Varennes, Le Vigean, Veniers, Velleches, Verrieres, Venneuil-sur-Biard.
Several of these are under churches, others under castles. At some of
these places are three or more distinct _souterrains._]

Victor Hugo, in his _Quatrevingt Treise_, speaking of the war in
La Vendee, says: "It is difficult to picture to oneself what these
Breton forests really were. They were towns. Nothing could be more
secret, more silent, and more savage. There were wells round and small,
masked by coverings of stones or by branches. The interiors at first
vertical, then carried horizontally, spread out underground like
tunnels, and ended in dark chambers." These excavations, he states, had
been there from time immemorial. He continues: "One of the wildest
glades of the wood at Misdon, perforated by galleries and cells, out of
which came and went a mysterious society, was called 'The Great City.'
The gloomy Breton forests were servants and accomplices of rebellion.
The subsoil of every forest was a sort of sponge, pierced and traversed
in all directions by a secret highway of mines, cells and galleries.
Each of these blind cells could shelter five or six men. Usually the
cover, made of moss and branches, was so artistically fashioned that,
although impossible on the outside to distinguish it from the
surrounding turf, it was very easy to open and close from the inside.
In several of these forests and woods there were not only subterranean
villages grouped about the burrow of the chief, but also actual hamlets
of low huts hidden under the trees. These underground belligerents were
kept perfectly informed of what was going on. Nothing could be more
rapid, nothing more mysterious, than their means of communication.
Sometimes they raised the cover of their hiding-places and listened to
hear if there was fighting in the distance." He mentions the ability of
the ambushed men to spring up, as it were, under the feet of the armies
sent against them. And to show the numbers of the concealed forces, he