The town now has some 30,000 inhabitants, but when Ferdinand Foch was a
little boy it had fewer than half that many.

For many centuries of eventful history it has consisted principally of
one very long street, running east and west over so wide a stretch of
territory that the town was called Tarbes-the-Long. Here and there
this "main street" is crossed by little streets running north and south
and giving glimpses of mountains, green fields and orchards; and many
of these are threaded by tiny waterways--small, meandering children of
the Adour, which take themselves where they will, like the chickens in
France, and nobody minds having to step over or around them, or
building his house to humor their vagaries.

Tarbes was a prominent city of Gaul under the Romans. They, who could
always be trusted to make the most of anything of the nature of baths,
seem to have been duly appreciative of the hot springs in which that
region abounds.

But nothing of stirring importance happened at or near Tarbes until
after the battle of Poitiers (732), when the Saracens were falling back
after the terrible defeat dealt them by Charles Martel.

Sullen and vengeful, they were pillaging and destroying as they went,
and probably none of the communities through which they passed felt
able to offer resistance to their depredations--until they got to
Tarbes. And there a valiant priest named Missolin hastily assembled
some of the men of the vicinity and gave the infidels a good
drubbing--killing many and hastening the flight, over the mountains, of
the rest.