Fursac: Un Poulet, Deux Mairies et Trois Hommes
This is the extraordinary story of how there came to be two town halls in the same building in the same small Limousin settlement of Fursac.
Fursac: Un Poulet, Deux Mairies et Trois Hommes
It is a great story, and it involves three desperate men and a chicken and it goes like this:
The two communes of St Etienne and St Pierre de Fursac are twinned by a town simply called Fursac. It has not always been so. The two burghs remained for a long time separated by a branch of the river Gartempe that passed behind the church of St Etienne, tracing the boundary between the two burghs. On some unknown date in the past, the ford or bridge that crossed the river was destroyed by a violent flood. The river was filled in; St Etienne and St Pierre became a single burgh. During the hundred years war, St Etienne was English, St Pierre was French. It took until 1527 for the two parishes to be definitively restored to the crown of France, one as part of Poitou, the other in Limousin. One the eve of the French Revolution, the two burghs still did not use the same weights and measures! Until 1789, Fursac was, in some ways, a frontier post built on the line of political rivalry between England and France, between Limousin and Poitou, between the Priory of Benevent and the provostship of La Souterraine. Saint Etienne had the left bank and the Gartempe valley, St Pierre had the right bank and the limestone cliffs.
But what about the chickens?
Hear what a witness says: Quand j'étais enfant, mon arrière grand-mère me racontait des histoires du temps passé, dont une qui l'avait profondément marquée. Après la capitulation de Paris en janvier 1871, l'armée française battit en retraite et une de ses unités arriva à Fursac. Ces hommes étaient épuisés et affamés. Un jour, trois d'entre eux attrapèrent une poule, la firent cuire sur un feu de bois mort et la mangèrent. Hélas, ils furent vus et dénoncés à leurs supérieurs. Un tribunal militaire se réunit et nos trois soldats furent condamnés à mort. Cette condamnation vraiment disproportionnée, émut la population et des protestations fusèrent faisant fléchir l'autorité militaire qui décida de commuer la peine à condition que les maires des sept communes environnantes accordent leur grâce. Nos trois soldats allèrent donc demander aux maires un avis favorable.
When I was a child, my great-grandmother told me stories from the past, of which one moved her profoundly. After the fall of Paris in January 1871, the French army beat their retreat and one of its units arrived at Fursac. The men were exhausted and starving. One day, three of them caught a chicken, cooked it on the embers of a camp fire and ate it. Alas!, they were seen and denounced to their superiors. A military tribunal met and our three soldiers were sentenced to death. This truly disproportionate sentence moved the population and protests followed, stinging the military authorities who then decided to commute the sentence on condition that the Mayors of the seven surrounding communes gave their blessing.
Les six premiers acceptèrent.
The first six agreed.
Il ne restait que celui de Saint Étienne de Fursac. Hélas la grâce fut refusée par le maire de l'époque.
Il n'y avait donc pas unanimité.
That just left the one from Saint Etienne de Fursac. Alas!, blessing was refused by the Mayor of the day. There was therefore no unanimity.
La sentence fut exécutée au pied d'un arbre, dans un pré, à la sortie du bourg de Fursac, sur la route de Chamborand. Cet acte odieux fut désapprouvé par la population de la région et chaque dimanche au cours de la messe le curé ne manquait pas de prier pour la mémoire de ces trois soldats morts pour rien. Les jeunes filles de Fursac et des villages alentours allaient, en sortant de l' église, au cimetière de Saint Étienne, porter des fleurs sur les tombes de ces trois malheureux.
Sentence was executed at the foot of a tree, in a meadow, on the way out of the burgh of Fursac, on the road to Chamborand. This odious act was berated by the population of the area and every Sunday during Mass the priest did not neglect to pray for the memory of the three soldiers killed for nothing. The young women of Fursac and surrounding villages went, after church, to the cemetary of St Etienne de Fursac to place flowers on their graves.
Other stories tell how the seventh Mayor changed his mind just too late to save the soldiers, how the pregnant women of Fursac gathered around the tree of execution to try and prevent it, how the bodies were carried away to the cemetery, still bleeding from their wounds and the river of blood that was spilled on that day separates to two communes to this day.
It remains a source of great disappointment to us that the three of us did not have chicken for our dinner that night.
The sources for this story can be found at the following addresses:
Last updated 17th August 2005