The following is an account, drawn from testimony given about a noteworthy 17th Century event at the Chateau de Balsac:

 

“On May 4, 1660, René de Faramond was awakened by cries and a great tumult which started from a house next to the chateau belonging to a peasant named Jean Roques.  René got up in a hurry, ran to the scene and found himself in the middle of nine to ten strangers who were threatening the owners of the house. 

Expecting to get involved, Rene was accompanied by his staff, who grabbed the rowdies and escorted them to the chateau prison or locked basement.   (Due to testimony given later, we know the names of each of the brigands.  Many of them were disaffected war veterans.)

Some of the actors of the night scene, escaped, ran off to Rodez, and there they had spread the news that the Lord of Balsac, without any reason, had treated their comrades brutally, and that they ran a great risk, locked in cramped dungeons.  It did not take more to irritate the spirits and excite among all the bourgeois a feeling of indignation and revenge.

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The next day, around noon a group of armed men arrived in the village and announced that they were there to  “deliver their oppressed comrades and bring to reason the lord of the castle.”  They gathered in the church, where the

parish priest was an enemy of the lord, and made plans to attack the chateau.  But Faramond had barricaded the gates, armed his servants, and prepared a defense. In particular, he had placed flower pots and other items in the windows that resembled canons, guns and weaponry he did not have.  The besiegers, astonished at the formidable appearance of the chateau’s defences, dared not risk an attack.  everything this apparatus, dared not risk an attack and asked for help.

Some help arrived from Rodez – practically a small army of perhaps 500 men made its way to Balsac.  In a council of war held by their chiefs, it was decided that Faramond would be summoned to surrender; otherwise, they would reduce his chateau to ashes and the entire set of occupants would be subject to the sword.  The lord’s reply was not long in coming.  The number of aggressors, he said, did not frighten him at all, and rather than surrender, he would blow up the castle and bury himself alive with his family in its ruins. This resolute response greatly embarrassed the besiegers who expected an easy conquest. Big solid walls, gates armed with harrows, ramparts to be climbed, ditches to cross… did not seem easy and above all harmless to all these good bourgeois more suited to the sweets and conveniences of a peaceful life than the fatigue of war.  While they were reflecting on the difficulties of their business and the means to get away with honor, the master of the castle, still full of confidence and courage, and noticing their irresolution, exhorted the garrison to hold on, and gave the order to fire on the first who dared to approach the place too closely.  A few musket shots fired at the same time on a fairly harmless group that had come too close, demonstrated that the master of the house was a keeper of his word, and that he would put up a good defense.

The order was given to the head of the artillery to begin firing; but when the soldiers tried to maneuver their cannons, they noticed that the lighting holes were completely blocked with rust, and that the cannons were unusable. 

Someone then proposed transforming the siege of the chateau into a blockade, and in the meantime to go foraging in the countryside. This proposal was greeted with enthusiasm, so the main body of men set off to pillage the land and possessions belonging to the lord, in particular the nearby barns, farmyard and storage rooms.

Once they’d done their damage, the troop returned to the village but found it deserted.    The soldiers in charge of maintaining the blockage of the village and chateau had become tired of waiting while their comrades had their fun rumbling around, so they  packed up and left, returning to Rodez. 

The leaders of the siege finally understood that the soldiers were impatient and discouraged and would not be easily led to mount an assault.  So they ordered a retreat. The troop departed, carting the non-functioning artillery and a few peasants taken as prisoners of war. 

Apparently they were well received back in Rodez for having escaped great peril.

What explains this hostility toward the lords of Balsac was an old grudge that at the time of the wars of religion, the lords had

sided with the bishops of the house of Corneillan against the city of Rodez. The present opportunity shattered it. The manuscripts suggests that the enmity had grown so much that the main presidential officers of Rodez were the organizers and motivators of this undertaking.

Be that as it may, the consequences were quite serious. We can see by the various documents of a voluminous procedure that the officers of the administration of Villefranche de Rouergue evoked the affair, and that the Parliament of Toulouse in 1664 ordered the capture of the principal authors of the attack, then suspended the ringleaders from their functions in local government.  Ultimately, the king, Louis XIV, by an edict, ordered that Balsac would henceforth be removed from the remit of Rodez to be included in that of Villefranche.

