Order of the “White Penitents,” and in the same way the “Black
Penitents” had inherited the independence and rebellious spirit that
animated the followers of Count Raymond of Toulouse. These rival
factions, whose original opposition had been mainly religious, had now
become political, and on the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo their
differences became more accentuated and violent. The Royalists were in
the ascendancy, and they revenged themselves upon their political and
religious enemies with all the fanatical fervour of their Southern
nature.
The aristocratic and religious party had much to remember. The Glacière
massacres of 1791 were perpetrated upon their class, and as in 1795 the
Royalist libertines in Paris had indulged in ghastly reprisals against
the red-capped revolutionaries, the White Penitents followed in Avignon
the fashion set them by the capital. The enforced submission to the
restored Bourbon Dynasty in July 1815 aroused the bitterest resentment
of the Black Penitents and their followers, just as the restoration of
Napoleon had done their opponents earlier in March of the same year.
At Carpentras, about fifteen miles from Avignon, a small garrison of the
republicans, who had kept the tricolour floating until July 15, were
shot down by the Royalist Volunteers, although they had surrendered.
Fanatical crowds of Royalists directed their hatred and anger against
the Protestant section of the community.
[Illustration: STREET STEPS IN CARPENTRAS]
Vindictive murder and pillage spread all over the country towns and
villages. “The White Terror” of 1815 is a thing to remember, or rather
to forget. The diabolical outrages of Jourdain were equalled, if not
surpassed, by the White Penitent Pointu, the Avignon murderer, a leader
of a band as ferocious and bloodthirsty as himself. The military and
civil authorities were powerless to check the excesses of the fanatical
horde that rode roughshod over law and order, morality, decency, and
ordinary human feeling.
Marseilles, Nîmes, Uzès, Avignon, Arles, and Carpentras were all
involved in the White Terror, and one can hardly credit the details of
the cruel crimes committed. Among the victims to the insensate Royalists
was Marshal Brune, passing through on his way from Marseilles to Paris
to defend his conduct to the Government. On reaching Avignon he sought
out quarters in the Hôtel de la Poste. The news of his arrival had
spread along with sinister stories as to his doings during the
Revolution of 1789, and a great mob assembled around the hotel, broke in
and shot the Marshal in cold blood. His body was on its way to burial
when the crowd forced the bearers to change their course and proceed to
the river-side, where a wooden bridge spanned the river. From this they
threw the body of the Marshal into the silent Rhone. The ribald crowd
fired shots into the body as it floated down the
[Illustration: TYPES AT AVIGNON.]
stream, a proceeding which they termed “military honours.” On the arch
of the bridge they wrote “The Tomb of Marshal Brune.” The river,
however, refused the honour, and after twice being washed ashore, the
corpse was taken and buried by two men, who recognised it. The Marshal’s
widow, eventually, had the body disinterred and embalmed. At her
instigation a public trial was held, at which the memory of the dead
man was cleared of the charge of suicide and the body buried at Rioni.
This is one story; a sidelight on the happenings in Beautiful Provence
at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
* * * * *
The Papal Palace in Avignon stands steadfast amidst all the changes that
have come to the city, for its outward features have successfully
resisted the incessant hammerings of time. The work of internal
renovation goes steadily on, whilst the white dust raised by the masons,
who sing at their work, settles in every conceivable resting-place, much
to the discomfort of the inhabitants, especially when the “mistral”
sweeps down and drives this dust, like snow, before it. The old motto of
the city
“Windy Avignon, liable to plague when it has not the wind and
plagued with the wind when it has it,”
still applies, if the plague is interpreted to mean dust.
The inhabitants have been easily moulded by the influence of modernity,
and their principal street boasts of electric light and trams. Fashion
finds ardent devotees in the provincial town, who worship at her shrine
with as much, if not greater, zeal than her votaries in Paris, London,
or New York. The café and the restaurant are held in high esteem, and,
as in all French towns, occupy an important place in the civil life. The
hour ’twixt sundown and the most important of the day, when all Avignon
sits around the well-spread dinner tables, is devoted to the cafés; and
these clubs of the people, deserted and idle at some hours, are full of
joyful life.
