IN THE VALLEY OF THE YONNE
There is no more charming river valley in all France than that of the
Yonne, which wanders from mid-Burgundy down to join the Seine just above
Fontainebleau and the artists' haunts of Moret and Montigny.
The present day Département of the Yonne was carved out of a part of the
old Senonais and Auxerrois; the latter, a Burgundian fief, and the
former, a tiny countship under the suzerainty of the Counts of
Champagne. Manners and customs, and art and architecture, however,
throughout the department favour Burgundy in the south rather than the
northern influences which radiated from the Ile de France. This is true
not only with respect to ecclesiastical, civic and military
architecture, but doubly so with the domestic varieties ranging from the
humble cottage to the more ambitious _manoirs_ and _gentilshommeries_,
and finally, to the still more magnificent seigneurial chateaux. Within
the confines of this area are some of the most splendid examples extant
of Burgundian domestic architecture of the Renaissance period.
The Yonne is singularly replete with feudal memories and monuments as
well. One remarks this on all sides, whether one enters direct from
Paris or from the east or west. From the Morvan and the Gatinais down
through the Auxerrois, the Tonnerrois and the Époisses is a definite
sequence of architectural monuments which in a very remarkable way
suggest that they were the outgrowth of a distinctly Burgundian manner
of building, something quite different from anything to be seen
elsewhere.
In the ninth century, when the feudality first began to recognize its
full administrative powers, the local counts of the valley of the Yonne
were deputies merely who put into motion the machinery designed by the
nobler powers, the royal vassals of the powerful fiefs of Auxerre, Sens,
Tonnerre and Avallon. The actual lease of life of these greater powers
varied considerably according to the individual fortunes of their
seigneurs, but those of Joigny and Tonnerre endured until 1789, and the
latter is incorporated into a present day title which even red
republicanism has not succeeded in wiping out.
The real gateway to the Yonne valley is properly enough Sens, but Sens
itself is little or nothing Burgundian with respect to its architectural
glories in general. Its Salle Synodale is the one example which is
distinct from the northern born note which shows so plainly in the tower
and façade of its great cathedral; mostly Sens is reminiscent of the
sway and tastes of the royal Bourbons.
A few leagues south of Sens the aspect of all things changes
precipitately. At Villeneuve-sur-Yonne one takes a gigantic step
backward into the shadowy past. Whether or no he arrives by the
screeching railway or the scorching automobile of the twentieth century,
from the moment he passes the feudal-built gateway which spans the main
street--actually the great national highway which links Paris with the
Swiss and Italian frontiers--and gazes up at its battlemented crest, he
is transported into the realms of romance. Travellers there are,
perhaps, who might prefer to arrive on foot, but there are not many such
passionate pilgrims who would care to do this thing to-day. They had
much better, however, adopt even this mode of travel should no other be
available, for at Villeneuve there are many aids in conjuring up the
genuine old-time spirit of things.
At the opposite end of this long main street is yet another great
barbican gate, the twin of that at the northerly end. Together they form
the sole remaining vestiges of the rampart which enclosed the old
Villeneuve-le-Roi, the title borne by the town of old. Yet despite such
notable landmarks, there are literally thousands of stranger tourists
who rush by Villeneuve by road and rail in a season and give never so
much as a thought or a glance of the eye to its wonderful scenic and
romantic splendours!
Before 1163 Villeneuve was known as Villa-Longa, after its original
Roman nomenclature, but a newer and grander city grew up on the old
emplacement with fortification walls and towers and gates, built at the
orders of Louis VII. It was then that it came to be known as the king's
own city and was called Villeneuve-le-Roi. By a special charter granted
at this time Villeneuve, like Lorris on the banks of the Loire, was
given unusual privileges which made it exempt from Crown taxes, and
allowed the inhabitants to hunt and fish freely--feudal favours which
were none too readily granted in those days. Louis himself gave the new
city the name of Villa-Francia-Regia, but the name was soon corrupted to
Villeneuve-le-Roi. For many years the city served as the chief
Burgundian outpost in the north.
The great tower, or citadel, a part of the royal chateau where the king
lodged on his brief visits to his pet city, was intended at once to
serve as a fortress and a symbol of dignity, and it played the double
part admirably. Attached to this tower on the north was the Royal
Chateau de Salles, a favourite abode of the royalties of the thirteenth
century. Little or nothing of this dwelling remains to-day save the
walls of the chapel, and here and there an expanse of wall built up into
some more humble edifice, but still recognizable as once having
possessed a greater dignity. There are various fragmentary foundation
walls of old towers and other dependencies of the chateau, and the old
ramparts cropping out here and there, but there is no definitely formed
building of a sufficiently commanding presence to warrant rank as a
historical monument of the quality required by the governmental
authorities in order to have its patronage and protection.
