The name guerre des demoiselles comes from the fact that the countrymen disguised themselves as women, with long white shirts or sheep skins, scarves or wigs, and blacked or concealed faces.
[2] This led to a campaign of civil disobedience in which men dressed as women to hide their identities and which came to be known as the War of the Maidens (la guerre des demoiselles).
[1] Despite the efforts of Castillonnais municipal councils to defend the peasants' rights through the legal process, on May 22, 1829, the Maidens chased forest guards out of their homes with shouting and gunfire.
Twenty forest guards, having surprised six trespassing shepherds with their flocks, wanted to seize the livestock; but they quickly found themselves facing a crowd of a hundred disguised and armed countrymen who insulted them, threw stones at them, and even shot at them.
The revolts used guerilla tactics consisting of avoiding direct engagement with the enemy in favor of skirmishes with forest guards.
[1] In mid-August 1829, a new attempt to seize livestock in Bellongue, close to the small village of Buzan, caused one of the largest confrontations of the year.
In June, charcoal burners were the target of violence in Sentein, in the Biros valley; and afterwards in July in Ustou, in the south of Saint-Gironnais.
The hostility of the Maidens continued until spring 1830, when in the April of that year some 30 charcoal burners were injured and forced to flee in the forest of Saint-Lary.
On December 17, 1829, guards of the Autrech valley, in the Saint-Lary commune, decided to cease their service after being threatened by 15 Maidens armed with axes.
These simple and direct actions, brought against all who infringed on their free use of the forest, became popular very quickly, and the movement was not slow to spread to the neighboring regions in the Ariège department.
[1] Encouraged by the success of the first guerilla actions, the revolt propagated in the Arbas valley (in Haute-Garonne), and in Ariège (in the Cabannes canton and the Ax region).
On January 24, at Balaguères (Castillonnais), the day of the local festival, they paraded in the streets armed with axes and guns to the sound of an oboe and a drum.
Due to their widespread use of horns and their communication by smoke signals, the Ariège rebels were described as truly organized and disciplined forces obeying warlords.
[7] Also, a doctoral thesis titled "Délits forestiers et troubles politiques dans les Pyrénées centrales de 1827 à 1851" ("Forestry offences and political troubles in the central Pyrenees from 1827 to 1851"), relying on new evidence from the National Archives, was written by Louis Clarenc at the University of Toulouse.
His work showed that the War of the Maidens should be considered as "one link in a long chain of revolts starting well before 1829, continuing well after 1831, and engaging at one moment or another almost all of the Pyrenean valleys.
[10] In 1976, Gerard Guillaume and Jeanne Labrune directed a feature film (two episodes) entitled La Guerre des Demoiselles, set in Massat with professional actors and local contributors.
The thesis of Francois Baby was the historic thread establishing a parallel between the revolt of countrymen in the 19th century and the current trend of protest, dominated by occitanistes, with its epicenter in Larzac.