On winter evenings the temporary stoves that stand prominently in the
middle of these salons are surrounded by cold-footed mortals, who rest
their extremities upon the encircling fenders. Friends meet, and seated
around marble tables consume café, beer, bright-coloured syrups, and
absinthe according to their fancy. Absinthe is still a popular drink
throughout Provence, in spite of reasoned appeals from the medical
fraternity for its discontinuance. Respectable womenfolk frequent the
cafés with their male relatives and friends, and sip sweet sickly syrups
with the rest. Excess is rare, almost unheard of. Cards are played, the
stakes usually being the cost of the entertainment. During the hour or
so before dinner the café is supreme.
The old folk in Avignon are all happy-looking; the men especially are a
jolly set of fellows, and although the snow of years falls on their
heads and never melts, their hearts are young and warm, secure from
Time’s blighting frosts. They have studied the art of living, under
their blue skies, and have mastered the difficult business.
[Illustration: AVIGNON.]
The girls and women are particularly well favoured, dark, as becomes
their Southern origin, well featured, favouring the Grecian rather than
the Roman type. They have less of the imperious self-conscious dignity
of their sisters in Spain and other Latin countries, and seem frank and
more human and in touch with the life around them. The Church finds in
them its chief adherents, faithful still in a country where once
everybody believed and few inquired, and now, where few believe and all
ask questions. New vistas of thought were opened up in Provence during
the Revolution epoch, and ever since the view has widened. In the
churches nearly all the little brass plates on the prie-dieu chairs have
the prefix Mme. or Mlle. engraved upon them. One seldom comes across
Monsieur.
In summer, when the heat of the brilliant day gives place to the lovely
glow of the Provençal evening, all Avignon sits outside around the
tables that trespass in careless fashion upon the pavements. The gossip
of the day goes round amidst unrestrained laughter and merriment. The
café on the pavement is as truly a Gallic institution as the “Bullring”
is Spanish. Spain carried her “institution” to her remotest colonies,
and France has done the same with the café.
The scene on a summer evening in the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in
Avignon is but a repetition on a smaller scale of what may be seen on
any evening from one year’s end to the other in the Cannebière at
Marseilles, or farther distant still, across the Mediterranean in the
Place du Gouvernement in the French city of Algiers.
[Illustration: BOATS ON THE RHONE.]
The Romans introduced their great national institutions for amusement,
the amphitheatre and the circus, into nearly all their colonies, no
matter how distant, and the modern Gaul has emulated the older and far
greater coloniser in this respect. Even on the borders of the Great
Desert the outside café is firmly planted amongst a people who boast a
longer civilisation than their conquerors--a feat which the Romans found
impossible, for the amphitheatre of Rome made no headway amongst the
conquered Greeks.
[Illustration: AVIGNON]
But the Place, with all its gay life upon a summer evening, is not a
lasting memory of Avignon. The picture that remains upon the mind is the
view from the suspension bridge, just where it reaches the isle of
Barthelasse. From this point of vantage Avignon, bathed in the evening
glow, assumes a thoroughly mediæval aspect. The dark masses of the Rocks
of the Dom, the Cathedral, the Papal Palace, the church spires and
belfries are all softened and mellowed in the mystic light of the
afterglow in the west, until fancy suggests that the intervening years
have, in some subtle way, been bridged over, and the beholder is back in
those days when the proud prelates ruled like kings, nay despots, in
this fortress town beside the Rhone.
VILLENEUVE
II
VILLENEUVE
The modern approach to the town of Villeneuve passes the Tower of Philip
the Fair, a huge square block of masonry, erected early in the
fourteenth century on the west bank of the river, at the spot where the
old Bridge of St. Benezet reached the shore. The position was such that
whoever held this tower had complete command of the bridge, and could
render it useless to the inhabitants of Avignon when any conflict arose.
Its presence here proves how determined Philip was to have the Papacy
under his complete control, and at the time of its construction it was
well-nigh impregnable, for it embodied the latest improvements known to
the military genius of that day.