Philippe-Auguste, in 1204, assembled here a parliament where the
celebrated ordonnance "Stabilementum Feudorum" was framed. This alone is
enough to make Villeneuve stand out large in the annals of feudalism, if
indeed no monuments whatever existed to bring it to mind. It was the
code by which the entire machinery of French feudalism was put into
motion and kept in running order, and for this reason the Chateau de
Salles, where the king was in residence when he gave his hand and seal
to the document, should occupy a higher place than it usually does. The
Chateau de Salles was called "royal" in distinction to the usual
seigneurial chateau which was merely "noble." It was not so much a
permanent residence of the French monarchs as a sort of a rest-house on
the way down to their Burgundian possession after they had become
masters of the duchy. The donjon tower that one sees to-day is the
chief, indeed the only definitely defined, fragment of this once royal
chateau which still exists, but it is sufficiently impressive and grand
in its proportions to suggest the magnitude of the entire fabric as it
must once have been, and for that reason is all-sufficient in its appeal
to the romantic and historic sense.
Situated as it was on the main highway between Paris and Dijon,
Villeneuve occupied a most important strategic position. It spanned this
old Route Royale with its two city gates, and its ramparts stretched out
on either side in a determinate fashion which allowed no one to enter
or pass through it that might not be welcome. These graceful towered
gateways which exist even to-day were the models from which many more of
their kind were built in other parts of the royal domain, as at
Magny-en-Vexin, at Moret-sur-Loing, and at Mâcon.
A dozen kilometres from Villeneuve-sur-Yonne is Joigny, almost entirely
surrounded by a beautiful wildwood, the Forêt National de Joigny. Joigny
was one of the last of the local fiefs to give up its ancient rights and
privileges. The fief took rank as a Vicomté. Jeanne de Valois founded a
hospice here--the predecessor of the present Hotel Dieu--and the
Cardinal de Gondi of unworthy fame built the local chateau in the early
seventeenth century.
The Chateau de Joigny, as became its dignified state, was nobly endowed,
having been built to the Cardinal's orders by the Italian Serlio in
1550-1613. To-day the structure serves the functions of a schoolhouse
and is little to be remarked save that one hunts it out knowing its
history.
There is this much to say for the schoolhouse-chateau at Joigny; it
partakes of the constructive and decorative elements of the genuine
local manner of building regardless of its Italian origin, and here, as
at Villeneuve, there is a distinct element of novelty in all domestic
architecture which is quite different from the varieties to be remarked
a little further north. There, the town houses are manifestly town
houses, but at Joigny, as often as not, when they advance beyond the
rank of the most humble, they partake somewhat of the attributes of a
castle and somewhat of those of a palace. This is probably because the
conditions of life have become easier, or because, in general, wealth,
even in mediæval times, was more evenly distributed. Certainly the
noblesse here, as we know, was more numerous than in many other
sections.
Any one of a score of Joigny's old Renaissance houses, which line its
main street and the immediate neighbourhood of its market-place, is
suggestive of the opulent life of the seigneurs of old to almost as
great a degree as the Gondi chateau which has now become the
École-Communal.
Of all Joigny's architectural beauties of the past none takes so high a
rank as its magnificent Gothic church of Saint Jean, whose vaultings are
of the most remarkable known. Since the ruling seigneur at the time the
church was rebuilt was a churchman, this is perhaps readily enough
accounted for. It demonstrates, too, the intimacy with which the
affairs of church and state were bound together in those days. A
luxurious local chateau of the purely residential order, not a fortress,
demanded a worthy neighbouring church, and the seigneur, whether or not
he himself was a churchman, often worked hand in hand with the local
prelate to see that the same was supplied and embellished in a worthy
manner. This is evident to the close observer wherever he may rest on
his travels throughout the old French provinces, and here at Joigny it
is notably to be remarked.
Saint Fargeau, in the Commune of Joigny, is unknown by name and
situation to the majority, but for a chateau-town it may well be classed
with many better, or at least more popularly, known. On the principal
place, or square, rises a warm-coloured winsome fabric which is the very
quintessence of mediævalism. It is a more or less battered relic of the
tenth century, and is built in a rosy brick, a most unusual method of
construction for its time.
