of turmoil!
The beast of Gévaudan, legend or truth?
(the mandate of the bishop of Mende)
They have XVIIIe century, between 1764 and 1767, more than 80 inhabitants of Gévaudan (current Lozère) were attacked by an animal, quickly described as a “fierce beast”. Some victims see their clothes torn, others are devoured. The king's soldiers intervene. We suspect a wolf, even several wolves. Batts are organized. But the hunt remains in vain.
On December 31, 1764, the bishop of Mende, Gabriel de Choiseul-Beaupré, published a mandate that will pass to posterity under the title of ” Mandate of the bishop of Mende ». A mandate is a pastoral letter that a bishop addresses to the faithful of his diocese. The prelate quotes the Bible there, orders prayers and songs against this scourge that the beast represents.
Fearing a divine punishment, the inhabitants of Gévaudan multiply prayers, masses and pilgrimages.
A fertilizer holder of Louis XV, second lieutenant at the Royal Harder of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, fell a large wolf in 1765. The animal was stamped and sent to the court in Versailles. We believe the classified affair! But soon after, the attacks resumed. It was not until June 1767 that a peasant killed another wolf (or a dog resembling a wolf) and the carnage ceases.
The mystery of “The Beast of Gévaudan” feeds the Gazettes and will inspire a number of authors of books, plays, comics and films.
A tormented campaign
(Turmoil bell towers, apotropaic tocsins)
The Lozère department offers splendid landscapes and incomparable panoramas. But in some corners of Mont Lozère, fog and storms, muds, mist and snow brought the inhabitants of several isolated hamlets without churches, at the beginning of the 19th centurye century, to build civil bell towers quickly titled “Tourment bell towers” using local materials for these modest edicts: granite, shale, limestone.
Intended, by its tingling, to guide the inhabitants, the shepherds in distress or the visitors lost to the heart of the village, the bell, often smaller than a church bell, but very sound, also allowed to celebrate Births, deaths, communions, return of classes or village events and ring the angelus.
When the mist invades Mount Lozère. © Étienne Madranges
Tourment bell towers (they are five in Lozère) are therefore not only a way to ring the tocsin to find a path.
For those who love language and its origins, let us specify that the word tocsin appeared in 1611 and that it comes from the Provencal word ” Tocasenh “, Coming from” tap “(Strike or ring) and” Senh “(Bell, coming from Latin sign). We find in the 16the century spelling ” tocquesainct “Or” touquesain » et « toquesing ».
These civil bell towers combine spatial interest as sound benchmarks in the event of bad weather and religious utility for lack of church bell -tower throughout the year.
They finally present, for the superstitious and all those who fear the devil, an apotropaic interest in order to ward off bad spells and keep demons away!
Four turmoil bell towers from Lozère to Auriac (Saint-Julien du Tournel), Les Sagnes (Saint-Julien-du-Tournel), Outlet (Saint-Julien-du-Tournel) and Serviès (Mas d'Orcières). © Étienne Madranges
Belonging to the remarkable rural heritage, they were classified as historic monuments in 1991. A pedestrian course of around five hours by 18 km allows them to discover them during a hike rich in discovery of panoramas and wild landscapes.
A prefect shot
(a severely sanctioned collaboration)
Appointed in 1941 in Mende, the prefect of Lozère Roger Druch is a faithful of Marshal Pétain. He resolutely puts himself at the service of the Germans. Following the betrayal of the Irenea Bretou gendarme which was aware of maquisard movements, he reported to the occupier in May 1944 the presence of resistance fighters of the maquis “Bir Hakeim” at the parade, a village of Causse Méjean.
At the end of May 1944, the German forces, including two rifle companies from the Armenian Legion, storm and kill the chief of the maquisards, Jean Capel alias Commander Barot. The Germans capture villagers and plan to bury them alive as well as shot the parish priest. Finally, losing themselves in battle 9 soldiers, they manage to kill 34 maquisards. They capture 35 other fighters than a Luftwaffe peloton rush roughly without trial.