Before this period the battlements of fortresses and castles were simply
a series of embrasures and merlons with narrow oylets perforating the
latter. The engines of war used in laying siege to these buildings were
great battering-rams, with iron points, which laboured incessantly at
the lower portions of the defences, until a breach sufficiently large to
give passage to the attacking party was effected. The defenders’ reply
to this mode of attack was to lower cords or chains from the
battlements, and with them entangle the battering-ram so as to put it
out of action.
The besieging party’s efforts were, therefore, engaged in preventing the
defenders from leaning over the parapets; the archers and bowmen
directing their arrows and quarrels at any and every head appearing at
the embrasures above. Throughout the crusades this was the manner of
defence and attack, and an improvement was introduced by a system of
covering the battlements with temporary galleries, projecting over and
supported upon wooden beams, thrust through holes left for the purpose
in the masonry. This gallery was roofed with wood and tiles, whilst the
floor had gaps between the planks through which the defenders could let
down their ropes and chains or pour molten lead, burning sulphur, stones
and other missiles upon the heads of those who advanced to enter
breaches in the walls.
But in time a method was discovered of successfully
[Illustration: TOWER OF PHILIP THE FAIR.]
attacking this device of the defending party. Great catapults, the most
ancient of military engines, invented away back in the early classic
times, were now employed to hurl barrels of burning tar up on to the
temporary wooden shelters, which were soon demolished by this means.
[Illustration: A HILL TOP VILLENEUVE.]
For centuries this method of attack and defence flourished, and it was
not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that the machicolated
battlements came into existence. From ancient times the old crenellated
battlements had served through ages that were engaged in fighting. The
ancient Egyptians and Assyrians used them, and it was reserved for the
military genius of the Middle Ages to invent the machicolated parapet.
This consisted of building out from the main walls of the tower or
castle a curtain of masonry, supported by stone brackets. This gave a
thorough protection to the besieged, who could look down through the
apertures between the corbels and drop their missiles, molten lead,
burning sulphur and melted pitch, on to the heads of their assailants.
The Tower of Philip the Fair is built with a machicolated battlement,
and over the small doorway there is an “échauguette,” or small
projecting tower, which commands the entrance. Even if the besiegers
managed to escape the missiles dropped through the floor of the little
tower, and forced their way into the porch, their task was not
accomplished, for from the roof of the narrow passage leading into the
large ground-floor chamber a long chimney runs right up to the top of
the tower and down this projectiles could still be dropped.
The tower contains three lofty chambers, one above the other, each of
which has a finely vaulted roof, the ribs resting upon fantastically
carved corbels. These chambers are in an absolutely perfect state of
preservation, a rare thing in a fourteenth-century building in this part
of the country. The narrow winding staircase lit by oylets, which betray
the thickness of the walls, has at intervals little branch stairways of
only a few steps. These give
[Illustration: GATEWAY, TARASCON.
p. 80]
access to small openings into the shaft that runs from the roof of the
porch to the roof of the building.
If for any reason the roof had to be abandoned, the besieged could still
command the entrance through these apertures. The top chamber in the
tower seems to have been used as a prison at some early time, for it is
covered with pathetic inscriptions, cut with such care that they could
only have been executed by persons upon whose hands the time hung
heavily. One cannot know for certain that they are not the work of a
besieged garrison, or the guardians of the tower, but the presence of
strong iron bars across the outside of the windows, and other evidences,
would indicate that prisoners occupied this tower at some time in its
history; and one would think that all these precautions to prevent the
escape of a prisoner from this lofty room were hardly necessary: unless
indeed the prisoner had a rope or was able to construct a makeshift one
out of his clothing, he would be very unlikely to run far after he had
dropped from this lofty tower on to the rough rocks below.