But apparently, some spirits were too heated to calm down despite the edicts.  In 1665, the peasants of the land of Joqueviel, where the Faramond family originated, aligned with long-deposed Albigensian excited by emissaries from Rouergue, attacked the castle of Joqueviel, pillaged it and set it on fire. This event gave rise to a complaint against the perpetrators.   To his surprise, the baron of Joqueviel (the same Faramond, Lord of Balsac) saw himself condemned by the subdelegates from Albi to five years of banishment and a fine.  He appealed to the king who, in his private council in 1665, quashed the Albi judgement, and referred the parties to the parliament of Toulouse. This court definitively reformed the judgment of Albi, and condemned the subdelegates who had made the banishment pronouncement to the same penalty they had given René de Faramond.”

 

There was a long line of Faramond family members until the last Faramond in Balsac, August-Alexandre, sold the chateau in 1779 before dying in Albi in 1795.

 

Guillaume Grailhe, the son of a Rodez merchant, acquired the Château de Balsac in 1779 from Auguste-Alexandre de Faramond for 75,000 livres, payable as an annual life annuity of 4,800 livres. This is equivalent to approximately €54,000 annually in today’s money.

 

Grailhe was apparently well off, and had 8 children.  He was the first of a long-line of non-noble bourgeois owners of the property.  The estate included extensive lands with meadows, orchards, vineyards, and woodlands, as well as a fully furnished house (the main house of the chateau) with gardens and various agricultural facilities. The property was described as having numerous fruit trees, including at least 350 walnut trees, and approximately 4,000 grapevines. The chateau’s grounds featured enclosed gardens, a grand avenue lined with horse chestnut trees, and multiple outbuildings such as stables, barns, and a dovecote (still present at the main entrance to the property. 

 

According to excerpts from the deed describing the property:

 

“The lands ceded represent an important heritage: there are a certain number of meadows, (with fruit trees: at least 350 walnut trees, pear trees, apple trees), vines (4000 stumps), at least 3 woods, in particular the wood of the Limouze valley, which... “at the top and above the Sauvage wood, was completely degraded by the Guizot rascals”; in the large meadow at the bottom of the large wood, the same Guizot “cut down the most beautiful acorn trees and set fire to those they could not cut down, for the sole pleasure of harming and doing evil”; the meadows and vines are generally surrounded by walls, called “murailles”.

 

When approaching the castle, the land currently in line with the southern façade consists of an enclosure surrounded by “high walls” crossed from end to end by an alley, and occupied by a meadow and a grove of “high woods which protect the small oaks which grow there”; the garden in front of the façade, also surrounded by walls, includes a well, 4 huts, a pond, fruit trees, a vegetable garden, trees on either side of a central alley; almost nothing of all this can be found in modern times; only the well has at least kept its location, if not its appearance! - the entire courtyard is surrounded by a beautiful wall; the gate of the time (corresponding to the current access) is described: 2 leaves, 6 hinges and straps, 2 locks, 1 large bolt, 1 iron beater with its anvil; “above the said gate, a dovecote, a large number of escaped pigeons, with tablets, a table, a good door with its hinges, iron hinges and key, as well as the platform which is in front of the door of the said dovecote, and the staircase”. The appearance, there, has remained generally the same at present.

 

Before the said gate or carriage entrance, there is a beautiful avenue with a new wall on each side, a covered well with a beautiful stone trough for watering the horses, 3 stone benches and 3 horse chestnut trees on each side”; the remains of this arrangement are still visible: the edges of the avenue have been built, the stone benches have disappeared, but the well is still there, in the neighboring school, and there remains a single old horse chestnut tree, on the south side.

 

We also describe, upon entering, a garden, the farmyard with buildings containing a washhouse, pigsties, a press, a shed, stables, barns and conveniences; on the other side of the castle is, in addition to another vegetable garden, a second farmyard with several barns, a chicken coop and stables and stables intended for cows, oxen, sheep and obviously horses! The spaces, as we can see, were comfortable; they have, since then, notably shrunk because of the modifications and alterations made later.”​