-Mende was released in late August 1944. The prefect DUTRUCH was immediately arrested for his collaboration with the occupier. He is incarcerated in the remand center located in the city center. Judged by the court martial of the Lozère sitting in Mende, he was sentenced to death on September 25, 1944, as well as the gendarmerie commander Pierre Bruguière. Both are shot on September 28 in front of the wall of Mende prison. Following his appeal in grace, the Bretou gendarme sees his capital sentence commissioned in thirty years of imprisonment.
Mende's prison, inaugurated in 1891, and the wall in front of which was shot the prefect DUTRUCH after being imprisoned there. © Étienne Madranges
Reputed to be “sure”, Mende's little prison “will host” briefly in 1974 Jacques Mesrine, who had escaped in 1972 from a Quebec prison and who had friendship with Willoquet, escaped from a Parisian prison.
A court plasticized
(dynamite to stop a dynamic)
During the night of February 17 to 18, 1994, three buildings in the city of Mende were blown away by violent explosions. The courthouse is severely degraded by plasticization immediately claimed by the Corsican terrorists of the FLNC.
1994 is a year during which the FLNC commits countless attacks both in France and in Corsica: machine -gunning of a dozen gendarmeries, plasticings destroying many villas, hotels and shops, attack on the Palais de Justice d 'Ajaccio in particular.
The authors of the Mennde plasticings who have damaged the court, the building housing the tax services and the academic inspection are two Bastiai teachers, Jean Castela and Vincent Andriuzzi. They will be sentenced to 8 and 10 years' imprisonment. They were also involved in the assassination of the prefect Érignac but will be bleached by this other accusation.
Mende was chosen by the Corsican terrorists due to the outfit in the chief town of the Lozère, on July 12, of an interministerial regional planning committee chaired by Edouard Balladur in which Minister of State had participated Pasqua, Minister of the Interior and Regional Planning …
During its history, the Mende courthouse has been the victim since its inauguration in 1836 of a multitude of incidents in 1836: collapse of vaults, persistent humidity, complaints of occupants and users before the state of dilapidation of insanitary premises, Lack of heating, roof requiring a complete repair in 1988… and finally a boosting…
The facade of the Mende justice palace, built by architects Boivin and Dangles in 1833 on land that belonged to a criminal court president who had been a lawyer at the bailiwick. © Étienne Madranges
Fortunately, the attack on the courthouse does not make any victims, despite the presence on the spot at the time of the concierge facts which suffered a nightmare night there. On the other hand, the material damage is considerable and will require an expensive restoration.
The guillotined mortuary mask
(face of a beheaded assassin)
There is a curiosity in Mende court. It is even the only copy of this kind of unusual object in a French court. There is indeed a mortuary mask belonging to the Société des Lettres, Sciences et Arts de Lozère, produced in 1855 by a pharmacist on the head of a guillotine to death.
Maurice Rousson, from Saint-Étienne-Vallée-Française, found guilty of eight assassinations and two assassination attempts, sentenced to death by the Lozère Assize Court on March 28, 1855, was indeed guillotined in Mende le May 23, 1855.
He had killed to steal the members of the family of François Rousson, his cousin, then murdered and stripped the Chabrol family in 1854.
Just after the take -up operated by the cleaver, the pharmacist had the authorization to practice a molding of the beheaded head.
The courtroom of the Mende court and the mortuary mask of the Assassin Rousson, guillotined in 1855. © Étienne Madranges
Integrated residents, a tormented weather, a shot prefect, a plastic court … La Lozère remains above all a densely not populated department with magnificent landscapes. Gorges, trays, forests, mountains, eagles, vultures and wolves, natural wealth, remarkable villages and hamlets, persistent traditions, traditional markets, local products make it a place to discover and travel.
Etienne Madranges
Court lawyer
Honorary magistrate