The stone seat in one of the deep window embrasures in the second
chamber has carved upon it, very neatly, the chequered pattern of a
chess-board, the alternate squares being either raised or sunk. A
similar “chessstone” appears upon the floor of one of the chambers in
the Fort St. André. One can only imagine them to be the work of
prisoners, for, however much time the soldiers of the Guard had at their
disposal, it is incredible they would have allotted themselves so hard
and tedious a task when they could easily obtain a bit of wood to serve
their purpose. And yet, who knows? A prolonged siege might have reduced
the garrison to its last stick, and the horror of their perilous
position may have driven them to seek any diversion to drive away the
contemplation of the fate awaiting them.
[Illustration: WINDOW SEAT. IN THE TOWER OF PHILIP.]
The Fort of St. André commands not only the town which nestles around
its foundations, but the river and the whole of the western side of
Avignon.
When Philip forced the miserable Pope Clement V. to settle in France, he
anticipated the necessity of keeping a strict watch on the Papal
residences, and although the great Palace which now stands in Avignon
was not erected till some years after, Philip had the Fort St. André
built to keep a guard. It was probably the proximity of this formidable
fortress that caused the succeeding Popes to take such care with the
fortification of their residence. It was from this fortress that the
French troops besieged the Papal Palace when Pierre de Luna set up his
pretensions and defended it against all comers.
[Illustration: FORT SAINT ANDRE.]
Two great towers form the entrance to the grounds upon which stood the
Abbey of St. André. During the troublous times of the sixteenth century
these two towers were used as prisons, and the great Hall on the first
floor, the Hall of the Chevaliers, served for a recreation-room. The
flagstones of this great bare apartment are covered with inscriptions
and devices which, although much worn, show that the prisoners who
carved them were educated men of the period. The skill displayed in many
of these elaborate devices is all the more remarkable when it is
remembered that the only instruments used were the soft pewter spoons
the prisoners had for supping soup with. Indications of the prisoners’
thoughts are embodied in the stones. A St. George and the Dragon, a
Crucifixion, cannon, Maltese crosses, a figure of Justice, a device
emblematic of abundance, skulls and crossbones, form some of the
subjects upon which the prisoners tried their spoons and skill; whilst
one by a member of the “Carbonari” recalls memories of Silvio Pellico
and his moving records of a prisoner’s life.
The venerable heavy doors that lead into these gloomy chambers groan
with age each time they turn upon their well-worn hinges; rusty iron
bolts creak out the same melancholy discords that many years ago fell
upon strained ears and sinking hearts.
The twin towers of the Fortress of St. André remain a most imposing
memorial of fourteenth-century military architecture. Standing on a
rock, that at one time was an island of the Rhone, the fort commanded
the surrounding country to an extent that made its presence a
[Illustration: A STREET IN VILLENEUVE.]
menace to the neighbourhood. The walls enclose a site upon which a town
nestled in calm security, and near by the Monastery or Abbey of St.
André, sheltered further by a great belt of pines, rises upon the site
of a still more ancient building now passed out of memory.
Its career has been a chequered one, for it has changed owners with a
bewildering frequency. After the Revolution it was turned into a
military hospital; later it came into the possession of private persons;
and in the second decade of the last century it again became a convent,
inhabited by nuns. Now, unoccupied, it awaits some fresh development,
but who dare prophesy what destiny has in store for it?
The little town beside it is fast tumbling to decay; its dilapidated
walls and roofs straggling in irregular confusion up the rocky hillside.
Higher up, on one of the topmost knolls of the enclosure, a small
ancient chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Belvezet, stands erect and
stern in its simplicity, forsaken and exposed to the mistral’s greatest
violence and the sun’s fiercest bleaching rays.
The town of Villeneuve, that lies below the fortress, sadly belies its
name, for a more concentrated collection of crumbling ruins could hardly
be imagined. The Monastery of the Chartreuse, founded by Innocent VI.
in the middle of the fourteenth century (1352), was for more than four
hundred years one of the most important and prosperous in Languedoc. The
walls enclosing it measure nearly a mile in circumference, and now its
ruins form a squalid little town inhabited by over five hundred human
beings, to say nothing of the domestic animals.
The walls of its crumbling church are fast disappearing, the roof lets
more than daylight in, and what little of it remains affords but a poor
shelter for a few rickety, cumbrous, mud-stained carts and piles of
faggots stored for winter use.
