History

We came across Miélan in 2013 after an exhaustive search of properties in the area. The house had many appealing features which had not been lost over time and was asking to be brought back to life and lived in.

We discovered that it had been commissioned by Pierre Leglise who was one of Napoleons General’s, and was described as a son of the Village. There is a facsimile of his military service record on display under the stairs. Napoleon’s Army was known to have traversed through the area whilst under pursuit by Wellington which lead to the Battle of Tarbes (20th March 1814) 25 km south of Miélan. At sometime Napoleon himself was said to have come through the village and apparently the bicentennial cedar trees planted in the garden commemorate this event.

During the occupation in WWII, the area had a high intensity of resistance activity mainly due to the Panzer divisions running out of Tarbes and its rail connections. The Maquis (as the resistance were known) were highly effective but suffered a huge betrayal at a farmhouse in the nearby village of Mielhan where 67 of them were killed by a force of 1200 Nazi’s (7th July 1944). The book “Moondrop to Gascony” talks about the local activity of a French/English resistance fighter aiding airmen across the Pyrenees and one house in the Village housed airmen from time to time plus various others in the locality hid Jewish people from the Nazi’s.

Further back still the Knights Templar were known to have lodges and dwellings in the area and the English were said to have sacked Miélan in the 1355 at the behest of the Black Prince who had his Citadel at Lourdes as part of his Aquitaine exploits.