The history of the Chateau de Saint Fargeau has been most momentous, its
former dwellers therein taking rank with the most noble and influential
of the old régime. Jacques Coeur, the celebrated silversmith of Bourges
and the intimate of Charles VII, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and the
leader of the Convention--Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau--all lived for a
time within its walls, to mention only three who have made romantic
history, though widely dissimilar were their stations.
An ornate park with various decorative dependencies surrounds the old
chateau on three sides and the ensemble is as undeniably theatrical as
one could hope to find in the real. In general the aspect is grandiose
and it can readily enough be counted as one of the "show-chateaux" of
France, and would be were it better known.
Mlle. de Montpensier--"la Grande Mademoiselle"--was chatelaine of Saint
Fargeau in the mid-seventeenth century. Her comings and goings, to and
from Paris, were ever written down at length in court chronicles and
many were the "incidents"--to give them a mild definition--which
happened here in the valley of the Yonne which made good reading. On one
occasion when Mademoiselle quitted Paris for Saint Fargeau she came in a
modest "_carosse sans armes_." It was for a fact a sort of sub-rosa
sortie, but the historian was discreet on this occasion. Travel in the
old days had not a little of romanticism about it, but for a
[Illustration: _Chateau de Saint Fargeau_]
lady of quality to travel thus was, at the time, a thing unheard of.
This princess of blood royal thus, for once in her life, travelled like
a plebeian.
Closely bound up with the Sennonais were the fiefs of Auxerre and
Tonnerre, whose capitals are to-day of that class of important
provincial cities of the third rank which play so great a part in the
economic affairs of modern France. But their present commercial status
should by no means discount their historic pasts, nor their charm for
the lover of old monuments, since evidences remain at every street
corner to remind one that their origin was in the days when knights were
bold. The railway has since come, followed by electric lights and
automobiles, all of which are once and again found in curious
juxtaposition with a bit of mediæval or Renaissance architecture, in a
manner that is surprising if not shocking. Regardless of the apparent
modernity roundabout, however, there is still enough of the glamour of
mediævalism left to subdue the garishness of twentieth century
innovations. All this makes the charm of French travel,--this unlocked
for combination of the new and the old that one so often meets. One can
not find just this same sort of thing at Paris, nor on the Riviera, nor
anywhere, in fact, except in these minor capitals of the old French
provinces.
The Comté d'Auxerre was created in 1094 by the Roi Robert, who, after
the reunion of the Burgundian kingdom with the French monarchy, gave it
to Renaud, Comte de Nevers, as the dot of one, Adelais, who may have
been his sister, or his cousin--history is not precise. The house of
Nevers possessed the countship until 1182, when it came to Archambaud,
the ninth of the name, Sire de Bourbon. One of his heirs married a son
of the Duc de Bourgogne and to him brought the county of Auxerre, which
thus became Burgundian in fact. Later it took on a separate entity
again, or rather, it allied itself with the Comtes de Tonnerre at a
price paid in and out of hand, it must not be neglected to state, of
144,400 _livres Tournois_. The crown of France, through the Comtes
d'Auxerre, came next into possession, but Charles VII, under the treaty
of Arras, ceded the countship in turn to Philippe-le-Bon, Duc de
Bourgogne. Definite alliance with the royal domain came under Louis XI,
thus the province remained until the Revolution.
With such a history small wonder it is that Auxerre has preserved more
than fleeting memories of its past. Of great civic and domestic
establishments of mediævalism, Auxerre is poverty-stricken nevertheless.
The Episcopal Palace, now the Préfecture, is the most imposing edifice
of its class, and is indeed a worthy thing from every view-point. It has
a covered _loggia_, or gallery running along its façade, making one
think that it was built by, or for, an Italian, which is not improbable,
since it was conceived under the ministership of Cardinal Mazarin who
would, could he have had his way, have made all things French take on an
Italian hue. From this _loggia_ there is a wide-spread, distant view of
the broad valley of the Yonne which here has widened out to considerable
proportions. The history of this Préfectural palace of to-day, save as
it now serves its purpose as a governmental administrative building, is
wholly allied with that of Auxerre's magnificent cathedral and its
battery of sister churches.
