Foch the Man | Page 4

Foch was a little boy of
seven.
He must have heard many soul-stirring tales about little Bernadette, the
peasant girl to whom the grotto's miraculous qualities were revealed by
the Virgin, and whose stories were weighed by the Bishop of Tarbes
before the Catholic Church sponsored them. The procession of
sufferers through Tarbes on their way to Lourdes, and the joyful return
of many, must have been part of the background of Ferdinand Foch's
young days.
Many important highways converge at Tarbes, which lies in a rich,
elevated plain on the left bank of the River Adour.

The town now has some 30,000 inhabitants, but when Ferdinand Foch
was a little boy it had fewer than half that many.
For many centuries of eventful history it has consisted principally of
one very long street, running east and west over so wide a stretch of
territory that the town was called Tarbes-the-Long. Here and there this
"main street" is crossed by little streets running north and south and
giving glimpses of mountains, green fields and orchards; and many of
these are threaded by tiny waterways--small, meandering children of
the Adour, which take themselves where they will, like the chickens in
France, and nobody minds having to step over or around them, or
building his house to humor their vagaries.
Tarbes was a prominent city of Gaul under the Romans. They, who
could always be trusted to make the most of anything of the nature of
baths, seem to have been duly appreciative of the hot springs in which
that region abounds.
But nothing of stirring importance happened at or near Tarbes until
after the battle of Poitiers (732), when the Saracens were falling back
after the terrible defeat dealt them by Charles Martel.
Sullen and vengeful, they were pillaging and destroying as they went,
and probably none of the communities through which they passed felt
able to offer resistance to their depredations--until they got to Tarbes.
And there a valiant priest named Missolin hastily assembled some of
the men of the vicinity and gave the infidels a good drubbing--killing
many and hastening the flight, over the mountains, of the rest.
This encounter took place on a plain a little to the south of Tarbes
which is still called the Heath of the Moors.
When Ferdinand Foch was a little boy, more than eleven hundred years
after that battle, it was not uncommon for the spade or plowshare of
some husbandman on the heath to uncover bones of Christian or infidel
slain in what was probably the last conflict fought on French soil to
preserve France against the Saracens. And there may still have been
living some old, old men or women who could tell Ferdinand stories of

the 24th of May (anniversary of the battle) as it was observed each year
until the Revolution of 1789. At the southern extremity of the
battlefield there stood for many generations a gigantic equestrian statue,
of wood, representing the holy warrior, Missolin, rallying his flock to
rout the unbelievers. And in the presence of a great concourse singing
songs of grateful praise to Missolin, his statue was crowned with
garlands by young maidens wearing the picturesque gala dress of that
vicinity.
Some forty-odd years after Missolin's victory, Charlemagne went with
his twelve knights and his great army through Tarbes on his way to
Spain to fight the Moors. And when that ill-starred expedition was
defeated and its warriors bold were fleeing back to France, Roland--so
the story goes--finding no pass in the Pyrénées where he needed one
desperately, cleaved one with his sword Durandal.
High up among the clouds (almost 10,000 feet) is that Breach of
Roland--200 feet wide, 330 feet deep, and 165 feet long. A good
slice-out for a single stroke! And when Roland had cut it, he dashed
through it and across the chasm, his horse making a clean jump to the
French side of the mountains. That no one might ever doubt this, the
horse thoughtfully left the mark of one iron-shod hoof clearly imprinted
in the rock just where he cleared it, and where it is still shown to the
curious and the stout of wind.
It is a pity to remember that, in spite of such prowess of knight and
devotion of beast. Roland perished on his flight from Spain.
But, like all brave warriors, he became mightier in death even than he
had been in life, and furnished an ideal of valor which animated the
most chivalrous youth of all Europe, throughout many centuries.
With such traditions is the country round about Tarbes impregnated.
It has been suggested that the name Foch (which, by the way, is
pronounced as if it rhymed with "hush") is derived from Foix--a town
some sixty miles east of St. Gaudens, near which was