Citadel is a work of fiction, although the imaginary characters exist against a backdrop of real events. It was inspired by a plaque in the village of Roullens, outside Carcassonne, commemorating the ‘Martyrs of Baudrigues’, the nineteen prisoners who were executed by fleeing Nazi forces on 19 August 1944, a matter of days before the Languedoc was liberated by its own people. Over time, most of the victims have been identified. There are three commemorative stones at Baudrigues: one apiece for the two leading members of the Aude resistance – Jean Bringer (‘Myriel’) and Aimé Ramond – and one listing nineteen other résistants, including two ‘unknown women’. Wondering about who those women might be was the starting point for this story.
Nearly seventy years after the end of the Second World War, estimates vary as to how many people were involved in the Resistance and the Maquis. By its clandestine nature, people could not admit to involvement at the time for fear of reprisal. Subsequently, a veil of secrecy fell over the années noires, which has only begun to lift in recent years. What is clear is that, following the invasion and occupation of the zone libre by German forces in November 1942 – and the introduction of forced labour laws, the hated service du travail obligatoire (STO) in February 1943 – there was a significant increase in Resistance activity in the South. This continued until the liberation of the Aude in August 1944.
It is also clear that, as the history of the Resistance in France was written, the ‘book of myths’ – to use Adrienne Rich’s phrase – women’s roles were underplayed. In part this is because many women themselves wished to forget and return to their ordinary lives, and in part because some historians overlooked the particular, and different, nature of women’s contributions. More than fifty thousand Médailles de la Résistance were awarded, both to those still alive and posthumously, though proportionately few were awarded to women. And of the 1,061 Croix de la Libération – presented by Général de Gaulle for exceptional acts of resistance and bravery – only six were given to women. Anecdotal evidence, not least talking to parents and grandparents of Carcassonnais friends, suggests there were many women involved in active roles in the Aude and the Ariège. I am indebted to contemporary accounts of female Resistance activity, in particular those of Lisa Fittko and Lucie Aubrac, as well as Margaret L. Rossiter’s excellent Women in the Resistance, H. R. Kedward’s In Search of the Maquis and Julien Allaux’s comprehensive La 2ème Guerre Mondiale dans l’Aude.
There was never – to my knowledge – an all-female network such as my imaginary réseau ‘Citadel’, nor is there any record of a Coustaussa Maquis. But there certainly were women involved in active roles in networks in the South. It is also important to note that the Resistance and Maquis in the Midi was far from being an exclusively French affair – German, Belgian, Polish, Czech, Austrian, Dutch and Spanish anti-fascists all fought alongside their French neighbours.
Finally, although the story is based around real events between 1942 and 1944 in the Aude, this is a novel, not an attempt to fictionalise what happened. My principal characters are wholly imagined and I have taken one or two historical liberties for the sake of the story. So although there was a demonstration in Carcassonne against Maréchal Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy government on 14 July 1942, there was no bomb attack and no one was killed. I have deliberately blurred exactly which organisation Leo Authié works for, to ensure he won’t be mistakenly identified with any real person in the Milice, Deuxième Bureau or Carcassonne Commissariat in those years. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would have been allowed into Le Vernet in August 1942, even with a senior-ranking French officer. There was no Couiza Maquis, no massacre of prisoners in Banyuls-sur-Mer or executions in Chalabre in July 1944, and no Gestapo/Milice attack on Coustaussa in August 1944. The stone capitelles do not date back to Roman times and finally, even though a cache of ancient codices was indeed found in caves outside the village of Nag Hammadi in December 1945 – twelve codices, plus eight leaves, containing fifty-two texts – the Codex of Arinius was not among them. That Codex is, I regret to say, entirely imaginary.
Kate Mosse
Carcassonne/Sussex, 2012