The Gothic tomb of Innocent VI., the founder and patron of this monastic
town (for the Monastery of the Chartreuse was more than a mere cluster
of religious buildings), was only removed from this church as lately as
1835, and placed amidst more secure and fitting surroundings, in the
Hospice of the town.
This beautiful tomb of Innocent, not unlike that of his predecessor
John, in the Cathedral of Avignon, suffered more shameful treatment at
the hands of the demoralised mobs of the first Republic. For years it
lay neglected, amidst accumulating mounds of degrading filth that
threatened to engulf it; till during the reign of Louis Philippe, when
the fires of the Revolution had died down, attention was directed to the
ancient monuments of the country, and amongst other things it was
discovered that this once beautiful and dignified tomb was being used by
some ingenious and impious person as a rabbit hutch. Time’s revenges are
indeed bitter, but its healing power is none the less merciful, and
to-day the tomb receives the homage of pilgrims actuated by more varied
motives than those of former ages.
[Illustration: GATEWAY OF MONASTERY CHARTREUSE.]
Some idea of the enormous power of Monachism, and the attraction it had
for all classes in the Middle Ages, can be derived from the
contemplation of even the ruins of these institutions in the Southern
countries where they flourished.
At the close of the thirteenth and all through the following century the
Monastery and Convent reached the highest developments. The primitive
hermits, who lived in bare seclusion, depriving themselves wilfully of
all but the essentials of existence, were not only fifteen centuries
removed from the powerful and luxurious monks of the Middle Ages, in
point of time; they are for ever unrelated to them in their methods of
existence. The gradual stages in the evolution of the monastic idea melt
into each other almost imperceptibly. From St. Anthony to the Monastery
of Villeneuve is a far cry, and the anchorite of Thebes would have found
it difficult to recognise in the monachism of later years the spirit
that controlled his life.
Instead of the rough cave of nature’s carving, a succession of chapels
richly decorated by the hands of accomplished artists, whose talents
were controlled by monastic wealth, cloisters with carvings that only
practical
[Illustration:.THE FOUNTAIN IN..THE CLOISTERS OF..THE CHARTREUSE.
.VILLENEUVE.]
and well-paid sculptors could achieve, galleries, chapter-houses,
refectories, gardens, kitchens, stables, wine-cellars, all contributed
to the enjoyment of the occupants. The worldly prosperity of the
institution continued right down until the Revolution relieved it of its
wealth and robbed it of its power. There was no lingering period of
decay, but a sudden lightning stroke put an end to the Monastery of the
Chartreuse.
Its architecture represents all the styles of four hundred years. Here
we see an early Roman-Gothic chapel, on whose walls linger remnants of
Italian frescoes, painted when art was breaking away from the archaic
tradition of the earlier Christian schools. Classic Renaissance
sculpture adorns the fine entrance gateway, a masterpiece of the
eighteenth century, the work of de Valfenier. Upon the shield facing the
spectator is the inscription: “Domus Sanctæ Mariæ. Vallis
Benedictiones.”
All through the strange winding lanes, that once were cloisters and
vaulted passages, incongruous squalid makeshift hovels mingle and jostle
with the ancient buildings. In the centre of one of the cloisters there
stands unfinished, but isolated, a classic rotunda that once sheltered a
fountain, one of the latest additions to the monastery when the end
came. At the beginning of the eighteenth century buildings foreign to
the character of the place grew up in the cloisters that surround this
dignified rotunda, but the intervening space has fortunately been spared
to give, as it were, a breathing space to one of the best preserved
monuments in the ruined abbey.
TARASCON
III
TARASCON
Daudet has left on record the feelings of embarrassment that overcame
him whenever he had to pass the little town of Tarascon. From the moment
when the great white towers of the Château René burst upon his view
until it was left behind he confesses to feeling ill at ease. He had
made the name of the sleepy Provençal town almost as famous in the
nineteenth century as it had been in the fifteenth, and yet its natives
were ungrateful and in no way pleased with the new celebrity that had
been thrust upon them.