Within the edifice, filled with clerks and officials in every cranny,
all busy writing out documents by hand and clogging the wheels of
progress as much as inefficiency can, are still found certain of its
ancient furnishings and fittings. The great Salle des Audiences is still
intact and is a fine example of thirteenth century woodwork. The
wainscotting of its walls and ceiling is remarkably worked with a
finesse of detail that would be hard to duplicate to-day except at the
expense of a lord of finance or a king of petrol. Not even government
contractors, no matter what price they are paid, could presume to supply
anything half so fine.
It was at Auxerre that the art and craft of building noble edifices
developed so highly among churchmen. The builders of the twelfth century
were not only often monks but churchmen of rank as well. They occupied
themselves not only with ecclesiastical architecture, but with painting
and sculpture. One of the first of these clerical master-builders was
Geoffroy, Bishop of Auxerre, and three of his prebendarys were classed
respectively as painters, glass-setters and metal-workers.
The towering structure on the Place du Marché is to-day Auxerre's
nearest approach to a chateau of the romantic age, and this is only a
mere tower to-day, a fragment left behind of a more extensive
residential and fortified chateau which served its double purpose well
in its time. It is something more than a mere belfry, or clock tower,
however. It is called the Tour Gaillarde, and flanked at one time the
principal breach in the rampart wall which surrounded the city. It is
one of the finest specimens of its
[Illustration: _Tour Gaillarde, Auxerre_]
class extant, and is more than the rival of the great Tour de l'Horloge
at Rouen or the pair of towers over which conventional tourists rave, as
they do over the bears in the bear-pit, at Berne in Switzerland.
The entire edifice, the tower and that portion which has disappeared,
formed originally the residence of the governor of the place, the
personal representative of the counts who themselves, in default of a
special residence in their capital, were forced to lodge therein on
their seemingly brief visits. The names of the counts of Tonnerre and
Auxerre appear frequently in the historical chronicles of their time,
but references to their doings lead one to think that they chiefly idled
their time away at Paris. That this great tower made a part of some sort
of a fortified dwelling there is no doubt, but that it was ever a part
of a seigneurial chateau is not so certain.
With respect to the part Auxerre played in the military science of the
middle ages it is interesting to recall that the drum, or _tambour_, is
claimed as of local origin, or at least that it was here first known in
France, in the fourteenth century. No precise date is given and one is
inclined to think that its use with the army of Edward III at Calais on
the 3rd August, 1347, was really its first appearance across the
Channel after all.
Above Auxerre the Yonne divides, or rather takes to itself the Armançon
and the Seruin to swell its bulk as it flows down through the Auxerrois.
Above lies the Avallonnais, where another race of seigneurs contribute
an altogether different series of episodes from that of their
neighbours. It remains a patent fact, however, that the cities and towns
of the valley of the Yonne give one ample proof of the close alliance in
manners and customs of all mid-France of mediæval times.
The inhabitants of this region are not a race apart, but are
traditionally a blend of the "natural" Champenois and the "frank and
loyal" Burgundian,--"strictly keeping to their promises, and with a
notable probity in business affairs," says a proud local historian. Here
in this delightful river valley were bred and nourished the celebrated
painter, Jean-Cousin; the illustrious Vauban, the builder of fortresses;
the enigmatical Chevaliere d'Eon; the artist Soufflot, architect of the
Pantheon; Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, Minister of Napoleon;
Bourrienne, his secretary and afterwards Minister of State under the
Bourbons.
Following the Yonne still upwards towards its source one comes
ultimately to Clamecy. Between Auxerre and Clamecy the riverside is
strewn thickly with the remains of many an ancient feudal fortress or
later chateaux. At Mailly-le-Chateau are the very scanty fragments
of a former edifice built by the Comtes d'Auxerre in the fifteenth
century, and at Chatel-Censoir is another of the same class. At
Coulanges-sur-Yonne is the débris, a tower merely, of what must one day
have been a really splendid edifice, though even locally one can get no
specific information concerning its history.
From Clamecy the highroad crosses the Bazois to Chateau Chinon in the
Nivernais. The name leads one to imagine much, but of chateaux it has
none, though its nomenclature was derived from the emplacement of an
ancient _oppidum gaulois_, a _castrum gallo-romain_ and later a feudal
chateau.
The road on to Burgundy lies to the southwest via the Avallonnais, or,
leaving the watershed of the Yonne for that of the upper Seine, via
Tonnerre and Châtillon-sur-Seine lying to the eastward of Auxerre.