Deserted villages

FULGENCE Bienvenue's little white house stands on a windswept crossroads, opposite the statue of a first World War poilu. Bienvenue, "the father of the Paris metro".

I went to the big city and made good more than 100 years ago. He is Uzel's favourite son, the Breton village's only claim to fame. As for the grey steel soldier leaning into the cold wind coming off the English Channel, his raincoat forever flapping, his arm forever raised to say forward", every Breton village has one. A high proportion of the Frenchmen who died in two World Wars came from Britanny; "Bretons don't accept domination," the mayor of nearby St Mayeux said by way of explanation.

"Uzel, to its children dead for France, 1914-18" says the pedestal beneath the soldier. Fifty four names are engraved there, good Breton names like Le Potier and Le Quillec. Here, in just a few square metres, you can see Uzel's past and present. Its present is summed up by an abandoned cafe, just two doors down from Bienvenue's immaculate cottage. "E. Le Guennec, Agricultural Machines, Cafe" is barely legible on the faded sign above the door. Cobwebs cling to the red and white chequered curtains. A rusted bicycle with flat tires is parked inside. The table is stacked high with bottles, books and drinking glasses, as if the cafe's owner fled suddenly in the face of cataclysm.

Every central Breton village has abandoned cafes, shut down bakeries, empty houses. According to the French Delegation a l'amenagement du territoire (DATAR), half of France is now "desertified" - with a population density of less than 30 inhabitants per kilometre, and central Brittany is one of the most recently affected areas. Eight out of 10 Frenchmen now live in cities; at the beginning of the century only two in 10 were city dwellers. In 1965 there were three million farms in France; the industrialisation of agriculture has reduced that to 700,000, and in seven years there will be only 500,000 left.

"We will never repopulate half of French territory," Pascale Lautecaze of DATAR said. "We mustn't dream. The problem for the government is to preserve the necessary public services and infrastructure so that those inhabitants who want to can stay."

Many of those who remain are elderly. In Brittany, 35 per cent of the population is over age 60, compared to a national average of 20 per cent. Arsene Le Neindre, a retired saddle and mattress maker, age 67, was walking through the crossroads in front of the war memorial when I stopped him. "There were four bakers in Uzel," he recalled. "Now there is one. There were three butchers; now there is one. Until the 1950s there were country fairs - people used to come from 30 km around by foot with their cattle. This region was famous for its cloth - they called us "les toileux". People were rich from making fabric and they had a reputation for being somewhat haughty. Now the looms are in the museum."

It was Sunday afternoon, and the village of 990 souls was silent. Thierry Le Potier dropped by Le Cyrano Bar Tabac to see his friend, the cafe owner. Breton music - sounding remarkably Irish - played on the radio. Le Potier's father, like his father before him, is Uzel's village doctor. "It goes back many generations," the young man of 20 said. He is about to leave Uzel to do his military service, and when he finishes in 10 months, he will go to Rennes or Paris to look for a job. "I'll be sorry to go, but I have to." His brother Eric and sister Benedicte are students. "They'll leave too," he said. "If things don't change, everybody will leave. Jobs are the only thing that could make us stay here.

In St Mayeux, the mayor, Robert Chateau (72) told a similar story. His village had 1,200 inhabitants in 1930; today there are 549. St Mayeux was a particularly sociable community, with 27 cafes, only one of which is left today. "On Saturday night, after mass and confession, people met in the cafes to drink cider," he recalled. "Then there was 7 a.m. Mass on Sunday, and people went to the cafes. They went after high Mass at 10 a.m., and after vespers. The bistrots were always full of people." But St Mayeux's last village priest died four years ago and no one has replaced him. Two priests in nearby Corlay serve 12 communities. There is no Sunday Mass in St Mayeux, and after the Saturday evening service, people drive home in their ears. "These days, there are more funerals than weddings or baptisms."

Mr Chateau says the in vogue expression "la France du vide" - the France of the void - describes what is happening to central Brittany. It is not the land that is dying - it is farmed, except for fields left fallow under EU directives - but a way of life has perished. Technology has replaced human effort and fewer farmers are cultivating larger areas, which is why there are so many desolate stone buildings. Down the road at the edge of St Mayeux is an old man who refuses to farm in the new way. Mr Chateau told me.

Chickens cackled and cows lowed in the rundown farmyard. Prosper Boscher appeared in the doorway of the house where he has spent all of his 70 years, wearing a cap, a tattered sweater, oft mended trousers and rub her boots. His parents, Adolphe and Marie, brought him here as a baby, and like many French farmers, he never married. Old wooden armoires and sleigh beds lined the peeling, thick walls of his house, and a fire smouldered in the fireplace. Yellowing copies of Ouest France newspaper piled up on the window sills.

MR Boscher's is one of only 2.8 per cent of French homes without a toilet, bath or shower. His only concessions to modernity are a refrigerator and an electric fence to prevent his 13 cows, five mares and pony escaping.

A smile broke across Prosper Boscher's wrinkled, highboned face as he raised his glass of homemade cider. "I bet you don't find many like me around here," he boasted, "I'm a rare bird."

Indeed, Mr Boscher is an endangered species; a genuine French peasant. A younger farmer told me be feels that Paris and Brussels are paying him "to be a gardener for nature", but Mr Boscher wants none of such nonsense. "I refuse all subsidies," he said. "I believe I must work to live." Boscher went to Paris just once 50 years ago when he did his military service. Since then he has rarely ventured further than Saint Brieuc, 40 km away. When he dies, the antique dealers will snap up his furniture, neighbouring farmers will buy his land, and St Mayeux will count another empty stone farmhouse.

Despite EU subsidies and agro industry, French rural life remains surprisingly feudal. Castles dot the countryside, and many farmers rent their land from the aristocrats who own them.

The Marquise de Robien - whose 400 hectares are let out to surrounding farms - had died the week before I arrived, and her descendants flocked from Paris to mourn her. "This land has belonged to our family for 700 years," her granddaughter, a countess pregnant with her fifth child, said. "Aristocrats want to pass on their values, to stay on their land. The tradition is being lost because young people go to Paris and study, then they work to pay to maintain this." She made a sweeping gesture towards the elegant 18th century facade of the chateau. So the dilemma was the same for rich and poor. The guard at the castle gate said the population of Robien village had fallen from 72 to eight. I told the countess about Thierry Le Potier in Uzel. "They have to stay," the countess said, very nearly stamping her foot.

"They must stay on the land. It's a duty."