Belgium, land of buried treasures
Belgium is the place in the world from where the most treasures have been extracted per km2. This record does not appear to have exhausted the very special capacities of its subsoil because it does not happen a month without the press does not signal a new find.
This fortunate characteristic stems from several reasons, such as having been the battlefield of Europe, possessing a high population density and being a traditionally rich country.
Perhaps we also owe all these treasures to the unreliable memory of the overnight workers, for it is more difficult to retain the coordinates of a hiding-place than the figure of a chest.
Generally, the hopper is buried at little depth, not more than 80 cm.it is often hidden in one or more terracotta vases sealed by means of a lead capsule. If you find, in turning your garden, a terracotta vase, do not throw it over the hedge of the neighbor, it may contain money!
Unthinkable, this is what happened at Grotenberge, a small town 25 km from Ghent, during the night of 24 to 25 May 1950 ...
To hide his treasure is useless if not to come and retrieve it.the holder of a treasure, whatever it may be, will not fail to choose the most characteristic landmarks it can find.
In emergency situations, a tree is often the ideal. Near Rouen, the Abbe de Jumieges and the bandit Duramé used it, as did that German soldier who at Ferrières fell on the booty of the Boar of the Ardennes. But nothing resembles a tree more than a tree.and thus in the three stories, the treasures went to magnify the list of the disappeared.
The solution is to draw up a plan of the places, as General Savary did. But again, if the trees in the forest were then slaughtered, that's no use.
The safest remains evidently the stone, although the monks of Orval could hardly have foreseen that their white menhir would one day be dragged from its forest of Longlier to adorn a place of Neufchâteau. Generally, the favorite cache for a treasure, is a good solid wall, often withdrawn from the depths of an underground passage, but sometimes exposed to all eyes, in a room or the enclosure of a domain.
Make an engraving in stone
How can one distinguish the stone behind which one has chosen to shelter its treasure from its neighbors? By tracing on it a rather banal mark to go unnoticed but to find it easily.
Some brands are more often used than others, probably because they come from the very subconscious of the individual. So when at Le Mans, the superior of the Ursulines wants a landmark for her treasure, she begs her mason to chisel a cross in the wall.
Possible that in this choice there is a kind of call to divine protection.but among the hundreds of crosses of different shapes there is, as if by chance, one called "Calvary" because it is planted at the top of a few degrees, often linked to the notion of treasure.
By way of association, this symbol was gradually identified in the popular subconscious with that of gold, to the extent that it was marked the inner door of the former secretaries when it was endowed with a secret mechanism designed to put the values eb safety.
The use of the Cross of Calvary at the Normandy abbey of Saint-Wandrillem where Cubs discovered in 1954 in the enclosure wall, three urns full of louis d'or, is exemplary. The chapel of Saint-Saturnin, at one end of the wall, had been marked with a cross of this type. A few steps away, and as it was later realized, a spiral called for research. Three new Calvary crosses were to be seen lined up at the bottom of the wall.they referred above to three caches concealing one of the pots of sandstone and marked respectively by a cross, a spiral and a kind of gallows.
Graffiti
Although no one thought of the treasure for two centuries, the hieroglyphics of the Saint-Wandrille precinct had not remained unnoticed all that time. This is evidenced by the many graffiti that surrounded them and paradoxically protected them.
It is the instinct of man, but also the problem of the treasure hunter, who is obliged to search among the ten or a hundred drawings for the archetype, the original, before he can undertake the slightest interpretation.
Such is the arduous task to which the priority of the fortune hidden by Diane de Poitiers at Anet should be given priority.the southern flank of the church of Saint-Lain is a real rebus, a puzzle that had been avoided by the Augustinian canons of the Red-cloister near Brussels. Their cross of Calvary to them, arranged in darker bricks, they had arranged it so that it appeared according to the position of the sun.
The cross of Calvary is rather the fact of the convents where one watched in common on the nest egg.this emblem will, however, be singularized to the maximum by the number of degrees, by placing it on a triangle, by treading it at its extremities, placing therein in a monstrance manner a sun, another figure of gold, Templars that a curious crucified, finally doubling it of an agreed and more discreet mark near the cache.
Very attached to his stock, the individual has tended more to personalize his landmarks, to make of it a kind of signature, a claim of property craftsmen, merchants, laborers use their ordinary marks, nobles an element, a piece of furniture of their coat of arms, Jews of allegories, some like that German soldier at Ferrieres engraving Al the trees of the path simply their initials.
It is therefore advisable in all cases to carry out his research first on the identity of the supposed burrowers and on their habits, before going on the quest for their nest egg.