eatedly ravaged and rebuilt over the centuries, perch on their precarious peaks like eagles' aeries. To reinforce the authority of the Crown in Auvergne, Cardinal Richelieu had these citadels systematically destroyed in 1629. The old defensive walls of Tournoël, Châteaugay, Murols, Arlempdes, Léotoing, Polignac, and Billy bear witness to the region's tumultuous military history.
On these hardscrabble high plains and mountains, life has long been a struggle for subsistence. Farmers had to battle brambles and weeds for a share of stony soil on which only poor crops like buckwheat and barley would grow; they cleared forest for a patch of grass to feed their single cow; they braved floods and bitter storms. “My own grandmother” (says André Gayot), “the eldest of seven children, used to tell me how, when she walked her little brothers and sisters to school on the snowy tracks of Pontgibaut, she would have to ward off hungry wolves who loped out of the forest!”
A taciturn people
Auvergnats are a taciturn race of country people. Their innate reserve is reflected in Auvergne's culture, mentality, and even in the landscape. Opulent dwellings and showy châteaux are rare. The few examples that do exist are found in the cities of the plain: Clermont-Ferrand, Riom--and they are usually hidden away at the end of winding, narrow streets, behind ancient ramparts. Others are found on the northern plains of Limagne and the Bourbonnais, where rich soil yields plentiful harvests of wheat, or else in the foothills where almond and peach orchards grow alongside the vineyards of Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule, Corent, and Châteaugay. In fact, there are two Auvergnes: the fertile plains of the north that open out to the progressive influences of Paris (Moulins, Vichy, Riom, Clermont), and the Auvergne of mountains and high plateaus, increasingly abandoned by farmers and given over to grasslands, cattle-grazing, or tourism--skiing in winter, climbing and hiking in summer. In spring the herds of tawny-robed Salers cows are still moved to mountain pastures where they spend the summer in the open air.
These two very different Auvergnes correspond in their way to the linguistic divisions that once prevailed in France: the southern langue d'Oc and the northern langue d'Oïl which was the language of Gothic art and culture. With Vichy, its major city, the Bourbonnais extends north to just beyond Moulins and west to Montluçon, a buffer zone, so to speak, between the Paris basin (of which it is geologically a part) and Auvergne (to which it is administratively attached). While Auvergne is mountainous, save for the Limagne plain which is contiguous to the Bourbonnais, the latter's gentle valleys benefit from a milder climate. Life there is less hard and the art of living more gracious.
Because it raises a 250-kilometer barrier to clouds rushing in from the ocean, the Massif Central is literally the water tower of France. Rivers rush out in all directions to irrigate the land. The springs that bubble up to the surface from deep in the earth are charged with beneficial minerals. As far back as antiquity, the Romans established thermal spas in Auvergne. The waters of Volvic are filtered by volcanic rock, and are as pure as if they had been distilled. Curists take the waters at Vichy, the queen of spas, for digestive problems; at Châtelguyon, for the kidneys; at Le Mont-Dore and La Bourboule for bronchitis; at Royat for the heart; at Bourbon-l'Archambault for rheumatism... In Auvergne, Nature can soothe nearly any ill!
The young volcanoes--extinct for a mere 5,000 years--that are scattered throughout Auvergne give these springs their vitality (150°F at Vichy!). And they also give the landscape its haunting beauty, softened by the passage of millennia. The spectacular Dômes range and the Monts Dore and their region are protected environments since the creation in 1977 of a vast Parc Naturel des Volcans. Lakes sparkle in former craters (Lac Servière, Lac Pavin, Lac Chauvet, Gour de Tazenat) or in naturally dammed valleys (Lac Chambon, Lac d'Aydat); man-made lakes gl